Lizzy Ballard fled to the desert to escape her past. Her enemies came to collect.

Lizzy Ballard is on the run after her fatal game of rock-paper-scissors with those behind the Vivantem fertility clinic's nefarious experiments. She finds herself in the Red Rock Country of Arizona … and finds a mentor in a man with his own dark past.

While Lizzy works to control her deadly ability, Louise Mortensen and her calculating operative are hot on her trail, and Lizzy's power will be no defense against the weapon they have chosen.

Then Mortensen strikes at the one person whose life means more to Lizzy than her own. Forced out of hiding and done with running, Lizzy carries the fight to the enemy's camp—into a boobytrapped house where her enemies are waiting, and where one misstep means she doesn't walk out at all.

SNAKES AND LADDERS is the heart-pounding second novel in Matty Dalrymple's Lizzy Ballard thriller series—a story about the long shadow of the past, the family you choose, and how a single move can send everything you've built sliding out from under you. For readers of Stephen King's Firestarter who like a coldly methodical villain and a young heroine learning just how dangerous she can be, this is a climb where every rung is a risk and the fall is fast. In this deadly game of snakes and ladders, will Lizzy be rewarded for her virtues or punished for her vices?