Watchers

On his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell, a former Delta Force operative and retired real-estate broker living in isolation near Santa Barbara, California, drives into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains carrying a loaded revolver. Years of compounding loss have left him in despair: His mother died giving birth to him, his brother drowned, his father was killed in a car accident, most of his military squad died in a botched embassy rescue, and his wife Paula succumbed to cancer. In the woods, a filthy golden retriever blocks his path and refuses to let him descend a particular trail. Something unseen pursues them, emitting sounds that are neither wholly animal nor human. Travis fires warning shots and flees with the dog. On the drive home, the retriever presses the glove compartment release to retrieve a candy bar Travis mentioned aloud, demonstrating startling intelligence. Travis names the dog Einstein.

Over the following days, Einstein reveals extraordinary abilities: He fetches beer from the refrigerator, opens cabinets, and arranges nineteen dog biscuits on the kitchen floor to form a question mark, demonstrating abstract thought and a desire to communicate. Travis confides his entire history to Einstein, and for the first time in years, he feels a reason to live.

In Santa Barbara, thirty-year-old Nora Devon lives as a recluse in the house where her domineering Aunt Violet raised her since age two. Violet, dead for a year, convinced Nora she was plain and undesirable, keeping her out of school and isolated from the world. When a television repairman named Art Streck begins stalking and sexually harassing Nora, she is too paralyzed by lifelong conditioning to defend herself.

A third storyline introduces Vincent Nasco, a professional hit man who believes he absorbs his victims' life energy and is approaching immortality. On the same day Travis finds Einstein, Vince murders several scientists connected to Banodyne Laboratories in Irvine, California. By interrogating one victim, Vince learns about the Francis Project, a top-secret program that produced a genetically engineered dog of extraordinary intelligence. The dog has recently escaped. Vince resolves to find it.

Einstein brings Travis and Nora together. During a park outing, Einstein charges at a man who is intimidating Nora on a bench and drives him away. Travis introduces himself, and a connection forms. Days later, when Streck breaks into Nora's house to assault her, Travis arrives with Einstein, who corners Streck until police arrive. Freed from his threat, Nora begins emerging from decades of seclusion, and a romance develops.

Lemuel Johnson, the African American director of the National Security Agency's (NSA) Southern California office, coordinates the secret search for both Einstein and a second Banodyne escapee called The Outsider. The Francis Project, named for Saint Francis of Assisi, produced two results. Einstein is a retriever with near-human intelligence designed for espionage. The Outsider is a creature derived from baboon genetics and engineered as a battlefield weapon; it possesses formidable intelligence, immense physical power, and an obsessive hatred of the dog. Soviet agents have complicated the crisis by murdering the project's lead scientists and destroying Banodyne's records, eliminating American expertise on both creatures.

As The Outsider moves north from Banodyne, it leaves a trail of savage killings, its victims' eyes always torn out. When searchers discover its lair in the Angeles National Forest, they find pathetic evidence of tormented self-awareness: candy wrappers smoothed flat, a Mickey Mouse coin bank, a mirror shard, and a magazine with every pictured person's eyes scratched out. The keepsakes reveal a creature that longs for beauty and connection yet is driven toward violence.

Travis and Nora develop a communication system with Einstein using Scrabble tiles. Einstein confirms he escaped from Banodyne and reveals that The Outsider is tracking him through a quasi-psychic sixth sense. Meanwhile, Nora's attorney, Garrison Dilworth, reveals that Violet Devon's husband had infidelities that triggered her descent into paranoid misanthropy, freeing Nora from the belief that her aunt's worldview was sound. Travis recognizes Nora's talent as a painter and encourages her. On June 4, Travis proposes, and Nora accepts.

After obtaining false identities through an underground forger in San Francisco, Travis becomes Samuel Spencer Hyatt and Nora becomes Nora Jean Aimes. They marry in Las Vegas with Einstein at their side and honeymoon along the California coast. Upon their return, they discover The Outsider has killed Travis's landlord in their rented house. Travis catches a glimpse of the creature: a misshapen head, enormous jaws, and lantern-yellow eyes. They flee to Garrison, who provides a car and financial support.

They settle in a remote house in the Big Sur area south of Carmel, where Travis fortifies the property with alarms, shutters, and weapons. Nora discovers she is pregnant. In late November, Einstein falls gravely ill with distemper, a potentially fatal viral disease that can cause brain damage. They rush him to veterinarian James Keene in Carmel, who treats the dog over agonizing days. When Einstein recovers, Nora tests him with Scrabble tiles, and he confirms his intelligence is intact. Keene, after witnessing the dog's abilities, burns a Banodyne wanted flyer and declares that imprisoning an intelligent creature is unjust. Einstein's quasi-psychic sense of The Outsider, however, remains impaired after his illness.

Garrison, now under NSA surveillance, executes a daring escape to warn Travis and Nora. While his companion pilots his sailboat out of the harbor as a decoy, the nearly seventy-one-year-old attorney leaps into the dark water, swims to shore, evades agents, and calls to warn them that the NSA has traced their connection to him.

On December 29, all threats converge. Vince, having traced their new identities through the forger's secret records, ambushes Nora at gunpoint after a prenatal appointment and forces her to drive home. As they arrive, Nora seizes a hidden pistol and shoots Vince four times, but he survives thanks to a bulletproof vest and wounds Travis in the shoulder. Travis kills Vince with an Uzi submachine gun. Moments later, Einstein alerts them that The Outsider has entered the house through a second-floor window. In a chaotic confrontation, the creature seizes Einstein and retreats into a room. Travis fires through the door, and The Outsider flees to the barn, badly wounded. Travis follows and finds it clutching a Mickey Mouse videotape. In a broken voice, it says it is hurt, alternately taunts that it killed the dog and seems racked with grief, then pleads for death. Travis complies. Keene arrives and saves Einstein, though the dog is left with a permanent limp.

In January, Lem Johnson locates them but arrives alone, intending to help rather than capture. A growing belief that imprisoning an intelligent creature is wrong has changed him. Travis claims Einstein is dead, but Lem notices fresh retriever hair on his pants in the immaculate kitchen and tacitly accepts the lie, ending the pursuit. Travis threatens to expose the Francis Project publicly if the government pursues the matter, and the NSA agrees to leave the family alone.

An epilogue set years later shows Travis, Nora, and their son celebrating the boy's third birthday. Einstein retains his full intelligence and has mated with a retriever named Minnie, producing litters of intelligent puppies distributed among trusted friends. That evening, Einstein uses a computer to ask if he will be remembered. Nora assures him that, as long as there are dogs and people fit to walk with them, he will always be remembered.