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CHAPTER 1

He ca down into his face and thewater close by There was a brilliant ache in his optic nerve, and a steady, painless throbbing at the base of his skull—the distant thunder of an approachingposition, tucking his head between his knees Sensed the instability of the world long before he opened his eyes, like its axis had been cut loose to teeter His first deep breath felt like soh on his left side, but he groaned through the pain and forced his eyes to open His left eye must have been badly swollen, because it seeh a slit

The greenest grass he’d ever seen—a forest of long, soft blades—ran down to the bank The water was clear and swift as it flowed between the boulders that jutted out of the channel Across the river, a cliff swept up for a thousand feet Pines grew in clusters along the ledges, and the air was filled with the s water

He was dressed in black pants and a black jacket with an oxford shirt underneath, the white cotton speckled with blood A black tie hung by the flimsiest knot from his collar

On his first atteh to send a vibration of searing pain through his rib cage His second try succeeded, and he found hi deck beneath his feet He turned slowly, his feet shuffling and spread wide for balance

With the river behind hie of an open field On the far side, the limmered under an intense, midday sun

Not another soul around

Beyond the park, he glis of a main street The toas at most a mile across, and it sat in the middle of an a several thousand feet on every side and cohest, shadowed ered, but down here in the valley, it arm, the sky above a deep and cloudless cobalt

The le-breasted coat

No wallet No money clip No ID No keys No phone

Just a small Swiss Army knife in one of the inner pockets

By the time he’d reached the other side of the park, he wasin his cervical spine wasn’t painless any longer

He knew six things:

The name of the current president

What his h he couldn’t recall her name or even the sound of her voice

That he could play the piano

And fly a helicopter

That he was thirty-seven years old

And that he needed to get to a hospital

Outside those facts, the world and his place in it wasn’t so n nomenclature beyond his co on the outskirts of consciousness, but it lay just out of reach

He walked up a quiet residential street, studying every car he passed Did one of the to him?

The houses that faced each other were pristine—freshly painted with perfect little squares of bright grass framed by picket fences and each household name stenciled in white block letters on the side of a black mailbox

In al not only with flowers but vegetables and fruit

All the colors so pure and vivid

Midway through the second block, he winced The exertion of walking had drawn a deep breath out of hi hi his jacket, he pulled his oxford out of his waistline, unbuttoned the shirt, and opened it Looked even worse than it felt—all down his left side stretched a dark purple bruise, bull’s-eyed with a swath of jaundiced yellow

So had hit him Hard

He ran his hand lightly over the surface of his skull The headache was there, becons of severe trauma beyond tenderness on the left side

He buttoned his shirt back, tucked it into his pants, and continued up the street

The blaring conclusion was that he’d been involved in some sort of accident

Maybe a car Maybe a fall Maybe he’d been attacked—that could explain why he carried no wallet

He should go to the police first thing