In fuchsia, violet, pink, blue, orange, scarlet … all shimmering in the sunlight.

He walked toward her, through grass that was as green as every living thing and smelled as sweet as heaven must smell.

She put her fingers lightly on his lips and smiled.

“You’ll be brilliant,” she said. “Absolutely brilliant.”

And a moment later he was dead.

Or so he thought.

Through his closed eyelids, he sensed a sudden illumination. It was accompanied by the sound of distant music rising through the ringing in his ears, and, above and through it all, the throbbing of a great drum.

And then he heard the voice.

The voice that brought him back to the cabin in the swamp in the middle of nowhere. A voice amplified mightily by a bullhorn.

“POLICE … NEW YORK STATE POLICE … PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS … PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND OPEN THE DOOR … DO IT NOW … PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND OPEN THE DOOR … THIS IS THE NEW YORK STATE POLICE … PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND OPEN THE DOOR.”

Gurney opened his eyes. Instead of moonlight, a spotlight was shining in the window. He looked across the room at where his formidable, invisible captor had been standing ninja-like in the darkness. In his place was a man of average stature in brown slacks and a tan cardigan, with one hand raised to shield his eyes from the glare. It was hard for Gurney to associate this modest figure with the homicidal monster of his imagination. But in the man’s other hand was the undeniable link to the monster: a gleaming .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol. The pistol responsible for the blood still trickling down the side of Gurney’s neck, the acrid smell of gunpowder in the room, the ringing in his ears.

The gun that had come so close to ending his life.

The man turned a little away from the spotlight and calmly lowered the hand he’d been holding in front of his eyes, revealing an impassive, unlined face. It was a face without distinction, without strong emotions, without any particularly prominent feature. It was a balanced, ordinary face. A face that was essentially forgettable.

Yet Gurney knew he had seen it before.

When he was finally able to place it, when he could finally attach a name to it, his first reaction was to think he must be mistaken. He blinked several times, trying to wrap his mind around the identity of the man facing him. He was having a hard time uniting that inoffensive, quiet identity with the words and actions of the Good Shepherd. Especially one of those actions.

But as his certainty increased and he was sure there was no mistake, he could almost feel the puzzle pieces being jarred into new positions, shifting into more interesting relationships, clicking together.