When the two officers returned to the ER the following day to ask further questions, Paul was glad he had been circumspect the day before. The officers asked him repeatedly about the supposedly planned intervention with the van carrying the cyclist—why did they deem it necessary to dangerously race around Boulder, chasing a man who had turned down the offer of help from an ambulance from the Boulder Memorial Hospital? Why were they so concerned about this one patient? The police seemed less interested in the possibility that the VW had been rear-ended on the road than the fact that Pia had been speeding, particularly because, according to them, the VW showed no evidence of having been hit by another vehicle, as banged up it was. Paul knew Pia would be far less sanguine about accepting the line of questioning than he was, but he was being honest. The fact remained that he truly couldn’t remember much at all about what had actually happened.

But in his own mind, Paul had asked himself over and over about the causes of the accident. Sure, Pia had been driving fast, but she was in control and was not being reckless, as far as he could recall. If another vehicle had been involved, where had it come from? Was the car racing Pia for some reason, or was it a third car that no one knew about? The idea that they had been pushed off the road had occurred to Paul almost immediately when he’d become oriented to time and place, but it seemed outlandish, like something that happened in a movie. It would mean that someone had tried to murder him and Pia, or at least Pia, and he would have been collateral damage. He had shared Pia’s suspicions, mostly unvoiced, that Nano might be experimenting on human subjects somewhere in the facility, but this line of reasoning about the accident struck Paul as being close to paranoia. Of course, he guessed that Pia would almost certainly feel differently when she came to, especially if, by some slim chance, she remembered more than he.

Paul looked down at Pia’s face. Despite the turmoil of his thoughts, Pia appeared to be in a deep but contented sleep. The contrast made Paul realize he was exhausted. He would have liked nothing better than to lie down next to her and catch a few minutes’ rest himself.

Chapter 33

33.

NANO, LLC, BOULDER, COLORADO

FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2013, 2:12 A.M.