Glancing down, he saw that his left hand was wrapped in some sort of gauze bandage. An IV line had been attached to a vein alongside the wrist of his right arm. A nearby purple bruise suggested it had not been an easy vessel to nail. There were a pair of windows in the wall to his left. The blinds were open, allowing bright sunlight to spill into the room. It had been late in the day when he’d been shot. Prayer time for Dr. Kazimi.

How long?… How long have I been here?… Maria. What happened to Maria?

He was seized by an image of her—a distorted mental picture, woefully out of focus, swirling like smoke. She was falling—melting like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. Moments later, faces intruded on the unsettling picture.

Who are they? When will the pain in my head go away? Where’s Maria? What happened to her?

“Tim, are you with us? Can you hear me?… Will he be able to speak?”

The words dragged Vaill out of his fog. He recognized the steely, authoritative voice immediately. It belonged to Beth Snyder, FBI director of Special Operations—his boss. Snyder, whose notion of time off was a Sunday afternoon nap in the office, rarely went to see an agent in person unless it was to attend their funeral or visit them in the hospital. Barring some great cosmic joke, the hard-boiled woman was far from Vaill’s idea of heaven, so he assumed he was in a hospital somewhere.

“Give him time,” a man with an accent said. “His wound was not life-threatening, but it was a serious injury.”

Wanting to change positions, Vaill pushed back on his elbows to prop himself up. Even that slight movement sent lightning bolts crackling through his head. Clenching his teeth, his vision having gone white, he forced himself to move past the pain. He needed to look Snyder in the eyes and ask the question he could not seem to answer for himself.

“Maria,” he managed. His voice was a strangled croak, with barely enough power to escape his parched throat. He tried again, digging deeper, ignoring the pain the way he had been taught at Quantico. “Maria … where is she?” Even though Vaill wanted water more than air, all he could do was keep asking for her. Each time he spoke her name he expected a sliver of memory to return, but nothing came.

“Agent Vaill, you should try to keep your movements to a minimum.”

The stranger’s accented voice again—a doctor of some sort, Vaill now believed.

“Who … are you … Where is Maria?”

Vaill inched his head around to face the man—an Indian or Pakistani, wearing turquoise hospital scrubs beneath a long, white coat with his name stitched in blue script above the breast pocket. Beth stood beside him, her expression grave.