He stared at the ceiling, in a hazy, reflective mood. Lincoln Rhyme divided people into two categories: traveling people and arrival people. Some enjoyed the journey more than the destination. He, by his nature, was an arrival person—finding the answers to forensic questions was his goal and he enjoyed getting the solutions more than the process of seeking them. Yet now, lying on his back, staring into the chromium hood of the surgical lamp, he felt just the opposite. He preferred to exist in this state of hope—enjoying the buoyant sensation of anticipation.

The anesthesiologist, an Indian woman, came in and ran a needle into his arm, prepared an injection, fitted it into the tube connected to the needle. She had very skillful hands.

“You ready to take a nap?” she asked with a faint, lilting accent.

“As I’ll ever be,” he mumbled.

“When I inject this I’m going to ask you to count down from one hundred. You’ll be out before you know it.”

“What’s the record?” Rhyme joked. “Counting down? One man, he was much bigger than you, got to seventy-nine before he went under.”

“I’ll go for seventy-five.”

“You’ll get this operating suite named after you if you do that,” she replied, deadpan.

He watched her slip a tube of clear liquid into the IV. She turned away to look at a monitor. Rhyme began counting. “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven…”

The other nurse, the one who’d mentioned him by name, crouched down. In a low voice she said, “Hi, there.”

An odd tone in the voice.

He glanced at her.

She continued, “I’m Lydia Johansson. Remember me?” Before he could say of course he did, she added in a dark whisper, “Jim Bell asked me to say good-bye.”

“No!” he muttered.

The anesthesiologist, eyes on a monitor, said, “It’s okay. Just relax. Everything’s fine.”

Her mouth inches from his ear, Lydia whispered, “Didn’t you wonder how Jim and Steve Farr found out about the cancer patients?”

“No! Stop!”

“I gave Jim their names so Culbeau could make sure they had accidents. Jim Bell’s my boyfriend. We’ve been having an affair for years. He’s the one sent me to Blackwater Landing after Mary Beth’d been kidnapped. That morning I went to put flowers down and just hang out in case Garrett showed up. I was going to talk to him and give Jesse and Ed Schaeffer a chance to get him—Ed was with us too. Then they were going to force him to tell us where Mary Beth was. But nobody thought he’d kidnap me.”

Oh, yeah, this town’s got itself a few hornets.…

“Stop!” Rhyme cried. But his voice came out as a mumble.

The anesthesiologist said, “Been fifteen seconds. Maybe you’re going to break that record after all. Are you counting? I don’t hear you counting.”