Callahan sighed, but reached out to shake the cop’s hand—which, oddly, extended past his hand to his wrist. He felt a sudden prick. “Shit!”

“Sorry, man,” the police officer said. “My goddamn signet ring.” But he didn’t move.

“What the fuck, man?” Callahan protested. All at once, he felt strangely weak.

The man in the blue slicker reached through the window and unlocked the door. Then he pulled on the knob.

Callahan was puzzled, even outraged. He wanted to say something … but nothing came out. He wanted to swat the man away … but when he tried to move his arm, nothing happened. And when the door opened, he found himself slumping out of it like a sack of gravel. He could not move.

“Easy, boy,” the man in the slicker said, laughing genially. He caught Callahan before he hit the ground. Now he leaned into the car, lifting Callahan up and over to the passenger seat on the right.

Callahan stared impassively, slack-jawed, as the man settled beside him in the driver’s seat.

The intercom light flashed blue, and a voice squawked through a small speaker: “Danny? What the hell’s going on?” Hildreth, on the other side of the opaque “privacy window,” was beginning to fret.

The man in the blue slicker pressed the driver-override buttons so that the rear doors were locked and could be reactivated only by him. Then he smoothly shifted into drive and made his way toward the Arlington Memorial Bridge.

“I’ll bet you’re wondering the same thing,” the man said to Callahan companionably. “It’s called Anectine. A neuromuscular blocker. They use it during surgery. Sometimes people on respirators get it, too, to make sure they don’t thrash around. It’s a strange sensation, isn’t it? You’re fully conscious, but you can’t fucking move. Your diaphragm goes up and down, your heart pumps away, you can even blink. But your voluntary muscles are out of commission. Plus which, the way it’s metabolized, it’s damn hard to identify in forensics unless you already know what to look for.”

The man pressed the window controls, lowering both rear windows partway. Another squawk came from the intercom, and the man switched the sound off.

“Your passenger can’t figure out why we’d lower the windows when it’s raining like a mother,” the man said.

What the hell was going on?

Callahan focused all his mental energy on the task of lifting his index finger. He strained with all his might, as if he were bench-pressing three times his weight. The finger trembled ever so faintly, and that was all. He was helpless. Utterly helpless. He could see. He could hear. But he could not move.