Nichols knew that Drummond would savor this assignment. Driving luxury cars full throttle in physical reality was his passion, one Nichols tried to cater to from time to time. He could hear tires squealing as Drummond raced onto the main road.

Nichols turned his attention to the testimony he was due to deliver to Congress. He had waited for this opportunity for twenty years. He wanted the speech to be perfect.

Fifty minutes after he left, Drummond reappeared in the study doorway.

Nichols turned to him. “Edward, I assume our guests are in hand?”

“No sir.”

Nichols frowned. “Why not, Edward?”

“Because their car skidded off the road at the turn on Otter Cliff.”

“Off the road? How far off the road?”

“Into the Atlantic.”

Nichols was silent for a moment. “Did you see them go off?”

“Yes. I had closed to within a few hundred feet.”

“And did you stop at the top of the cliff?”

“I did.”

“What did you see?”

“The car floating on the water, upside down. Then it sank.”

“You didn’t see any sign of Ms. Caldwell or her companion?”

He shook his head. “Mr. Nichols, that cliff is well over—”

“Yes, I know.” Nichols turned to the window that overlooked the front of the estate. “Thank you, Edward. That will be all.”

At 8:00 p.m. I tried to access the VR park where Ray hoped to meet me again. The location didn’t exist. Ray had been right. The door had been closed.

I checked on Cleary’s memory stream for Pape’s most recent tap. Nothing. Whatever had happened to Ray, Cleary hadn’t yet been informed.

I walked downstairs to Lauren’s kitchen, simultaneously accessing news headlines from around the world. I bit into an apple as I noted a breaking report from Maine. A reporter stood on a cliff road overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

“In a rare automotive fatality, a former FBI agent and a woman passenger were killed as their car plunged off the side of Otter Cliff on Mount Desert Island near Acadia National Park. The car apparently skidded on slick pavement and was unable to navigate the turn. Local authorities have begun a search for the car but hold out little hope of recovering it in these deep coastal waters. The agent, Ben Steele, a thirty-two-year veteran of the FBI, had left the bureau just last week. The woman, Abigail Caldwell, had recently come to the United States for the first time from Papua New Guinea, where her American parents had raised her among an isolated jungle tribe.”

The apple dropped. I sank to the floor, buried my head in my hands, and did something I didn’t know was possible with my new brain.

I wept.