Ted didn’t say much. Beyond a perfect faith in his intuition, he didn’t have a lot to offer. Remarkably little that could have been called “fact.” The central piece of information that he might have provided—that Kenzie had been chasing a city councilman who had been driving away in a limousine—sounded too preposterous to be believed. Unless, of course, you knew McKenzie from Ridgewood, the fearless and sometimes impulsive community organizer.

Orders finally came down from some higher level, New York lost the toss, and the Nassau cops melted into the night. Ted rode to the hospital with two unhappy detectives. Their moods didn’t improve when they arrived.

“Mr. Molloy?” The nurse approached Ted, ignoring the two hulking men bracketing him. “The patient is asking for you. Will you come this way?”

“This man is a suspect. We’re going to want to talk to her first,” one of the detectives said, latching on to Ted’s arm.

“Am I under arrest?” Ted pointedly asked the other cop.

“No,” he said. “You’re a witness.”

Ted shrugged off the first detective’s grip.

“A person of interest,” the first one countered.

Ted looked to the RN for adjudication.

“You’ll get your turn,” the nurse said to the first detective. She spoke with absolute authority.

The cop considered his options. He had none. They were on her turf. “All right. You can have him. But for five minutes only.”

The nurse gave him a withering look before turning to Ted. “This way, please.” She led him past the security and triage desks and into the heart of the ER. Ted was braced for the usual chaos and clutter of a New York emergency room. He was stunned to find an orderly, clean, and modern facility that gave off a quiet, controlled hum of coordinated efficiency. It was like stepping into a futuristic movie version of an ER.

Kenzie was in a glass-walled room on the far side of the area. The door slid open automatically as Ted and the nurse approached. “I’ll hold them off for at least ten minutes,” she said. “If you need anything, press the button on the cord. If it’s an emergency, hit that red button on the wall.”

Kenzie smiled as he entered. Ted was hit by her transformation from a tough woman into a vulnerable girl. She’d somehow shrunk four inches and dropped forty pounds. They’d washed the mascara off her face, and a gauze wrap had replaced the wig, but there were brown splotches of dried blood matting her hair, and her right ankle was immobilized in a Velcroed splint. Blood pressure and pulse monitors beeped quietly. She looked pale and a little tired. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and stroke her face with his fingers and tell her how frightened he had been and how relieved he felt at that moment. But he didn’t. He let her lead.