heavy steel door and, positioned high on the wall in the corner, watching the scene with its unblinking gaze, a security camera.
“Mr. Grey, I’m Horace Guilder,” the one on the left said. His tone of voice struck Grey as oddly cheerful. “This is my colleague Dr. Nelson. How are you feeling?”
Grey did his best to focus on their faces. The one who’d spoken looked anonymously middle-aged, with a heavy, square-jawed head and pasty skin; the second man was considerably younger, with tight dark eyes and a scraggly little Vandyke. He didn’t look like any doctor Grey had ever met.
He licked his lips and swallowed. “What is this place? Why am I tied up?”
Guilder answered with a calming tone. “That’s for your own protection, Mr. Grey. Until we figure out what’s wrong with you. As for where you are,” he said, “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that just yet. Suffice it to say that you’re among friends here.”
Grey realized they must have sedated him; he could barely move a muscle, and it wasn’t just the straps. His limbs felt like iron, his thoughts moving through his brain with a lazy aimlessness, like guppies in a tank. Guilder was holding a cup of water to his lips.
“Go on, drink.”
Grey’s stomach turned—just the smell of it was revolting, like some hideously overchlorinated pool. Thoughts came back to him, dark thoughts: the blood in the tank, and Grey’s face buried greedily in it. Had that actually happened? Had he dreamed it? But no sooner had these questions formed in his mind than a kind of roaring seemed to fill his head, a vast hunger lurching to life inside him, so overwhelming that his entire body clenched against the straps.
More images were coming back to him, rising through the fog. The tank in the road, the dead soldiers, and explosions all around; the feel of his hand crashing through the Volvo’s window, and the fields detonating with fire, and the car sailing through the corn, and the bright lights of the helicopter, and the space-suited men, dragging Lila away.
“Where is she? What have you done with her?”
Guilder glanced toward Nelson, who frowned. Interesting, his face seemed to say.
“You needn’t worry, Mr. Grey, we’re taking good care of her. She’s right across the hall, in fact.”
“Don’t you hurt her.” His fists were clenched; he was straining against the straps. “You touch her and I’ll—”
“And you’ll what, Mr. Grey?”
But there was nothing; the straps held firm. Whatever they had given him, it had taken his strength away.
“Try not to excite yourself, Mr. Grey. Your friend is perfectly fine. The baby, too. What we’re a little unclear on is just how the two of you came to be together. I was hoping you might help us with that.”
“Why do you want to know?”
One eyebrow lifted incredulously behind the faceplate. “For starters, it seems that the two of you are the last people to come out of Colorado alive. Believe me when I tell you, this is a matter of some interest to us. Was she at the Chalet? Is that where you met her?”
Just the word made Grey’s mind clench with panic. “The Chalet?”
“Yes, Mr. Grey. The Chalet.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Then where?”
He swallowed. “At the Home Depot.”
For just a moment, Guilder said nothing. “Where was this?”
Grey tried to put his thoughts together, but his brain had gone all fuzzy again. “Denver someplace. I don’t know exactly. She wanted me to paint the nursery.”
Guilder quickly turned toward the second man, who shrugged. “Could be the fentanyl,” Nelson said. “It may take him a little while to sort things out.”
But Guilder was undeterred. There was something more forceful about the man’s gaze now. It seemed to bore right into him. “We need to know what happened at the Chalet. How did you get away?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Was there a girl there? Did you see her?”
There was a girl? What were they talking about?
“I didn’t see anyone. I just … I don’t know. It was all so confusing. I woke up at the Red Roof.”
“The Red Roof? What’s that?”
“A motel, on the highway.”
A puzzled frown. “When was this?”
Grey tried to count. “Three days ago? No, four.” He nodded his head against the pillow. “Four days.”
The two men looked at each other. “It doesn’t make sense,” Nelson said. “The Chalet was destroyed twenty-two days ago. He’s not Rip Van Winkle.”
“Where were you for those three weeks?” Guilder pressed.