I leaned back against my chair, feeling the blood drain from my cheeks. “What are you talking about?”

“The doctors at the university trau:ma center found…,” Vincent explained, his voice flat and precise.

“An abnormality in the way my blood was carrying oxygen,” he continued.

“They treated it. They also sent samples for independent testing because it did not fit an ordinary medical emergency.”

I glanced at the envelope. “You think someone poisoned you.”

“I think someone put something where it should never have been.

The doctors can tell me what happened inside my body.

Investigators will have to tell me how it got there.”

He turned his phone toward me.

The screen displayed a photograph of the restaurant’s private booth, taken before the paramedics arrived.

A white napkin lay crumpled beside an untouched plate.

Near the edge of the table was a glass with a pale ring along its rim.

“I asked my security people to preserve the footage,” he said.

“The restaurant sent them a recording with eleven minutes missing.”

“Eleven minutes?”

“The section before you called for help.”

I tried to remember that night.

Dennis ordering everyone away.