And I woke in the back of an ambulance with fractured ribs and blood in my mouth and a single thought burning hotter than any of the pain: that whoever had done this had known, exactly, where I would be.

Which meant it was someone close.

Someone inside.

So I made a decision, there in the ambulance, that probably saved my life.

“Tell them I’m gone inside,” I told my private physician.

“Tell them I’m in a coma.” My injuries were real.

The coma was not.

And by sunrise, all of New York believed that Julian Vance lay comatose and dying in a private Manhattan hospital suite, while in truth I lay there awake, and listening, and waiting to see which of the people I had trusted would reveal themselves.