He must have been out for less than a minute.

Painfully, Jack pushed himself out of the mud. To any observer, he would have looked like human life emerging from the primordial slime.

His right pant leg flapped.

At first, Jack thought it was his own flesh flapping.

He touched his cut, realized how deep it was, and retched.

Well, Jack thought, if I'm going to vomit, this is the perfect place to do it.

The Cowboy had a key to open the train door.

He had planned to kill Jack on the train home all along. Toss him into the woods. Be gone with the train to Albany? Where he would get off. Anonymous. Vanishing into the city.

If someone had seen him, would he have waited for another opportunity?

How long had he been waiting for this opportunity?

While Jack thought he was playing with the Cowboy, the Cowboy was playing with Jack.

How long would it have taken for Jack's body to be found?

If it was ever found.

Throat cut, kicked off the train, maybe Jack would have sunk into the marsh, becoming food for the noisy creatures around him.

Jack felt as if he were trying to fit pieces from one jigsaw puzzle into another.

When the Cowboy had attacked, Jack had been holding his cell phone. But he had no idea what had happened to it.

Was Caroline okay?

Jack had to get to Caroline.

He forced himself to move. He stumbled through the woods, roots tripping him, leaves like reptile fins slicing his mouth....

The razor hadn't crippled him, Jack figured.

Jack looked around. Looked at the sky. Disoriented.

Was he stumbling in the right direction to get to Caroline's?

Hudson was behind him. North. Northish.

That made sense.

That's the direction the train had been going.

Jack realized he was not thinking as cogently as he had assumed.

Caroline's house-her uncle's house-was north of Hudson.

Through Mycenae. Along the river.

Jack's head throbbed. His ribs, his back, his side-everything hurt.

Without looking down, he touched his thigh. His hand came back wet with blood.

Jack leaned against a tree and took deep breaths.

The only thing to do was to keep walking.

3.

The woods ended with a scrim of pillarlike trees, backlit by a moonlit backyard. A hand-painted sign shaped like a pointing hand said See 3.6 Million Year Old Hominid Fossilized Footprints Next to Dinosaur Footprints: Proof Man Lived With Lizards-$10.

A homemade exhibit.

Jack blinked at the fossils next to a slab of concrete with the imprints of a high-arched human, modern foot, maybe thirty years old.

The sign looked worn.

On the other side of the footprints was another worn sign that asked: What killed the dinosaurs?

The sign was decorated with a faded cartoon of two running velociraptors, a tyrannosaurus, a brontosaurus, and three pterodactyls, all fleeing from a bloody-looking comet with a face and fangs.

The exhibit might have been popular twenty years ago. Maybe.

Closer to the house was a broken seesaw and a rusty swing set. The breeze rattled the chairs as if ghostly kids were pushing each other.

The house was dark.

Beside the side door was a propane canister, looking like a space probe.

On the road in front of the house, Jack checked his watch and headed north-past a closed farm store with its empty plywood bins, past Harvey's Meat Company, past the twenty-foot tall ad for Stan the Vegetable Man, a figure made up of zucchini legs, pumpkin chest, corn arms, grinning tomato head. A Knish-O-Rama, abandoned by a couple from the Catskills across the river who thought to expand their franchise.

Walking along the Taconic Parkway, Jack saw a car driven by an elderly man, sharp chin, leaning back in seat with, in the seat behind him, a huge, stuffed toy gorilla in a porkpie hat.

A battered pickup truck stopped on the other side of the road.

Jack half ran, half hobbled to the median, glanced to his right-no oncoming cars-and approached the truck.

The driver-a kid with a soul patch on his chin-leaned out his window and asked, "You need a lift?"

Jack, his throat bruised, croaked yes.

As Jack climbed into the passenger seat, the kid surveyed him, "Looks like you've had an interesting night."

Jack nodded.

"I'm going as far as Hudson," the kid said. "Warren and Fourth. I can drop you off at the police station."

"No police," Jack croaked.

"Didn't think so," the kid said, grinning.

In Hudson, Jack hailed a taxi.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

1.

The trees around Caroline's house were hung with bars of deodorant soap to discourage the deer. Unsuccessfully.

Half a dozen deer stood in the yard. Like Balinese shadow puppets.

The front door was unlocked.

Jack entered.

In the living room to his right, Caroline, Nicole, and Dixie were playing chamber music. Caroline played a violin. Nicole leaned over a cello like an animal over a scrap, scraping away ferociously. Dixie, in a tattered, old-fashioned, red smoking jacket, played the piano, working the pedals as if he were taking a curve in the Indianapolis 500.

Her back to Jack, Caroline said, "It's harder to get my fourth finger on the F-sharp. Bach is still Bach."

The piano was painted bright red. The room's drapes were red. The walls were red. On the piano, lying in front of the score, was a red Pentel pen.

"My better-red-than-dead red," Dixie said, serenely catching sight of Jack with his peripheral vision.

"My God," Caroline said.

She put down her instrument and ran to Jack.

Her knees clutching the cello and pointing her bow at Jack, Nicole, thinking she was joking, said, "You look like someone tried to kill you."

"The linoleum cutter slipped," Jack said, "and I fell down the stairs."

Nicole laughed.

She'd never been to Jack's shack and didn't know it had no stairs.

"And you came all the way over here for Caroline's care and tending," Nicole said. "How touching."

"Caroline's a good nurse," Dixie said.

"I hope you left a trail of blood," Nicole said, "so you can find your way home."

"You should spend the night," Caroline said.

When Jack heaved himself up to go into the bathroom off the front hall, Nicole called after him, "We're trying to go easy on the environment. I only use three squares of toilet paper for every flush."

Under his breath, Jack said, "I'm glad I don't have to do your laundry!"

2.

After Jack showered, the blood from his razor cut circling, diluted, down the drain, he toweled off, soaking a towel with blood-even though he had made a tourniquet from his ripped shirt.

When Caroline handed in a white terry-cloth bathrobe, Jack said, "Better get me an old robe."

Caroline slipped into the steamy bathroom.

When she saw the blood pooling on the floor, she sagged.

Jack caught her.

"You have to go to the hospital," Caroline said.

"It's slowing down," Jack said.

"Please," Caroline said.

"If it's still bleeding in half an hour," Jack said. "Get me some hydrogen peroxide. Gauze if you've got it. Adhesive tape..."

Caroline put her hands on Jack's cheeks and kissed him so hard she bruised his lips.