“I don’t see why this is necessary,” Sarah said, sitting up in bed. She had electrodes stuck to her chest and legs.

“Please don’t move,” the nurse said. “We’re trying to get a record.”

They were in a small, screened-off cubicle in the Flagstaff hospital emergency room. Kenner, Evans, and Sanjong had insisted she come there. They were waiting outside. She could hear them talking softly.

“But I’m twenty-eight years old,” Sarah said. “I’m not going to have a heart attack.”

“The doctor wants to check your conduction pathways.”

“My conduction pathways?” Sarah said. “There’s nothing wrong with my conduction pathways.”

“Ma’am? Please lie down and don’t move.”

“But this is—”

“And don’t talk.”

She lay down. She sighed. She glanced at the monitor, which showed squiggly white lines. “This is ridiculous. There’s nothing wrong with my heart.”

“No, there doesn’t seem to be,” the nurse said, nodding to the monitor. “You’re very lucky.”

Sarah sighed. “So, can I get up now?”

“Yes. And don’t you worry yourself about those burn marks,” the nurse said. “They’ll fade over time.”

Sarah said, “What burn marks?”

The nurse pointed to her chest. “They’re very superficial.”

Sarah sat up and looked down her blouse. She saw the white adhesive tags of the electrodes. But she also saw pale brown streaks, jagged marks that ran across her chest and abdomen. Like zigzags or something—

“What is this?” she said.

“It’s from the lightning.”

She said, “What?”

“You were struck by lightning,” the nurse said.

“What are you talking about?”

The doctor came in, an absurdly young man, prematurely balding. He seemed very busy and preoccupied. He said, “Don’t worry about those burn marks, they’ll fade in no time at all.”

“It’s from lightning?”

“Pretty common, actually. Do you know where you are?”

“In Flagstaff hospital.”

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Monday.”

“That’s right. Very good. Look at my finger, please.” He held his finger up in front of her face, moved it left and right, up and down. “Follow it. That’s good. Thank you. You have a headache?”

“I did,” she said. “Not anymore. Are you telling me I was struck by lightning?”

“You sure as heck were,” he said, bending to hit her knees with a rubber hammer. “But you’re not showing any signs of hypoxia.”

“Hypoxia…”

“Lack of oxygen. We see that when there’s a cardiac arrest.”

She said, “What are you talking about?”

“It’s normal not to remember,” the doctor said. “But according to your friends out there, you arrested and one of them resuscitated you. Said it took four or five minutes.”

“You mean I was dead?”

“Would have been, if you hadn’t gotten CPR.”

“Peter resuscitated me?” It had to be Peter, she thought.

“I don’t know which one.” Now he was tapping her elbows with the hammer. “But you’re a very lucky young woman. Around here, we get three, four deaths a year from strikes. And sometimes very serious burns. You’re just fine.”

“Was it the young guy?” she said. “Peter Evans? Him?”

The doctor shrugged. He said, “When was your last tetanus?”

“I don’t understand,” Evans said. “On the news report it said they were hunters. A hunting accident or an argument of some kind.”

“That’s right,” Kenner said.

“But you’re telling me you guys shot them?” Evans looked from Kenner to Sanjong.

“They shot first,” Kenner said.

“Jesus,” Evans said. “Three deaths?” He bit his lip.

But in truth, he was feeling a contradictory reaction. He would have expected his native caution to take over—a series of killings, possibly murders, he was an accomplice or at the very least a material witness, he could be tied up in court, disgraced, disbarred…. That was the path his mind usually followed. That was what his legal training had emphasized.

But at this moment he felt no anxiety at all. Extremists had been discovered and they had been killed. He was neither surprised nor disturbed by the news. On the contrary, he felt quite satisfied to hear it.

He realized then that his experience in the crevasse had changed him—and changed him permanently. Someone had tried to kill him. He could never have imagined such a thing growing up in suburban Cleveland, or in college, or law school. He could never have imagined such a thing while living his daily life, going to work at his firm in Los Angeles.

And so he could not have predicted the way that he felt changed by it now. He felt as if he had been physically moved—as if someone had picked him up and shifted him ten feet to one side. He was no longer standing in the same place. But he had also been changed internally. He felt a kind of solid impassivity he had not known before. There were unpleasant realities in the world, and previously he had averted his eyes from them, or changed the subject, or made excuses for what had occurred. He had imagined that this was an acceptable strategy in life—in fact, that it was a more humane strategy. He no longer believed that.

If someone tried to kill you, you did not have the option of averting your eyes or changing the subject. You were forced to deal with that person’s behavior. The experience was, in the end, a loss of certain illusions.

The world was not how you wanted it to be.

The world was how it was.

There were bad people in the world. They had to be stopped.

“That’s right,” Kenner was saying, nodding slowly. “Three deaths. Isn’t that right, Sanjong?”

“That’s right,” Sanjong said.

“Screw ’em,” Evans said.

Sanjong nodded.

Kenner said nothing.

The jet flew back to Los Angeles at six o’clock. Sarah sat in the front, staring out the window. She listened to the men in the back. Kenner was talking about what would happen next. The dead men were being ID’d. Their guns and trucks and clothes were being traced. And the television film crew had already been found: it was a truck from KBBD, a cable station in Sedona. They’d gotten an anonymous call saying that the highway patrol had been derelict and had allowed a picnic to proceed despite flash flood warnings, and disaster was probable. That was why they had gone to the park.

Apparently it never occurred to anyone to question why they’d got an anonymous call half an hour before a flash flood warning had been issued from the NEXRAD center. The call had been traced, however. It had been placed from a pay phone in Calgary, Canada.

“That’s organization,” Kenner said. “They knew the phone number of the station in Arizona before they ever started this thing.”

“Why Calgary?” Evans said. “Why from there?”

“That seems to be one primary location for this group,” Kenner said.

Sarah looked at the clouds. The jet was above the weather. The sun was setting, a golden band in the west. The view was serene. The events of the day seemed to have occurred months before, years before.

She looked down at her chest and saw the faint brownish markings from the lightning. She’d taken an aspirin, but it was still beginning to hurt slightly, to burn. She felt marked. A marked woman.

She no longer listened to what the men were saying, only to the sound of their voices. She noticed that Evans’s voice had lost its boyish hesitancy. He was no longer protesting everything Kenner said. He sounded older somehow, more mature, more solid.

After a while, he came up to sit with her. “You mind company?”

“No.” She gestured to a seat.

He dropped into it, wincing slightly. He said, “You feel okay?”

“I’m okay. You?”

“A little sore. Well. Very sore. I think I got banged around in the car.”

She nodded, and looked out the window for a while. Then she turned back. “When were you going to tell me?” she said.

“Tell you what?”

“That you saved my life. For the second time.”

He shrugged. “I thought you knew.”

“I didn’t.”

She felt angry when she said it. She didn’t know why it should make her angry, but it did. Maybe because now she felt a sense of obligation, or…or…she didn’t know what. She just felt angry.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Glad to be of service.” He smiled, got up, and went to the back of the plane again.

It was odd, she thought. There was something about him. Some surprising quality she hadn’t noticed before.

When she looked out the window again, the sun had set. The golden band was turning richer, and darker.