“You’re… notjoking about this?”

“No, Kip. This is no joke.”

He tries to call up a memory of everything he wrote but it’s impossible, given the stream-of-consciousness that flowed through the laptop. But what he does remember is enough to curl him into a fetal ball.

Oh, my God! Sharon! The way I talked about her, and about Jerrod, and sex and everything else to the whole world! How can I ever face anyone again?

The doctor is clearing his throat in an unsuccessful effort to refocus Kip’s nearly dilated eyes.

“Kip,” he says at last, “I’d say that right now it’s safe to say that you are probably the most famous living person on Earth. I realize you didn’t intend that to be, and I realize it’s like having the whole world read your diary, but that’s what’s happened. I know it’s going to take you a while for this to sink in so you can come to grips with it.”

“They broadcast everything?”

“Every word. And people were acting on it. For instance, you talked about your employer’s misconduct with that bad batch of antibiotics, and federal indictments have already been issued.”

“Against me?”

He laughs. “No, Kip. Against the guys in your company who did what they did. Hell, man, you’re probably not even aware someone filed your divorce for you?”

“My… divorce?”

“You wrote out the papers up there and someone printed them out down here and raced to the nearest courthouse, I think in Tucson.”

He feels the room getting a bit fuzzy.

What on earth will I tell Sharon?“Do you suppose my wife knows?”

“Well, she’s been interviewed on TV a dozen times, so I’d say she… you okay, Kip?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Kip, breathe deeply a few times. There. Hey, fellow, the world isn’t laughing at you, we all have great respect for you. You needn’t be embarrassed.”

“That’s easy for you to say!”

“What’s amazed all of us is the way you just told the truth about your life and your thoughts and everything.”

“Doc, I feel like I’m standing buck naked in front of the whole world. You know that dream everyone has where you’re suddenly out in public without clothes? But I’m naked in front of the whole planet.”

“Hey, man. One of the greatest things about what you wrote was the glaring truth about your own feelings.”

“But… I mean… how do I deal with this? What the hell do I do now?”

“You already know, Kip. You wrote the answer. You go out there with your head held high and live for yourself, knowing you’re one of the few humans on the planet who’s been truly honest with himself.”

“Yeah. Honest. Any chance the government would let me disappear into the witness protection program?”

“You’ve got a booming voice now, Kip. Use it well. We’re all listening.”

Suddenly Geoff Shear sees what he’s walked into is an ambush.

He should have been clued in, he thinks, by the others already assembled in the Oval Office, and their tight-lipped response when he was shown the place of honor on the couch. The FBI Director, the Attorney General, and the White House Chief of Staff would not normally be expected to evaluate NASA’s emergency scrub of a shuttle launch.

Nothing sinister had been reported by any of his sources in the last few days, but the fact that Dorothy Sheehan had evaporated has been scratching at him like a strange vibration in an airborne engine, vaguely threatening, though nothing has happened yet.

But now the President has entered with a tight-jawed expression and little more than a glance at him, and Geoff feels his blood running cold.

The President stands behind his desk, not even sitting, a bad sign.

“Geoff, you recall what you personally promised me when I took office and chose to keep you on as head of the agency?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I told you above all else, I demand two things. Honesty in communicating any disagreements or distasteful information, and complete lockstep obedience when I’ve made a decision.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve violated both. Jim? Hand him the evidence.”

The FBI Director leans over and wordlessly plops a manila folder in Shear’s lap.

“Evidence?” Geoff feels his stomach flip-flopping.

“Yes, Geoff. From the woman you sent to sabotage the rescue mission I ordered by keeping it on the ground. I’m aware you’d never imperil the crew or the vehicle on purpose, but I consider you’ve done just that. She, and you, put at risk more than just my orders, and when you’ve had a look at that folder, you’ll understand why I have a decision to make right now. One, to prosecute you to the fullest extent of federal law in what will be a slam-dunk case, and put your ass in a federal prison; or two, have you resign immediately and preserve the illusion that we know what the hell we’re doing in this office when I and my predecessors appoint someone to high position on the presumption that they’re honest.”

“Mr. President…”

“Don’t even think about oiling your way out of this, Geoff. You’re busted. And you’re going to twist in the wind for the next forty-eight hours while I decide what to do.”

The others are already on their feet, following the President from the room as a secretary appears, quietly motioning a stunned Geoff Shear to an alternate exit.

Jerrod Dawson smiles at the symmetry of the curve in his fishing line as it describes a lazy arc through the evening air.

He wonders what it would have been like to be here ten years ago. It does seem odd at age twenty to be learning how to fly-fish at the behest of one’s father, but he’s enjoying it—and he’s getting better at it all the time. Now, instead of creating a safety hazard with every cast, he can lay the line down quietly on the surface of the crystal water, the small fly plopping in almost effortlessly, as if no filament was attached to it.

The afternoon has yielded nothing more edible than a granola bar, but he knows the resident trout of Roaring River are still down there, tantalizing them both by their refusal to follow yesterday’s catch into the frying pan.

He lets the hand-tied fly drift past the pool he’s been aiming for, and once he’s sure that nothing below the surface is interested in it, he looks away, back at the campsite. Dad is waving at him to come in, presumably to help cook the three rainbows they pulled from the lake last evening.

He pulls in the line, cranking his father’s old reel carefully to avoid snarling it. He starts walking toward the bank in the awkward hip waders, stepping carefully on the slippery rocks, feeling like a kid again—like the kid he should have been. Or maybe he’s living someone else’s dream of being on a camping trip with a loving father. Not that his father didn’t love him in years past, but he can’t recall much time with him during his early years.

Kip is kneeling over the campfire, smoke beginning to rise into the pristine blue-black of a perfect Colorado twilight. From the distance of a hundred yards, the man could be as young as Jerrod, his hair flopping down into his eyes, a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt outlining a fit body, his jacket hanging on an adjacent tree. Jerrod thinks he’s never seen his father as happy and content. But then again, before the last few months, he’s never really seen his father at all.

He pulls himself free of the water and shucks the waders before shouldering the creel and walking back.

There is a history here in this beautiful place he knew nothing about, a history his dad has been relating story by story. Lawn Lake and Rocky Mountain National Park. A history of Kip’s father and grandfather having camped here, almost in the same spot not far from the base of a sheer cliff that drops almost vertically from the summit of Mummy Mountain three thousand feet above. A history of dealing with an inquisitive bear in this very clearing, yelling it away from their tents late one night. The decades in between have been muddied by so much, even before he was born, including the loss of the grandfather he never knew. Seeing the mist in his dad’s eyes last night as he described that first camping trip with hisdad was yet another small addition to the emerging mosaic of the man.