But sometime in the night, his mind went where he dared not let it go, and he woke up sobbing in grief for her. Madeleine, Mad, Mad. I don't care if you were a lie, I loved you. I loved you and you left me and I didn't do anything to deserve it, I was good to you. He cried himself back to sleep.

When he woke again it was five in the afternoon. Dark outside already. He got up and called the garage that kept his DC car. In the time it took them to bring it over, he showered again, dressed. He came out to meet the driver, tipped him, then got in the car and drove to Tysons Corner and picked up some shirts and slacks, socks and underwear. A new pair of running shoes. A new razor, new kit, two new suitcases exactly like the ones he already had. A new winter jacket. He drove home and changed into new clothes, then put everything that had been in the house on the Hudson, including the clothes he had stuffed in the garbage in the wee hours of the morning, packed them into the old suitcases, and carried them out to the Dumpster. It was nine o'clock. He drove to Lone Star and ate peanuts and steak soup and it was all ashes in his mouth but he went on and ate the salad and the filet because he was not going to let this thing kill him. He was going to go on with his life.

He got home and the message light on his answering machine was blinking. Someone had called.

But that wasn't possible. When he was away from one of his residences—which was most of the time—he had all the calls automatically routed to a single answering service in Nebraska. When he got to one of his residences and wanted to start receiving local calls on his own phone, he would call in and punch in the code to release calls to that particular phone number.

Only his parents, his lawyer, and Madeleine had the codes that would allow them to override his answering service and reach the answering machine in this residence. And his parents and his lawyer had no idea he was here. They would assume he was still at Madeleine's family house on the Hudson River.

Which meant that the message on his machine had to be from Madeleine. Except that Madeleine didn't exist. Which meant that it had to be from the person behind Madeleine. The person who made her. The User, who could wander free from her body and follow him wherever he went, who would know where he was, who would know he was away when the phone call was made so her intention was to leave a message on the tape, and not talk to him directly.

He could hear Lizzy's voice telling him that the User wasn't done with him yet. She hadn't got what she wanted. If she needed him before, she still needed him. Only now it wouldn't be love that she used to motivate him.

He didn't want to hear the message. But he reached out and touched the PLAY button.

"Quentin Fears? This is Ray Cryer. We're worried that we haven't seen Madeleine since you ran out on her yesterday. We have the local police looking for her, but it occurs to us she might be out looking for you and you may find her first. If you do, we'd appreciate a call. Her mother and sister and I are worried sick. Just worried sick. I know you were very angry yesterday, but I hope you'll still help us find our little girl. The local police here might call you to ask you some questions. I hope you'll cooperate with them. You have our number." There was an emotional catch in his voice at the end.

Ray Cryer? Madeleine's mother and sister? These were people Madeleine had never spoken of. Quentin had certainly never met them. Nor did he have their number. But he had no doubt that they would be completely convincing to the police. That was what the User did best—completely convincing people.

The implications were clear. Quentin had better do what they—no, what the User—wanted, or the police would be looking far and wide for a woman they would never find because she didn't exist. And when they didn't find her, it would start looking very bad for Quentin. Her parents say that Quentin had a fight with her. He snuck away with his suitcases, and ever since then they haven't seen their daughter. Why did he sneak off? Where is Madeleine? Your Honor, you don't have to find a body to know that there was foul play.

No. A murder trial was out of the question. There had to be some evidence. The mere disappearance of a person wasn't enough. But that didn't mean that the police wouldn't be convinced that there was a murder. That they wouldn't be dogging Quentin's heels for months and years looking for Madeleine. And the publicity. No, it wouldn't even take publicity. It would just take visits from police investigators to all of his partners and all of the political people he knew in every city where he did business—Madeleine had met them all, and if the User forgot any of them she could just drop in on Quentin's own mind and take the list out of his memory. He had no secrets from the User. The cloud of suspicion would grow around him. His parents. They would question his parents.

"You have our number." No doubt the police would hear Ray Cryer say that. Even if he erased this tape, there was probably also a recording on the other end, and then they would wonder why he had erased his copy. And since he didn't have the number, what choice did he have? He had to go back to New York, back to the house on the Hudson. Where the police would ask him about that night he spent in the house. If he said he slept in the house with Madeleine and had breakfast with her family, they'd go in and find a cold, dark, waterless house with only his footprints in the dust and only one side of the bed slept in. If he said the house was empty and dark, the police would doubtless find it sparkling clean and well lived-in, with Ray Cryer expressing his bafflement that Quentin would tell such an obvious lie.

He couldn't win. There was no escape from her. He might as well give up and head back there first thing in the morning. Or get in his car right now and drive all night and...

No way. That's what the User wanted. For all he knew, she was putting these thoughts in his head right now to try to bring him back. Well, Lizzy had told him he was strong. He had some power to resist her. And the User wasn't all-powerful, Lizzy had said that, too. It strained her there in the library at breakfast to keep six dead people under control, maintain the illusion of Madeleine, and show various servants bringing in imaginary food, all at once. During the police investigation the User wouldn't have half so much to do. She wouldn't have to produce the deep illusion of Madeleine at all. As for this Ray Cryer, he might be a real person and not a mental construct at all. Making the house look clean and lived-in would be a cinch. But could she create the illusion of detailed chemical evidence? Bloodstains? Anything that would convince a court that a crime had been committed? Maybe—but wouldn't she have to know exactly what the lab technicians would need to look for? Could she make her illusions show up on a photograph? Or would she have to follow the photograph constantly to make sure everyone saw the right things when they looked at it? If she knew enough and had power enough to do all that, then there was no point in his even trying to resist her.

But she wasn't infinitely powerful. Her limits could be reached. And he was not going to roll over and play dead.

It was eleven at night. He called his parents in California.

"She left me," he said. Almost his first words.

"No," said Mom.

"Aw, Quen, I'm so sorry," said Dad. "I never would've thought. She was so—you two were so perfect together."

"I don't know where she is. She didn't tell me where she was going."

"How could she do that?" said Mom. "You just don't do that. Decent people don't..."

"Does her family know where she might have gone?"

Here it came—the beginning of his counter-story. Since he had never met or heard of this Ray Cryer, he wasn't going to go along with the User's story that they knew each other. "I never met her family. She took me to the house on the Hudson, but there was nobody there." That was dangerous, he knew, since they were telling the police that he had met her parents. But if they gave him a lie detector test about meeting Madeleine's parents at the house, he could pass it. "And then today, this afternoon, she left."