Free The Identity Man by Andrew Klavan Page B

there in dripping blood-red letters.
    "What the fuck?" Gutterson muttered.
    The dripping blood-red letters said,
    Ramsey murdered Peter Patterson!

SHANNON KNEW TIME was passing but he didn't know how much. Days? Weeks? He had no way of telling. He would float upward toward the surface of consciousness but never quite break through. He would see the world above as if through water, a liquid blur of life just beyond him.
    The foreigner was up there sometimes. The crazy old bastard who'd injected him. Shannon remembered. The mall parking lot. The watching eyeglasses. The back seat of the car...
    The foreigner would give him drinks through a straw. He would talk sometimes, though the words also came to Shannon as if through water and he could never recall from time to time what the foreigner said. He would try to answer. He would struggle to break through the surface, to come awake fully. But the drugs—it must've been drugs—would suck him back under. Light narrowing to a pinpoint, depths closing over him. He would hear the foreigner's voice like a fading echo: "Sleep."
    And he would sleep.

    Now he awoke. It was different this time. He felt it right away. His mind was clearer. He was aware of the room around him, of the bed underneath him. He had a new sense of his own material presence.
    He was in pain—he was aware of that now, too. His face was stiff, aching, throbbing. The pain pulsed from the center of his head to radiate through his entire body. His left arm stung like hornets had been at it.
    He began to lift a hand to his face.
    "Don't touch yet," the foreigner said.
    Shannon stared at the hand groggily. He let it sink down again to the sheets. Slowly, he turned toward the voice.
    The foreigner was standing beside his bed. He was wearing a doctor's get-up, a white coat, a stethoscope around his neck. He was adjusting a blinking machine that stood on the top shelf of a green cart. Shannon noticed now that his bed had a rail like a hospital bed and that the mattress was partly raised like a hospital mattress so he could sit up. The machines the foreigner was tinkering with looked like hospital-style machines, too. There was an IV bag with its tube stuck in Shannon's arm. Another tube ran out from under the blankets—a catheter. It was all hospital stuff.
    But Shannon sensed that this was no hospital. A dim fire of panic sprang up in him, a dim fire of fear he understood was there but could hardly feel. He looked around the room. No windows. No pictures. Nothing. Just blank, white walls. No furniture but the bed and one chair. Where the hell was he?
    At that point, Shannon's eyes started to sink shut. He started to slump on the upraised mattress.
    "Sit. Sit up, stay up," the foreigner said briskly, coming to the bedside, pushing at his shoulder. "You have to keep elevated for swelling."
    Shannon shook his head, stretched his eyes, trying to stay awake. "Where am I? What'd you do to me?"
    "I cut off your legs and replace them with grinning doll heads."
    "What?"
    "Ta, ta, ta. Don't be fool. I joke with you. I give you new face, like I tell you. So the police, they won't know you. Is good, yes?"
    "My face? You changed my face?" Shannon started to lift his hand to it again.
    "Don't touch. Here. Drink."
    The foreigner held up a water bottle made of blue plastic, a sports bottle with a built-in straw.
    "No more drugs," said Shannon thickly.
    "Drink. Is apple juice. I drug you here," said the foreigner, pointing to the IV tube.
    Shannon realized he was very thirsty. He let the foreigner hold the bottle under his lips. He sucked at the straw. The apple juice tasted good—cold and sweet. Shannon took another sip, then sat back against his pillow.
    His mind was getting clearer. He rolled his head so he could focus on the foreigner. He could see the man better in here than he could before, out in the parking lot, in the night. There really was something seedy about the guy. The doctor outfit couldn't change that. The whole look