Using all the strength he could muster, Gus forced his eyelids open. A giant head filled his vision, sandy brows nearly brushing his own eyeballs. Gus let out a scream.

The giant head screamed, too, and moved away quickly. Gus’ eyes fought to focus.

“Dude, you’re awake,” Shawn said.

Gus squinted against the light and was able to make out Shawn’s beaming face over his.

“I was just checking to see if you were still breathing,” Shawn said.

“What happened?”

“You were,” Shawn said.

“Before that,” Gus said. “How did I get here?”

“Someone tried to kill us.”

Gus tried to recapture his last, fleeting memory. A red Mercedes flitted across his consciousness before his subconscious hauled it back with the other moments too painful to remember.

“With a car.”

“With a shotgun.”

There was something about a gun tickling the edges of Gus’ brain. For some reason, he envisioned what could only have been the mascot for the University of Idaho’s skeet-shooting team; a giant smiling potato holding a shotgun. And then it all came flooding back. The Echo. The shack. The attendant.

“He tried to kill us!”

Gus fought the screaming pain in his shoulders and moved his arms across his body, checking for spatter pattern. There didn’t seem to be any.

“Don’t worry, buddy,” Shawn said. “Nothing but soft-tissue damage. At least that’s what a fleet of doctors tells me.”

“Doctors?”

For the first time, it occurred to Gus to wonder exactly where he was. He managed to shift his eyes away from Shawn’s face, even his ocular muscles aching with the strain, to see the dull fluorescent tube throbbing on the ceiling, the small TV bolted to the wall, the cheery sailboat painting hanging over the institutional sink. He flexed his fingers over his chest and noticed that his starched button-down business shirt had been replaced with a flimsy sheath of slick, flameproof polyester.