heri Poltrain had been working behind the register at the Gas V Carry in Cumberland County, North Carolina, for three years. She'd been robbed twice and threatened with bodily harm half a dozen times. Now as the stranger approached the register of the convenience store, she tensed. She was better acquainted with trouble than most women, and she knew when it was walking toward her.

He looked like a biker, except the wrists and hands exposed beneath the sleeves of his unzipped brown leather jacket were clean and free of tattoos. And he didn't have a beer gut. Not even close. Through the open front of his jacket, she saw a belly as flat as the stretch of rainy county highway that ran past the gas pumps outside. He was at least six feet tall, with good shoulders, a muscular chest, and faded jeans that clung to one of those narrow, tight butts men never had the good sense to appreciate. No. There was definitely nothing wrong with his body. In fact, it was pretty incredible. What was wrong with him was his face.

He was just about the meanest-looking son of a bitch she'd ever seen. Not ugly mean. Just cruel mean. Like he might put out cigarettes on sensitive parts of a woman's body without ever changing his expression.

His hair, damp with the chilly late November drizzle that fell outside, was dark brown, almost black, and it hung nearly to his shoulders. It was clean but shaggy. He had a strong, perfectly shaped nose and the kinds of bones she'd once heard somebody describe as chiseled. But great bones couldn't make up for those thin lips and that hard mouth that didn't seem to have learned how to smile. And great bones couldn't make up for the coldest, single blue eye she had ever seen in her life.

She told herself not to stare at the black patch that covered his other eye, but it was hard to ignore. With that black patch and emotionless expression, he looked like some kind of modern-day pirate. Not the blow-dryer kind on the cover of one of the romance novels that sat on the rack next to her register, but the nasty kind who might pull a Saturday night special out of his back pocket and empty it into her belly.

She looked uneasily down at the digital display on her register that told her how much gas he had pumped into the mud-splattered gray GMC van that sat outside. "That'll be twenty-two even." She wasn't the type to let any man see that she was afraid, but this one gave her the heebie-jeebies, and her voice wasn't as firm as usual.

"Also a bottle of aspirin," he said.

Her eyes flickered with surprise at his faintly accented speech. He wasn't an American, but a foreigner. He sounded like he was from the Middle East or somewhere. The notion sprang into her mind that he might be some kind of Arab terrorist, but she didn't know if Arab terrorists could have blue eyes.

She removed an aspirin bottle from the cardboard display behind her and slid it across the counter. There was something dead in that single visible eye, an absence of any sort of life force that gave her the creeps, but when he withdrew nothing more threatening than a wallet from his back pocket, her curiosity poked through one small corner of her fear.

"You stayin' around here?"

The look he gave her was so threatening she quickly returned her attention to the register. He laid thirty dollars on the counter, picked up the aspirin bottle, and walked out of the store.

"You forgot your change," she called after him.

He didn't bother to look back.

Eric removed the seal from the aspirin bottle. As he rounded the back of the van, he pulled off the lid and took out the cotton wad. It was a chilly, drizzly Saturday afternoon in late November, and the dampness was bothering the leg he had injured in his auto accident. When he was behind the wheel, he swallowed three pills with the cold coffee dregs in his Styrofoam cup.

After his car had crashed through the guardrail last May, he'd spent a month in the hospital and another two months in physical therapy as an outpatient. Then in September, he'd started work on a new film. They'd considered delaying shooting because of his injuries, but he'd made good progress, and they had eventually decided to work around them instead, giving him a stunt double for a number of scenes he would normally have done himself.

The picture had been finished ten days ago. Afterward, he was scheduled to fly to New York to discuss a play, but at the last minute he'd decided to drive instead, hoping the solitude would help him pull himself together. After a few days, the solitude had become more important than his destination, and the closest he'd gotten to Manhattan was the Jersey Turnpike.

He was heading south on the back roads, traveling in a GMC van because it was less conspicuous than his Jag. At first he'd had vague ideas of visiting his father and stepmother on Hilton Head, where they'd retired a few years ago. But it hadn't taken him long to figure out that they were the last people he wanted to see, even though they'd been urging him to visit for years, ever since he'd grown famous. Still, he had six more weeks to kill before he had to start work on another film, and he had to do something to fill the time, so he kept on driving.

As he pulled away from the pumps, he caught sight of the female attendant watching him through the plate-glass window. She hadn't recognized him. No one had recognized him since he'd left L.A. He doubted that even his friends would have known him unless they looked closely. The phony accent he'd used in his last film, along with the longer hair he'd grown, had successfully concealed his identity for three thousand miles. Even more important than anonymity, the disguise afforded him at least temporary escape from being himself.

He turned out onto the wet county road and automatically patted his jacket pocket for his cigarettes only to remember he no longer smoked. They wouldn't let him smoke in the hospital, and by the time he was dismissed, he'd fallen out of the habit. He'd fallen out of the habit of enjoying all of life's sensory pleasures. Food no longer held any appeal, and neither did liquor or sex. He could no longer even remember why they had once been so important. Ever since he'd lost his children he felt as if he belonged more to the world of the dead than the living.

In the seven months since Lilly had taken the girls, he'd learned more than most lawyers knew about the sexual abuse of children. While he had lain in his hospital bed, he'd read stories of fathers violating tiny babies in unspeakable ways, of perverted, twisted men who preyed upon one daughter after another, betraying the most sacred trust that could exist between two human beings.

But he wasn't one of those monsters. He was also no longer the naive hothead who had stormed Mike Longacre's office demanding that his attorney put an end to Lilly's false accusations. Now he knew that the law was also full of injustice.

No matter what personal sacrifices he had to make, he wouldn't let his children end up in the underground, where they would be deprived not only of their father but of their mother as well. So he stayed away from them, relying on the international fleet of detectives he had hired to keep them under watch. With an increasing sense of dull resignation, he followed Lilly's wanderings with the girls, first to Paris and then to Italy. They'd spent August in Vienna, September in London. Now they were in Switzerland.

Everyplace she went, she engaged new governesses, new tutors, new specialists, all of whose bills he paid. From the interviews the detectives held with those she had hired, he knew that Becca was regressing and that Rachel had become increasing difficult to control. Lilly herself was the only stability the girls had, and forcing them into the underground would end even that.

Even so, he ached for his daughters so badly that he was sometimes tempted. Over the past seven months his pain had gone beyond the torture of a raw, gaping wound into something more primal, a desolate emptiness of the soul that was worse than any physical anguish because it was a living death.

For a while he had been able to direct his despair into the role he was playing, but when the filming was done, he had lost his place to hide.

He had also gradually lost the ability to see any of the world's beauty, and now he only registered its horror. He could no longer read newspapers or watch television because he couldn't endure another account of a newborn baby abandoned in a trash can, umbilical cord still attached to its small, blue body. He couldn't read about another severed head found in a cardboard carton, or a young woman gang raped. Murders, mutilations, evil. He had lost his ability to separate his own pain from the suffering of others.

All the world's pain belonged to him now, one atrocity after another, until his shoulders were bowed with the weight and he knew he would break if he didn't find a way to protect himself.

And so he was running, hiding away inside the skin of someone he'd invented, a persona so menacing that ordinary people drew away from him. He played jazz tapes instead of listening to the radio, slept in his van rather than a motel room with its beckoning television, avoided big towns and newspaper stands. He sheltered himself in the only way he knew how because he had grown so fragile he was afraid he would shatter.

A tractor-trailer rig kicked water at his van as he turned from the county access road out onto a state highway. The wipers made several half-moon passes over the windshield before he could see. Through the blur he spotted a blue road sign imprinted with the white H that indicated a nearby hospital. It was what he'd been looking for, the fragile thread that allowed him both to protect himself and try to save his soul at the same time.

He followed the blue and white hospital signs through a two-stoplight town until he came to a small, unassuming brick structure. He parked in the farthest corner of the lot away from the hospital building and climbed into the back of the van. The seats had been removed so there was an area big enough to stretch out his bedroll, which was now neatly folded away next to an expensive leather suitcase that held his clothes. He pushed it aside and drew forward a cheap vinyl suitcase.

For several moments he did nothing. And then, with something that might have been either a curse or a prayer, he opened the lid.

'"Ow does a bloke get some service around 'ere?" Nurse Grayson's head shot up from the chart she had been studying. She was generally unshockable, but her mouth dropped open at the improbable figure who stood on the other side of the nurse's station desk, grinning devilishly at her.

He wore a frizzy red wig topped with a black pirate's scarf knotted at the side. A purple satin shirt was tucked into voluminous black trousers that were spangled with saucer-sized red and purple polka dots. A single exaggerated eyebrow arched into the clown white that covered his face. He had a bright red mouth, another dot of red on the end of his nose, and a purple patch shaped like a star covering his left eye.

Nurse Grayson quickly recovered. "Who are you?"

He gave her a naughty grin that made her forget she was fifty-five years old and long past the age where she could be taken in by a charming scoundrel.

He sketched an overly dramatic bow before her, tapping his forehead, chest, and waist. "Patches the Pirate is me name, me pretty, and a more pitiful excuse for a sea dog, you'll never set eyes on."

Despite herself, his mischievous manner drew her in. "Now why is that?"

"Can't stand the sight of blood." He gave a comical shudder. "Miserable stuff. Don't know 'ow you tolerate it."

She giggled, and then belatedly remembered her professional responsibilities. Casually lifting her hand to tidy any errant salt-and-pepper curls that might have escaped her cap, she inquired, "Can I help you with something?"

"It's the other way around, now isn't it? I'm 'ere to entertain the kiddies. The bloke from the Rotary Club told me to show up at three. Did I get the time wrong again?" His look was devilish and unrepentant. "In addition to bein' afraid of blood, I'm also unreliable."

The single eye not covered by the patch was the brightest turquoise she had ever seen—as crystal clear as a candy mint. "No one told me that the Rotary had arranged for a clown to visit the children."

"Didn't they now? And I 'ave to be in Fayetteville by six to entertain at the Altar Guild bazaar. It's lucky for me that you've got an understanding 'eart, in addition to a beautiful face. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to earn the fifty bucks the Rotary's payin' me."

He was full of the devil, but so charming she couldn't resist. Besides, the rain had kept visitors down this afternoon, and the children could use a little entertainment. "I suppose there's no harm."

"Not a bit."

She came out from behind the desk and began to lead him down the hall. "As you can see, we're a small hospital. We only have twelve beds in Pediatrics. Nine of them are filled."

"Anyone I should know about?" the clown asked softly, all traces of mischievousness fading.

If she'd had any doubts about letting him onto the floor without official authorization, they vanished instantly. "A six-year-old named Paul. He's in one-oh-seven." She pointed toward the end of the hall. "He's had a rough time with pneumonia, and his mother's been too busy with her boyfriend to visit very often."

The clown nodded and made his way to the room she had pointed out. Moments later, Nurse Grayson heard the cheerful gravel of his voice.

"Ahoy, there, mate! Me name's Patches the Pirate, and I'm the mangiest dog that ever sailed the seven seas...."

Nurse Grayson smiled as she made her way back to the nurses' station and congratulated herself on her good judgment. There were times in life when it paid to bend the rules.

Eric spent that night parked off the side of a dirt road in a small clearing just over the South Carolina border. When he emerged from the van the next morning, still dressed in his jeans and T-shirt from the day before, his mouth felt like dull metal from bad food and too many nightmares.

He'd bought the clown costume a week ago in a shop near Philadelphia, and since then he'd stopped at a small-town hospital nearly every day. Occasionally he called ahead, posing as a civic leader. Most of the time, however, he just followed the blue and white signs as he'd done yesterday and talked his way in.

Now he couldn't shake off the suffering of the little boy at the hospital yesterday. The child was thin and frail, and his lips bore a faint bluish rim. But it was the boy's pathetic delight at receiving Eric's undivided attention that had been wrenching. Eric had stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon and then gone back that evening and done magic tricks until the child had fallen asleep. But instead of feeling good about what he'd done, he could only think about all the children he hadn't been able to comfort, all the pain he couldn't stop.

The chilly dampness seeped through his T-shirt. As he worked the kinks out of his muscles, he gazed up into the gunmetal-gray sky. So much for sunny South Carolina. Maybe he should get back on 1-95 and head directly for Florida. For a while now, he'd had vague ideas of hanging around the clowns at Ringling Brothers winter quarters in Venice for a few weeks. Maybe he'd get a chance to perform for well children, for a change, instead of sick ones. The idea of being with children who weren't suffering tantalized him.

He climbed back into the van. He hadn't showered in two days, and he needed to check into a motel so he could clean up. In the past he'd always been impeccable about personal cleanliness, but since he'd lost his children he'd grown lax. But then he'd grown lax about a lot of things, like eating and sleeping.

Half an hour later, he felt a tug on the steering wheel and knew he had a flat. He pulled over to the shoulder of the two lane highway, climbed out of the van, and went around to the back to get the jack.

It had started to drizzle again, and at first he didn't see the splintered wooden sign that leaned in the palmettos at the side of the road. But the bad tire was mud slicked, and when he pulled it off, it got away from him and rolled into the ditch.

He spotted the sign as he bent over to reclaim the tire. The letters were faded, but he could still make them out:

SILVER LAKE AMUSEMENT PARK

Home of the Legendary Black Thunder Roller Coaster

Thrillz 'n' Chillz for the Entire Family

Twenty Miles Straight Ahead,

Left 3 Miles on Rt. 62

Silver Lake Amusement Park. He felt the tug of familiarity, but he couldn't remember why. It wasn't until he secured the last lug nut on the spare that he recalled the name. Wasn't that the place Honey had talked so much about? He remembered the way she had entertained the crew with stories about growing up in an amusement park in South Carolina. She had spoken of a boat that had sunk to the bottom of the lake and a roller coaster that was supposed to be famous. He was almost certain it had been the Silver Lake Amusement Park.

He secured the hubcap with the heels of his hands and then looked thoughtfully back at the sign. His jeans were wet and muddy, his hair dripping down the back of his neck. He needed a shower, clean clothes, and a hot meal. But so did the majority of the world's population, and as he stood where he was, he wondered if the park was still in existence. The condition of the sign made it doubtful. On the other hand, anything was possible.

Maybe the Silver Lake Amusement Park was still open. And maybe they needed a clown.