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spiral, before his mandate ran out.
    It didn’t help the balance sheets that Mat had a consummate ability to spend the corporation’s money, even though he was, in his own right, a multimillionaire. His flamboyant spending was driving USOIL into debt about as fast as the White House was draining the wealth of the country: only the best for him and his overpaid executive staff; only the most sophisticated technology for exploration and refineries; only the classiest corporate work environment in Houston.
    He flew by private jet and stayed in the most expensive hotels, even thought he hated them. They were cold and indifferent. No matter how upscale they were—nothing was like his own bed, in his sprawling eight-hundred-acre property outside Houston: Sundown Ranch. Every minute he could spend away from work, he spent there, shared with three hundred wild horses and a staff of ranch hands who took care of the business of running the place.
    He loved that freedom, and the privacy of a world that made sense: a place to go home to, when the other side of real got too crazy for him.
    Manhattan was just that kind of crazy to Mat. The noise was unbearable, the women were too aggressive, and life moved too damned fast. So many people, it was a blur in the streets—all the empty faces and too many bodies walking around every which way, like they were all on some giant urban conveyor belt, going everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
    When push came to shove, Mat liked to think of himself as a southern gentleman, even though a lot of people thought of him more as a ruthless manipulator, and he could be both—depending on what the situation called for.
    He loved those “down home” comforts, and the way people just generally behaved in the South, more than anywhere else he had ever been in the world. Things were far more civilized in Texas; people smiled at each other on the street corners—even strangers. New York? It made him feel like a mouse in a cement jungle, scurrying along the side of the road, trying to find his way out of the gutter and back to Central Park.
    It was late, by the time he got into the city that night and checked into his hotel suite. He ordered room service and settled in, going over the profit/loss statement, and preparing a strategy for questions he might have to field in the meeting. Mat was determined to turn in early, to be prepared for the next morning, but he could not relax enough to fall asleep—it just refused to happen. He turned on the television, set to CNN. There was nothing new about the news—nothing but the same footage, repeating over and over again, and the inane, insignificant banter between a few pretend journalists that had little or nothing to do with the real story unfolding on the planet—the story he knew from the inside. He surfed all the channels, about to give up, when he landed in the middle of
Katie Lee Live!
—a popular late-night talk show.
    It was a rerun of an earlier show entitled “Psychics and the World of Spirits,” featuring three self-proclaimed visionaries of note: one of whom was a woman named Jamie Hastings—a very beautiful, very intriguing woman who caught Mat’s eye and sparked his interest immediately. At the point when he came in on the program, Katie was asking her specifically about her work with the Los Angeles Police Department, which served, she told her audience, as the inspiration for one of the leading TV dramas of success. JamieHastings condensed into a few minutes an entire five-year story of her work for the LAPD, with fifty-three cases officially solved, through her contribution.
    Katie was taken aback when she heard the figure. “Did you hear that, ladies and gentlemen? Fifty-three crimes solved—and that’s on the police record for you doubters out there—thanks to the psychic investigation of this one woman.” She addressed Jamie alone, ignoring the other two guests seated next to her. “How many years are we talking about