She stared. “You have lost your mind.”

He met her gaze. “You keep saying you love me. Yet you keep doing stuff that would convince any reasonable person that you’re a liar. Here’s your chance to finally prove your love. You have to follow in my steps. You have to pretend to die like I did. You have to vanish from normal society. To be with us, you have to sacrifice everything you know. That’s the deal.”

Amy started to speak and stopped. She understood deals. Probably the devil had explained them to her the day before she was born. She saw that he was serious and that was not a quality she liked in him. Her whipping boy had grabbed hold of the strap. And he was a strong sonofabitch. But exactly how strong she needed to know.

“What if I say no?” she asked.

“I’ll take the Farallon and jump overboard and get to my boat. I’ll disappear with Jimmy. You’ll never hear from us for the rest of your life.”

“You’re bluffing.”

He shrugged. “Try me.”

She acted wounded. “Why are you doing this to me? Is it because of the other night? I explained all that. You talk about testing my love. What about your love? If you loved me you wouldn’t force me to make such a horrible choice.”

“The horrible choice is to commit murder. I told you, I’m not a murderer.”

“But you kidnapped my son. Yeah, go ahead, say he was your son as well. That is bullshit. You lied when you said you knew Jimmy was yours when you stole him. How do I know you’re not lying now?”

“This is a simple plan. What is there to lie about?”

“How do I know? You throw this in my face at the last minute. Why can’t we just go ahead with what we planned?”

“I told you why. I don’t want to kill David. Besides, we could be seen on the deck. One backward glimpse and Gilbert could put us both in jail for the rest of our lives. Do you want to risk that?”

“Gilbert won’t see anything.”

“Those are just words. In any murder, if something can go wrong, it usually does. You’re out of your league when it comes to this stuff. Trust me, I know.”

She wrung her hands. “But our son will grow up an outcast.”

“He’ll grow up with his parents. That’s the important thing. He doesn’t have to be an outcast. We can move to another country. We have enough money to do whatever we want.”

“Three million is not much nowadays.”

“When someone talks that way, no amount of money is enough.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this ahead of time?”

“It would have spoiled the drama.”

She was angry. “How can you joke about this?”