Another turn, and then Gregory stopped the car and turned off the engine. It clunked to a stop in a way that sounded as if no one would get it started again without major surgery. Gregory stroked her calf and tried to squeeze his hand between her knees. She locked them tight and glared. Now he laughed like Chino and got out of the car.

He pulled open the passenger-side door violently enough to throw her out of the car onto the blacktop dock the car was parked on. One shoe came off. She kicked the other away. She could hear water lapping against the side of a boat. He unlocked one cuff and pulled her to her feet with it. She had been right about the cuffs. Her free wrist was rubbed bloody raw. “On the lift,” he said. “In this city people are out at all hours.”

Tied up next to them was a sport fisherman more than forty feet long, looking fast and powerful. She could hear music, distant and sensuous. “And all you can think of is hurting people,” she said, as he hustled her along.

“Chino said I did not make myself.”

She was looking behind her. In the distance was the steeple of a cathedral, bathed in light. The music was up-tempo, surprising. “Everything’s so beautiful! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“All stories end in death.”

“You sound like Chino.”

“You honor me. Step up onto the boat, please.”

As she went from the rough concrete curbing to the smooth, wet fiberglass of the gunwale, she had thought at last that she wouldn’t have to contend with this monster after Chino was done with her. Not if he had been listening to everything between them. Not if he had been on the other side of the mirror.

No, they would pass her back and forth. They would take her at the same time. Maybe they would do things to her body after she was dead.

She had seen the blood on Gregory’s suit earlier. What was the name of the man who had had revenge, according to Gregory? Rosario. What had Gregory done to him?

With one hand tightly holding the open handcuff, with the other Gregory dialed the combination on the lock on the sliding cabin doors. The doors popped open and he pushed Amy inside, swung her around, and locked the cuff to a handhold on the overhead.

“I have to get the boat ready,” Gregory said. “This will keep you from falling overboard.”

“I’m not going to get any circulation in that hand.”