He eyed her without answering, then stepped out on the deck, sliding the doors shut behind him. She waited until he was out of sight before looking around the cabin. Everything bore the same heavy duty combination locks. The boat shifted to dockside and righted itself quickly again. Gregory was on the dock. What would he have to do there to get the boat ready? As far as she knew, this had always been Chino’s first means of escape — there had been no talk about a “Plan B”. Unless they were senseless as well as mad, they had only to start the engines and cast off. So what was Gregory doing on the dock? Was there something in the car? She would know when he came back.

Her hand was growing numb quickly. All she could do to help herself was stand on her toes to take her weight off her wrist, and she could only do that only as long as it took her calf muscles to burn. If they kept her here long enough, she would start to cramp, the weight would be back on her wrist again, and discomfort would rise inevitably to agony.

The boat shifted again. Gregory entered without a word and unlocked the cuff around her wrist and herded her toward the forward companionway. Below, she turned to him, but he pushed her forward into the master cabin and turned on a ceiling lamp. A circular bed filled the teak-paneled forepeak. “Don’t bother looking for a way out,” he said. “This door has a bolt on the outside to cut down on the noise when we are at sea, and the hatches are padlocked shut to keep people out when we are not. And don’t look for a weapon, because there aren’t any. It isn’t that kind of boat.”

“What kind of boat is it?”

“There are fresh nightgowns in the closet, and hot water on demand in the shower. You’ll live longer if you use them to your advantage.”

He closed the door behind him. She heard the bolt slide home. She turned the privacy lock on this side, too.

Had he spoken to Chino? Did that mean Sam was dead? Sam had come too close to saving her from her death not to honor his. All she had to do was figure how to best do that.

Merrill had been in such a hurry to get out of Chino’s house that he had forgotten the cell phone in Rosario’s car and the page of telephone numbers in Ruiz’s address book in O’Malley’s bag. It was almost four o’clock when he got the car running.

“I’m out,” he told Scott Waller. “Chino’s dead.”

“Hang on,” Waller said. He repeated what Merrill had told him away from the handset. Merrill heard someone clap.

“Who’s that?”

“Senator Ward.”

“Fuck him.”

“That’s a copy.”

“You have the good news.”