“What a man. You’re lucky I have a headache.” Delicately she tucked the cotton into the wound and put the gauze pads in place. “Press down. Harder.” She rolled the tape around his leg almost faster than he could get his hand out of her way. “A little more. It has to be tight. I want you to keep your weight off it for a while.”

“Who hit you?”

“Sam, let’s just get out of here. Go below. I’m feeling better. I can sail the boat. I want you to rest. Do what I tell you.”

“They were about to clear the beacon. He gave her the tiller. “We’ve got to talk. I’ll rest in a moment. We’ve got more problems than him. What I was saying I have to tell you to keep you alive.”

“He said he had enemies that would use you to strike at him.”

“Kill him. You mean. He didn’t lie. He has enemies. And one of them told me an hour ago to kill him. We’re in no position to do anything about him, except what we must to survive, to live our own lives. We know some shit now, but we’ll last a lot longer if we just go on playing the parts of the all-American dummies they’ve cut out for us. We’ll keep the focus on Chino. He’s the bad guy. You’re better off not knowing the name of the man who told me to kill him.

She was staring at him. “Senator Ward, I’ll bet.” It took him only a moment to see in the darkness that her lower lip was trembling. “Can you raise the cutter on the radio. Let them know we’re on the way. A large pleasure boat near here needs a wide berth. It’s full of guys who worked on the room under the house and it’s going to blow up just before six o’clock. It — it’s all right with me. They thought it was funny when I got hit.”

Now Merrill knew who had hit her. A steady rumble of big diesels suddenly surged across the bay. Merrill reached for O’Malley’s bag. “Ninety degrees to starboard.”

“Hanging a right. Aye, aye, sir.”

He checked the guns as the boat turned. She hurried to correct the trim of the sails. The speed of the boat picked up again, but not all that much.

“I adore you.”

“And?”

“Why did you throw up?”