Remembering the thought of Sam’s crazy take on her now made Amy think that he was the subject of the telephone conversation that had had Chino so transfixed. Maybe if Chino thought she was subjecting him to another kind of test, he might tell her something about Sam. She turned her back to him and stepped through the French doors to a terrace high enough to give her a view over the wall that surrounded the estate to the mountains to the east.

A swollen white moon was rising over the sea, darkly shadowing the dark mossy folds of the hillside beneath. Somewhere in the distance she heard young dogs yapping, lots of them. She was getting her bearings. The loom of the light of the city was at her back, the sea no more than a mile or two to her left, perhaps five hundred feet down, a ratio of one foot of drop for every ten feet north, not so steep as a ski slope, but certainly not so carefully tailored, either. It could be terribly rugged land, in fact.

For the first time she asked herself if she would run for it before she was reunited with Sam. She did not have an answer yet, but it was obvious that she was going to have to decide something. And then maybe have to decide it all over again.

Amy heard a door open in the room behind her, and then voices, Chino’s and Gregory’s. They weren’t worried much about her trying to escape. She remembered the light on Gregory’s dashboard, another on the telephone: the place was full of electronic devices, and there was no point in trying to probe them. She wanted to keep Chino’s charm flowing. Right now, that meant letting him have to search for her a little. She heard the door close again, and no more talking. She thought she might be enjoying this if she weren’t wild with terror. As she filled her lungs she shuddered. The reality of the situation wasn’t that far away.

“You’re not cold yet?”

“I’m from Montana,” she said. She saw he was holding a flip-top phone. “Am I going to have to listen to you yakking on that thing?”

“We’ll see. If you take the staircase to your right, we’ll get to the back of the house.”

“More jasmine, I hope.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“I heard dogs.”

“I raise them. Thank you for not testing the security.”

“You mean, thank you for not being disappointing.”

“That, too. Again.”

“What kind of dogs?”

“Oh. Spaniels, as a matter of fact.”

“Do you hunt?”

“It has never occurred to me. What does one hunt with spaniels?”

Was he kidding? Time to move him along. Raising one eyebrow, she gave him a slow, over-the-shoulder, up-and-down look.