“A woman who has allowed only her husband to enter her,” he answered. His sudden predictability allowed her to gather her wits. He said, “There will come a moment when you surrender to a shame and self-loathing you can’t possibly imagine now, but which you’ll hurry to embrace, under the right circumstances. I want to watch that interesting moment in your eyes. I want to see it mirrored in mine. Coming out the other side, you’re going to be wonderful, Amy.”

What about Gregory? She almost said it aloud. She sniffed for effect and forced a smile. Since he was not going to believe anything she could say now anyway, she wanted him to contemplate all the roles she was capable of playing. “Chee-noh,” she said in her thickest Cattle Queen of Montana cowgirl accent, “you shore are smooth talkin’ son of a bitch.”

She gave him a big smile as it sunk in. He meant to be her king? How long would that last? Until he tired of her? When he had a bad day at the computer screen? Her anger was returning, and rising. He was talking about choosing his own pleasure, seducing her to do evil. If she left him only one option, he would rape her. No, he would always have two. He could always rape her and kill her. Always.

Unless she killed him first.

It took him a moment, his eyes shadowed with suspicion and mistrust, and then he clapped his hands and laughed out loud. “Wonderful! I said you were an actress, but I really couldn’t imagine. Just wonderful.” He reached for her. He wanted to kiss her again. She didn’t want him to touch her now. The thought about Gregory wouldn’t go away. Chino could be a walking bomb. Maybe he even knew it. She hugged him quickly, slipped out of his grip, and danced away, remembering to look back and hint at pleasure to come. He did not look happy. He thought he deserved more? She let her eyes drop for a split-second before making eye-contact with him again.

“You’ll live,” she said. “Maybe.”

The right Fender was flapping like a starched sheet, scraping on the blacktop and throwing off orange sparks in great swirling gusts. Merrill was sure he had left the Mercedes back near the airport in the multi-car pile-up he had started, but the sparks were as vivid and identifying marker as the boiling light on a police car. Pedestrians were yelling at him. At a stop sign he blasted across the intersections, deliberately swerving left to hit the speed bump across the oncoming lane on the far side. He went airborne, came down on a corner of the fender as it folded under the car, and as he corrected right he felt the fender tear off its mountings like an old piece of adhesive tape.