“Merrill!” It was Gregory. “Come out from behind that automobile! Do not put yourself and your wife at any further risk! Come out from behind that automobile now!”

Silence. Overhead, a window opened and a gun barrel protruded. Merrill kept moving, staying silent. The gun fired. A hole appeared in the windshield of a Bentley on the far side of the courtyard.

“This is no joke, Commander Merrill! Put down your weapons and come out with your hands in the air!”

Another pause, and more shooting. The windshield splintered. The hood jumped up like a startled hare. Merrill moved into the shadow and began to run. The shooting continued. An orange light made him look back. The car burst into flames and then exploded, the back end lifting a foot in the air. Merrill kept running.

The explosion made Amy scream in spite of herself. On one large color television screen up on the wall she could see that Sam was safe, running away in the darkness. Next to that image, another large color screen showed the Bentley being consumed by flames. Under the large screens — four in all, of which two now were blank — were three long rows of smaller black-and-white picture tubes, showing the house and grounds from every angle. Those smaller images leaped up onto the large screens in response to motion detectors built into the system, Chino had told her.

The sensors also activated video recording equipment, which he had demonstrated, replaying Sam squeezing from the closing gate forwards and backwards, fast and slow, poor Sam bouncing between the gate and the post again and again, protecting some kind of leather bundle, a gun in his hand like a TV private eye.

The strange blood-red shirt he was wearing only made the scene more bizarre. Her screaming over the explosion surprised her, but it was no wonder she screamed, she realized. Sam was doing all this for her: what was she doing for him that wasn’t at heart really only self-serving, — back-pedaling and straight-arming, more and more desperately trying to keep this son of a bitch Chino from raping and killing her?

“Are you satisfied now? he demanded. “We’re not trying to kill him!”

“Yes, I see,” she muttered, trying to cool it. She had already taken the issue too far for his tastes, she was sure. Now the only way she could convince Chino that she had any real sexual interest in him was to put on a show that wouldn’t convince anybody sane. He wasn’t sane — but she was: she wouldn’t last a minute of that kind of storytime without coming completely apart. Finally she knew how someone could bow meekly before a gun and accept a bullet behind the ear than put up with another moment of torture and torment.