Ronin was wearing a black tank top, and shorts that had an elastic waist. His legs were smooth and hairless. He swallowed some eggs and nodded. “She showed up by herself,” Ronin said. “Said she’d grown up around here, that she’d always wanted to see the island up close. She looked hot. I figured an attractive woman at the party alone—that was good. She promised not to eat much.” He slurped the eggs down with some coffee.

“You hire class acts,” Henry said to Jack.

Archie stayed focused on Ronin, tripped up by something he’d said. She showed up by herself. But that wasn’t right. She hadn’t been by herself. “What about her friend?” Archie asked him.

“She didn’t have a friend,” Ronin said, shoveling some more eggs in his mouth. “She was alone.”

“She was with another woman,” Archie insisted. “I saw them later in the evening. They’d been drinking.” A young woman crashing a party by herself? It seemed unlikely to Archie. But two women together, that he could buy.

Ronin thought for a minute. It looked like it hurt. Bright yellow bits of egg clung to the corner of his mouth. His tongue was stained brown with coffee. “What did she look like?” Ronin asked. “Hot?”

Archie mentally stumbled. He hadn’t actually seen the friend. She was in the bathroom. He’d heard her throwing up. Or at least what sounded like someone throwing up. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

Ronin shrugged. “Maybe she met someone at the party, but I’m telling you, she arrived solo. And she was the only person we let in who wasn’t on the list.” He glanced at Archie. “I mean, besides you.”

Karim lifted the spoon out of his cup, tapped it on the cup’s lip, then licked the spoon and laid it carefully on the saucer. There was something about him that Archie found unsettling. He was too calm. Too controlled. His cuff links sparkled. The gems were probably sapphires.

Archie turned his attention back to Ronin. Ronin took care of himself—he shaved his legs, for Christ’s sake. He considered himself a player. He would have flirted with a pretty girl. And when men flirted with women, they asked their names. It was instant intimacy. Use the first name as often as possible. It was the same technique Archie used in interrogations. Ronin would have asked her name. Which meant that he was lying.

“What was her name, Ronin?” Archie asked.

Ronin’s mouth fell open. Archie could see chewed-up egg inside.

Karim lifted his teacup to his mouth. The teacup was a fragile little thing, bone china. A blue stamp on the bottom of the cup claimed it had been made in England. Archie watched as Ronin gave Karim a questioning look, and Karim responded with an almost imperceptible nod.

The command hierarchy.