“She’s made friends, and it’s impossible to get her alone.” Zsóke stepped to the short wall that rimmed the building and looked down. Perfect: night vision had stabilized.

“Shoot her friends. Knife her where she stands.”

Zsóke was not so foolish as to think Stephen would hesitate to sacrifice the person who he’d once purchased as his best friend. “If I do that, I’ll be arrested. And if I’m arrested, our relationship, yours and mine, will come to light. Your injuries and her injuries, and your proximity to her the night before she washed up on the beach. You would be implicated.”

Stephen was silent as he struggled against the truth he had to face. If Zsóke took the action he demanded, he’d be revealed. In a low guttural voice Zsóke recognized as rage, he said, “Never mind. I will get out of here and kill her myself.”

“Really? How? Because I saw the doctor’s report, and today you collapsed trying to walk by yourself to the bathroom.”

“Who gave you that report?”

“No one. You know I have my ways.” Turning, Zsóke faced the roof and casually scanned the herb garden, the grape trellis, the groupings where the acting team worked and the firepit. There. On the chaise lounge, wrapped in a down comforter...

Zsóke brought up the subject that truly prompted this call. “Darling, I do not like to think you double-crossed me, your very best friend.”

“What are you talking about?” He had struck the right note: Stephen sounded confused.

“I’m here on the scene in Gothic, preparing to do your will. Then a sniper tries to kill her.”

“Kill who? Elladora Varela? A sniper—”

“Yes. A sniper.”

“There? What the hell? Shooting at Elladora Varela? With what?”

Not that Stephen Penderghast couldn’t act as well as any Academy Award winner, but Zsóke thought, in this instance, he was truly flummoxed. “A sniper shot through the window and into the room where Elle was visiting with her friends. The police dug the bullet out of the wall. The weapon was a B14 HMR.”

“The hell you say. Elladora is not dead?”

“There’s some doubt that she’s who the sniper was shooting at.”

“So who’s dead?”

“Nobody.”

Now Stephen sounded truly angry. “You thought I would hire a sniper so lousy he couldn’t make a kill?”

“I thought perhaps you hired a sniper to hurt but not kill her.” Over by the firepit, Zsóke could see small motions, as if someone was shivering in cold and fear.

Wise. Very wise.

“Whoever that sniper is, he fucking better not make my kill. I want that woman to bleed internally, like I did. I want her to suffer, like I did. Amnesia? No. I want her to remember me and what she did and know she’s lost everything. Family and reputation. Friends, too. Kill them all. Take everything.”