She took the keys and got out of the car, pointing the gun at me through the windshield as I opened my door and stepped out into the night, the air twice as frigid as it had been in the city due to the wind screaming off the ocean.

I heard the unmistakable sound of a round ratcheting into a shotgun chamber, and turned my head, looked down the black barrel at Julian Archerson standing at the other end.

“Evening, Mr. Kenzie.”

“Lurch,” I said. “A pleasure as always.”

In the dim light I could see a chrome cylinder sticking out of the left pocket of his topcoat. I got a closer look as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and realized it was an oxygen tank of some kind.

Desiree came around beside Julian and lifted a tube that hung off the tank, straightened the kinks in the tube until she extended a translucent yellow mask through the darkness.

She handed the mask to me and twisted the knob on the tank, and it hissed.

“Suck on this,” she said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Julian dug the shotgun muzzle into my jaw. “You don’t have a choice, Mr. Kenzie.”

“For Miss Gennaro,” Desiree said in a sweet voice. “The love of your life.”

“Slowly,” I said as I took the mask.

“What’s that?” Desiree said.

“That’s how you’re going to die, Desiree. Slowly.”

I put the mask to my face and took a breath, immediately felt numbness tingle through my cheeks and fingertips. I took another one, felt a cloudiness invade my chest. I took a third, and everything went green, then black.

39

My first thought, as I swam back to consciousness, was that I was paralyzed.

My arms wouldn’t move. My legs wouldn’t move. And not just the limbs themselves, but the muscles.

I opened my eyes, blinked several times at a dry crust that seemed to have formed over the corneas. Desiree’s face floated past, smiling. Then Julian’s chest. Then a lamp. Then Julian’s chest again. Then Desiree’s face, still smiling.

“Hi,” she said.

The room behind them began to take on shapes, as if everything suddenly flew out of the darkness toward me and stopped abruptly at their backs.

I was in Trevor’s study, in a chair by the front left corner of the desk. I could hear the roar of the sea behind me. And as the effects of my sleep wore off, I could hear a clock ticking on my right. I turned my head and looked at it. Nine o’clock. I’d been out for two hours.