Marco ignores me and goes back to questioning Claire. “Did you ask him out or did he ask you out? I bet you asked him out. The Logan I knew back in Los Angeles never had the balls to talk to a girl. He’s got movie-star good looks, but he’s got no game with the ladies.” He nudges my arm. “I know you better than you think, old friend.”

“That’s enough,” I say.

“He wasn’t good with girls,” Marco says, “but I once saw him beat a guy twice his size unconscious with his bare hands. Your boyfriend was something special back in the day.”

“That person doesn’t exist anymore,” I say quietly.

Marco laughs hard.

Jasper clears his throat and hocks a thick glob of snot and saliva out into the trees.

“The thing I don’t get,” Marco says to Claire, “is how you never suspected anything. Some strange guy living in Lake Tahoe. No job. A comfortable stream of money. Probably no real friends. None of that struck you as odd?”

“Leave her alone,” I say again.

“He really had you fooled, didn’t he?” Marco says. “Are you dumb or was the sex really that good?”

I rise. “I said leave her alone, Marco.”

Marco looks up at me from the log, grinning, then he rises slowly. He pulls his Beretta from its holster. He points the barrel at Claire’s head and she twists her face away and puts her hands up, as if they could stop a bullet.

“Hurt her and I’ll kill you,” I say.

Marco chuckles. “You’re good, old friend, but there are two of us, and we’ve got the guns.”

I step back, raising my hands.

“If you want to save your honeybunch,” he says, “you’ve got to give me those diamonds.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” I say. “Let’s get moving so we can both get what we want.”

CHAPTER 18

I BRING THEM to the same granite slope where Claire and I first kissed a week ago.

“We’re here,” I say.

Marco looks around curiously. “Okay, so where are the diamonds?”

I turn toward the lake and point. “Out there.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I shake my head. “I’ll swim out and get them. When I get back, you let Claire go. Deal?”

“You’re not going out there alone,” Marco said. “Jasper, go with him.”

I smirk. “Do you have any idea how cold that water is? It’s pure snowmelt. It’s probably not even sixty degrees.”

Jasper walks to the edge of the water, bends over, and sticks his hand in. He holds it under for four or five seconds and then pulls it out. His hand is red, as if sunburned.

“No way,” Jasper says, shaking his arm and flinging the water off his hand. “That hurts all the way to my elbow.”