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"Until the next time, the next installment."

"Don't worry about that," Cutter said. "You just go back to your bank tomorrow and draw out the twenty-five thousand and have it waiting for me here when I call you. Fifties and hundreds, same as the first installment."

"I don't have that much in my account."

"Then get it from the one in the Cayman Islands. A wire transfer doesn't take long."

" . . . How did you know about the Cayman account?"

"How do you think? Same way I found out everything else about you."

"Not by asking around, you didn't," I said. "Nobody on this island knows about that account but me and my bank, and they wouldn't give out the information."

"Well, somebody else knows."

I got it then. All at once, like a rocket going off inside my head. Crazy coincidence, hell. Y factor, hell. Yplus x equals xy squared—that was the real equation here. My hands had started to shake. I pressed them together, hard, between my knees.

"Annalise," I said.

His face bunched into a scowl. "Who?"

"Blue eyes. Jesus, I should've known. She always was partial to men with blue eyes."

"Huh?"

"She told you. That's how you knew about the Cayman account. About Jordan Wise. About the steps from downtown, too—you couldn't have figured out the way up here just from looking at a city map, or been able to find this house in the dark. You're not from San Francisco, you never laid eyes on me before that bump in front of the bank. She told you where to find me, told you everything. You're in this together, you and Annalise."

He didn't try to deny it. "Oh, what the hell," he said. "She didn't want you to know, but you figured it out anyway and I don't give a shit. That's right, me and Annalise."

"How long have you known her?" I could barely get the words out.

"Three months, if it matters."

"Living together?"

"Uh-uh. I had enough of that."

"What about her?"

"What do you care?"

"Where does she live? New York City?"

"Never mind where. None of your business anymore." The grin was back on his mouth. Now that the truth was out, he was openly enjoying himself. "She's some piece," he said.

"Some piece."

"You were lucky to hang on to her as long as you did, you know that? Woman like her." The grin widened into a smirk. "Really something in bed, isn't she? Man, she could suck the varnish off a table leg."

I couldn't look at his face any longer. I lowered my gaze to the front of his shirt, fixed it there. You could almost see the sweat stain spreading. The shape, if you looked long enough, seemed oddly trapezoidal.

"She come down here with you?"

"No way. She's had it with this island."

"The blackmail—her idea?"

"Mine," Cutter said. "We were drinking one night, she had a little too much and dropped your name, and I dragged the whole story out of her. But she didn't try to talk me out of it, I'll tell you that. She needs money, same as me."

"Why does she need money?"

"Dumb question, Jordan. Everybody needs money. The shittier your job, the more you need."

"What kind of shitty job?"

"Quit trying to pump me. You got all the information you're going to." I had something else I wanted to say, something I wanted him to tell her, but the words seemed clogged in my throat. Even after another swallow of rum I couldn't push them out.

Cutter pasted one of his dark-brown cheroots into a corner of his mouth, left it there unlighted. His drink was gone; he rolled the tumbler over his forehead again, then tapped the melting ice cubes into his mouth and began to chew them, the cigar bobbing up and down with the motion of his jaws. The sound he made was like glass being crushed.

He said, chewing, "So you'll go down to your bank tomorrow and get the twenty-five thousand, right? No arguments?"

"Yes."

"Good man." He took the cheroot out of his mouth, scowled at it, spat out a shred of tobacco, and extended the empty glass. "Do this again, Jordan. Tastes like crap, but at least it's wet. Then you can drive me back to my hotel."

I got up slowly, took his glass, went around behind him and across to the sideboard. The shaking had stopped; my hands were steady. I put ice in the glass, picked up the heavy decanter. And then I just stood there.

Annalise. Annalise and Fred Cutter. The twenty-six thousand she took with her—gone or almost gone. The clothing manufacturer, the shot at being a fashion designer—gone, too. A different kind of life on the edge now, after only eight months. Back to working at shitty jobs, like the one she'd had in San Francisco. Bedding down with a muscle-bound halfwit, resorting to blackmail. Scraping bottom.

Outside, the wind was rising. I could hear it making a frenzied rattle in the palm fronds, feel its sultry breath swirling in through the open terrace doors.

"Hey," Cutter said, "hurry up with that drink. I'm dying over here."

I turned around. He was leaning forward, rubbing slick off his face again. There was a wet spot on the back of his shirt, too, between the shoulder blades. Another geometric shape, this one a ragged-edged circle with a darker circle in the middle where the cloth stuck to his skin. It reminded me of something, but I couldn't think what it was. Couldn't seem to think clearly at all.

Twenty-six thousand. Five thousand. Another twenty-five thousand. And more bites to come, little ones and big ones until they bled me dry.

Screaming, that wind. Like jumbees in the night.

Some piece. Great in bed. Suck the varnish off a table leg. Lucky to hang on to her as long as you did.

It was as if the coming storm, the jumbees, were inside me now. Blowing hot and wild. Screaming.

Cutter and his Good man, good man. Cutter and his smarmy grin. Cutter the lowlife blackmailer. Hurry up, I'm dying over here—I don't remember crossing the room.

I don't remember hitting him with the decanter.

One second I was standing in front of the sideboard, looking over at him, the storm wind shrieking inside my head, and the next I was beside the chair staring down at him on the floor. The back of his head was crushed and there was blood mixed with rum streaked over the fair hair, blood and rum on the floor, blood and gore on the decanter and spattered across my shirtfront.

I knew then what that sweat stain on the back of his shirt reminded me of.

It looked exactly like a target.

Either I dropped the decanter or it slipped out of my hand, I don't know which. The sound of it hitting the tile floor dragged my gaze away from Cutter. An edge of the heavy cut glass had gouged a triangular chip out of a tile.

Now how am I going to fix that? I thought.

I kept on standing there. Looking at him again, at what I'd done to him. The wildness was still inside me, but it had mutated into a near panic overlain with numbness—

What? Yes, I know that sounds contradictory, but it's an accurate description. All the crazy rage and fear held down under the weight of dazed confusion, like a lid on a bubbling pot.

Time seemed to have gone out of whack, to stop and stutter with long spaces between the ticking seconds. I couldn't think; my mind was a wasteland. Then I grew aware of something moving on my cheek, like a fly walking. I raised a hand, brushed at it. The fingers came away wet and sticky. When I looked at them I saw that they were smeared with blood and something else, a whitish gelatinous substance that must have been brain matter. That broke the spell.

Bile pumped thick and hot into the back of my throat. I ran blindly for the bathroom, barely made it to my knees in front of the toilet before the vomit came spewing out. I pliked until there was nothing left but strings of saliva. It left me weak but calmer. I flushed the toilet, rinsed my mouth. Washed the blood off my hands and face. Pulled my shirt off, found more blood spots on my chest and neck and washed those off. Better still by the time I finished, both the wildness and the numbness starting to fade. I went back through the living room, not looking at what lay sprawled on the floor, and out onto the terrace.