“Johnny…”

“And then she died, and I got sentimental. I sold Skull with Burning Cigarette and put My Horse, Bella on that wall permanently. It’s been there for five years, and every time I look at it, I think of my mother. I’ve even come to appreciate certain aspects of it.”

Fitch took a step forward into the splay of light emanating from the desk lamp. He looked clear-eyed. He held a large-caliber revolver in his right hand. His glass of Macallan in the other.

“There are similarities between you and Van Gogh, Letisha. Both fiery redheads, with a nasty predilection for self-injury. Suffering from what the psychoanalysts would best describe as daddy issues. And perhaps most pityingly, both masters of a trade you would never be appreciated for. At least, not in life.

“You look confused, Letty.” Fitch smiled. “Yes, I know your real name. I like it more than your alias, if you want to know the truth. Although I did prefer you as a redhead.”

He sipped his scotch.

“Did you call the police?” she asked.

He laughed. “I’m going to see my fair share of law enforcement for the rest of my life, don’t you think? The notion that you’d try to steal from me? Come onto my island and steal from me? You brazen girl.”

“Johnny.” Letty thought she might be just drunk enough to scare up some real emotion. She had disarmed her fair share of men in the past with a few tears.

“Oh, don’t cry, Letty.”

“I’m sorry, Johnny. I tried to take advantage of you, and—”

“No, no, no. I should be the one apologizing to you.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. Something in the tone of his voice suggested a piece of knowledge she wasn’t privy to.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, starting to get up.

“No, you just stay right there, please.”

She settled back into the chair.

“My life,” Fitch said, “has been so rich. So…fragrant. I went to Yale undergrad. Harvard business. I was a Rhodes scholar. Earned a PhD in economics from Stanford. I lived in Europe. The Middle East. Argentina. I rose as fast through the ranks of PowerTech as anyone in the history of the company.”

Fitch edged closer, his hair trembling in the breeze stirred up by a pair of ceiling fans.

“By thirty-five, I was the youngest CEO of a global energy company in the world. I had a family I loved. Mistresses on six continents. I was responsible for twenty-four thousand employees. I brokered multibillion-dollar deals. Destroyed both domestic and foreign competitors. I’ve fucked in the Lincoln bedroom under three separate presidencies. I’ve been adored. Demonized. Admired. Copied. I’ve played hard. Made men and ruined men. Had the finest of everything. More money than God. More sex than Sinatra. Trust me when I say I go to federal prison for the rest of my life a happy man. If the masses knew how much pure fun it is to have this kind of power and wealth, they’d kill me or themselves.”

He walked to one of the windows and stared out across the moonlit sea.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Letty Dobesh. In another life…who knows? But I didn’t allow you to come into my home for sex. I’ve had plenty of that.” He held up his tumbler. “And I don’t really even care about this forty-thousand-dollar bottle of single malt. On the last night of a man’s life, before he reports to prison for a twenty-six-year stint that will likely kill him, he has to ask himself, What do I do with these last precious moments? Do I revisit the things in life that most made me happy? Or use this last gasp of freedom to have a truly new experience?”

Letty eyed the staircase.

If she hadn’t been drunk, she could’ve probably reached the steps before Fitch turned and fired. But he was holding a beast of a gun. A .44 Magnum or worse. Taking a bullet from something of that caliber would finish her.

“What does this have to do with me?” she asked.

Fitch turned and faced her.

“Sugar, there’s one thing I’ve never done. I was too old for the draft in nineteen-sixty-nine. I’ve never been to war, which means I’ve never had the experience of taking a life.”

“He’ll kill you,” she said. “Even in prison, he can get to you.”

“Are you talking about Mr. Estrada?”

She nodded.

“You don’t see it yet, do you?”

“See what?”

“It was Javier who put this whole thing together, Letty. There was never any painting. No drug in your mouthwash spray. I told him about this last experience I wanted to have before I went away, and for a very significant price, he brought you to me.”

Letty felt a surge of hot bile lurch out of her stomach—anger and fear.

She fought it back down.

“Johnny…”

“What? You going to beg me not to do this? Try to test the limits of my conscience? Good luck with that.”

“It won’t be how you think. It’s not some great rush.”

“See, you don’t understand me. I have no expectations of feeling one way or another. I just want to have done it. What’s a richly lived life that has never caused death? You ever killed someone, Letty?”

“Yes.”

“How was it?”

“Self-defense.”

“Kill or be killed?”

She nodded.

“Well, how was it?”

“I think about it every day.”

“Exactly. Because you had a true experience. And that’s all I want. This is how it’ll work. I’m going to wait right here for five minutes. Give you a head start. See, I don’t just want to kill you, Letty. I want to hunt you.”

“You’re as evil as they say.”

“This is not about good and evil. I’ve lived dangerously all of my life. I want to continue to do so on this final night, when it counts the most. My security team is on their way down the dock as we speak. They’re going to anchor my speedboat a quarter mile out. My yacht is staying in the marina in Key West for the night. It’ll just be you and me on the island. I know you can’t swim, Letty. That was one of the requirements that, unfortunately for you, landed you this job. So there are no ways off this little island.”

“I have a son,” she said.

“Haven’t we covered that already?”

“Johnny, please.” Letty stood up slowly and moved forward with her arms outstretched, hands open. “Has it occurred to you that you aren’t thinking clearly? That you have all this emotion swarming around inside of you and—”

Fitch pointed the revolver at her face and thumbed back the hammer.

“That’s close enough.” It wasn’t the first or the second or even the third time she’d had a firearm pointed at her. But she’d never got used to that gaping black hole. Couldn’t take her eyes off it. If Fitch chose to pull the trigger in this second, it was the last thing she’d ever see.

“You destroyed thousands of lives,” she said, “but you aren’t a murderer, Johnny.”

“You’re right. Not yet. Now you have four minutes.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Letty raced down the spiral staircase.

Drunk.

Terrified.

Still trying to wrap her head around what had just happened.

Only one conclusion. Javier had played her.

Sold her out.

She passed the second floor and ran down the remaining steps into the living room. Straight to the cordless phone on a bookshelf constructed from pieces of driftwood. She grabbed the handset off its base, punched Talk.

Fitch was already on the other end of the line. “I’m afraid that’s not going to work, Letty. Three minutes, thirty seconds. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight…”

I need a weapon.

She dropped the phone and turned the corner into the kitchen. She started yanking drawers open.

As she pulled open the third, she saw it lying on a butcher-block cutting board next to a pile of onion and garlic skin. A chef’s knife with a stainless handle and an eight-inch blade.

For ten seconds, she stood in the remnants of Angie’s cooking, trying to process her next move. So much fear coursing through her, she felt paralyzed.