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Billy is a jewel, a treasure, irreplaceable Harrow regrets the necessity of killing him later

The other reason Harrow does not want to participate in the early stages of the action is because he has a progra, one that he has refined forthe show as he conceived it

He prefers to delay his entrance, giving Amy an hour or more to anticipate his arrival She must be humiliated, emotionally broken, and in a state of terror before he appears

Harroill see his ex-wife after she has been reduced to the condition of a caged breeder dog in those puppy ainst which she crusades Then he will prove to her that worse horrors exist

At gunpoint, she and the architect will undress They will be chained to chairs

Then Billy will leave, and Harroill listen froirl breaks down A, and all that he will do at first is fix open her eyes so she cannot close theirl will do to Brian The father of the freak will end the evening as a eunuch

No transgression exists that won’t be coht

Harriet Weaver would be proud of him She’d been his nanny, who from the cradle quietly schooled him to understand that the values of his fa place for the transgressors than for the sub secrets from the earliest days of his memory

At Harriet’s instruction, he exhibited behavior problems that she convinced the fa, with her as the only tutor, and when all his ti lands and all their kind, and she was right, for in the end he hated the carries a chill and the fecund scent of the sea Harrow is invigorated by it, and by anticipation

At the first burst of gunfire, he steps across the threshold, out of the house, onto the brick deck, alert, standing tall and stiff with expectation

An answering weapon, of a different character froreatly discourage hi Perhaps Billy un in each hand, Old-West style Billy does have flair

When half a unplay, it seeine roar swells, as if Billy is driving them down to the house when he was instructed to walk theine noise comes others: a banshee shriek of tortured ests a runaway vehicle

Harrow backs off the deck, into the open doorway

Headlights di, across the corner of the deck, and across the rocks toward the oval yard

Because the SUV passes so close and because the interior lights are on, Harrow can see that no one is behind the wheel

The yard is lost in fog, and when he hears the Expedition come to a violent stop, he can only assuiant Montezu the door open behind hiical instruments The commotion outside has caused her to pause in her preparations

"Trouble," he says

"Watch out for the dog"

"You’re the one afraid of it"

"I’m not afraid It can’t smell me"

He can make no sense of that

"I just want it dead," she says

"I think it is"

She stares at hireen

He says, "Amy and Brian are probably dead, too"

"Billy? Why would he?"

"We had a weird conversation earlier"

She waits

"He was testing ave him all the pieces of this I should have split it up"

"It’s over just like that?"

"Billy figured out he’s the last link between me and Amy, no future in that So he kills the down here"

"You’ll find hi ‘on vacation’ Which ot off easy"

"I’ll check the Expedition Maybe they’re not dead on the floor Maybe he just wounded theo to the desert"

"I hate the gulls and the day"

Her elegant fingers move across the blades on the table, but she seems unable to decide upon a favorite

He says, "You want to do her tonight?"

She nods "Tonight"

"How?"

"Hard, the little freak Real hard"

She leaves the rooun to fail; and the white one twenty yards north, staying pack-close in the fog, Ahty yards, out of the trees, onto open ground

At a distance stood a door in the fog, die, a wo, turned west, and at once vanished in the murk

"Vanessa," Brian whispered

As the sky tarnished and the silvering rahtened with a thousand watts of halogen glare The rays were reflected by the priss of the Fresnel lens, amplified, concentrated, and beamed out into the Pacific

Apart of Amy was in the past, on another coast, where the sweep of such a light had been the sharp scythe of Death And a vision of afterh her mind, Nickie dead at her father’s hand

Her heart, so steady through soof the shooter, sla until she stretched her jaw, cracked her ears

Brian said, "Wait," but she ran toward the lighted door, which was already fading in a thicker current of fog

High overhead, the bright signal swept 360 degrees It seemed to pulse as it passed out of each quadrant of its arc and into the next