I was more thankful than ever I hadn’t told him about Paul.

“That may be true, but not this way, and certainly not by you. You swore an oath to do no harm, remember?”

“If destroying a monster prevents it from doing harm to others, and preserving the quality of life of the rest of my patients, I’m upholding that oath. That’s how physicians who administer lethal injections to prisoners on death row justify their actions.”

Whoa. I’d thought last night that he was making progress when he’d told me how it felt to be dead, unable to reach out to the people he’d loved.

But this wasn’t progress. This was premeditation . . . something with which I was not unfamiliar, but that still didn’t make it all right.

“Okay,” I said, hanging on to the passenger door. He was taking the hairpin curves along the sea at an impressive clip now that the traffic was thinning out. “Well, I guess that’s what you’d better do, then. Go ahead and take out Jimmy and the priest. I’ll enjoy CeeCee’s headline: “ ‘Young Physician Wastes Promising Future with Sizzling Hot Wife by Murdering Scumbags.’ ”

Jesse didn’t laugh. “Someone has to do it, Susannah.”

“Yeah, but like I said, that someone doesn’t have to be you. Your job is to save lives, not take them.”

“Like I said, sometimes by taking one, you can save others. And if I don’t do it, who will? You?”

“Why not me? It’s not like . . .”

“Like what?”

I clamped my mouth shut, realizing what I’d been about to cavalierly admit to Jesse: that I’d been contemplating killing Paul ever since I’d received that e-mail from him. The only reason I’d agreed to have dinner with him was because afterward, when we retired to his hotel room for “dessert,” I planned to mediate him, permanently.

But this was another thing a girl should keep secret, right? There’s no reason for her intended to know everything about her.

“Never mind,” I murmured, looking out over the sea. It had been burnished amber by the sun, slowly sinking toward the west. The sky, the beaches, the water—the whole area, as far as the eye could see, was glowing with the same golden sheen as Lucia’s hair . . .

Saint Lucia is the one they always show wearing a crown of lit candles around her head, usually at Christmastime. She’d supposedly worn the candles around her head in order to be hands-free while leading hundreds of Christians to freedom through the darkness of the catacombs beneath Rome, a job not unlike my own, leading the souls of the dead to the light of the afterlife.

“What did you say?” Jesse asked. The wind rushing past us from behind the windshield was noisy, making it hard to hear.

“Nothing. Look, how long is your shift this weekend?”

“I’m on call starting at five tonight. I’m not off again until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay,” I said, shouting to be heard above the wind. “Great. I’ll get in touch with CeeCee and see what she can find out about where Jimmy Delgado lives.” I made a big show of pulling my phone from my purse. “Then maybe we can hit him—and Father Francisco, assuming he’s back from his alleged conference—tomorrow night.”

By tomorrow night, if things worked out the way I was planning, the Delgado Photography Studio and possibly even Sacred Trinity would be in ashes.

The only thing still standing would be 99 Pine Crest Road. I hoped.

“We?” Jesse threw me a suspicious glance as we headed through the gate that said THANK FOR YOU VISITING 17-MILE DRIVE. PLEASE COME AGAIN. “Not we.”

“Yes, we,” I said. “I’m your fiancée. I understand you’re not entirely up on twenty-first-century social mores, Jesse, but it’s considered rude these days not to invite your fiancée to your vigilante party.”

His lips twisted into a cynical smile. “Not this time, Susannah.”

“What do you mean, not this time? What kind of sexist bullsh—?”

“I’m well acquainted with your feelings about my nineteenth-century macho-man ways, Susannah, and I’ll be the first to admit many of those ways were wrong. But some of them aren’t. Some of them work better than your twenty-first-century ways, which seem to allow child murderers to go unpunished and”—he held up a hand to silence me when I began to protest—“young girls to needlessly suffer. So perhaps just this once you’ll allow me to do things my way.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, okay, Sheriff de Silva. I’ll just go decorate some bonnets while you execute a few criminals without due process.”

His smile became even more infuriatingly cynical. “You don’t even know how to sew.”

“Yeah, well, I do know how to shoot a gun. I’ve been taking target lessons with Jake over at the range in Monterey. But if you don’t want me around, fine. I’ll just sit quietly at home like a good little bride-to-be while you’re out fighting the bad guys.”

His lifted his gaze from the road to glance at me.

“I do want you around, Susannah,” he said. “That’s why I want you at home. I’ve lost too many people—all the people—I love. I can’t lose you, too. Do you understand? That’s why you have to let me take Delgado myself, alone. I want you around forever.”

“Oh.” Now I felt like a jerk for having called him a macho man so many times. Not, of course, that it made a difference. If anything, his admission only strengthened my resolve not to change a single thing I was planning to do. “Well, when you put it that way. Okay. Okay, sure.”

Even through the dark lenses of his sunglasses, I could see that his gaze hadn’t strayed from mine. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re hiding something from me, querida?”

“Me?” I asked in an innocent voice as I texted rapidly. “I would never hide anything from you.”

Drinks sound good. See you at 5. Can’t wait.

NOV 18 4:15 PM

veinticinco

“Simon, you came. I have to admit, I didn’t think you—” Paul jerked back, apparently regretting his decision to kiss me hello. “When did you start wearing glasses?”

“Hello, Paul. You haven’t changed a bit. Still rude as ever.”