DesirЋe wanted to throw up. They were going to make her do something and photograph it. Her lips trembled with frustration, that she had just rid herself of the threat of one nasty film and now another one was going to be made. She felt Smith – or was it Jones? – give her back a push and she stumbled into the room. It was a bedroom made for royalty, but what was going to happen to her here inside it?

Sam watched Billy go over to the leather bag where he had secreted the weapons with which to kill her. The plan was to slit her throat with a large, razor-sharp hunting knife, the saw her limbs off, disembowel her, and use the body parts to incriminate Clete for her murder, but not until they had shown the black sheriff the film they planned to sell in the brothels of Europe. The murder of the wife of a state politician would not go well for Clete, and Billy was gloating over Clete's date with the executioner.

Billy started the three video cameras one by one, then positioning the uncertain and frightened girl in the proper spot between them, thrust his hand into the leather bag for the huge Bowie knife. Sam waited, his heart rising to his throat at the thought of seeing DesirЋe's throat gouged open and her hot blood arcing from the severed arteries onto the carpet, the innocent blue eyes that would open wide in wonder, then dim with the rapidly encroaching oblivion of death. Billy was drawing out the knife when Sam's hand grasped his wrist and forestalled the movement.

"Wait a minute," Sam said. "Wait a minute, buddy." His grip was strong and Billy's eyes bored into his questioningly.

"I've got an idea," Sam said. He felt Billy trembling with pent-up energy, unreleased in the gruesome way it had been planned. "Got an idea. Come on outside." He drew Billy out onto the landing, near the rail that looked down onto the marbled entrance hall twenty feet below.

"This girl is one sweet piece of ass," Sam coaxed, nudging his friend with his shoulder. "Why snuff her so quick? Why not make use of her first? Give us something to remember her by." He saw Billy's lips curl in a thin smile. "Make her do a strip for us first, film the thing. Plant it in Clete's house, or something. Add to the evidence."