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then the scream cut out,
leaving an echo as Henri completely severed Kim’s head from her body in three long strokes.
    Arterial blood spurted against the yellow walls, emptied onto the satin bedsheets, ran down the arm and loins of the naked
     man kneeling over the dead girl.
    Henri’s smile was quite visible through the plastic mask as he held Kim’s head by her hair so that it swung gently as it faced
     the camera. A look of pure despair was still fixed on her beautiful face.
    The killer’s digitized voice was eerie and mechanical, but Horst found it extremely satisfying.
    “I hope everybody’s happy,” Henri said.
    The camera held on Kim’s face for another long moment and then, although the audience wanted more, the screen went black.

Chapter 8
    A MAN STOOD at the edge of a lava-rock seawall staring out at the dark water and at the clouds turning pink as dawn stormed
     Maui’s eastern shore.
    His name was Henri Benoit, not his real name, but the name he was using now. He was in his thirties with medium-length blondish
     hair and light gray eyes, and he stood at about six feet tall in his bare feet. He was shoeless now, his toes half-buried
     in the sand.
    His white linen shirt hung loosely over his gray cotton pants, and he watched the seabirds calling out as they skimmed the
     waves.
    Henri thought those birdcalls could have been the opening notes of another flawless day in paradise. But before the day had
     even begun, it was down the crapper.
    Henri turned away from the ocean and jammed his PDA into a trouser pocket. Then, as the wind at his back blew his shirt into
     a kind of spinnaker, he strode up the sloping lawn to his private bungalow.
    He swung open the screened door, crossed the lanai and the pale hardwood floors to the kitchen, poured himself a cup of Kona
     java. Then out again to the lanai, where he sank down into the chaise beside the hot tub and settled in to think.
    This place, the Hana Beach Hotel, was at the top of his A-list: exclusive, comfortable, no TV or even a telephone. Surrounded
     by a few thousand acres of rain forest, perched on the coast of the island, the unobtrusive cluster of buildings made a perfect
     haven for the very rich.
    Being here gave a man a chance to relax fully, to be whoever he truly was, to realize his essence as a human.
    The cell phone call from Europe had shot his relaxation all to hell. The conversation had been brief and essentially one-way.
     Horst had delivered both the good and bad news in a tone of voice that attacked Henri’s sense of free agency with the finesse
     of a shiv through a vital organ.
    Horst had told Henri that the job he had done had been well received, but there were
issues.
    Had he chosen the right victim? Why was Kim McDaniels’s death the sound of one hand clapping? Where was the press? Had they
     really gotten all they’d paid for?
    “I delivered a brilliant piece of work,” Henri had snapped. “How can you deny it?”
    “Watch the attitude, Henri. We’re all friends, yes?”
    Yes. Friends in a strictly commercial enterprise in which one set of amigos controlled the money. And now Horst was telling
     him that his buddies weren’t quite happy enough. They wanted
more.
More twists. More action. More clapping at the end of the movie.
    “Use your imagination, Henri. Surprise us.”
    They would pay more, of course, for additional contracted services, and after a while the prospect of more
money
softened the edges of Henri’s bad mood without touching the core of his contempt for the
Peepers.
    They wanted more?
    So be it.
    By the time his second cup of coffee was finished, he had mapped out a new plan. He dug a wireless phone out of his pocket
     and began making calls.

Chapter 9
    THAT NIGHT SNOW FELL LIGHTLY on Levon and Barbara McDaniels’s house in Cascade Township, a wooded suburb of Grand Rapids,
     Michigan. Inside their efficient but cozy three-bedroom brick home, the two boys slept deeply under their quilts.
    Down the hall,