She was ready.

Lucy, braless, and further turned out in a black slit skirt, low heels and a tightly fitted red silk blouse, arrived and got seated at their table-tucked away in a corner-twenty minutes early. It was a cool day, and cool in the restaurant. It calmed and somewhat gratified Lucy to realize that no man who looked her way seemed to be able to avoid a glance at her erect nipples.

When Frank Millay came to the greeting station, she recognized him immediately, even though he was now the quintessential lawyer-clean-shaven, short-haired, dressed in a three-piece suit. He was still trim, still handsome, although slightly gone to gray. But the face had no slackness to it, the jaw was firm. Close up, she could see that the deep blue artist's eyes still might have the power to captivate. But not her. Not anymore.

When the hostess left him, he sat, assayed a bit of a worried smile and said, "My God, you're beautiful."

"Thank you."

A waiter came by, introduced himself and presented menus, saying he'd be back in a couple of minutes. A busboy poured water. Out the window, on the Bay, the Sausalito ferry with its complement of screeching seagulls steamed out from its mooring under the scudding clouds.

Millay's eyes darted down to her breasts, then came back up to her face. He sighed. "This is awkward."

Lucy reached out her hand and placed it over his for an instant, then withdrew it. "It's all right," she said. "I guess I should have told you on the telephone. I contacted you because I wanted you to know that I forgive you."

"I don't know why." he began. "It's why I left New York, to get away from what I was doing. It was all getting out of control, what I did to you was just part of it. I was going through a crazy time." He brought his hand to his face, rubbed the side of his cheek. His look was something more than chagrin, touched by a brush-still-of fear. "I can't explain it."

"You don't have to," Lucy said. "We all make mistakes."

"Not like that. I've got a seven-year-old daughter right now. The thought of what I did to you still makes me sick. I'm so sorry. So sorry."

"Were there others?"

"No!" Frank Millay nearly blurted it out. "No," he said again.

"It was just you, the pretty little girl who loved my paintings. The only one who loved them, to tell you the truth. And who made me take her up to my room one time to see them."

"Was it only once?" Again, she touched his hand. "I really don't remember."

"Just once," he said. "Once was enough."

The waiter arrived and took their order. She said she'd like to have some wine, but only if he'd join her. By the time the waiter left, Frank Millay had visibly relaxed. Pushed back from the table, he sat with his ankle resting on the opposite knee. He wore stunning black shoes of knitted leather, black socks that disappeared into his pants leg. Lucy, fidgeting now as though she were slightly nervous, managed to undo the second button on her blouse.

"So," she said, "you're married now?"

"Yes." "Happily?"

"Well, seventeen years. We're okay." "That doesn't sound very romantic." "It's really not very romantic." "Do you miss it? Romance?"

"Not really," he said. Then, "Sometimes, I guess. Who wouldn't?"

"That seems a shame. You're still a very good-looking man. You must know that. You must hear it all the time."

A small embarrassed chuckle. "Thank you, but I wouldn't quite say that I hear it all the time. And I for damn sure wouldn't call me good-looking anymore."

She put her hand on his again, and this time she left it there as she met his eyes. "I would," she said. "Why do you think I've remembered you after all this time? Do you think, that day, it was all your idea?"

After that, it was easy.

At the Four Seasons, they went straight up from the hotel entrance to her two-room suite. As soon as they were inside, Lucy excused herself for a moment, leaving Frank Millay in the living-room section while she went, ostensibly, to use the bathroom. One of her cameras that looked like a pen she had arranged on the dresser-it would automatically snap a picture every minute until she turned it off. The video camera was her cell phone, which she arranged and propped on one of the bed tables.

In the bathroom, she flushed the toilet for verisimilitude's sake, then stepped out into the bedroom, undoing her blouse now, taking it off, laying it on the bed. "Frank," she said, "aren't you going to come in here?"

"Sure."

He appeared in the doorway and stopped, taking her in.

She saw the hesitation now. He still had his coat and tie on. And it was one of her inviolable rules-she would give each of her victims one last chance to save themselves, to prove to her that they were better than they appeared. Even Frank Millay might still escape, although she didn't want that to happen.

She gave him what she knew was her finest smile. Winsome and seductive at once, playful but with a serious edge of promised passion underneath. "Are you sure you're comfortable with this?" she asked him. "I don't want to force you to do anything you don't want to do."

He broke a small smile that seemed to mock himself. "If you hadn't wanted to force me," he said, "you would have left your shirt on."

She unclasped the hook on her skirt and let it drop to the floor. "Well, then," she said, stepping out of it, sitting on the bed where she knew the cameras would capture everything. She patted the mattress next to her. "Why don't you come over here?"

Still, he seemed to hesitate for one last moment before he started moving toward her. When he got in front of her, she reached for his zipper, traced her finger down the bulge in the front. "Oh, my," she said.

She felt his hands in her hair, traveling down the sides of her head to cup her face, which he lifted so that she looked up at him.

"I'm so sorry," he said as his hands slipped lower.

"No. You don't need-" But suddenly she felt the hands pushing down on her shoulders, holding her where she sat, then slowly, almost as though he were caressing her, closing around her neck.

"Don't you see?" His face suddenly inches from hers. "I can't take the risk. Someday you might tell."

"But no, I-"

And then there was no way to make any more sound. She tried to call out, to straighten up off the bed, to kick at him, but he was nearly twice her size and now seized with an irresistible power. He pushed her back onto the bed and fell upon her, his hands closing tighter and tighter around her windpipe.

Her vision exploded into yellows and purples and greens and then they all blended to a muddy blue, then a darker, colder blue.

And then no colors at all. Only black.

I hadn't heard from Lucy for two weeks when I turned on the news late one night and watched her face appear on the screen while a reporter described the brutal murder that had taken place in San Francisco.

"The killing was recorded on Lucy Delrey's cell-phone camera, which the police discovered at the scene."

Immediately in the hours, days and weeks afterward, Millay's PR machine went into action and it was clear that by the time the case went to trial, his attorneys would have spun it so that the world at large would perceive Lucy Delrey as a psychotic nymphomaniac who got pleasure from setting up men sexually in order to destroy them. Frank Millay had been her hapless victim.

The sympathy would be with him by then, but I've got to believe that even in San Francisco, if you strangle a woman on videotape, you're looking at some kind of a stretch in prison. Mil-lay's career-his entire life-would be ruined. It could never be the same.

And the strange thing was, just as I had asked her to, Lucy had found the complicated truth. No matter what had happened in those final minutes, she had gone out there to destroy him and she'd done it.