They sat resting on the lazarette. Carly leaned against Preston, stroking his pubic hair. She asked coyly, "Did you take something?"

"No," he replied. "It was just me."

"Twice!"

"I just wanted to show you I could be as good as the others."

"Others?"

Preston glowered menacingly at her. Carly instinctively moved away from him.

"A marriage should end as gloriously as it began," he said.

"I don't-"

Preston gave her a backhand blow that knocked her off the lazarette.

She looked up at him in shocked disbelief. As she was getting up, he pushed her back down with his foot. Standing over her, he snarled, "How many were there?"

"What?"

"Men."

"I don't know what you-"

"Save it! I know about the gigolo you've been fucking on the Upper East Side, and I know he wasn't the first."

The realization that Preston knew about her infidelity left Carly flabbergasted.

"How many?" Preston screamed.

"S-six."

"Six?" Preston echoed. "Was I so inadequate?

"No," Carly replied desperately. "I was inadequate. There was nothing in my life that wasn't inherited from my family or didn't come from my relationship with you. I needed something that would make me feel-empowered."

"So you became a whore!"

He stomped on her stomach. She cried out and doubled up in pain.

"You want to know how I found out?" Preston asked. "A card from your family planning clinic, mixed in with my mail. It was a reminder for you to change your contraceptive implant. And we both know my sperm are immotile, so you don't need it for me."

"How-how long have you known?"

"Two years. I could barely bring myself to touch you. But I forced myself, while I waited for this moment."

Preston opened the lazarette on which they'd had sex and took out lengths of rope from the storage compartment.

"What are you going to do?" Carly asked, frightened.

Preston forced Carly to lie face down on the cockpit sole and kept her down with a knee on her back as he tightly bound her wrists and ankles. He pulled off her gold wedding band and his own. He looked at the rings for a few seconds, and then hurled them into the sea with disgust.

"Preston," Carly said, trying to stay calm, "what are you going to do?"

Preston grabbed her hair and, ignoring her cries of pain, dragged her to the top of the cabin house and slammed her against the boat's mast. He lashed her to the mast with another length of rope.

"Preston, please!" Carly begged tearfully.

Preston went back to the cockpit and put on his clothes. He noticed the bank card that had been hidden in Carly's panties. He picked it up. Carly could see from the expression on his face that a wicked idea had formed in his mind. He brought the card to Carly, and said to her, "You probably won't need this where you're going, but you never know." He jammed the card into her pussy, and she winced.

In the cockpit, Preston lifted a can of gasoline from the compartment beneath the starboard lazarette. He splashed gasoline around the cabin house hatch and on the companionway steps that led down into the cabin. He took a propane torch from the storage compartment, and then went to the stern of the boat and opened the fuel-tank compartment. He lit the torch.

Trying not to panic, Carly said, "Preston, you don't have to kill me. You can divorce me. I won't ask for anything. You'll never see me or hear from me again."

Preston adjusted the torch flame to minimum intensity, and then put the flame in direct contact with the fuel tank. He pulled on the tow line of the dinghy to bring it closer.

"How will you explain coming back without me?" Carly asked him, still trying to get him to see reason.

"Easy," Preston answered. "I'll say you ran off with one of your lovers."

"Preston, you can't do this! You can't burn me alive!"

"Don't worry. I've put enough bottled propane below to blow you to bits long before you burn."

"You bastard!"

"Sticks and stones."

Preston climbed down into the dinghy and cast off the tow line. He started the dinghy's motor and puttered away from the boat. Carly cursed at Preston until he was beyond the illumination of the deck lights and she could no longer see him.

Smoke rose from the scorched exterior of the fuel tank. Carly could not control her quaking-or her bladder. She closed her eyes and waited. The fuel tank erupted into flames that raced forward along the lazarettes, and into the cabin house.

"Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!" Carly muttered. She could feel the heat against her feet as the interior of the boat burned.

I'm actually going to die! She would never see Lauren again, or her friends, or her lovers...

First came the thunderous noise, and then, for a split second, Carly felt the searing heat. Before she lost consciousness, she felt herself hurtling through the air.