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ROBBY SASSOON LEANS OVER the roof of his rented car and watches them with his new Pulsar Merger binoculars. They’re expensive, but worth it.

So am I, he thinks.

He has followed them here from her neighborhood, just beginning to get the lay of the land out here, learning her personal geography. Then he has waited for them to park and get out of his SUV along with the dog. When they’re down on the beach, he parks at the end of the lot closest to the water.

As they walk east, in the direction of what he now knows is the next beach over, the one known as Atlantic, she appears to be doing all the talking, almost nonstop.

Lawyers , Robby thinks. You have to kill them to shut them up.

Fine with me.

He keeps the binoculars trained on them until he almost can’t believe his eyes when they stop, and the guy kneels down, and can only be proposing to her.

Robby Sassoon wonders when the photographer is going to pop out of the dunes and start snapping pictures.

But no one else appears on the beach. It’s just the two of them out here right now. Them and the dog.

Maybe when the time comes, I’ll do the dog, too.

No extra charge.

He’s going to enjoy killing Jane Smith if it comes to that, which it probably will unless things change dramatically, and fast. They have history, he and Jane, even if she doesn’t know it. She has a debt to pay, too, just not like her ex-husband’s.

Somehow her getting proposed to like this is just going to make it better.

He tells himself to be patient.

Only a matter of time.

They are hugging now in the distance and she seems to be crying. Or maybe they’re both crying. Sassoon puts down the binoculars and walks around the car and gets behind the wheel.

He resists the temptation to walk down there and give her a pat on the head.

Plenty of time for that later, too.