Shuji’s townhouse combined a Japanese sense of negative space with his flair for the opulent and dramatic. The entire fourth floor was his music studio. Juliana knew; she’d spent countless hours there. A warmth came over her, a nostalgia for those days, their security. She almost cried.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“A car and some cash.”

He managed a small smile. “The New York Times find out what you’ve been up to?”

“No, my mother’s been kidnapped.”

He looked at her, uncertain that she was in fact serious. For almost twenty years he’d listened to her problems, excuses, fears, exaggerations. He knew her better than he knew anyone. Loved her in a way he could love no one else-as, he realized, she did him. She was unpredictable and outrageous, and he knew he was lying to himself if he believed he could ever walk out of her life, J.J. Pepper or not.

He handed her the keys to his Mercedes and all the cash in his wallet. “I presume you’re in too big a hurry to answer any questions.”

“Later,” she said, throwing her arms around him as she felt the tears hot on her cheeks, and then she fled.

It must be a man, Shuji told himself, heading back upstairs to practice. Now at least he could. Since their argument he’d been able to do little more than stare at the keyboard, something, of course, he would never admit to her. He hadn’t understood what happened to her. J.J. Pepper, dyed hair, turbans, outrageous clothes. Jazz. He shuddered. Yet now, while he still didn’t understand, he did know it wasn’t something he needed to address. It was Juliana’s problem-something she had to confront and decide what to do about on her own. If she wanted his counsel, she would ask for it. The student-teacher relationship they had had for so long was over. It was one of those things that had been ending for a long time, gradually fading, not like a sunset into the night, but like the colors of dawn into a bright, beautiful day. Yes, that was how he would think of it.

They’d become friends, he thought with satisfaction.

Equals.

The cabdriver obviously felt vindicated when he pulled up in front of Catharina’s Bake Shop and the place was crawling with police. Blue lights were flashing, in contrast to the festive holiday lights lining the street. Stark passed him a twenty and didn’t wait for change as he got out, dropping his mask in place. Inside he was empty and stone cold. He flashed his press credentials and talked to the cop in charge, listening without comment. It seemed to be a simple break-in; they’d found a guy unconscious in the kitchen claiming he was smacked on the head while buying cream puffs. Guy’s name was Peters-Alex Peters. They’d tried to reach the owner.

Just then Adrian Fall walked up and introduced himself, but Stark had already guessed who it was, not so much by his resemblance to his daughter-although it was there, in the coloring, the bones, the sensitive mouth-but by his look of terror. Stark knew something of how he felt.

Bloch had struck it rich, Matthew thought bitterly: Juliana and Catharina in one fell swoop. But if Matthew mentioned his name now to the police, Bloch would just dump them the first chance he got. That was the sergeant’s style. No deals, no loose ends. His chief strength, his only weakness.

“Goddamnit,” he muttered. Wilhelmina…

He thanked the cop as he heard Adrian Fall say his wife had called from her shop two hours ago and hustled down the block to the first pay phone he came to. He dropped in some coins and dialed Juliana’s apartment, and Wilhelmina answered on the first ring, saying “Allo.”

“It’s Stark.” He looked up at the milky-dark sky above Manhattan. “A man named Phil Bloch has Juliana and your sister. He’ll come for you next. Then he’s going to find out which one of you has the Minstrel’s Rough. If he gets to you before I do, don’t tell him. Stall him. I’m on my way.”

“Who is this Phil Bloch?”

There wasn’t an ounce of fear in her solid, accented voice. “A real shitkicker, Willie. Lay low.”

He hung up, thinking Ryder, you sonofabitch, you put this in motion. This is all your fucking fault, and if anything happens to the Peperkamps or Weasel, I’m coming after your ass the way I should have twenty years ago.

He flagged a cab and headed back to the Upper West Side. He passed the bakeshop. Adrian Fall was standing outside, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his conservative cashmere overcoat, his handsome patrician face white and gaunt in the harsh light of the police car. Matthew felt for the man. It couldn’t be easy to be in love with a Peperkamp.

Her hands were all right.

It was Juliana’s first coherent thought as she drove north along the Hudson River Parkway, staying within five miles of the posted speed limit. Traffic was heavy. Cars passed her with ski racks on their roofs; there’d been snow in Vermont and the Berkshires during the week and another couple of inches was forecasted. Skiing would be excellent. Juliana didn’t ski. She’d never taken the time to learn and she’d always been afraid for her hands. That wasn’t why she went to Vermont. It wasn’t why she was going now.

The initial shock of pain had subsided, and now she felt a dull throbbing at her side where she’d fallen against the door. She wanted to hear her mother’s voice tell her to drink some warm milk lightly flavored with cocoa and go to bed…her mother, whose pain had to be-

“Oh, God,” she mumbled, hearing again the snapping of her mother’s arm.

Her father would be frantic, but she didn’t dare call him-couldn’t. He would demand that she come home; he had a right to know what was going on. But she couldn’t explain, not now, and she had to live up to her responsibilities. If only she’d known seven years ago that Uncle Johannes wasn’t half-kidding or half-nuts. Her father would blame Aunt Willie, whom he’d never liked. He called her a troublemaker.

Aunt Willie…

If she couldn’t call her father, Juliana felt she at least had to give her aunt some kind of explanation-tell her what had happened at the bakeshop. Matthew… She owed him something, too, although she was no longer sure what.

She began looking for an exit.

The old aunt was having a goddamn cup of tea when Matthew pounded into the apartment. “Get your things,” he told her. “I’m getting you out of here.”

He thought rapidly, where the hell can I stash her? In a hotel. The Plaza. She could complain about how fancy it was, and he’d send Feldie the bill. Jesus. Hey, don’t worry about it, Weasel used to tell him, guys with no sense of humor’re the ones who get aced.

Weasel. Juliana. Catharina Fall.

If only he’d taken Weasel’s tip more seriously and put the screws to Ryder at Lincoln Center when he’d had the chance.

If only. His goddamn life was filled with if onlys.

Wilhelmina got up slowly, dumped out the rest of her lukewarm tea into the sink, and rinsed out her cup. “I will not run,” she told Stark.

“Don’t argue with me. I’ll haul you out of here on my back if I have to.”

She raised her thick eyebrows. “Imagine what the doormen would say. They do have their uses, don’t you think? Mr. Stark, I appreciate your protective impulses, but I cannot permit myself to run to safety while those I love are in danger.” She placed the cup on the counter and turned back to him, her plain face racked with worry. “They’re all I have left.”

He nodded curtly, realizing he had no right to order her around-not that she, like her lovely niece, would pay a damn bit of attention if he did.

“I don’t expect you to take me with you. I’d slow you down, and you seem quite competent. You don’t need me. Just leave, and let me do what I must.”

The telephone rang, and Matthew pounced on it.