“What do you want?” Skinner asked.

Windows were opened up and down the street for the summer’s night, and Zeke could hear televisions, dogs barking, the cry of a baby. “You stole the two gate keys, didn’t you?”

Quint crossed his arms on his massive chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And you tossed my room this morning. Find anything interesting?”

But he knew Quint wouldn’t answer, so he got up from the swing, stretching. He needed sleep. With Pembroke security no doubt on the alert and John Pembroke staying at the little purple cottage, Zeke figured he could skip keeping watch on Dani tonight.

He stood close enough to Quint to see the bulge of his shoulder holster even in the dark. “Did Joe show you the picture of Lilli and Mattie in the hot-air balloon before he died?” His voice was just over a whisper.

Quint’s eyes disappeared in the thick, scarred flesh around them. “Joe didn’t show me anything.”

“Here’s what I think,” Zeke said. “I think you’re in Saratoga to find out what happened to Lilli and pin it on my brother so you can revive your career.”

“My career doesn’t need reviving. But you go ahead and think what you want to think.”

“I’ll do that.”

He started off the porch, got halfway down when Quint grabbed his arm and pulled him around. His fingers dug in deep, in a grip that probably would have broken Dani’s arm. Zeke didn’t flinch. He met Quint’s gaze dead-on.

“You think you’re tough,” Quint said in a low voice. “You think you’ve seen action doing the work you do, but you haven’t seen anything. Nothing like what your brother saw.” He hissed his words, saliva spraying from his mouth. “You can’t make up for Joe. You can’t go through what he went through and prove you wouldn’t become what he became.”

He released Zeke and spun around and made the front door in two long steps. The herb wreath wobbled when he slammed the door shut behind him.

Zeke shook his arm where Quint had had it in his iron grip. He walked out to the sidewalk and headed up the street to where he’d parked his car. The air was cool; he could smell freshly cut grass. Some kid had left his bike in the middle of the sidewalk. He climbed into his car and sat a minute behind the wheel, not moving. He’d underestimated Quint. Not physically. He’d have held his own on that score. But he’d let himself forget Quint’s incisiveness.

“You can’t make up for Joe.”

He stuck the key in the ignition, turned it and pulled out into the neighborhood street, trying not to notice that his hands were shaking.

John Pembroke pushed his way through brush and low-hanging branches on the narrow path from the Pembroke Springs bottling plant through the woods to the steep rock outcropping where Dani had found the gold key.

It was almost dawn, and he’d had to get out of that cottage.

The memories.

The questions.

Lilli.

The estate his great-grandfather had built had changed and yet stayed the same. His daughter obviously had a peculiar talent, a knack for embracing the past without letting it dominate the present or determine her future. But John had half hoped-had told Dani himself-that everything would be so different, so changed, that being there would be easy.

Such was not the case.

“Oh, Lilli,” he whispered. “Lilli, Lilli.”

He didn’t know if Dani had been asleep or not. Didn’t stop in her room to tell her where he was going or leave a note. He just went. His sneakers were soaked with dew and mud, and his face was scratched where switches and branches had slapped him. As a boy, he’d known every inch of these woods.

The path ended. He saw clouds rolling in from the west, encircling the moon. His breath came in ragged gasps. He was too damn old for this nonsense. Pounding through the woods at the crack of dawn. What did he think he was doing?

He hung his toes over the edge of a massive boulder and stared twenty, thirty, fifty hundred feet-whatever it was-down to the trees and rocks below.

His throat caught. Lilli…

Compared to Tucson, it was cold out, and damp.

He didn’t know how long he stood there. When he finally turned back, he was shivering and crying and the sky had lightened, a light drizzle falling.

Walking along the path, he could feel the wind of forty years ago in his face as he’d played Zorro in these same woods. He loved to check out Ulysses’s long-abandoned bottling plant. The old goat had sold mineral water throughout the country, then had tried to capitalize on the new soda market by drawing off and selling the carbonic acid that gave the water its natural sparkling quality. But he’d tired of the enterprise, and the plant fell into bankruptcy, which, given his tendency to overdo everything, had probably saved his springs from extinction. Had saved them for Dani.

John could feel his strength and exuberance, and all the optimism of being a kid and having his life ahead of him, believing still that he could make his dreams come true.

He’d been so confident. A true Pembroke.

He stumbled through a muddy spot and then realized he’d veered off the path. Up ahead, he recognized one of the lamps on the bottling-plant grounds. Keeping his eyes on it, he pushed forward through ferns and undergrowth, never minding the path. If he was right, he’d come out near the pavilion in the clearing just beyond the plant. He could easily pick up the main path back to Dani’s cottage from there.

Feeling foolish, he brushed away his tears with the backs of his hands.

He heard a rustling sound behind him. A squirrel? He doubted his daughter would tolerate bears in her woods.

There it was again.

Pressing ahead, he could see the Doric columns of the pavilion. They anchored a Victorian wrought-iron fence, crawling with morning glories and roses that enclosed stone benches and an old marble fountain. Lilli’s gold key, John remembered, had been a copy of the key to its gate. He wished he could have seen both keys before they were stolen.

He pictured his wife’s exuberant smile as she stood next to his nutty mother in the basket of her balloon. He’d call Mattie in a few hours. Talk to his mother as he’d never talked to her before.

The rustling was right behind him now.

He started to turn and felt himself falling, and then felt the slicing pain.

Eleven

Someone knocked on Zeke’s door just after seven, waking him. He’d collapsed atop the crazy quilt around one. Pembroke housekeeping had unransacked his room. He wished they hadn’t. He might have been able to tell what Quint had been after. Did he know about the blackmail note as well?

“Hang on,” he called, rolling off the bed. He pulled on his jeans and shook off the last vestiges of sleep. “Who is it?”

“Ira Bernstein.”

So Dani wasn’t bluffing about kicking him out. Zeke opened up. “Look-” He stopped instantly, taking in the Pembroke manager’s pale face and shaken look. “What’s wrong?”

“Dani’s father has been found unconscious out near the bottling plant. He’s being transported to the hospital by ambulance now.”

“Does she know?”

Ira shook his head. “I thought you…”

He thought Zeke could tell her. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“He appears to have stumbled and fallen. He wasn’t on the path.”

“What’s his condition?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give me three minutes.”

“I’ll wait out here.”

Zeke nodded and shut the door. Outside his window the clouds and dawn drizzle had vanished, leaving in their wake a beautiful blue sky. Guests were already up and at it. He could see a half-dozen doing stretches on the lawn.

He dialed Sam in San Diego. “This thing’s getting even uglier.”

It was still night on the West Coast, but Sam was clearheaded. “One thing I’ve learned, the past is never past.”