“What behavior? That I wasn’t a gung-ho wife and mother?”

Thomas sighed. “You’re making excuses, Annette, where there are none to make. No, you haven’t been a good mother to Quentin-but you were a rotten parent long before you became chairman of Winston & Reed. Working or not working has nothing to do with your basic selfishness. You’re a good businesswoman, but that doesn’t make you immune from being responsible for your other failings. It wouldn’t if you were a man.”

“Get out of my house, Thomas.” She threw down the scone, but was pleased to see her hands weren’t shaking. “I don’t have to listen to your insults and senile drivel.”

“I don’t want your feud with Jean-Paul harming anyone else. Do you understand that, Annette?” Thomas’s heart was beating erratically again. God help me from giving her the satisfaction of seeing how upset she still can make me. He went on carefully, “As powerful and strong as you think you are, my dear, you don’t respond well to personal pressure.”

“And you do?” She sat back, hating him, but unable to pull her eyes from his aging figure. “Damn you to hell, Thomas, for thinking I want anyone hurt over this business with Jean-Paul. Yes, I’m sure he wants the Jupiter Stones. He must believe that silly woman Gisela’s claim they were real, in which case they must be enormously valuable-a pity I misplaced them. But he knows I’d pay him to stay away from me. So it has to be more than a simple profit motive at work here, don’t you think?”

“It makes no difference-”

“Not to you, I’m sure. I’m the one who turned him in and, as you say, ruined his life. Has it ever occurred to you that his conviction that I have those stones has kept him from coming after me? He doesn’t just want the stones.” She swallowed hard, looking for some way to make herself seem more composed, then gave up. “He wants revenge, Thomas. Don’t you see that? As soon as he get the stones, he’ll come after me.”

I hope he does, Thomas thought, and he walked over to her, moving slowly and stiffly after his long day. Yet he could see from Annette’s expression that she wasn’t looking upon him as a man approaching eighty whose body was beginning to fail him. She was remembering their days together in Saigon, when Annette had wanted nothing more than for him to love her.

He leaned in close, so that she could see the yellow in his eyes, the wrinkles and the liver spots on his hands and face, the sagging skin, so that she could know that time, too, would catch up with her. He didn’t give a damn about being old. He had seen too much death, was too close to it himself, to let it worry him. But aging, dying-they wouldn’t sit well with Annette.

“Understand me, Mrs. Reed,” he said coldly. “I don’t care if Jean-Paul Gerard exposes you for what you are or even if he kills you. I only care that his obsession with the Jupiter Stones and your belief that you’re worth saving at any cost don’t spill over and ruin the lives of any more people I care about.” He straightened up and simply refused to breathe hard. “I’ll do what I can to keep him away from you-but not for your sake.”

She suddenly looked like a petulant adolescent who wanted to stick her tongue out at him. “You’re wrong about me, Thomas. I’ve suffered, as well-”

“You don’t know what suffering is.”

“I lost a husband because of your arrogance!”

“You see, Annette, you phrase everything in terms of yourself-you’ve suffered, you’ve lost. Suffering isn’t just when you yourself are hurt. It’s when someone you love is hurt. What’s unfortunate, but obvious and probably unchangeable, is that you only love yourself.”

She stuck her chin up at him. “Go to hell.”

“Simply do as I ask.” He gave her a nasty smile. “Think, my dear. What if after all these years I decided to talk?”

“Kim!”

The Vietnamese appeared immediately, but Thomas waved him off and walked himself out.

Annette splashed more coffee into her cup and gulped it down, her hands shaking violently. She should have shot Thomas. She had guns in the house. She’d learned how to use them-would use them. She should have filled him with lead and watched him bleed. Who was he to judge her?

No one would have blamed her for shooting him.

Poor Mrs. Reed, they would say, having to endure being accosted by that vile old loser who’d killed her husband.

Anyone else in her position would have shot him.

She’d loved Benjamin! And she loved her son. Quentin was her baby-

Ignoring Kim, she ran to her study and removed the Browning automatic from her desk drawer.

Thomas had left the front door open. She rushed out to the steps with her gun.

He was already gone.

“I hate you, Thomas Blackburn…I hate you!”

If only she believed it.

Twenty

A little before noon, Jared entered the unprepossessing building on Congress Street where Rebecca’s studio was located. There was no building directory. He asked a scrawny, ink-covered man in a printing office for directions. “Fourth floor” was all he said, and that ungraciously. Not bothering to thank him, Jared took the creaking elevator and entertained himself by considering ways the building could be renovated, if the owner had the funds and the imagination for such a task. Even a few gallons of paint would do wonders.

The studio’s entrance looked like something out of a Humphrey Bogart movie with its windowed door, black Gothic lettering and never-used brass mail slot. Jared peered through the milky, patterned glass, but he couldn’t see much. There didn’t seem to be any lights on inside. He knocked.

No answer. He wasn’t surprised. Walking alone through the Public Garden and the streets of Back Bay had started him rehashing his conversations with Thomas and Rebecca Blackburn, trying to put pieces together. He had already known Thomas hadn’t told him everything, but he hadn’t expected the same from Rebecca. Not because she was any more forthcoming than her grandfather: being a Blackburn, she was naturally tight-lipped and outspoken, each when it suited her. The problem was, Jared hadn’t anticipated her knowing anything he didn’t already know. A stupid mistake on his part.

He fished out the set of keys he’d swiped from Rebecca’s spartan room on West Cedar Street. He had guessed that she might be off on a mission of her own, but he was determined to check out her studio for anything that could lead him to the honest, complete answers neither she nor her grandfather would give him. Maybe he’d find something, maybe not. At least he was taking some kind of action and not just sitting around twiddling his thumbs or drinking Athena’s overpowering coffee.

The third key he tried worked.

The studio was pure Rebecca Blackburn. Everything about the large, airy rooms suggested the woman who worked here was intense, exacting, high-energy and, more often than she should be, irreverent.

Nothing suggested she was anywhere near as rich as she was.

Jared flipped on the overhead lights. On a less gloomy day, there would be adequate sunlight from the huge paned industrial windows that looked out onto the street. It wasn’t much of a view. Rebecca could have afforded the best views of the Boston skyline, the Rockies, the Alps, Central Park… San Francisco Bay. Whatever she wanted. But therein lay the contradictions that made Rebecca Blackburn not only a captivating, exciting woman, but also so hard to figure. Part of her wanted to have money and surround herself with the good things money could buy, to take pride in what her creative talents, business acumen and entrepreneurial drive had earned her. Jared could see that side of her in her choice of original prints for her walls, in her state-of-the-art equipment, in her quality pens and pencils and markers and all the other tools of her trade. In one corner, she had on display her many design awards and mementos of the game that had made her rich: the game board she’d made at eighteen for Sunday nights with Sofi and her grandfather, the original handcrafted game pieces, framed copies of the first Junk Mind poster.