He started with a cursory search of her flat files and reference library, not sure what he expected to find. He was momentarily distracted when he came across photographs of her five brothers, some with wives and children, and it bothered him that he couldn’t tell who was who. He remembered the Blackburn boys as toddlers and little kids, but he didn’t know them as men. Next to their pictures was a photo of Jenny and Stephen Blackburn on their wedding day. Jared, just four, had been the ring-bearer.

The elevator creaked down the hall. Jared wasn’t worried about getting caught; he’d shut the door on his way in. But then he heard footsteps, saw R.J.’s silhouette in the translucent glass and knew there wasn’t much way around it-he was going to scare the shit out of her.

Of course, he should have remembered with whom he was dealing.

Rebecca kicked open the door and said, “I should have you arrested, Sloan.”

So much for scaring her. He eased down onto the stool at her light table and took note of the color in her cheeks, the load of papers in her arms, the way his heart started thumping when he saw her.

“How’d you know it was me?” he asked.

“Art.”

“The printer?”

“He said some good-looking guy was asking for R. J. Blackburn. The good-looking I wouldn’t know about, but you and Sofi’re the only ones who still call me R.J. You pick my lock?”

He waved her keys at her. She snatched them out of his fingers. He said, “Your bedroom looks like an eight-year-old lives there-except for the Victoria ’s Secret underwear.”

Spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “Nice of you to notice.”

“How could I not?”

“You could have stayed out of my things,” she snapped back, dropping her load of stuff onto her drawing table. “What were you looking for?”

He shrugged. R.J. had never been one for hypocrisy, and for that reason alone he’d never considered that she’d deliberately omit critical details-skirt the truth, in other words, if not out-and-out lie. Her last words to him at the hospital in Manila -and he’d always believed them-had been “Go on your way, Jared. I have nothing else to say to you.”

Like hell, sweetheart.

He said, “I was looking for what you know about our guy from Saigon that you haven’t told me.”

She turned cool, a sure sign he had her. “Like what?”

“There, you see? That’s not a direct lie, but it’s not the truth, either. You know what. You talked to him.”

“I told you that already. He was here yesterday-”

“And you said-and I quote-‘I recognized him straight off as the Frenchman who shot you in Saigon.’”

She clamped her mouth shut.

Jared was losing patience. “You want to tell me how you knew he was French?”

“From his accent,” she said, neatening up her stack of photocopied papers. “He said something that night after he shot you.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t remember exactly.”

“There you go again. You don’t remember exactly. But I’ll bet you remember generally what he said. Rebecca, I have a right to know!”

She inhaled deeply, controlling herself. “You’re a fine one,” she said, “to be talking about someone’s rights.”

He sprang to his feet and raked both hands through his hair in frustration and guilt, but couldn’t think of a thing to say. Rebecca was on firm ground there, and she knew it.

“You’ve stayed out of Boston for fourteen years,” she said, “but as soon as you spotted the Frenchman outside your house, you flew here and went straight to my grandfather. Why?”

“You’ll have to talk to him about that, not me.” Jared studied her a moment, and he had to admit that she was as maddeningly captivating as she’d been at nineteen. His curse to notice, he supposed. “Believe it or not, R.J., I didn’t punch that guy on the motorcycle just so I could mess up your life. Thank your grandfather for me.” He sighed; obviously he wasn’t going to get anywhere with either Blackburn. And what right did he have to involve them in his problems? “I won’t be staying on West Cedar Street tonight.”

He felt her eyes on him as he headed for the door, and he wondered what words he’d put in her mouth if he could. Stay…I’ll tell you everything, Jared…I’ve thought about you a lot over the years…

Definitely time to back out of her life.

“Have you seen Grandfather yet today?” she asked.

Jared pulled open the door. “He came down a few minutes after you left and said we ought to head to San Francisco.”

Rebecca’s smile surprised him. “He didn’t recommend Budapest to you?”

In spite of himself, Jared grinned. “No-I think he must have decided San Francisco ’s more romantic.”

And he left before he started saying things he had no business saying and forgetting how mad he was at Thomas Blackburn and his rich, beautiful and totally unfathomable granddaughter.

Rebecca resisted the temptation to follow Jared only because she had work to do. Not design work; she’d already given up any illusions of drumming up clients today. A couple of hours at the Boston Public Library had netted her a biography of Empress Elisabeth that mentioned the Jupiter Stones, a couple of articles on the Côte d’ Azur robberies in 1959 that Rebecca photocopied and stuck in a file folder and stacks of information on her grandfather and his downfall. She checked out what she could and copied what she couldn’t and carted it all back to her studio to go through in privacy.

A 1963 article from Time was on top of her pile. There were pictures of Thomas Blackburn as a Harvard professor in 1938; in Saigon in 1961 with his Vietnamese friend, the popular mandarin scholar Quang Tai; in Boston in 1963 at the funeral of his only child. This last picture also showed Stephen Blackburn’s penniless young widow surrounded by their six children at his graveside. They all looked exhausted and still in the grip of grief and shock. It was a photograph Rebecca had never seen until that morning. As far as she knew, her mother had never bothered with any of the news pieces probing the tragedy. She’d certainly never mentioned them.

Steeling herself, Rebecca began to read.

The Winston & Reed Building on the Boston waterfront was one of the best of Wesley Sloan’s timeless designs. Jared was impressed. He had never seen the finished building, but found that models and photographs didn’t do it justice. His father was a hell of an architect, but that didn’t make Jared itch to join his firm and design skyscrapers himself. He was content working out of his one-man studio behind his house on Russian Hill.

Still smarting from his encounter with Rebecca, he entered the luxurious lobby and took the elevator to the thirty-ninth floor. He had no idea what he’d say to his cousin Quentin. The child that could have been yours is a great kid and I’m not going to let anything happen to her.

At least it was a start.

Being a Sloan, he got past the receptionist with no trouble and almost got past Willa Johnson, Quentin’s secretary. But her boss had just gotten in, he wasn’t having the best of days, and Jared couldn’t just walk in, cousin or not, without her checking first.

She checked. Quentin, it seemed, had no desire to see his cousin Jared.

“I’m sorry,” Willa said, as if that ended the matter.

It didn’t. Jared commented that he was sorry, too, and marched past her to Quentin’s office. He could hear her calling security, but that didn’t trouble him. Without hesitating, he pushed open the heavy walnut door.

“Call off the dogs, cousin.”

Quentin looked so pathetic Jared almost took pity on him. Then Mai’s face came to him. He could see her stubborn pout when he’d said goodbye to her in Tiberon, and he could hear her saying “Oh, Daddy” in that way she had, as if he was the biggest idiot who’d ever lived.

And Tam’s face came to him. So trusting and innocent even as it crumpled in pain and horror when the first of the assassin’s bullets struck her. And Rebecca’s face, pale with shock, defeat, betrayal.