“What were you and my grandfather talking about?”

“About how foolish you would be to stay after me,” Jean-Paul said quietly.

Rebecca gave him a cool look, her cheeks regaining their color. “You were in the Mekong Delta with my father when he died.”

So she knew. Jean-Paul all at once felt very tired and not nearly as confident in his purpose as he had. Perhaps he should have left The Score in the newsstand and remained in Honolulu.

Rebecca eyed him with impatience. “And you’re a jewel thief.”

But her voice quavered, and she hesitated, suddenly looking frightened when he took another step toward her. He could see how very blue her eyes were, how dark the lashes, how creamy her skin. Just knowing she was in Boston should have been enough to keep him away. Wherever he went, he brought agony and death. Perhaps Thomas Blackburn was right; he would never win.

“Stay away from me,” he told Stephen Blackburn’s beautiful daughter. She paid no attention to the rain pelting on her chestnut hair and soaking her blouse. He could see the clear outline of her breasts under the wet fabric. He put out a hand, as Thomas had to him, and didn’t blame her when she drew back. And he said, “I’ll only hurt you.”

She raised her squarish chin. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Perhaps you should be.”

As she considered his remark and her own response, Jean-Paul suddenly understood that this wasn’t a woman who discouraged easily. She would keep coming and coming and coming until she’d found answers. She had spotted him talking with her grandfather and followed him onto the Common, a reckless act considering how little she really knew about him. He would have to be more alert.

“I’m not going to be put off,” she told him.

“Then you’re a fool.”

He drew back one hand and before she could react, he cuffed her hard on the side of the head. He kept his expression grim and menacing, forcing himself not to grimace as her eyes widened in shock and pain and she staggered backward.

Around them, people backed off.

Blood spurted from Rebecca’s mouth and it might have been Jean-Paul’s own for the pain he felt.

She didn’t scream. She put one hand up in front of her face in belated self-defense, but Jean-Paul couldn’t bring himself to strike her again. Instead he moved very fast to make certain that few onlookers witnessed what he’d done. Another blow and someone would call the police.

“Stay away from me,” he said through gritted teeth, and fled into the Tremont Street traffic. Horns blared, brakes screeched. He wouldn’t have cared if a car hit him. Picking up his pace, ignoring the ripping pain in his chest, Jean-Paul darted down a side street.

On the Common, Rebecca broke away from the crowd that had gathered around her and ran hard through the rain, trying to catch up with Gerard. She wanted to ask him about the Jupiter Stones-to give them to him if they were what he wanted. Then he could take the stones and go off and leave them all alone.

But she’d lost him.

She brushed one hand at the blood that had dribbled from her cut lip down her chin. She ended up smearing it, probably making her injury look worse than it was. How dramatic. Her head throbbed and she felt stupid. She finally gave up on finding the Frenchman among the lunchtime crowds and headed back up to Beacon Hill. She thought of her grandfather and his refusal to talk to her, Jared Sloan and his, of Jean-Paul Gerard and his. And for the first time in her life, Rebecca though she understood why intelligence-gathering organizations had invented truth serums.

Twenty-Two

Jean-Paul.

Jared.

Quentin.

Former lover, nephew, son. And Thomas. What was he? Annette remembered when she’d thought he was everything to her.

She hoped if she could put them out of her mind she could assemble the scattered fragments of her thoughts into a coherent plan. But it was one of those things that was easier said than done, and she thought perhaps digging in the dirt-physical labor-would help. Sitting around waiting for things to happen was against her nature. She wasn’t a passive woman.

At the first break in the rain she went back out to the garden and was on her hands and knees pulling weeds in the soft, damp soil at a raised bed when she heard footsteps on the terrace behind her. Anticipating an unpleasant encounter with Jean-Paul or Quentin, she braced herself.

“Hello, Aunt Annette.”

She rolled back onto her hands and forced a smile. “Why, Jared, what a surprise.”

He was one of those rare men with the capacity to see through her subterfuges and false civilities. It was just as well he’d gone to live in San Francisco. He said skeptically, “Quentin didn’t warn you I was in town?”

“He mentioned it,” she said, rising. “I wouldn’t call it a warning.”

Jared said nothing.

Peeling off her lambskin gardening gloves, Annette wished she’d gone into her office today, after all. She’d have avoided that unpleasant confrontation with Thomas, and she’d have been around when Jared had barged into Quentin’s office. She didn’t care about protecting her son against his cousin. She simply preferred that her first encounter with her handsome nephew in more than a dozen years didn’t occur here in her garden, where she always felt so damned frumpy.

“I’m going to have to look into tighter security,” she said. “It seems my excitement these days stems from wondering who might wander onto my property. It’s been a long time, Jared. I was under the impression that you’d never come back to Boston.”

His teal eyes-his father’s eyes-bored through her. “Because you ordered me not to?”

She checked her irritation. Even as a little boy Jared had had an annoying capacity to cut through the nonsense. She feigned amusement. “As if you’ve ever listened to my or anyone else’s ‘orders.’” She climbed to her feet, noting that Jared didn’t offer her a hand. “I recall I simply expressed my concern and disappointment that you’d had an affair with a Vietnamese woman and fathered an illegitimate child with her.”

“Let’s not rehash the past,” Jared said tightly. “And let’s not pretend we’re happy to see each other.”

“As you wish.”

Annette walked across the terrace to her garden table and whisked off the plastic cover and left it to drip over one of the chairs. “So, Jared,” she said, gesturing to one of the chairs. “Sit down and let’s get caught up with one another. The sun seems to have come out for a bit, and I’m due a break.”

She sat down herself, brushing loose dirt from the knees of her khaki pants. She was dressed casually, but expensively, in a yellow cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, tan poplin pants and dusty tennis shoes without socks. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and with her hair coming out of its pins, Jared saw echoes of the free-spirited woman Annette Winston Reed had been in her youth. But tragedy, the pressures and responsibilities of business and her own unyielding view of her place in the world had brought a weariness, even a hardness, to her mouth and eyes.

Jared relented and sat across from her. “I’m in town because the pictures in The Score-I assume you’ve seen them-brought the man who shot me in Saigon out of the woodwork.”

“Really? How unfortunate.” Annette gave him a sympathetic look. “But whatever would that have to do with Boston?”

So innocent. Too innocent. “You’ve known all along about Quentin’s involvement with the drug smugglers in Saigon -”

“Oh, Jared, honestly. I can’t believe you’re that naive. Quentin was a rich, vulnerable young man who allowed himself to be framed for something he didn’t do. The easiest course of action was for him to come home, which is what he did. If you think that has anything to do with this man who shot you, you’re dead wrong.”