“Vengeance?” Tam had laughed in disbelief. “I’ve seen too much suffering in my country to bother with vengeance. No, I’ll use what I know about Annette to get what I want.”

What she wanted was no less than a life with Quentin in the United States.

Jean-Paul had kept an eye on her and Jared, and had been appalled when Rebecca Blackburn turned up in Saigon. He waited for Tam to make her move, prayed she wouldn’t…and hoped Stephen Blackburn’s beautiful, crazy daughter would get out of Southeast Asia before anything happened to her.

Finally, in the predawn hours of April 29, 1975, Jean-Paul realized-too late-that Tam had gone to Annette Reed with what she knew about 1963. The Vietnamese assassin was Annette’s answer to her demands.

Over and over he had pleaded with Tam to forget Quentin and just let Jared Sloan get her out of Vietnam, but Tam had wanted everything: her baby, Quentin, a life in the U.S. “Quentin loves me,” she would say, so disarmingly.

As he started down pretty Mt. Vernon Street, Jean-Paul was reminded of the streets of Paris in his boyhood and was glad to shove aside the dark memories of Quang Tam. During his years of captivity, he had coped with his isolation and suffering by recalling every detail of his childhood with his eccentric, warm-hearted mother. Gisela had loved people and wanted them to love her, and she’d wanted to be somebody-not frantically, not jealously. Just for the fun of it.

“Why couldn’t I have been born a baroness?” she would ask him, laughing.

So she became one. Then Jean-Paul became a successful race-car driver, and it was too late for Gisela to recant and claim her famous son without jeopardizing the life she’d come to love on the Riviera. Jean-Paul hadn’t minded. He and his mother understood one another.

Had she died hating him?

He shook off the question, as he had for thirty years.

Automatically he glanced up at Annette’s magnificent house. He spotted a dark-haired girl pausing at the wrought-iron gate and squinting up at the fanlight above the front entrance.

His stomach lurched as he recognized her.

Mai Sloan.

No!

Jean-Paul threw down his foam cup and felt his insides burn as he began to run.

The Jupiter Stones and justice-vengeance-weren’t worth another life.

Not a child’s life.

With his limp, he couldn’t move fast enough. And what are you going to do when you catch up with her? She’ll only scream. Annette will come out and see she’s Quentin’s daughter-so obviously Quentin’s daughter-and that’ll be that. She’ll whisk Mai inside…

Jean-Paul slowed, wheezing.

He couldn’t risk moving too soon.

Haven’t you caused enough trouble? he asked himself. You should have followed Gisela into the Mediterranean thirty years ago.

Better than that, he should have killed Annette under the olive tree that miserable day when she’d handed him twenty thousand dollars in payment for the life she’d just destroyed.

There was no undoing the past; he could only make the present right.

Nothing would happen to Mai Sloan.

He settled into the shadows.

“Nothing,” he said aloud, waiting.

Grateful that Quentin was about to leave, Annette went to answer the front door. She’d had all she could take of her son. But she was in a relatively good mood. There’d be an end to all this soon…finally. It wasn’t the first time she’d had such a thought. When she’d gotten rid of Jean-Paul in 1959, she’d believed she was free. And then in 1963-for years she’d waited futilely for firm word that he was dead. And 1975. She’d shot Jean-Paul herself and would have made sure he was dead, but Nguyen Kim, her primary contact with the Saigon underworld, had insisted they leave at once for Tan Son Nhut. As it was, they’d only barely gotten out in the ARVN plane he’d commandeered. She shuddered at the memory of the artillery fire all around them, but they’d managed to arrive in Thailand safely. Annette had conducted some business there, quietly arranged for Kim’s emigration to the United States, earning his undying gratitude, then taken a commercial flight back to Boston. For the next fourteen years she’d thought despite the uneasy status quo among herself, Quentin and Jared, at least Jean-Paul was dead.

She took a bite of scone and checked through the side window.

She gasped, recognizing the girl on her doorstep at once as Mai Sloan.

Her hands trembling, Annette opened the door. At first she thought the girl’s Asian features were unexpected, then decided it was her Caucasian features-and then realized they blended together, inseparable, right.

Annette smiled her most gracious smile. “Hello, dear,” she said, hearing the slight catch in her voice. “You must be Mai Sloan.”

The girl smiled back, obviously relieved at her welcome, but Annette had to call on all her powers of self-restraint not to fall back into the entry and slam the door shut.

In particular when she smiled, Mai’s resemblance to Quentin-to Benjamin-was unmistakable.

Mai said, “And you’re my great-aunt Annette, right?”

No, Annette thought, no longer any question-or hope-left, I’m your grandmother.

Thirty-Three

Rebecca couldn’t stop moving. Her grandfather had twice insisted she sit down because she was driving him crazy, but he himself had trouble standing still. They were in the parlor, trying to figure out where Mai Sloan could have gone. Jared had called from the airport with the news her plane had landed safely and she was on the loose somewhere in Boston. Was she headed to Winston & Reed? Quentin’s condominium on Boylston Street? The Winston house on Mt. Vernon? West Cedar? Even Rebecca’s studio was a possibility.

Rebecca notified security at the Winston & Reed building and called the watchman at her building on Congress Street, describing Mai as best she could. She left her grandfather’s number with both.

Jared was on his way to Quentin’s condominium on the Public Garden.

There was no answer at Annette Reed’s house.

“I can’t stand this,” Rebecca said. “I’m going over to Mt. Vernon and have a look. Will you be okay here? You look exhausted.”

Her grandfather gave her a pointed look. “I should say I got more sleep last night than you did.”

She felt her face redden, but she really had no idea if he knew about her and Jared or was just making a good guess. “I’m not eighty,” she told him.

“Neither am I.”

“Grandfather-”

“Ah,” he said, peeking through the front window, “my cab’s here.”

“Your cab? Where are you going?”

He ignored her question. “Find Mai and sit on her until Jared gets back. I’ve something I need to do.”

“What?”

“I’m not used to having anyone worry about me anymore. Don’t you start.”

He headed into the entry, Rebecca on his heels. He paid no attention to her. Looking grimly determined, he got his old umbrella out of the coat closet.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Rebecca asked him.

He sighed. “Isn’t being cracked in the head by Jean-Paul Gerard enough to convince you there are dangers involved here?”

“You know Gerard isn’t going to kill me. He just wants me out of the way-maybe for my own protection, who knows? The same with Mai. He’s not going to hurt her. He had his chance in Saigon and saved her life instead.”

Thomas added a rain hat that looked as if it had seen a few too many tropical storms. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Acting on impulse, Rebecca grabbed his arm, even as she stifled a surge of panic. “Grandfather, please.”

A kind of pain crossed his face. “Rebecca, please.” He pried her fingers loose and held them tightly against his chest, reminding her of the powerful man he’d been in his younger years. “I know your brain is in overdrive as you try to put all these pieces together, but understand this-I will not have you hurt. This is my affair-my responsibility. It’s something I should have dealt with thirty years ago.”