“But if that woman-”

“We need to worry about the ocean right now.”

“Why is she doing this to us?”

“Because she made a mistake a long time ago and couldn’t face up to what she’d done. So she kept compounding that mistake until now, and she feels she has no other choice.”

“I hate her.”

“Yes, but she wasn’t always like this, Mai. She’s an insecure and frightened woman, and that makes her very selfish and mean. I’m not making excuses for her. Everyone’s afraid sometimes. It’s how we act when we’re afraid that shows us what we are. Do you understand that, Mai?”

“I’m going to roll off you now and try to sit up. Okay?”

He smiled even as he heard yet another wave coming at them. “Okay.”

“Your father and I were brothers.”

Either Jean-Paul Gerard had gone nuts, Rebecca thought, or there was another fly squirming in the ointment. Right now it didn’t matter which. Crouched down, she climbed back up onto the seat of her truck and peered over the dashboard.

Nothing but wind, rain, gray sky, gray ocean. Jean-Paul had already disappeared down onto the rocks.

Staying low, Rebecca cracked open the passenger door and slipped out, leaving the door slightly ajar, although with the crashing surf and howling wind, probably no one would have heard it even if she’d slammed it. And who’s around to hear it? The place looked dead. She shuddered at her terminology. Grandfather, Mai-they had to be around here somewhere. Given what Jean-Paul had told her, she was positive this was where her grandfather had come.

Annette was going to make him her scapegoat…again.

Hunched over, Rebecca used the Mercedes as cover and crept onto the walk, the flagstones slippery in the pounding rain. She moved quickly, but no one came out and shot her or grabbed her and took her away. Should I have trusted Jean-Paul? What if I’ve been gullible and he’s no good after all?

She shook off the doubt and kept moving. The walkway branched off, heading to the front of the house in one direction and around back in the other. She picked the one going around back and stood. If someone saw her, so be it. She tried to look innocently oblivious to what was going on and totally unafraid, but neither was easy.

She went all the way round to the side entrance, nearest the ocean. The door was unlocked. Inside the house was quiet and warm, as beautiful as Rebecca remembered from her few visits there as a child. As she recalled, she’d always gotten into trouble for one thing or another.

There were wet footprints in the kitchen. Fear rising in her throat, Rebecca followed them out into the hall and into the front entry.

Annette came down the stairs, buttoning the cuff of her shirt. “Why, Rebecca-hello.” She sounded cheerful, and even smiled. “What are you doing here?”

“Where’s Mai?”

“Out on the rocks with your grandfather. I was just looking outside. The weather’s turned rather nasty-it’s insane for Thomas to keep a child out there in these conditions. He wanted to show her the surf at high tide during a storm.” Annette came to the bottom of the stairs, her cuff buttoned. “I hope nothing’s happened to them.”

Rebecca stiffened, restraining herself, and headed back to the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Annette demanded, following.

“I’m calling the police.”

“Why-Rebecca, obviously you’re upset about something. What? What on earth’s going on?”

Rebecca resisted the temptation to turn around and scream for her to just stop, but this was no time to lose control. She hunted around for a telephone.

A loud crack sounded outside.

Gunfire.

Annette shuddered visibly, and the color drained from her face. “What…”

“Save it,” Rebecca said.

And she was out the door and running.

Thirty-Eight

The first shot struck Jean-Paul in his bad leg. It had missed his upper body only because he had dived off a boulder at the last split second. His landing in the tide pool below probably did him worse damage than the bullet that had seared his thigh. It wasn’t that he felt any pain-that would come later-but that he couldn’t move. He lay prone in the icy water, the tide washing over him.

“In the end,” Nguyen Kim had said, “I win.”

Jean-Paul searched with one arm for something with which he could pull himself out above the water line, but he cut his hand on barnacles and came up only with useless periwinkles, snails, mussels and slimy seaweed.

A wave surged over him. Cold, salty water filled his mouth and nostrils as his body was picked up by the powerful tide and thrown down again, along with the sea life clinging to the rocks. He didn’t fight. The tide would ebb, leaving the tide pool quiet and still for a few hours, himself drowned…unless that wasn’t good enough for Nguyen Kim.

The swirling water flipped Jean-Paul onto his side, and as the wave pulled back, trying to take him with it, he could see Kim standing on the rock six feet above him.

Kim had been waiting for him. In the past, Jean-Paul might have taken him-in fact, had. But not today, with his body and spirit giving out. He had hoped, at least, his death would satisfy Annette and she would leave the others alone.

But of course, it was too late for that. Jean-Paul had seen the two figures huddled together against the battering tide… Thomas and Mai…no!

He had jumped from certain death, and Kim had fired.

Now the Vietnamese was preparing to fire again and finish him off. Jean-Paul felt his leg burning. The rest of him was numb.

Then-for no apparent reason-Kim was catapulted through the air, yelling, his legs kicking. His gun went flying. He more or less rolled, slid and plunged onto a steep, rocky embankment a few yards from Jean-Paul, and his momentum carried him down into the ocean, where the tide smashed him back against the rocks.

Steeling herself against the pain in her ribs, Rebecca clambered down off the huge boulder, down to the tide pool where Jean-Paul was bracing himself for another round of pounding surf. He looked dead. Then he grinned weakly at her, and she cried out with relief, wading out to him. She grabbed him under the arms. Going with the oncoming wave, she used its momentum to drag him out of the tide pool. Then she scrambled, heaving and tugging, moving fast so they wouldn’t get caught in the outward pull of the tide. Jean-Paul was scrawny and she was fit, but she still had to get him onto a rounded rock, above the water line.

She saw his blood-soaked thigh and understood why he wasn’t doing more to help himself.

The rain beat down on her, and she half expected Annette to appear on the rocks above them with another gun, another attempt to kill them both.

With one last burst of energy, she hoisted Jean-Paul onto the flat boulder where Kim had first landed. The rain seemed to make getting a decent breath even more difficult than it already was with her bruised ribs and the exertion, but she stayed on her hands and knees, gasping for air, willing back the stabbing pain.

“Grandfather, Mai,” she said, “where are they?”

Jean-Paul’s eyes focused, and he tried to push up on his hands. “On the rocks.” He winced in pain, pointing. “They’re in the tide.”

Rebecca could feel near-hysteria rising up in her. “And Kim…”

“He’s a killer. Save him for last.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Go!”

Not needing to be told twice, Rebecca was off, clambering over the steep rocks. Jean-Paul hated himself for not being able to go with her. To lie here bloody and useless was unacceptable.

He swore viciously in French.

Slowly, the pain beginning to register now, he pushed himself onto his hands and one knee, and began to drag himself over the rock toward the girl and the old man…toward his father, damn both their souls.