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.
The waves seemed to be coming in higher and faster and more often, and Mai was terrified one would finally take her and the old man. She still didn’t know who he was. Barely conscious, he was unable to speak. They had both managed to sit up and worm their way to a more sheltered spot up against a sleek, black boulder. There weren’t as many barnacles there, but they weren’t out of reach of the tide.
Mai was exhausted from fighting the waves. Even with the old man in front of her, trying to protect her, the force of the water was almost impossible to resist. She no longer even noticed the cold or the pain of her scrapes and cuts and bruises from being bashed round on the barnacles and rocks.
Dad…Dad, where are you?
Another wave was boiling in over her. She didn’t even prepare for it, but simply let it come.
White-faced and staring blankly out the passenger window, Quentin hadn’t spoken for the last five miles. Jared didn’t try to get him to talk. Preoccupied with his own fears, he hadn’t bothered to sugarcoat what he’d had to say: Annette—Quentin’s mother—had deliberately misled him about Tam and had ordered Tam’s killing and that of her own granddaughter.
“She’s lied to you and used you,” Jared had said brutally, “in the worst ways I can imagine.”
“But why?”
“To save herself.”
He’d explained what he could, not knowing if Quentin was able to digest anything beyond the fact that his mother had taken advantage of his guilt over his stupid involvement with the drug smugglers…that Tam hadn’t fallen into bed with his cousin…that Mai was their child.
Jared took the turn into the Winston driveway in Marblehead too fast and ran up into the pristine lawn, but quickly righted the car and sped up toward the house.
Annette’s Mercedes was coming at them.
It swerved onto the lawn to avoid a head-on collision. Jared screeched on the brakes and jumped out. He didn’t look back to see what Quentin was doing.
Annette had already rolled down her window. “Jared, I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t know what’s going on—there were shots fired and Thomas has Mai down on the rocks. Kim’s doing what he can to help. I’m heading for the police now. I’ve tried to call, but the line’s dead. Someone must have cut it—”
“Give it up,” Jared said stonily. “I know what you’ve done and there’s no escape. If anything happens to Mai, I don’t care where you go, there’s no place you can hide from me. Got that, Auntie? Nowhere.”
“You’re dead wrong.”
Behind him, Quentin said, “No, Mother, I don’t think he is.”
“Quentin…” Annette swallowed, no color at all in her face, and began to cry. “Quentin, don’t let him poison your mind. I’m your mother. How could you believe I’d hurt anyone?”
“I’m going after Mai,” Jared said, unmoved, and ran off into the rain.
Quentin fell in beside him. “You might need my help—I know every rock out there.”
Jared clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
They heard the Mercedes engine race, and Jared glanced back, seeing the big car bang into Rebecca’s car, right itself, and go on. He had no idea where his aunt was going, but it didn’t matter. He’d find her.
“Grandfather…Mai!”
Rebecca choked back her terror and slid down the black rock into the icy, thigh-deep water. The force of the swell pushed her up against the wall of the rock and she had to hang on to the edges of the rock to maintain her footing, hooking one arm around the slight figure of Mai Sloan. The girl was unconscious, and now, at high tide, every oncoming wave totally inundated her. Rebecca held on as the current tried to pull them back out with it.
Her grandfather’s thin body floated up in the foaming water and went with the receding wave, pounding over the rocks. Rebecca could see his pale, bloody face, and she screamed for him. He didn’t move.
Never loosening her hold on Mai, Rebecca shivered in the numbing surf and knew she didn’t have the strength to hoist Mai up over her head onto the black rock. She would have to edge to her right where, about twenty feet away, the steep embankment of rocks gave way to a small cove. The tide wasn’t as deep there. Rebecca would be able to leave Mai on the bank of sea-smoothed, softball-sized rocks and go back for her grandfather.
You can do this. Just stay steady and keep moving.
But as she peeled her fingers loose from their hold on the black rock, she could feel Mai being pulled from her. At first she thought it was the current, then she heard Jean-Paul’s French-accented voice. “I’ve got her.”
He was on his stomach on the rock above her, reaching one arm down and lifting Mai’s tiny body by her soaked shirt. Rebecca helped shove her up to him.
And then Jared was there behind him, taking Mai, and Quentin leaped into the water with Rebecca and thrashed out into a roaring wave where her grandfather bobbed helplessly. He got an arm around the old man, and they both disappeared in the gray swell. Rebecca dove in after them, losing her footing in the deepening water, the force of the tide trying to push her back. Barnacles cut at her hands and feet, and she banged against rocks as she fought to stay in control, not to let the tide
seize her.
Leaving Mai with Jean-Paul, Jared came around to a rocky point off to Rebecca’s left, where the water was just waist-deep. He jumped in, and Rebecca made her way toward him, guessing he’d spotted Quentin and her grandfather.
Within seconds, Jared pulled Thomas up and deposited him on the rocks.
Together, he and Rebecca dragged Quentin to safety. He’d bashed his head on a rock but was conscious.
Thomas and Mai, however, were another matter.
“Jared…” Rebecca bit her lip, unable to bring herself to ask.
But Jared understood. “They’re both alive.”
“We’ve got to get them warm,” Rebecca said.
Jared nodded grimly. With a jackknife from his pocket, he deftly cut the wet, cold rope binding Thomas’s hands and feet. He looked over at Quentin. “You’re in no shape to carry him. Can you get Mai?”
Without a word, Quentin took Jared’s jackknife and hurried back over the rocks to where Mai and Jean-Paul were. Jared lifted Thomas onto his shoulder and steadied himself before starting up to the house.
“R.J., I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.”
She climbed agonizingly to her feet and gave him a quick smile. “The day I let anybody, even you, Jared Sloan, carry me when I can walk…” She caught her breath and winced. “Just don’t wait for me.”
It was Quentin who called the police and the ambulance, who got out blankets while Jared and Rebecca peeled off Mai’s and Thomas’s soaked, tattered clothes. Ignoring their scrapes and cuts for the moment, they wrapped them in the blankets. Jared held his daughter and tried to will his own warmth into her.
“Nothing will change, Jared,” Quentin said softly. “She doesn’t have to know who I am.”
“Yes, she does. I can’t keep lying to her. Before it was to save her life. Now…there’s no reason.”
“I won’t try and take her from you.”
“Good, because I’d fight you every inch of the way.”
“I just…I just want to be a part of her life, Jared. That’s all. She’s my cousin’s kid, right?” He looked at the pale, pretty face. “She’s going to be okay.”
On her way up to the house, Rebecca had stopped to help Jean-Paul Gerard, but he’d shooed her off. “The rain’s letting up—I’ll be fine. Take care of your grandfather.”
But now there was nothing more she could do for Thomas beyond what she and Jared and Quentin had already done, and so she grabbed a blanket and a first-aid kit and headed back out to the rocks. She’d taken a couple aspirin for her ribs. For now, it’d have to be enough.
The rain had stopped, and already the tide had begun to ebb. Rebecca went straight down to the black rock where she’d left Jean-Paul.
He wasn’t there.
She scoured the immediate area and scanned the gray swells, but saw no sign of him. How far could he get in his condition? Frowning, she started back up to the house, hoping he hadn’t just given up and lowered himself into the sea. But that wasn’t Jean-Paul Gerard’s style. He’d survived too much to give up now.
By the time she reached the grass, the police and ambulance had arrived. Jared pointed her out to a paramedic, and she tried to protest, but there was no arguing with medical types.
As they draped a blanket over her, she noticed that her truck was gone.
She grinned. Jean-Paul Gerard had stolen it.
Thirty-Nine
The sky was an impeccable Mediterranean blue and the rose garden behind the stone mas in full bloom, a riot of pinks and yellows and reds. Annette enjoyed their scent as she came out onto the terrace. She would miss this beautiful old place, but sacrifices had to be made—and there was still the possibility everything would work out to her advantage. Already she’d cabled Quentin, letting him know that she’d left for France in a total state of shock, unable to fathom all the accusations being flung at her, and promising she’d fight to clear her name. No one had yet offered a shred of proof she’d done anything more than left for her annual trip to the Riviera a bit earlier than usual. Both suffering hypothermia and head injuries, Thomas and Mai hadn’t yet been able to give their version of what had transpired at her oceanside house on the North Shore. Jean-Paul Gerard was missing and presumed drowned, and Kim’s body had washed ashore.
Naturally Jared and Rebecca had come out unscathed. Didn’t they always?
Annette had the glimmer of an idea in which she could blame everything on her dead Vietnamese bodyguard, even ordering Mai’s hands and feet bound. I had to…he was going to kill me!
Hmm, she thought. The story needed work, but it had possibilities.
But meanwhile, she had her contingency plan of last resort. Thirty years ago—after her brush with being “found out” as Le Chat—she had set up a Swiss bank account for herself and purchased a beautiful chalet in the Alps to which her ownership couldn’t possibly be traced. Retreating there would mean giving up everything: Boston, Winston & Reed, Quentin. She would have to begin a completely new life—and at sixty years of age. It wouldn’t be easy. At least she’d have the satisfaction of knowing Thomas Blackburn would finally have to acknowledge that she indeed knew what it was to suffer.
She planned to leave for Switzerland this afternoon.
However, she had one last loose end to snip off in her mas garden.
The sharp thorns of the rosebushes dug at her gloved hands and her sleeves as she reached among them, feeling around until she grasped the edges of a tall, heavy terra-cotta urn. She rocked it onto its edge and rolled it out onto the terrace.
The cremated remains of my pets are in there, she’d told various gardeners over the years. Just leave it right where it is. Of course, they had. They’d thought her quite the eccentric.
The plastic cover she’d taped carefully over the top was still in place. She grimaced at the layers of dead insects and grime, but just shut her eyes and peeled back the plastic. The top half of the urn was filled with hundreds of bits of cork, which she scooped out. In spite of the close call she’d just had on Marblehead Neck, she could feel the excitement building in her.
At last her fingers struck the familiar softness of the plastic-wrapped leather pouches she’d dropped into the urn in 1959. She hadn’t touched them since.
One by one she brought them out: Le Chat’s plunder. Diamonds, pearls, emeralds, gold, sterling silver—beautiful pieces of jewelry of every description. There was even one particular Art Deco piece, an interesting snake bracelet, that had caught her eye. It had belonged to a St. Louis socialite, one of Annette’s Radcliffe classmates, who was still whining about its loss.
Nothing in these pouches, however, came close to equaling Empress Elisabeth’s incredible Jupiter Stones.
If Annette had known Tam had swiped them all those years ago, she wouldn’t have waited until 1975 to deal with the sneaky little brat.
Still, it wasn’t the monetary value the jewels represented that made Annette’s heart trot happily along as she indulged in the memory of those thrilling days. She hadn’t become Le Chat for the potential profit, but for the excitement—the daring of it all. If she could go back to 1959, she wouldn’t change a thing, except perhaps not shooting Jean-Paul when she’d had the chance.
“Was it worth it?” a female voice asked.
Annette jumped, startled out of her reverie.
Rebecca Blackburn looked stunning in a navy wrap-dress and flats, her hair pulled back, no sign that her beloved grandfather was on the brink of death.
“Get off my property,” Annette said, “before I call the police.”
“Oh, don’t worry. The police are already on their way.”
Annette shot to her feet. “I want you out of here!”
Rebecca was unmoved. “Scream and throw a fit all you want. I’m not leaving. There are all kinds of warrants out for you in the United States, and the French police know you’re here. They’re going to detain you for questioning. I just thought I’d mosey on over and make sure you didn’t try and make a
n exit before they could get here. Those are your suitcases on the walk out front?”
Annette didn’t speak.
“Grandfather’s going to recover. Mai’s already talking like crazy. I know what you’ve heard, but it’s not true. I thought you might like to know that.”
Cursing herself for not having the foresight to bring a gun out to the garden with her, Annette bent down and gathered up her packages of stolen jewels. Her hair fell into her face, and she could feel perspiration springing out on her back and in her armpits. She hated this feeling of desperation.
“Don’t try to leave,” Rebecca said.
Annette glared at her, hugging the packages to her chest. “I’ll do as I please.”
“I didn’t come alone.”
“Oh—and I suppose you tucked Jean-Paul in your back pocket? Did he live, as well? Get out of my way, Rebecca. I may be sixty years old, but I can still knock you on your pretty behind.”
But she could hear the back door creaking open, and her gut twisted as she saw the familiar tawny hair and the handsome, grim face of her son.
“Quentin…”
“Hello, Mother,” he said.
Annette licked her parched lips and felt her spirit—her very soul—catching fire, blackening in the despair of seeing her son’s expression. He knows, she thought. He knows everything.
Rebecca said softly. “How do you think I knew where to find you?”
“I did it all for you.” Annette’s voice was hoarse; she felt as if she were choking. “Quentin…don’t look at me like that. Please! It was all for you. How could you have had a jewel thief for a mother? The police would have come after me if I hadn’t given them Jean-Paul. Think of what that would have been like for you.”
“If you’d considered me, you’d never have become a thief in the first place. And I’d rather—” He hesitated, his tone cold, but he was fighting back tears. Clenching his fists at his side, he went on, “I’d rather have had a mother who accepted the consequences of her actions. I’d rather have had a jewel thief for a mother than a liar and a murderer.”
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