Betrayals (8 page)

Behind her stood a motionless, silent Vietnamese whom Jean-Paul recognized as Nguyen Kim. Kim was just over
five feet tall, sleek, wiry and very tough. In Vietnam, Jean-Paul had known him as a consummate survivor. He’d been trained by the American Special Forces, and no doubt Annette showed him off as a former South Vietnamese army officer she’d generously given a job as her bodyguard. But Kim ingratiated himself with anyone who could help him—and was perfectly willing to kill anyone who wouldn’t. Probably, Jean-Paul thought, Annette knew that.

He had considered she might have a gun or a bodyguard, but had risked that she wouldn’t shoot him, if only not to have to explain the bloodstains on her floor.

“Well, Jean-Paul.” She sat up very straight, her tone more regal than it had ever been thirty years ago on the Riviera. She had only been a rich woman then; now she was powerful, as well. “I’m beginning to think you’re invincible.”

He’d had the same thought about her. “I want the Jupiter Stones.”

“Fine.” She swept to her feet and came around to the front of the table, sitting on its edge. Her navy suit was conservatively cut and expensive, and her hair no longer fell out of its pins and made her look more innocent than she was. “Get them. The Jupiter Stones have nothing to do with me.”

“You’re a liar, Annette.”

She laughed. “Oh, I used to love to hear you say my name. To think, I used to lie awake nights wondering if you were thinking about me. My, my, I’ve never been so absorbed with any man the way I was with you. But I’ve changed in the past thirty years. So, yes, Jean-Paul, all right—I’m a liar. But not this time.”

“You’ll do anything to get your way.” Jean-Paul walked to the edge of the Persian carpet but stopped there, as if treading on it would suck him back into her world, back
under her spell. “You only care about yourself—your own pleasure and excitement. You were that way even in bed. I should have guessed long ago what you would do to me.”

“And now you hate me.” She looked at him coldly, her eyes as mesmerizingly blue as he remembered, but now distant and unsympathetic. “That’s your problem, Jean-Paul. I can’t help you.”

Looking around the study, he took in all the indications of her extraordinary wealth and thought of his own squalid room in Honolulu. Was she any happier? Any better a person?

“Do you have one of your guns handy? Or will you just wave your fingers and leave your dirty work to your bodyguard?”

He thought he saw her shiver at his reminder of just how much he knew about her—how much he’d suffered at her hands—but she recovered. “I see no reason we can’t resolve this problem in a civilized manner. Jean-Paul, I haven’t seen the Jupiter Stones in thirty years, and that’s the truth.”

“So you say.”

“Don’t believe me, then. It’s your choice.”

Jean-Paul stepped onto the thick carpet, his footfall making no sound, and his gaze riveted on the powerful woman seated before him. He asked mildly, “You love your son, don’t you? As much, of course, as a woman like you can love anyone.”

She bristled. “Who are you to talk to me about love? Get out of my house.”

Jean-Paul ignored her. “And your company,” he went on. “Winston & Reed is your triumph. It would never have amounted to anything if your husband had lived. How fortunate he died, hmm? You’re the Winston. You were always
the one with the money and intelligence, but you insisted on being the perfect Boston woman and wife—until Benjamin’s death freed you. A widow can get away with so much more, can’t she? Yes. Look at Annette Reed, bravely carrying on alone.”

“Get out, Jean-Paul.” Her voice was low and deadly, but the Vietnamese guard remained impassive, not moving until she specifically instructed him to.

Jean-Paul persevered. “You always loved to take risks. It used to be you could satisfy your zest for risk by going to bed with the kind of man I once was.” He made himself smile and move toward her, until he was so close he could have taken her into his arms. Better a viper, he thought. But he lowered his voice and exaggerated his French accent, “Aah,
ma belle,
you were a passionate woman. Have you put all that passion into your company?”

She pushed him away. “Go to hell.”

Jean-Paul laughed. “We’ll go together,
ma belle.
” Then he moved in close again, daring her to touch him; he saw her wince at the foulness of his breath and the ugliness of his scars. “I can destroy your son, and I can destroy your company. Quentin and Winston & Reed. Imagine them gone. What would you have left?”

For a moment she was expressionless, saying nothing. But Jean-Paul could see beneath the composed facade, could sense how angry she was—and frightened.
Could he do it? Would he?
Annette might like risks, but she wanted them to be on her own terms. She hated losing control. With Jean-Paul, she had lost control thirty years ago and had tried to drive him out of her life for good.

“Don’t threaten me,” she said, but her voice cracked. She licked her lips. Without lipstick, they seemed pale and thin. Still, she had never been vain about her appear
ance. “No one will believe anything you say about Quentin or about me. I’ll have you locked up for the raving lunatic you are.”

Unaffected by her outburst, Jean-Paul walked to the table and fingered a chunk of rose quartz Annette used as a paperweight. “Mai Sloan’s a pretty child, isn’t she?” he commented, without looking at her.

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen her, Jean-Paul. She’s just fourteen—”

Annette broke off, and Jean-Paul could tell she was getting nervous. The more uneasy she became, the more relaxed he felt. She was a formidable opponent, and to get what he wanted, he had to keep her off balance. Or she would win.
Again.

He looked at her. “Get me the Jupiter Stones.”

“Jean-Paul,” she said in a whisper, “let the past be.”

“I can’t,” he replied and left her standing amidst her expensive antiques, her bodyguard’s eyes following him as he disappeared.

Not until she heard the back door shut and his footfall on the cobblestone carriageway outside the open window behind her did Annette move. Then, clutching her chest as her heart throbbed painfully, she flung herself into the hall, running to the front parlor, tripping and stumbling along the way, her vision blurred by tears.

She got to the window in time to see him go through the wrought-iron gate onto the brick sidewalk.

Jean-Paul Gerard.

He wasn’t even the ghost of the robust, cocky young race-car driver he’d been thirty years ago. His horrible face would give her worse nightmares than she already had about him, night after night. He seemed so shrunken and
pitiful and old. Yet he was younger than she was. His yellowed, skeletal smile had stirred up her fears of dying, and she’d have given him the Jupiter Stones, just to be rid of him.

If she’d had them.

She watched him limp down the shaded brick sidewalk of Mt. Vernon toward Charles Street until he was out of sight. “Damn you to hell, Jean-Paul,” she said, turning back to her silent, empty house, “why aren’t you dead?”

A
lthough Sofi Mencini’s apartment in a renovated stone building on the waterfront was decorated in warm pastels and simple lines, it was as spectacular as any in Boston. Various furnishings were handcrafted, one-of-a-kind, custom-made, not because Sofi sought to be different or special, but because she knew exactly what she wanted. The effect, especially combined with the stunning harbor views, was both welcoming and awe-inspiring. A visitor knew at once that this was a successful woman with power, compassion, intelligence and humor. Rebecca wouldn’t have wanted to get rich with anyone else.

“I had to cancel a meeting,” Sofi said when she greeted her ex-roommate at the door. “Dare I ask what this is all about?”

“Not if you’re smart.”

Sofi digested that remark and could tell at once Rebecca wasn’t kidding. “David’s in the kitchen.”

David Rubin was a curly-haired redhead in his midforties. He loved to flirt with Sofi—and, thirty seconds after meeting her, with Rebecca—but he was totally committed to his wife and their five children. Together they ran a
jewelry store at Copley Place. They’d sold Sofi and her fiancé, Hank—a game-creator, ace puzzle-builder and as one-of-a-kind as everything else in her life—their wedding rings. A rumpled, cheerful man, David always seemed to have baby spit-up on his tie or the odd piece of Lego in his pockets. When it came to gems, however, he was very serious and very, very careful.

He examined Rebecca’s stones for more than an hour.

Sofi and Rebecca drank iced herbal tea on Sofi’s balcony while they waited. David had tried to get them to go back to the store, where he had all his equipment and reference materials, but Rebecca refused. She felt uneasy enough as it was showing the stones to him and Sofi, possibly jeopardizing their safety. Accepting defeat, David did make several cryptic calls to his wife to verify information.

“I’m not going to ask questions you’re not going to answer,” Sofi said.

“Good.”

Rebecca sipped her tea, feeling Sofi’s penetrating executive’s glare. Not much over five feet, Sofi had transcended the stereotype of small women as vulnerable and weak-willed with her strength of character and high expectations of herself and those around her. Reliable, creative and direct, she thrived on the challenges of corporate life, and was good at what she did.

On the other hand, Rebecca thrived on change and taking risks with her money and her talent. She regularly drove her financial advisors in New York crazy. One had told her he’d be happy if she’d just make up her mind whether she was going to live like a rich person—she did occasionally—or a “Cinderella who can’t decide if she’d rather have a coach or a pumpkin to ride around in.” She had totally frustrated him by laughing. Later she’d discov
ered she’d been driving them all crazy and they’d decided to draw straws for who got to vent his spleen to her. He’d been the lucky winner. It wasn’t business at all, he’d explained: Rebecca was on top of every penny she had and every penny she’d ever spent. It was, he admitted, just personal. Did he want out? Oh, no, working for her gave him great material for breaking the ice at parties.

“You get a copy of
The Score?
” Sofi asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Jared’s still good-looking, isn’t he?”

Rebecca sipped her tea. Despite Jared’s failings, Sofi had always chastised Rebecca for letting Jared Sloan go. “You have unrealistic standards, R.J.,” she was fond of saying.

“I think you should call him,” Sofi suggested bluntly. “Sharing the front page of a supermarket tabloid gives you a good excuse.”

“I don’t need an excuse.”

“Then how come you’ve waited fourteen years?”

“Sofi.”

She waved her tea glass. “Yeah, yeah, I know, but I’ve gotten used to telling people what I think.”

Mercifully, David emerged from the kitchen managing to look both excited and grim. “Where did you get these stones?” he asked.

Rebecca shook her head. “Can’t say.”

“Are they one of your peculiar investments?”

Leaving the question unanswered, Rebecca gave Sofi a look. She’d just met David, which meant Sofi must have told the jeweler something about her. Of course, David could have read about her in any number of gossip rags over the years, including
The Score.

David cleared his throat and became businesslike. “You’ll need more corroboration than just my say-so, but
there’s no question in my mind that what I’ve examined are the famed Jupiter Stones.”

Rebecca suddenly felt light-headed. “Which are?”

“Ten corundum gems—nine sapphires and a ruby—commissioned by Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary for his wife, the Empress Elisabeth. She was unstable and quite an eccentric, and apparently she gave the stones away or lost them, probably in the mid-1890s. There’s extensive documentation of each stone, so there should be no trouble verifying if these are the ones. But I should warn you that no one’ll be satisfied without some explanation of how you came by them. They haven’t been seen since Empress Elisabeth’s day. The last time anyone even heard a rumor about them was in the late fifties when a Hungarian baroness claimed they’d been stolen from her by a jewel thief prowling the Riviera at the time. He was never apprehended—supposedly he was a French race-car driver who disappeared before the police could arrest him. The baroness committed suicide, and no one seriously believed she ever had the real Jupiter Stones.”

Sofi was impressed. “How do you know all this stuff?”

David shrugged off the compliment. “Any gemologist worth his salt knows about the Jupiter Stones. The Red Moon of Mars and the Star of Jupiter—the ruby and the Kashmir sapphire—alone are famous stones, but the entire collection…Well, now I can verify that it’s fantastic.”

“You don’t think you’ve made a mistake?” Rebecca asked.

“It’s possible, but no, I don’t think so. In addition to the stones matching the descriptions of the Jupiter Stones, the velvet bag they’re in is embossed with the Hapsburg imperial seal.”

“Are they valuable?”

David, ever the jeweler, smiled. “Name your price.”

H
is plane’s descent took Jared directly over Boston proper, glittering in the clear evening air. The city of his childhood had changed. In the new skyline, he spotted the distinctive outline of the Wesley Sloan–designed Winston & Reed Building on the waterfront. He wondered if Quentin was working late, and if his aunt was there, pretending she didn’t run the place when everyone knew she did.

The landing was smooth, but the inactivity of the long cross-country flight had gotten to Jared, and he couldn’t wait to be out in the city and moving. All he’d done for the past seven hours was think about Mai, about Saigon and the man from Saigon and the Winstons—and about the Blackburns. Why did Rebecca have to be in Boston? He’d considered staying away because of her. But he couldn’t. He had to see Thomas Blackburn; he had to get answers to the questions he’d left hanging for fourteen years.

He couldn’t take any chances. The white-haired man had come to San Francisco. Obviously he had seen Mai’s picture in
The Score.
Now he had seen her.

Jared took a cab to the Massachusetts State House and
walked the rest of the way to West Cedar Street. Whatever else might have changed in Boston in the past fourteen years, he supposed Beacon Hill would be pretty much the same.

And he knew Thomas Blackburn would be.

After the long flight, the exercise and the cool night air felt good. Jared took the familiar shortcuts to West Cedar Street, not even tempted to go by the house on Chestnut where he had lived with his mother after her brief marriage to his father. The place belonged to someone else and had for a long time.

The Eliza Blackburn house was in hellish shape. Jared discovered the doorbell didn’t work and tried the brass knocker, in need of polishing.

Thomas Blackburn opened the door, the strong smell of curry emanating from inside the house. He squinted at Jared, then nodded with satisfaction, as if he’d been expecting him.

“Jared,” he said.

“Hello, Thomas.” Jared put out his hand, but that wasn’t enough and they embraced briefly. Standing back, Jared added, “You haven’t changed.”

Thomas gave him a small laugh, shaking his head because, of course, he had changed. He was almost eighty now. He didn’t stand so tall and straight, and there were more lines in his face, more weariness. Yet his eyes were still that intense blue, his gaze incisive and uncompromising as he studied Jared for a moment.

“It’s good to see you, Jared.”

“And you.” Jared choked back his emotion. “It’s been a long time, Thomas. Too long—but you don’t seem surprised I’m here.”

Thomas shrugged, but his expression was serious. “I suppose not. Come inside.”

They went into the faded elegance of the front parlor. Neither man sat down. Jared was restless, anxious to move after his long, frustrating day. The odor of curry was even stronger inside, and he recalled that Thomas had always liked spicy food.

“You saw
The Score?
” he asked.

Thomas nodded. “Rebecca showed me.”

R.J.
Jared had devoured every word on her in the short tabloid article, but there’d been no mention of where she was living. One of Boston’s pricey new condominiums? She was the first Blackburn in two hundred years to have money to blow, and he hoped she was enjoying every minute of it. But he couldn’t think about her now.

“Jared—” Thomas broke off, sighing. “Jared, what’s happened? The pictures have stirred up trouble, I assume.”

“Yeah. One of the assassins from Saigon—the one who shot me—saw them and must have realized Mai made it out alive.”

Leaving out nothing, Jared told Thomas about the scar-faced man from Saigon and his visit to Russian Hill, and even after fourteen years, it seemed right to unburden his soul to this aged, experienced, tortured man. The friendship they’d forged when Jared was in college and Rebecca still a kid in Florida remained intact, although in 1975, when Jared had come to Thomas shattered after his own experience in Indochina, still suffering the effects of two bullets in his shoulder, they had realized the decisions they’d arrived at that night might mean they’d never see each other again. Jared had already acknowledged, if not accepted, that he and R.J. were finished. But he’d understood then—as he did now—that whoever had shot him in Saigon had also meant to kill Mai, and could try again.

As he had fourteen years ago, Thomas listened without
interruption or any apparent reaction. Finally, when Jared had finished, he asked, “Where is Mai now?”

“My father’s place, outside San Francisco.”

“Good.” Thomas clamped one hand on Jared’s upper arm, his eyes glittering even in the dim light of the parlor. “Go back to her. Stay with her. Let me find out what I can about this man and deal with him. My guess is he’s not after Mai directly.”

Jared stiffened with disappointment and increasing frustration. “I’d hoped you’d talk to me, Thomas. I need advice—answers. Look, after Saigon I was so crazed and in such a state of shock, I’d have gone to Peru and opened a butcher shop if you’d told me it was the smartest thing to do. I trusted you then, and I trust you now. But Thomas…You haven’t been straight with me. I can’t let it lie anymore, not with this bastard showing up on my doorstep. Talk to me.” Stemming his anger, Jared softened his voice and asked, “You know this guy, don’t you?”

“From a long, long time ago.” The old man’s voice was distant, sadder than Jared would have ever thought possible. He had always seemed so impervious to anguish, but perhaps he was merely clever at hiding it from those who would take pleasure in his pain. Staring at the marble mantel where photographs of his lost wife and son were on display, he went on, “I’d assumed he never made it out of Saigon.”

Jared resisted the urge to press and press hard for information. “Who is he?”

Thomas shook his head, as if cutting off his own rampant thoughts, not Jared. “You came here because you trust me, didn’t you?”

Jared nodded.

Turning back to his young friend, Thomas clapped him
on the arm, his grip stronger than Jared would have expected from a man near eighty. “Then believe me,” the older man said, “when I tell you the best thing you can do for yourself and for your daughter is to go home and let me see what I can root out on my own. You did what you had to do fourteen years ago. You knew then that you had to go on without answers—for Mai’s sake. Well, nothing’s changed.”

“Mai’s safe,” Jared said stonily. “I’m going to find this guy. I want to know what he’s up to. If it doesn’t involve my daughter, then fine. If it does—”

“Jared, go home.”

“I can’t. I’m not running away this time.”

“You didn’t before,” Thomas said with certainty. “You did what was right.”

Jared started to argue, but stopped at the sound of footsteps in the hall.

“Grandfather, how the hell much curry did you put in that stuff? It’s enough to kill a horse! My mouth’s on fire and—” Rebecca went silent as she came into the parlor.

The sight of her took Jared’s breath away. In her tangerine shirt and slim black skirt, she looked pulled together, gorgeous and very rich. She was older and even more beautiful, her eyes just as blue, her hair shorter, but still that unusual, very memorable shade of chestnut. And Jared realized, with a certainty that hurt, that although his life had gone on, he’d never really gotten over having loved and lost Rebecca Blackburn.

“Hello, R.J.,” he managed to say.

“Jared.”

Her voice was a whisper, and at that moment Jared knew that Thomas was right about one thing: nothing had changed.