CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Winstons’ house on Marblehead Neck was much as Thomas remembered from his first visit there with Emily, before World War II, but he wasn’t the same man he’d been. As he stumbled on the slippery rocks and shivered in the biting ocean wind, he could see Annette as a little girl, climbing up to him, her hands filled with seaweed and periwinkles, her cheeks rosy and her eyes bright with triumph.
“Look, Uncle Thomas, look! Do you think I’ll find a mermaid, too?” she’d asked.
“Keep looking,” he’d said. “You never know.”
“I’m going to show Father.”
Minutes later, Thomas had seen John Winston angrily marching to the edge of the rocks with little Annette’s treasures and flinging them as far as he could, and her mother taking her sobbing daughter inside to wash her hands and change her dress, telling her there were no such thing as mermaids.
All more than a half century ago and yet, Thomas thought, clearer in his mind than anything that had happened last year.
Behind him on the rocks, Nguyen Kim commanded him to stop. Thomas was perfectly glad to oblige. He’d read somewhere that balance and the legs were the first to go as one aged, and from this billy-goat climb down to the water’s edge, he could attest to that theory’s veracity.
They had come to a relatively level area of barnacle-covered boulders and tide pools below the tide line, well out of view of the house. With the gathering storm, the tide was coming in high, with huge, frothy swells. Already Thomas could feel the icy spray of the roiling waves on his face. Had Annette, he wondered, made her plan according to the weather, or were the turbulent seas just another of her happy coincidences?
He turned around, and Kim pointed to a rock and ordered him to sit.
“Barnacles are sharp,” Thomas said.
Kim grinned. “Good.”
Annette’s Vietnamese bodyguard had met Thomas on the lawn and, without a great deal of fanfare, had revealed the gun tucked in his waistband and suggested Thomas lead the way down to the rocks.
Thomas had hoped the bastard would trip and accidentally shoot off his own balls.
He sat on the rock. The barnacles pricked his rear end, but it wasn’t that uncomfortable—preferable, he supposed, to a bullet in the head, although that might be next.
“I gather Annette doesn’t want me killed in her living room,” Thomas commented.
Not answering, Kim removed a length of rope from his back pants pocket.
Thomas stiffened his jaw so that his teeth wouldn’t chatter, but the cold had reached into his bones. “Afraid I’d come back and haunt the place, isn’t she?”
“Your hands,” Kim said.
With a resigned sigh, Thomas crossed his hands behind his back, and Kim immediately came round and whisked the rope around his wrists, Kim repeating the move with Thomas’s ankles, the knots tight enough that what little circulation he had to his extremities was immediately cut off. He’d always had an irrational fear of having to have a hand or foot lopped off, but supposed that’d be a luxury now.
“You always were efficient,” he said mildly.
Kim fastened his hard eyes on him. “I’ve only done what I had to do to survive.”
“And what, might I ask,” he said, unflinchingly meeting the Vietnamese’s gaze, “is so bloody important about your surviving?”
“You’re going to die today, old man.”
Thomas gave him a cool, appraising look. “As I should have twenty-six years ago?”
Not responding, Kim gave the ropes at his captive’s hands and feet a final tug and bounced back onto his feet.
“Nguyen Kim,” Thomas said, rolling the name around in his mind, as if he hadn’t made up his mind yet whether he recognized it or not. “Quang Tai’s friend, weren’t you?”
“I knew him.”
“Did you know you were signing his death certificate when you tipped off your Vietcong friends on Annette’s behalf?” Thomas’s gaze didn’t let up. “That was you, Kim. Tai trusted you. He told you my itinerary—and you, brave fellow, told the insurgents.”
Kim remained impassive. “I was doing a job,” he spat. “On your stomach!”
But Thomas wasn’t fast enough for Kim, who grabbed him by the shoulder and thrust him onto a huge, flat boulder. Thomas felt the sharp barnacles bite into his cheeks.
“You’re going to drown, old man,” Kim said.
His feet crunching on the barnacles, he hurried off, leaving Thomas trapped at the water’s edge, unable to do much beyond listening to the rhythmic sounds of the approaching tide.
* * *
Jared’s call to Sofi Mencini shook him. She had gone over to Mt. Vernon Street herself, but saw no sign of Annette, Rebecca, Mai, Thomas or Jean-Paul. “I’m worried, Jared,” Sofi had said.
“So am I.”
“David’s putting the stones in a safe at the store, but I’m calling the cops.”
Jared agreed. “I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
Through the hotel’s glass front doors, however, he saw Quentin climbing out of his white Porsche and smiling graciously at the uniformed attendants rushing to serve him.
Jared surged forward. An attendant moved to open the door, but not fast enough, and Jared banged through it, sensing the already suspicious eyes of the security guards on him. He didn’t care. He jumped in front of Quentin, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and smashed him up against his car.
“Where’s my daughter?”
Quentin squirmed in terror. “Jared…what’s wrong with you?”
“Answer me.”
“She’s with Mother. I thought—she said Thomas had called and you and he and Mother were all going to meet in Marblehead.”
Jared froze. “Your mother has Mai?”
The attendant with the keys said tentatively, “Mr. Reed, you want me to get security out here?”
“No, it’s all right,” Quentin managed to say, Jared’s grip on him already loosening. “What’s going on, Jared? I saw Mai myself. She’s fine. She looked a little tired, that’s all.”
“When did they leave?”
“A half hour ago, something like that. Jared, Mother’s not a monster. I know she said some pretty cruel things about Mai at first, but that’s over. They seemed to be getting along—” Quentin swallowed, white-faced. “Thomas didn’t invite you to Marblehead? You don’t know anything about it?”
“No.”
“Jared, is he going to hurt Mother and Mai? He’s an old man, and it just never occurred to me…”
Jared started for Rebecca’s car, but stopped abruptly and turned to Quentin, still sprawled against his Porsche. “Answer me this, Quentin. Did Tam come to you for help getting out of Saigon in 1975?”
“What? No, I never heard from her after I left. I know that was wrong, and I don’t blame you or her for what happened. I—I guess I was just stupid. I did really care about her, you know.”
Jared felt as if his entire world was on fire. Tam didn’t go to Quentin for help, she went to Annette. He stared at his cousin. “Then you don’t know.”
“What?”
Mai’s your daughter….
“Get in,” Jared said, pulling open the passenger door to Rebecca’s car. “We’ll talk on the way.”