Betrayals

She’d laughed. “Because I’m a Winston. If I’d had a brother, he’d be stuck with the place. I loathe primogeniture, but in this case it’d be a blessing.”

It was, of course, a magnificent house, not a mausoleum or anything Annette Winston Reed had ever remotely considered giving up. Jean-Paul went through the unlocked carriageway gate to the back as Annette had instructed him. He had called her office at Winston & Reed and had spoken to her secretary, who’d told him her boss wasn’t in the office today. Jean-Paul had urged her to get hold of Annette at once and left the number of his pay phone.

Annette had called him back right away. The only hint of the mind-numbing shock he’d just given her was a slight hoarseness in her voice.

So she actually thought I was dead.

The thought amused him.

She’d understood they would have to meet in person—if only to convince herself the call wasn’t a nightmare. Reluctantly, but ever the stiff-upper-lip Bostonian, she gave him directions to her house.

Jean-Paul entered the beautiful house in the back, then moved silently through the antiseptic kitchen and down a short hall, where dozens of expensively framed photographs hung on the wall. The people in them were all the same—smiling, rich, perfect. The men were without scars and the women without fear, and Jean-Paul had to make his arms go rigid to keep from knocking the photographs off the wall. The pain was there, the anger, the burning hate. Nearly four years in the Légion étrangère and five years at the mercy of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese in a prisoner-of-war camp had taught him how to control his emotions, but he could feel them exploding to the surface.