“I don’t.”

“Mac!”

“All right.” Angrily, he stubbed out his cigarette. “My best guess is he’s KGB.”

Ashley simply shut her eyes. More spies, more spooks, more ghouls and goblins. She wouldn’t think. Don’t think...don’t think...don’t think... That’s what she used to say to herself, over and over, when she’d wake up obsessed with thoughts of death. It occupied her mind, and she’d go back to sleep.

“He’s probably a sleeper,” Mac went on, as if he were talking about someone ordinary, a butcher, a mailman, a farmer. “Or an agent in place—whatever the hell you want to call him. Orült szerzetes was always a lie, a tool of the Soviets. He’ll stop anyone who gets in his way.”

“Including you, Mac,” Jeremy said softly, his voice hoarse with tension.

“That’s a risk I have to take.”

“Why not call in the law?”

He laughed bitterly. “What laws can I prove have been broken? I have no proof, Jeremy. And do you think any of my old colleagues would pay attention to me? No, I have to do this my way—and alone. Ashley, Jeremy, get yourselves out of this. Just do it. Now that he has the jewels, Bartholomew Wakefield is going to make his move. I wouldn’t want either of you to get caught in the cross fire.”

He rose and looked down at Ashley, and his face was gentle and filled with regret. “I’m sure you wouldn’t be so devoted to your uncle if he hadn’t been a kind and decent man to you. But he had to be, you understand, to pull this off. I wish I had more answers for you. I don’t know what the jewels mean, I don’t know who your parents are or why—or how—he got hold of you, or where the trust came from. I’m guessing. But the rest—what I told you here tonight, that I know to be true. I lived it, Ashley. I was there.”

Then he turned around and walked out of the cold apartment, and he shut the door softly behind him. The self-lock clicked.

The silence was strained after Mac had left. Ashley refused to look at Jeremy. She couldn’t stand to have people feel sorry for her, but especially a man, a lover. “My best guess is he’s KGB.” No. How could a man who gave her piggyback rides and helped sheep give birth to tiny lambs and let her win at Monopoly possibly be a spy—an enemy?

She sprang to her feet. “This cloak-and-dagger nonsense has to stop.”

“Ashley—” Jeremy rose awkwardly to his feet. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

“Poor little Ashley, raised by a Russian spy. Sybil Morgenstern would love it. ‘Wakefield twins brought up by KGB.’”

He took her seriously. “Ashley, you’re jumping to conclusions.”

“Of course I’m jumping to conclusions. Do you really think I believe Barky’s KGB? I was just trying to get you to see how crazy this all sounds. But you don’t see it, do you? You don’t think your friend Mac is nuts. You’d rather think my uncle is a Russian spy.”