If not for Mac, she’d have gone after him, made him stop her. But Mac needed her. This time, she couldn’t just leave him to his fate.

She knelt back down beside him, and took him into her lap—he was so heavy—and held him, sheltering him from the wind and cold. “You should never have listened to Judith.” But how was she to have known?

The letter had come to Lillian Parker in New York, where she had her first job, behind the scenes, in television. In it, Judith Land explained exactly what she wanted her best friend—her only friend, she wrote—to do for her. And she would never, never, never ask another thing of Lillian.

Judith had had five million dollars in gold and stocks transferred to an account in Lillian’s name. She wanted her friend to go to Switzerland, to Piccard Cie in Geneva, and open up an account in the names of Ashley and David Wakefield.

A Liechtenstein trust.

In addition, she was to go to Judith’s New York attorneys and they would give her access to a safe-deposit box. In the box were the hand and footprints of Ashley and David Wakefield and, she wrote, the Balaton jewels. Lillian was to put the jewels in the vaults at Piccard Cie, with instructions for the box to be opened on the same day as they were to become beneficiaries of the Liechtenstein trust...on July 14, 1982.

It seemed such a long time off. But that was Judith—secretive, impulsive, melodramatic. “I’m sure it will all come to nothing,” she wrote. “But please do it. Please, please, please.”

And Lillian had.

Two weeks later, when Judith Land was trampled by a horse on her father’s ranch and there was no mention of any surviving twins, any babies, Lillian Parker told herself that Judith’s babies must have died.

There were no Ashley and David Wakefield. The Swiss would do whatever they did when beneficiaries couldn’t be located, and that would be that.

35

Jeremy spotted Lillian Parker out on the windswept point, and he shot ahead of Ashley, moving faster, yelling, “Mac!”

Tripping on the wet ground as she looked around in panic for her brother and uncle, Ashley ran after him. He had squatted beside Mac and was taking off his sweater, handing it to Lillian, who eschewed it for herself and instead covered Mac. His face was ashen, but he was breathing steadily. Lillian’s lips were blue and she shivered uncontrollably as in rapid phrases she tried to tell them what had happened. They got the idea.

“David wasn’t with Balaton?” Ashley repeated breathlessly, forming a question to which she already knew the answer. “Then where the hell is he?”

Lillian closed her eyes, and Ashley could see the tears squeezing out the corners. “Your uncle said your brother was leverage.”

Ashley straightened up. Coupled with everything else she now knew or suspected, it made sense. “Balaton will exchange David’s life for the rest of the Balaton jewels.”