“Of course I do. I’m saying MacGregor Stevens turned to private practice after he’d done intelligence work in one of the most sensitive areas in the world— and I’d keep that in mind, if I were you.”

Jeremy tried to absorb this latest twist. “You mean he was a spy?”

“I mean whatever he told me to do, I’d do it.”

Chilled by his father’s words, Jeremy went rigid. And yet all he could think of was Ashley Wakefield. She was energetic, stubborn, intelligent. And absolutely relentless. She would go after Mac and her uncle, and she wouldn’t believe her uncle was anything but the salt of the earth unless she had tangible, irrevocable proof.

Bartholomew Wakefield isn’t anything he says he is and never has been.

Mac was right. Someone had to stop Ashley.

As she pushed open the door to her co-op on Central Park South, Ashley could feel her eyes burning and the muscles in her neck and shoulders aching with fatigue and tension. She wanted to call David, take a long bubble bath and go to bed. She would tackle jewel thieves and such in the morning.

She closed the door behind her and yawned. Ashley started and straightened up, alert once more, adrenaline rushing through her veins.

The air smelled strange. Like stale pipe smoke, except she didn’t smoke.

Someone had been there. Could still be here now.

No. She wouldn’t get paranoid. She might simply have left something in the trash.

She put down her suitcase and handbag, sniffing. It was definitely pipe, not cigarettes.

She whirled around and quickly checked the locks for any sign of tampering. There was none. She tried to think. Who had keys? David. But he didn’t smoke. Barky.

Her heart jumped.

Barky smoked a pipe.

Licking her lips with her dry tongue, she grabbed a Waterford vase off a table in the foyer and moved into the living room. The drapes were drawn. It was dark, silent. Her knees quaked, her head throbbed.

“Barky?”

She felt her hands grow clammy on the vase as she remembered the blond man who had brutalized her brother. She edged into the kitchen and flipped on a light.

Again, nothing.

She checked the bedroom, dining room, study, bathrooms. The stale air was strongest in her bedroom, and she stood in the middle of the floor, smelling. She looked under the bed, in the closets, in the dressing room.

Whoever had been there had gone.

She went around and opened all the drapes. Then she grabbed the phone and, sitting on her white couch and peering down at Central Park, she called her brother. “David? I’m in New York. I made it back alive. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Good.” She could hear the relief in his voice. She thought she’d sounded lighthearted, carefree. “Your Jag showed up, Ash.”

“It did? Are you all right—”

“Yeah, yeah. Found it this afternoon in the turnaround down the road. I figure Stevens must have parked his own car around there somewhere, but because he was hurt he couldn’t get to it fast enough, so he stole yours. Borrowed, I guess. Anyway, it’s in good condition. What happened in San Diego?”