David didn’t make a sound.

As he approached his car, Ashley jumped in front of him. Naturally she hadn’t waited for him. She opened the door and helped him get David into the back seat.

Then she reeled, and Jeremy caught her by her waist. She was slender, but strong and fit. She smiled through her pain and anguish. “I’m all right.”

“I’m glad you think so.” He opened the passenger door for her and shoved her in. “Don’t look in the mirror. Is there a hospital nearby?”

“Northampton.”

He got in the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. He was sweating and his heart was thumping painfully in his chest. Adrenaline and overexertion. He glanced in the back seat.

David managed a wink and a single, vicious curse.

That seemed to hearten Ashley. She told Jeremy to go out to Bay Road to Route 9 and follow it over the Connecticut River to Northampton. “There’ll be signs.”

He resisted asking questions until he hit the highway. Ashley had thrown off his shirt and, leaning over the seat, arranged it over David. Now she sat with her arms crossed, shivering violently, lips blue. He guessed there wasn’t a millimeter of her that was dry.

“What happened?” he asked.

She wouldn’t look at him. “It was Barky.”

At Fifty-Sixth and Fifth Avenue, Trump Tower is a fashionable high rise, built by wunderkind Donald Trump, and in an area of high prices and luxury, it offers some of New York’s priciest and most luxurious shops and condominiums. In the upper stories, overlooking Central Park, the Crockett Industries condominium was decorated lavishly in black lacquer and gold, more for effect than for comfort. It was a place to entertain and impress, not to live and love.

Andrew Balaton, in a velvet smoking jacket, greeted his not unexpected guest. There had been no telegram, no telephone call, no note that he was coming, but Andrew knew.

The president of Crockett Industries poured two glasses of Courvoisier brandy, and the two men sat opposite each other, each looking through the floor-to-ceiling windows to Manhattan glittering beneath them. It was after midnight.

The man who called himself Bartholomew Wakefield looked benevolent, even in his solidly black attire, a simple man out of place in the sumptuousness of the Manhattan apartment. Andrew knew better.

“So,” the executive said, “it’s been a long time.”

“Nearly thirty years.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, but I assumed I’d never see you again.” Andrew measured his words carefully. “Perhaps I should say I hoped I never would.”

The farmer’s expression of placidness and sympathy didn’t change. “Necessity brings me here.”

Andrew smiled into his brandy. “I shouldn’t think you were pleased to have your picture in a national magazine. Did you know I would recognize you?”

“The picture means only that I must act now rather than later—or perhaps not at all. We shall see.” The man in black spoke in a mild tone, as if he were discussing the fate of the chickens he’d been raising the past decades. “I helped you when no one else could, Andrew Balaton.”