Closing his eyes, Lane shook his head. “You’re too damn good to us.”

With a grunt, Gary shuffled up the stone steps and put his hat back on. “House and grounds like this, she’s an old lady. Something’s always gonna be wrong. Gotta stay on top of ’er.”

Will we even be able to keep this place, Lane thought as he followed along.

For the first time in Easterly’s history, the property and house were carrying a mortgage. Fortunately, it was with a family friend, not a bank—but Sutton Smythe was going to want her money and interest. And what about repairs? Gary was right. Something was always needing to be fixed, and if that “thing” was the roof? The electrical systems? The over-two-hundred-year-old foundation?

It was going to be a long, long time before those kinds of things were coverable: Not only had his mother’s primary trust been drained, but the Bradford Bourbon Company was running at an over hundred-million-dollar deficit—even after Lane had paid off the fifty million his father had borrowed from Prospect Trust.

Over a hundred million dollars. Plus the depletion of his mother’s trust.

It was a staggering deficit, and all thanks to his father’s off-balance-sheet financing of a crap ton of businesses that had two things in common: One, they were all in William Baldwine’s name; and two, they didn’t just under-perform, they either tanked . . . or didn’t even exist.

Lane was still working to get to the bottom of it all.

On that note, he decided to pay attention as Gary went up to the lantern, took a screwdriver out of the back pocket of his overalls, and began working around the base of the fixture.

“Do you need some light?” Lane asked.

“Plenty out here.”

“You must eat your carrots.” Leaning up against Easterly’s clapboards, Lane rubbed his face. “It’s dark as the inside of a skull.”

“I can manage.”

As Gary eased the heavy glass and brass casing away from its base, Lane straightened. “You want me to hold that?”

“Nah, you’ll probably drop it.”

Lane had to laugh. “Is my incompetence so obvious?”

“Ya got other skills.”

“That better be true.”

With a curse, Lane stared across the flower beds to the darkened expanse of the business center. The conversion of what had originally been the stables had been done back when money had been no object, and as a result, the architecture was so perfectly blended that it was hard to tell where the antique stopped and the modern began. Under that slate roof? Behind that lineup of French doors, each of which had been handmade to match the original ones on the mansion? There were enough offices for the BBC’s CEO and senior management team, plus assistants, a full catering kitchen and also formal dining and conference rooms.

The full corporate headquarters were technically downtown, but for the last three years, all decision making had been done right across the garden.

William had maintained the relocation was required so that he could support his wife, who had taken to her bed and was ailing. The truth, however—which hadn’t come out until about two weeks ago—was that the man needed privacy for his embezzlement. That self-contained facility, with its limited staff and very extensive security measures, had allowed him the isolation to do what he needed to for the misappropriations to remain under wraps.

It was the perfect ruse to protect himself from prying eyes. And the perfect plan, at least in the short term, for diverting BBC assets into William’s own name and control.

Too bad the bastard had been horrible at business: Abandoned mines in South Africa, bad hotels out west, failed communications and technology endeavors. William’s money had been a curse, it seemed, on any investment opportunity and Lane was still trying to get clarity on exactly how many failed entities were out there—

“How’s Miss Aurora doing?” Gary asked as he shoved his fingers into the arteries of the lantern and then followed up with the screwdriver. “She any better?”

Ah, yes, something else Lane didn’t want to think about.

“No, I’m afraid she is not.”

“She gonna die?”

For the past few days, whenever anyone asked him that question, he always answered with optimism. Out here in the dark with Gary, he spoke what he believed was the truth. “Yes, I think so.”

The head groundsman cleared his throat. Twice. “She’s a good woman.”

“I’ll tell her you said that.”

“You do that, boy.”

“You could go see her, you know?”

“Nope. Can’t.”

And that was that. Then again, Gary McAdams came from the old school, before people talked about what was bothering them. He and Miss Aurora had both been working for the Bradford family since they were teenagers, and neither of them had married or had any children of their own. The estate was their home, and the staff and family on the land and in the house was their community.

Not that he would speak of any of that.

Still, the man’s sorrow was as tangible as his reserve, and not for the first time, Lane recognized and respected the dignity in that taciturn nature.

“I’m glad you’re staying on,” Lane heard himself say. Although he might as well have talked about Miss Aurora’s funeral arrangements for all this was going to go over well. “And I’ll continue to pay your—”

“I think the valve here is clogged. I’ma come back in the morning and work on it. But least now it won’t leak so it’s not no fire hazard.”

As Gary picked the lantern casing up and muscled it back into place, Lane found himself with a lump in his throat. For so many years, the estate had seemed to magically function on its own. Just as he’d never worried about how much it cost to keep the gardens going, he’d never considered the prices of the food or liquor for all the parties, or the insurance on all the cars, antiques, and other assets, or the heat, electrical, and water bills. He had gallivanted through his life, floating on the surface in the golden sunshine of wealth, while below him, people were toiling at minimum wage, squeaking by, just to keep up the standard he enjoyed.

The idea that Gary McAdams was staying put without a thought of whether or not he’d get a check each week made Lane feel about as tall as the sole of a shoe.

“Okay, so that’s what we got.”

The older man stepped back and returned his screwdriver to whatever pocket it had come out of.

“You, ah . . .” Lane grabbed ahold of his own shoulder and squeezed at the knot there. “You always keep one of those on you?”

“One-a what? M’ Phillips head?”

“Yeah.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Well, there was that. “Good point—”

In the corner of Lane’s eye, a flash of something moving caught his attention. “Wait, what is that?”

“Nothing,” Gary said. “Whatchu think you saw?”

“There was something white over there.” Lane pointed with the gun’s laser sight across to the terrace that faced the river, the one where cocktails had always been served at sunset. “There was . . . I could have sworn that I saw someone there in a white dress. . . .”

He let his words drift off, aware that he sounded crazy.

“You think you seen a ghost or sumthin’?” Gary asked.

The groundsman didn’t seem particularly perturbed. Then again, you could probably drop a car on his foot and he’d just take out his screwdriver and remove the damn thing piece by piece.

Lane walked over and looked around the corner of the house. Nothing was on the terrace that shouldn’t have been there, yet he continued all the way to the edge and the drop-off down the mountain. It was a helluva view, he had to admit, the Ohio River off in the distance, easing its way to Charlemont’s financial district. Against the dark horizon, the twinkling, unevenly spaced lights of the skyscrapers made him think of bubbles rising in champagne glasses, and the scant, isolated cars and semis on the interlocking highways were a testament to Midwestern bedtimes.

Leaning out over the wall, he checked the old stairway that snaked down the great rock embankment. Easterly had been built upon the crown of the highest hill in the city, and the mansion’s footprint had been so large that the plot of land had had to be shored up with backfilled earth held in place by cement and stone. When the leaves were out, as they were now in May, you couldn’t appreciate just how precarious the house was on its lofty perch, the thickly leafed branches hiding the truth. In the winter, however, when it was cold and the trees were bare, the dangerous free fall was so clear, it was a rare vertigo that was not triggered.