“Your young man disappointed you?” Anneliese’s embrace was soft and lilac scented; Jordan managed not to shudder. “I thought he wasn’t anyone serious.”
“I got a lot fonder of him than I meant to,” Jordan choked, realizing she was telling the truth. Somewhere in this welter of horror and fear there was a stab of betrayal all for Tony. Tony in the darkroom, arms about her waist, wire strong and wanting against her as she asked if he’d tell her a secret. There’s one I want to tell you and can’t. Letting her think that as long as there weren’t wives or children or warrants to worry about, it was all fine. As all the while, he and his friends staked out her shop, her family, her life.
Use that, J. Bryde, Jordan told herself as she cried in her stepmother’s arms. Use the tears, use the anger, use it all. She pulled back at last, wiping her eyes, tremulous smile not one bit faked. “I’m sorry to cry, Anna. You’re right, he isn’t worth it.”
“You’ll meet someone else in New York. Some dashing young man who brings you roses.” Her brows were creased with worry. You shot six children in cold blood, Jordan thought. Now you wring your hands over my boyfriend problems. But she pushed that away, hard.
“I thought I’d go out for an ice cream, take Ruth with me. I need something sweet.”
“A bruised heart definitely calls for ice cream. Ruth just got into her bath, but I’ll hurry her out.” Anneliese smiled, arm still about Jordan’s shoulders, and Jordan’s heart cracked because that smile was so warm and soothing that she still had the urge to trust it. Like Taro, who sat shoving an adoring black nose under Anneliese’s free hand, Jordan felt the same instinctive surge of comfort as her stepmother’s soft, murderous fingers stroked her hair.
First horror, then fear for Ruth had carried Jordan through the last hour of shocks. Now the third reaction rose, more terrible than the first two, and it was shame, because she couldn’t help the reflexive leap of affection at Anneliese’s touch. She’s a murderess. A Nazi murderess—but there was still the urge to lean into that calming hand, to want to doubt the truth even after seeing all the evidence. Because this was Anneliese, who had encouraged her to dream beyond Garrett Byrne and his pear-shaped diamond; who had admitted her own fears and listened to Jordan’s; who adored the family dog and made the best cocoa in Boston.
So much for dogs knowing good people from bad, Jordan thought. Or stepdaughters knowing a wicked stepmother in the flesh.
Except some part of her had suspected, right from the first. If only I’d convinced Dad—
But she shoved that thought away hard too.
“Oh, Anna.” Jordan squeezed that soft hand. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’ll miss you when I leave for New York.”
“We’ll always be here, Ruth and Taro and me. New York isn’t so far away.”
A prison cell is a lot farther, Jordan thought. Whoever Ian and Tony and Nina really were, they were clearly looking to build some kind of case against Anneliese. And with a sudden surge of implacability, Jordan brushed aside the fact that Tony had lied to her. If he’d done it to put Anneliese in a cell, she was going to help.
“Ruth,” Anneliese was calling up the stairs, “hurry out of the bathtub, your sister is taking you for ice cream.”
I love you, Anneliese, Jordan thought, looking at that serene profile. But I’m still taking you down.
Chapter 50
Ian
September 1950
Boston
Let’s admit we’re idiots.” Tony broke the silence. “She was under our noses the entire time. I saw her with my own eyes, I talked with her—”
“She looks almost nothing like that picture we have,” Ian said tersely. “It was too old to be useful. Only someone who knew that face very well would—goddammit, can’t you make this car go faster?”
Tony had the Ford’s gas pedal mashed to the floor, but the lunchtime traffic poured like slow honey. “I looked at her neck the day we met. There was no scar!” His hands were clenched around the wheel.
“She covers it,” Nina guessed from the backseat. “Is makeup, maybe. Blyadt, how far is McBride house—”
Not far, but who knew how long ago Jordan had left Scollay Square? She went for her sister, Ian thought. That’s what I would do, if I learned my stepmother was a murderess.
“I should have known when we spoke,” Tony muttered. “That she wasn’t a native speaker, the rhythms—”
“You said she had no accent, even dropped her R’s like a Bostonian.”
“Still should have brought me in to check,” Nina snapped. “I would have known her, more than you only seeing the old picture—”
Ian cut them both off. “We all could have done better, yes. But we had no reason to think Lorelei Vogt had stopped in Boston rather than passing through as all the others did; we had no reason to think Jordan’s stepmother had connections to Europe—not with a name like Anna McBride, listed as born in Boston, no accent to give her away. There seemed nothing suspicious about her to investigate, and we had Kolb in front of us, looking suspicious as a rotting fish.”
“And she kept her distance from the shop,” Tony said. “Jordan said her father took pride that his wife didn’t have to work, and I didn’t think anything of it. But she kept her distance so if anyone took a second look for shady business, what they’d see was Kolb. And we did, damn us all—”
“Stop this. Stop it now.” Ian pushed steel through his voice, slicing through the discussion. “We finally know who she is and where she is. Let’s focus on that and assign blame later.”
“Holy hell, I hope Jordan grabbed Ruthie and got out of that house,” Tony muttered. “If she’d just waited—”
“Why should she?” Nina said. “Has no reason to trust us, or know what we do.”
“We should have brought her in. Told her.”
“We saw no reason to. We’ve never brought in outsiders before. Once and for all, stop the what ifs and should haves.” The last thing this team needed was to careen into recrimination. But Ian’s hands were clenched so tight around his panama that the brim had crumpled like paper, and the same tense fear was vibrating through the car between all of them, unspoken.
If Jordan or her sister came to harm because of this, the team was finished.
In a squeal of tires, Tony brought the car around the corner onto the street with the McBride house. “If Lorelei Vogt is there,” Ian said, “we confront and apprehend on the spot.”
“On whose authority? We have no warrant!”
Ian thought he could bluff around that. He was damned well going to try. This wasn’t how they normally handled confrontations; usually there would be a careful plan laid and backing authorities notified. No time for that now. Ian looked at his partner and his wife, blood sparking in his veins. “Be on your guard every bloody minute. We’ve never confronted someone like this. Most of the men we find are no more dangerous without their Third Reich than field mice, but she is different. If she so much as lifts a finger toward herself or anyone else, stop her. By any means necessary.”