“My poor Mäuschen.” Anneliese ran a finger along the cot’s blanket. “I didn’t mean to grow fond of her, you know. A Jewish child . . . I only took her with me because a mother with a beautiful little girl in her arms, well, no one suspects a woman like that. And she was so pretty. With that blond hair and none of the features one usually sees, the nose, the coarseness, perhaps there wasn’t much Jewish taint. I thought I could raise her free of all that. A way to make amends.”
“Amends,” Jordan said. “For murdering her mother.”
“I had no choice.”
“You really believe that.” Wonderingly. “You had no choice but to kill a woman and push her in a lake after robbing her of everything she owned? No choice?”
“You have no idea what cornered prey will do when desperate.” Anneliese touched the gray pearls at her neck. “I was very sorry I had to do it. She didn’t suffer, at least. I wear her pearls to remember her by.”
For a moment Jordan thought she was going to vomit. “You aren’t going to deny any of it,” she managed to whisper.
“I don’t see the point, really. You clearly know enough.” Anneliese straightened. “How did you find out? Who’s been telling you about me?” The barrel twitched on her knee. “Is someone coming?”
“Yes. A team of Nazi hunters who tracked you all the way from Austria.” Jordan used the melodramatic term without hesitation. Anything to make Anneliese flinch. “You are never going to escape them, ever.”
“Who are they? Do they have the police with them? Don’t lie,” Anneliese said as Jordan hesitated. “I know you very well, Jordan. I know when you’re lying.”
“An English journalist. His partners.” Jordan was disgusted by the shake in her own voice. “They’re coming for you.”
“And what are they going to do, drag me before a jury? Extradite me?” Anneliese shook her head before Jordan could answer. “I suppose that doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, I doubt I’d find it pleasant. People are such hanging judges over some things.”
“Things like murdering children and prisoners of war?” Jordan shot back, shaking voice or not.
“I’m thirty-two years old, and my life is the sum of many moments. Why do some moments outweigh all the other, better moments? When is there enough running, enough punishment?”
“You think you’ve been punished?” Jordan nearly choked on a swell of incandescent fury. “You stole another woman’s name and life and child, then nested yourself in my family so you could live every day in complete ease and comfort, and you think you’ve been punished?”
“Do you have any idea how much I’ve lost?” Anneliese returned. “A life I loved, a man I loved, contact with my mother except for the occasional cautious letter, which I don’t even dare post myself. Every day I’m afraid and every night I dream.” She shivered. “Strange how many nightmares I have in this house, where everything is so safe. My house on the lake in Posen, it was so isolated . . . no servants by the end of ’44, everything falling to pieces, Manfred away for days at a time, yet I slept so soundly there. It was so beautiful. And I can never go back.” Looking at Jordan. “You think that isn’t punishment?”
Not enough. “So turn yourself in and fight the charges,” Jordan said, switching tack. “Defend yourself. Whatever else you are, I never thought you were a coward.”
She’d hoped that would sting, but Anneliese just gave a faint smile. “Cowardice doesn’t exist, you know. Nor does bravery. Only nature. If you’re the hunter, you stalk and if you’re the prey, you run, and I am quite realistic enough to know that I have been the prey ever since the war ended and the victors decided I was a monster.”
“You are a monster,” Jordan said.
“Because of those children?” Anneliese shook her head. “It was an act of mercy. They were Polish Jews and the directive in Posen was to eliminate the Jews first, eventually the Poles.”
“The war was ending, and you were losing. Why carry that directive out, with everything falling apart?”
“Because the executions and shipments were still proceeding. Those children died far more kindly at my hands, fast and painless, with full bellies, than they would have fared starving to death in huts or dying of thirst on packed trains. I take no pleasure in suffering. If something must die, kill it cleanly.”
Jordan thought she’d scream if she had to hear more of this, but she made herself continue. Keep her talking. “Why kill that young prisoner of war?” Sebastian Graham, Ian’s younger brother, whose name she’d read in the file this morning. “There are rules about prisoners; you should have returned him to his camp alive. Why kill him?”
“Guards don’t like it when prisoners escape. I likely saved him from a far more nasty death.” Anneliese rose, business-like. Don’t lose her.
“I loved you, you know.” Jordan flung it down like a challenge. “I really did. And I thought you loved me. It was all lies, wasn’t it?”
A look of surprise. “Why would you think that?”
“Ever since Dad died you’ve been trying to ship me off. To college, to work, to New York, anywhere, as long as you could get me out of the door.”
“Only because I have to keep up my guard around you, all the time. I thought that would be easier if you were in another city. But it doesn’t mean I’m not fond of you.” The old smile, that woman-to-woman ease they’d had the last few months, relying on each other. “You’re clever and levelheaded and gifted; you want things for yourself; you dream. I did too when I was your age. I wanted more than some Austrian Advokat husband no matter what my mother said, and you wanted more than that nice muttonhead Garrett Byrne no matter what your father said. I encouraged you to aim higher because I wanted to see you soar. It was a pleasure to watch.”
“I don’t believe you, Anna.” Jordan said it defiantly, but inside she flinched. “Anna, Anneliese, Lorelei, whatever you call yourself.”
“I hate that name.” A shiver. “Lorelei. Like rusalka. Another water witch.”
“Who really came out of that lake and gave you the rusalka nightmare?” Jordan pounced on the new angle of attack. “Someone who didn’t agree with your definition of mercy?”
“I did tell you about that dream, didn’t I?” A blink. “She was no one, really. Just a refugee woman in Posen.”
“Did this one hurt you instead of the other way around?” What does a monster fear? “Is that why she makes you afraid? Why you dream of her?”
“I don’t fear her. Why would I?” Anneliese’s hand drifted up to her neck, unconsciously. The old scar, Jordan thought, hidden by makeup. “She’s probably long dead.”
But her face flickered, and Jordan knew it was fear. I can read you too, you know. Why had Anneliese told her the rusalka nightmare in the first place?
Because it was midnight, and she was frightened, and I was there. Because sometimes even monsters need to talk.
Jordan made her voice soft, as she gathered her feet beneath her. “Anna, won’t you let me—”