WHEN OLIVE’S WHEELS lifted from the ground and Ian saw the first terrifying glimpse of the earth falling away below, he wanted to shut his eyes and bury his face in his wife’s hair. It was all scent and touch and noise up here in the tiny world of wind and metal, fabric and sky. It ravaged his ears.
The cockpit was so tiny it felt like being jammed inside a cartridge, Ian folded into the seat and Nina folded into him, her back against his chest, his arms welded around her waist, every limb in contact, every twitch of muscle shared. We aren’t nailed together this close when we’re making love, Ian thought. He had no idea how Nina was managing the controls, wedged up against them as she was, but she did it with complete confidence. Ian kept his eyes on her instead of the terrifying sky, his wife’s hands moving over those strange dials and levers like a pianist, and felt a flash of terrified pride in her skill.
She shouted something he couldn’t hear. How long the flight lasted, Ian had no idea. To him it lasted forever, then forever took on a new meaning as the engine died.
She’s doing it on purpose. She knows what she’s doing. Bringing them down toward Selkie Lake without the engine so that there would be no warning mechanical thrum to give their presence away. But all his instinct knew was that the engine was dead and they were dropping from the sky like a stone, and suddenly the world was full of terrible silence. Against the rush of the wind Ian heard Jordan’s gasp, Tony’s curse . . . and Nina laughing.
I married a bloody madwoman, Ian thought. As if she could hear him, Nina reached up behind her own head and touched his cheek. This time he heard her when she said, “We won’t crash.”
“Bloody hell we won’t,” Ian muttered into her hair. Nina stretched out her arms to the wind, back arching against him as if she could add her wings to the plane’s, and Ian snatched her hands back inside. Olive was still dropping. “Hands on the controls, goddammit!”
She laughed again. Below the pines were rushing upward, and the silver flash of what must be Selkie Lake. Nina took the stick and for a moment, his wife’s body twinned against his, Ian felt what she felt. There is nowhere she leaves off and the plane begins, he thought. Woman and machine, masters of the air. And one terrified man clinging to their tail feathers.
“Is there,” Nina was saying, calm as water, “the treeless stretch. Is long enough.”
Ian felt her hands moving, but he didn’t look down to see the drop, just buried himself in the engine grease and north-wind scent of her hair as the biplane continued to fall out of the sky. He’d flung himself and the team into the void, and he’d trust his wife to bring them all down.
Don’t fail me, comrade.
One final sickening lurch, and wheels bounced on ground. Every tooth in Ian’s head rattled. Bloody hell, we’re alive. He repeated it like an incantation, and then a different incantation: Let die Jägerin be here.
Chapter 55
Jordan
September 1950
Selkie Lake
Nina saw the cabin first, its modest slanted roof showing between tree trunks, and at a gesture from her they all went silent. Jordan felt her own heart thumping as they crept closer, careful of the dried leaves underfoot. The silver expanse of lake opening wide between the trees, the short ribbon of the boat dock stretching out . . .
And sitting at its end, Ruth.
Relief washed violently over Jordan at the sight of that small figure. Ruth’s feet swung over the water, and her blond head was bowed as she looked down into her lap. Hang on, cricket. I’m coming for you.
At Jordan’s shoulder, Tony pointed. The sturdy old Ford belonging to Jordan’s father was parked beside the cabin, trunk standing open. Even as they watched, the cabin door opened and Anneliese came out with a pair of traveling cases. A very different-looking Anneliese, Jordan saw. Much less the Vogue fashion plate in an old coat and trousers instead of skirts frothing with crinoline, hair now bleached a tired-out blond and lying damp on her shoulders. Jordan realized the rest of the team had gone utterly still at the sight of her—Tony’s gaze unblinking even as his fingers flexed, Ian turned to stone if stone could emanate waves of ferocity, Nina flowing into some strange relaxation, lips curving like a moon. Three profiles overlapping one another, devouring their first real sight of the woman they had been hunting.
“Ruth,” they heard Anneliese call, closing the Ford’s trunk on the cases and tossing the keys into the front seat. “We’re leaving.”
So close, Jordan thought. Even flying, they had barely got here in time. By car they would never have made it. A few fast-murmured plans flew, the first part of which was Get Ruth. Until Ruth was removed they could do nothing or Anneliese might kill her.
Nina slanted off toward the east, away from the cabin and the dock. Tony peeled left toward the cabin’s far side where Jordan had told him about the back window. Ian and Jordan continued on straight, stopping well inside the tree line, where Ian cupped his hands around his mouth and gave a whistle: the haunting four-note opening of the simple Siberian lullaby he had learned from Nina and taught Ruth to play on her violin.
Anneliese, slamming the car door, didn’t hear. At the end of the dock, Ruth looked up.
Ian whistled the opening bar again, low and calling. Jordan bit her lip, watching Ruth’s eyes hunting for the music. Anneliese paused, clearly puzzled, but she didn’t play the violin, she didn’t know the ancient cradle song Ruth played so beautifully. Anneliese stepped onto the dock, her back to the cabin as she walked out over the lake. “Ruth, into the car. Stop sulking.”
At the end of the dock, Ruth stood up. Jordan thought she could see the stubborn set of that fragile jaw all the way from here. Anneliese held out a hand, but Ruth brushed straight past her, breaking into a run. That’s it, cricket, Jordan wanted to cheer as Ian whistled one more time and her sister pelted off the dock.
At that moment, Tony broke out of the cabin at a flat sprint, door banging open, something long in one hand. He scooped up Ruth like a football, tossing her over one shoulder and running for the car. Anneliese scrabbled in her coat pocket, but her pistol snagged for a split second and Tony was moving too fast. He yanked the car door and dove inside, pulling Ruth with him out of sight. Jordan could hear him urging Ruth down flat on the floor of the car, even as he slapped a long glinting shape down across the open driver’s-side window: Dan McBride’s spare shotgun, taken from the cabin and now leveled at Anneliese.
Jordan quivered inside like a plucked violin string, seeing Ruth disappear inside the car. Tony had sworn that if all went wrong he would drive away with Ruth, that he would make her safe first. The most precious pawn was off the board.
Now, staring across the chessboard, they faced only the queen.
Anneliese had frozen midway down the dock, pistol finally in hand, caught between lunging toward shore and firing from where she stood. Her back was to the trees as she stared at the car, and Jordan stepped out of cover onto the shore.
Ian strode arrow straight at her side. “Stay back,” he said very low voiced. “This time she may shoot you.”
“I know how to throw her off guard,” Jordan murmured back, feeling the Leica about her neck on its strap. She’d snatched it on pure instinct when they left the house—perhaps the same instinct that made Ian stretch for his typewriter, Nina for a plane, Tony for his own nimble tongue. When preparing to level with an enemy, you readied your best weapon. “Anneliese doesn’t really want to kill me, and after years of hiding, she’s scared of the camera. I can use both against her. If I don’t, she’ll shoot you—you’re the stranger; she’ll aim right for your head.”