Ian’s stride didn’t slow, sun glinting off his hair as he aimed for the dock. Jordan didn’t stop either.
From inside the car, Tony was shouting at Anneliese in German and English, telling her to remain still or he’d shoot, keeping her gaze aimed at him. Jordan could see him from the corner of her eye. She didn’t turn to look directly; neither did Ian. The world had narrowed to the two of them, and Anneliese. It has to be us, Jordan thought. The ones who have already gone against her and lost something—me, my father; Ian, his brother. Us. The ones who refused to lose Ruth too.
Anneliese saw them as they stepped onto the dock, stiffening in a freeze of pure shock. She seemed to turn very slowly, or maybe it just seemed slow to Jordan through the Leica’s lens as she lifted the camera—the flying strands of her hair, the blue of her eyes as they rounded, the knuckles whitening around her pistol. Watching it, something in Jordan telescoped, compressed, divided: there was the side of her that flinched in fear; the human side—and there was the lens that narrowed with perfect focus, the ruthless eye that put a lid on the chaos of emotions and simply watched Anneliese scrabble like a cowering animal chased out from under a bush. The cold inner lens that wanted nothing but to record what happened here and show it to the world.
“Smile for the camera, Lorelei.” It was Jordan who smiled as she took the picture.
Then the shot rang out.
Chapter 56
Nina
September 1950
Selkie Lake
Nina crouched on the shore of Selkie Lake not eight hundred meters down from the cabin, yanking off her boots. She watched Tony snatch the child, saw Jordan and Ian come from the trees, saw the slim figure of the woman now frozen on the dock. There you are, Nina thought, yanking her summer dress over her head. The blue-eyed huntress with her Walther PPK and her scar. Half a decade and half a globe had had to be traveled, but the hunt went on. Only now, who was the huntress and who was the prey?
Ian was advancing down the dock now, implacable as granite, the American girl at his side just as steady. Tony worked the bolt action on the shotgun, the threat of it echoing across the lake, telling Lorelei Vogt not to run. Your days of running are done.
Nina straightened, naked except for her slip, the waters of Selkie Lake lapping at her toes, and unfolded her razor. Reaching carefully inside her mouth, she nicked the inside of her cheek. Spat blood.
Voices from the dock, more camera flashes. The huntress half frozen, half poised to pounce. Don’t kill anyone yet, Nina thought to her enemy and her team both. Wait for me. She waded into the water, warmer by far than Lake Rusalka or the Old Man. The huntress’s scar was calling her, the rusalka’s kiss. You’re still mine.
A shot echoed into the perfect summer sky, and Nina was pierced by a bolt of pure, clawing, protective rage. Oh, you blue-eyed bitch, if you killed my husband—
And she dived into the arms of the lake.
Chapter 57
Ian
September 1950
Selkie Lake
The shot came from Tony. At the corner of Ian’s eye he saw his partner had aimed into the sky, a flat report making the blue-eyed woman flinch and whirl even as she was still flinching from the flash of Jordan’s camera. “Smile, Anna,” Jordan called out again. Click click click. She’d said there was nothing her stepmother disliked more than having her picture taken, and she was right—Ian could see the woman flinch with every flash.
He took a deep breath, speaking up in his deepest, crispest tones of authority. “Lorelei Vogt, stay where you are.”
She straightened at the sound of her name. He hoped she would lunge forward in a panic, let him get within arm’s length and wrench the pistol away. But she stepped back instead, to the very end of the dock, face emptying of shock with frightening speed. Ian had never seen anyone knocked so off-balance recover their poise so fast. The pistol hung loose at her side, but he and Jordan still froze halfway down the dock before she could raise it. There was an odd moment of stillness where the sound of the shot faded and they regarded each other. Ian met the eyes of his brother’s murderess for the first time, and every sound in the world—Ruth’s muffled sobbing from the car, Tony’s voice soothing her, the monotonous slap of the lake against the pilings—faded to nothing.
Here you are, Ian thought, staring into those blue eyes in wonder. Here you are. For more than half a decade he’d thought of her every day, and here she was. Ian drank her in. He found her lovely. He found her obscene. He found her. “Here you are,” he said aloud, and smiled.
“Who are you?” she asked, sounding genuinely puzzled, and it made Ian smile again. This woman had loomed over his life like a boulder, blotting out the sun, yet, of course, she had no idea who he was.
Ian didn’t answer. Instead, he spoke words he’d dreamed of speaking for years. “Lorelei Vogt, you are charged with war crimes.”
He expected excuses, the defensive shuffle, the whine that always seemed to begin It was so long ago or I was just following orders . . . Lorelei Vogt did none of those things. She merely shifted her gaze to Jordan at his side, steadily gazing through her camera lens. “How did you get here?” Genuinely curious. “Even if you got out of the darkroom at once, you couldn’t—”
“Magic,” Ian said. That was as good an explanation for Nina as any. Nina, where are you? Ian took a step closer, Jordan at his side.
Die Jägerin’s pistol came up. “No closer.”
Jordan clicked off another shot. Ian saw their target wince. “You really don’t like having your picture taken, do you?” he observed. “I wouldn’t like looking at myself either, if I’d done what you’ve done.” Click.
Another flinch. “Jordan, stop.”
“No.” Jordan adjusted something on her Leica. “You and I have said everything that we needed to say to each other, Anna. I’m just doing my job, now. Recording the moment.” Click. “The moment a murderess realizes she’s going to pay for what she’s done.”
The woman’s voice was calm. “You cannot arrest me.”
“Yes, we can,” Ian said. “For murdering Daniel McBride. You admitted as much to Jordan in the darkroom a few hours ago. We can perform a citizen’s arrest and bring you to the authorities. Murder is punishable by the electric chair in Massachusetts.” Ian waited for the flicker of her eyes. “There’s another option, of course.”
“Murder me here, sink me in the lake?” The pistol lifted again.
“Don’t tar me with your brush, you Nazi bitch. I have no intention of harming you.” Ian felt no fear at all, only a humming tension running through him like wire. Was this how Nina felt on her bombing runs, when she cut the engine? He was gliding down now, falling very fast but very sure toward his target. “Put that pistol down, Lorelei Vogt. I know you can shoot either me or your stepdaughter between the eyes at this range, but be aware of this: the moment you do, my partner in the car back there will shoot you. And even if you get the drop on him”—Ian could see her eyes measuring it—“your time running is done. My article exposing you runs in the Boston Globe tomorrow. Page one above the fold, with photographs.” Ian hadn’t written a word in years, but he flung the lie at her with complete assurance. “There won’t be a reader on the East Coast who doesn’t know your face by the end of the week, and after that, the nationals will pick it up. There’s nowhere you will be able to hide, not one corner of this huge country that will not know your face and recoil. That is a promise.”