When she saw his lips lift in that parody of a smile, she felt nothing but overpowering fury. It would be easy, so easy, to shoot him, taunted a voice inside her. It would feel so good, so satisfying, to watch him die.
She thought of all the dead bodies of women she’d seen, of Brynn’s lifeless face, of all the violence that the Beast had done. That Reitter had done. Rage and hatred coursed through her veins, making her want to hurt back. To kill. Just pull the trigger. Pull it. Get a bit of your own back—
But no. She lowered the gun, hands shaking, and took a step away. No, she thought. No.
He leered as he screamed, “Fucking whore.” Then he lunged.
I will not let you kill me. Maggie aimed at his head and pulled the trigger. I will not die for you. The kick of the gun made her stagger backwards, hands smarting, as the roar of the explosion filled her ears, and the acrid smoke burned her lungs.
Reitter fell backwards to the floor with a violent crash, legs and arms akimbo.
Maggie stood over him, gazing down into what was left of his jaw. A pool of blood began to spread on the carpet.
She stood there, the gun still hot in her hand, watching him bleed. Her mind was blank with shock, the thud of her heart like a drumbeat in her ears, the air of the library cold on her face.
She’d struck a blow of revenge for Brynn. For all the murdered women. For herself. She wasn’t proud—but she wasn’t ashamed, either. It was kill or be killed. The hunter or the hunted. And she had made the decision to kill—in order to live.
She stood over the body, gun still pointed down, breathing heavily.
There was banging at the front door, then a deafening crash as the Metropolitan Police officers broke it down. Maggie looked up and saw Durgin in the lead, his own pistol drawn.
“I shot him,” she told him, in a voice that sounded surprisingly normal. She could only watch as he and the officers took in the fallen body, the widening circle of red on the carpet, and then her own blood-flecked face.
One of the men knelt down to take Reitter’s pulse. “He’s alive,” he told them. “We need to get him to hospital.”
As the men carried Reitter out, Maggie reached up to wipe at a tear rolling down her face. But when her fingers came away red, she stared down at them, transfixed by the sight of Reitter’s blood.
“You’re safe now,” Durgin said, putting an arm around her as they watched the men carrying Reitter leave. “You’re all right.”
Somehow in that moment, Maggie knew exactly what to do. She took her fingers and smeared a line of blood across one cheek, then the other, then her forehead. She was now a hunter.
Chapter Nineteen
As early morning sunlight streamed through the windows, Sarah yawned and stretched in bed. “May I make you a cup of tea, darling?” she said in perfect French, tracing the line of his jaw with one finger.
Hugh beamed. “Thank you, dearest. That would be lovely,” he replied, stroking her dark, silky hair.
The leggy brunette slipped into her red silk robe and went down to the kitchen. “It’s a bit like playing house, isn’t it?” she called to Hugh, who’d followed behind. She began to rummage through the cupboards to find the tea things and bread and jam for breakfast.
As the kettle began to whistle, Sarah turned off the gas and used a pot holder to pour the hot water into the teapot she’d prepared. She assembled everything on a tray and carried it to the table, which Hugh had set.
Sitting down, she reached for the creamer to pour a splash into Hugh’s mug. “No!” he cried, reaching over to grab her wrist in midair. “Remember—in France it’s tea first, then milk, not the other way around! Something even as small as that could give us away to the Gestapo!”
Sarah set the creamer down and picked up the teapot instead, realizing not only her error but what a mistake like that could cost them in France. “Sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Hugh released her hand, but kept his eyes on hers. “We’re a team now,” he reminded her. “Whatever comes, we’ll get through it together. I’ll cover for you—you’ll cover for me. But it’s best if we keep our wits about us.”
The telephone rang and Hugh rose to answer it. “Yes,” he said, looking back at Sarah. “Yes, of course. We’ll come to the office right away.”
—
Next to the pristine white hospital bed, a pot of forced pink hyacinth blossoms on a table gave off a pungent sweet scent. Durgin slumped in the chair next to the bed, asleep, snoring softly.
Maggie was already awake and sitting up in the white enamel bed, reading a tattered and dated issue of Vogue one of the nurses had given her. She couldn’t stop staring at an advert of an enraged man towering over a redheaded woman. The caption read: Is it always illegal to kill a woman? There was the company logo and then the response: Show her it’s a man’s world. She dropped the magazine and it fell to the floor.
She tried to move again. She was bruised, yes, bloodied, a bit—but felt no serious damage beyond the remnants of a horrific headache. Then she thought back to the events of the last few days, yesterday, last night…to Brynn.
Brynn. Brynn and all the other SOE women who’d been killed. Murdered. Gone, destroyed. What had Reitter said? It wasn’t fair. Well, Maggie was old enough, and had seen enough, to have given up any hope of life being fair long ago, but it seemed the women’s deaths had ripped a dreadful and forever unmendable hole in the fabric of life.
Slowly, memories began to trickle back. The press conference. The desperate struggle in her house. Her visions of Brynn and the Minotaur. Shooting the Blackout Beast—Nicholas Reitter, May Frank’s fiancé. She reached up to touch the blood on her face, but someone had washed it off. Her fingers came away clean.
Durgin opened his eyes. She’d always thought they were gray, but in this light, they looked forget-me-not blue. He sat up, surreptitiously wiping at his mouth to see if he’d drooled. “Morning,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“I’ll live.”
Maggie’s hands went to her head. It was covered in bandages, and she could feel a large and painful lump on the crown.
“The visions I had…They were…insane.” Maggie pinched the bridge of her nose. “And now I have a god-awful headache.”
“I’m not surprised.” Durgin reached out to clasp her hand. Their fingers interlaced. “You’d been given drugs and hit your head, hard.” He appraised her, then asked gently, “Do you remember anything?”
“If you’re asking if I remember shooting Reitter, the answer is yes.”
“The shot you fired missed his brain, but took off most of his jaw.” He poured water from a carafe into a glass and handed it to her. “He’s still alive, Maggie. It will take some time, but eventually we’ll put him on trial. Justice will prevail.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “But, darling,” he warned. “You need to be careful.”
“I know, I know.” Maggie grimaced. “When you stare into the abyss—”
“—the abyss stares back at you. Yes, believe it or not, this humble DCI has read Nietzsche, too.”
They sat together in silence, then Maggie asked, “Who is he? Nicholas Reitter?”
Durgin’s eyes narrowed. “My men put together a profile for me, earlier this morning. Reitter went to the Oxford College of Engineering, and studied architecture. Didn’t graduate, though. Despite the fact his professors all said he was one of the most gifted students they’d ever met, he apparently had problems with authority figures—left the program. When the war broke out, he enlisted in the Army. And he was dismissed for what his records show were ‘issues with superior officers.’?”
“I see.”
“Here’s something interesting—he interviewed for SOE after being discharged from the Army. He has a good command of French—and made it to the first round of training in Scotland.”