That’s your one fear now, Ian thought. Not lakes. Not drowning. To fail another sestra, another teammate, another comrade.
He drew a deep breath, shoved the shock and the anger away. Reached out with one hand and hooked his trigger finger through Nina’s, looking into his wife’s blue eyes that held such desperate sorrow behind their opaque shield.
“You didn’t fail him, Nina. And you aren’t going to fail us now. Believe that. This team will not save Ruth without you. This team cannot catch die J?gerin without you. If your one fear is losing another team, her one fear is you, and we are going to use that.” Nina’s eyes flared.
“We need to get there first, and we’re at least an hour and a half behind,” Tony said grimly behind the wheel.
Ian released Nina’s finger with a fierce squeeze. “We’re going to catch up.”
The Ford stopped in a spray of gravel. Ian had never seen it before, but Tony had described it: the tiny ramshackle airfield where Nina had gone joyriding. Ian looked at a blue-and-cream biplane droning overhead, preparing to land, and felt a wave of pure terror. He shoved it down. “Jordan, can you persuade your former fiancé to do us a very large favor?”
GARRETT BYRNE LOOKED at them, dumbfounded. “You want to borrow a plane?”
“Olive,” Nina said. “I like Olive.”
“Ruth is in danger, Garrett,” Jordan said. “It’s for Ruth—”
“If she’s in danger, contact the police and—”
“Brilliant idea, Gary,” Tony snapped. “Telephone the police and report that a child is with her mother. That’ll send them running, all right. Superb.”
“I can’t let an unlicensed pilot waltz off with one of my aircraft—”
“Tony, get his other arm.” Ian came round the desk to take Garrett Byrne by the elbow. “We’re locking him in the closet.” So much for the line we won’t cross, Ian thought. He wasn’t just stepping over that line, he was vaulting across it, perfectly willing on Ruth’s behalf to bolt Garrett Byrne in with the cleaning supplies. Garrett seemed to realize it.
“Jesus—” He yanked out of Ian’s grip. “Jordan, is this true? You were right all along, your stepmother is . . .”
Jordan nodded, white faced.
“Jesus.” He gulped it this time, looking at Nina. She gazed back, eyes slitted. “Mrs. Graham, you’d better bring Olive back without a scratch, or—” But Jordan was already flinging her arms around him in a violent thank-you, Nina was calling for maps, and Garrett pulled free and went jogging off to have the Travel Air 4000 fueled.
Tony looked at Ian. “Is this really going to work? Riding to the rescue in a biplane; this is something out of a serial where damsels get tied to railway tracks.”
“It will work,” Ian said with all the conviction he could muster.
“Only way to beat a car to the cabin,” Nina said calmly, pawing through the maps. Her doubt and guilt had gone, Ian saw in relief—she had a mission to fly and the navigator in her had snapped to the fore, all business. “If I can land. Jordan, you say there is flat spot nearby, no trees? Show me—”
Soon they were all jogging for the runway, Olive standing proud in her blue-and-cream paint. Nina tugged flight goggles on. She could have been a ludicrous sight, goggles and boots and a Filene’s summer dress, but she was all cool, hard competence. “Plane can take four. Two each cockpit.”
“That’s not safe,” Garrett began.
Nina ignored him. “Is crowded but possible.” She looked over her shoulder at Ian. “Jordan with Tony in front, you fly with me.”
Ian had been afraid she would say something like that. “It would be far safer to fly with Tony, while Jordan and I follow in the car—”
“I fly four out of Taman once when U-2 behind me is chased down and the engine holed. Galya and I have to ferry the pilot and navigator. Was like flying a brick, but she stays up. Mostly.” Tony was already settling into the passenger cockpit up front, Jordan scrambling after him. Nina crooked a finger at Ian, who fought a gripping wave of the deepest panic he’d ever felt in his life.
Nina felt the same panic when she threw herself into Lake Rusalka, he thought. She could have let it take over, let herself sink, and then there would have been no one to bear witness to Seb’s murder.
Ian fought his stuttering heart down out of his throat and stepped up onto the wing. “Don’t fail me, comrade,” he said through gritted teeth, and dropped into the cockpit.
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 J?gerin 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.