Tony blew out a breath. “By letting her choose that, you know you’re giving up the chance of justice for your father. Unless there’s another messy extradition fight over her after her trial in Austria.”
“If she was tried here for his murder—for which we have much less proof, only my word that she didn’t deny it when I accused her—she might never face justice for Ian’s brother and the Jewish children. That isn’t right either.” Jordan still felt like she was floating somewhere very quiet. “So we do what we have to.”
They sat in silence for a while, Jordan as hollow inside as a glass.
“We’ll take her to Austria by boat.” Tony rubbed his jaw. “Much harder to escape from the middle of the Atlantic, if she has thoughts of getting away. I’ll see what’s leaving Boston Harbor tomorrow or the next day. I don’t care if it’s a luxury liner or a raft with a paddle.”
“I’ll cover the tickets,” Jordan said. “Whatever it costs to make it happen fast. I have Dad’s insurance; if we can’t use it for this—”
“It’ll help.”
“You’ll have to watch her every minute,” Jordan warned. “We have her tied now because she consented to it if it meant Nina would keep her distance, but she can’t walk onto that ship tied up. Not when legally you don’t have a warrant until you get to Austria. You’ll have to be vigilant every second, until she’s under arrest.” If an arrest order could be procured . . . but Jordan refused to go down that rabbit hole. It was out of her hands; all she could do was trust Ian and his colleagues overseas. “I don’t think Anna will try to run, not with Nina watching. But still . . .” Jordan thought of the woman on the dock with the pistol in her hand, a cornered animal ready to lash out at anyone, and shivered.
But then there was the woman who had encouraged Jordan to want the world, who had comforted her when she cried for her father . . . who had murdered her father. And none of those images seemed to have anything to do with the woman huddled in the cabin doorway now, clutching a towel to her bandaged arm and shivering.
“I pity her,” Jordan said. “I hate that. I hate her, yet I still care for her. Why can’t I turn it off, what I felt for her?”
Tony reached out, tugging Jordan against his shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t tell Ian that I . . . For him it’s so simple.” Something had unwound in the tall Englishman the moment Anneliese had surrendered. “Do you want to go in with me?” Jordan had asked after leading the tied and shaking Anneliese to the cabin. “Ask her why she did it?”
“I know why she did it,” he’d answered. “She did it because she wanted to, because she could. No matter what her other justifications might be. And I don’t care to hear those.”
I care, Jordan thought, staring at the cabin. She wished she didn’t, but she did. Tony’s hand rubbed the back of her neck under her hair, as if he were trying to massage the pain away. She brushed at her eyes. “Thank you, Tony.”
“You don’t need to thank me. I owe you.”
“For what?” Jordan gave a half smile. “Using my weeping fit after Dad’s funeral to infiltrate the shop, or sleeping with me?”
Tony was silent.
“You were tracking down a murderer.” The anger she’d felt toward him initially had sunk and died under the tidal wave of today’s shocks. It seemed like pretty small change now, his initial deception. “Getting the job out of me when we first met, that was a manipulation for the sake of your chase. But I have eyes, Tony. You weren’t squiring me around ballet classes and airfields afterward just to get information out of me. You weren’t getting anything out of me for the chase by then. As for what else you were getting, well, if all you wanted was an easy girl, I’m fairly certain you could have found one who didn’t put you to work as a photographer’s assistant first.”
“I started tagging after you because I wanted to. No other reason.” His black eyes were steady. “I’m still sorry for the lies. More sorry than I can say.”
“And I still want to hit you, a little bit,” Jordan tried to joke. “But I’ll get over it.”
“Hit me if you want, J. Bryde.” Tony lifted her hand, kissed the pad of her index finger that pressed the Leica’s button. “You were magnificent on that dock. Like you’d been striding through war zones with a Leica all your life.”
“The eye took over.” What a strange feeling it had been. Not the right feeling, maybe—surely it couldn’t be right, for the eye with its obsession to capture the perfect shot, to take charge of that moment on the dock and overshadow the more natural things, the more important things: fear, love, worry for Ruth. Maybe it wasn’t right, but Jordan had still felt it. And I want to feel it again.
Ian and Nina were striding back along the lakeshore, the Russian woman fully dressed and shaking out her wet hair, Ian strolling at her side hands in pockets. They’ll be gone tomorrow or the next day, Jordan thought with a sudden wrench in her stomach. How much a part of her life they had all become, not just in banding together against Anneliese, but before: tea, jokes, reminiscences, the tender thread of Ruth’s music. A brief, perfect friendship. And now, of course, they would be moving on. Another hunt, another chase. Looking at Tony, his black eyes fixed on Anneliese again. Another girl.
And I’ll be here, Jordan thought, and the thoughts that had been submerged under the struggle of what to do about Anneliese broke free. No New York, no apartment, no interviews to see if she could sell her Boston at Work. At least not yet. Ruth would need her. The scandal was going to break, everyone was going to know what her mother had been. Everything would fall on Jordan now: the neighbors, the bills, the shop, the house, Ruth . . .
At least when Dad died I had Anneliese, Jordan found herself thinking, and that thought was so macabre, so terrible, so true. How long was it going to be before she stopped instinctively reaching for the quiet bulwark that had been Anneliese, always taking care of her in the background?
Now it’s just you. Twenty-two years old, with a business and a house and an eight-year-old child. Looking down at the Leica, Jordan wondered how much time she’d have for it in the immediate future.
“Next question,” Nina said, coming up to the dock, and paused to spit blood into the lake. “Tvoyu mat, one little nick in the cheek, it won’t stop.”
“Apparently I missed a vampire,” Ian observed, looking at his wife’s scarlet mouth. “What’s your question, comrade?”
“I fly Olive home. Now we have two more people, so too many.” Nodding at the car. “Who drives, who flies?”
“Drive,” said Ian and Tony in unison. “With Anneliese,” Tony added. “I’ll take the shotgun and keep it on her the entire way.”
“Fly,” said Jordan. “Ruth can squeeze in with me.” She’d be afraid, but better that than subject Ruth to ride in the same backseat as Anneliese.
“Good.” Nina showed her teeth, still faintly red, in a grin. “Is a long time since I fly with a sestra.” For Nina it was simple too, Jordan thought: she’d caught the woman who tried to kill her; now was the time to rejoice.
“Just don’t . . . turn Olive off midair this time,” Jordan added. “If you don’t mind.”
“No fun,” Nina grumbled, and Jordan found herself smiling. A weak smile, but a smile.
She didn’t think the days ahead would bring too many of those.
BEFORE ANNELIESE DEPARTED the next day for the passenger liner that would take her back to Europe, she spoke only once. She said nothing to Nina, sitting ceaseless and wakeful outside her locked door. She said nothing to Tony when he brought her meals on a tray. She did not even see Ian, who had taken over the typewriter in a fever of inspiration and begun hammering out the first article he’d written in years.
But when Jordan came into the bedroom with an armload of Anneliese’s clothes for the voyage, watched from the doorway by Nina, Anneliese looked up from where she’d been sitting on the edge of the bed. Jordan stopped, clutching the pile of underclothes and dresses, pulse thumping.
“May I say good-bye to Ruth?” Anneliese asked.
“No,” said Jordan.
Anneliese nodded. She stood, graceful again, hands clasped composedly before her, though she’d never look as composed as she used to—not when the first motion of her eyes was always a quick darting glance to find Nina. She flinched away from the gleam of Nina’s teeth, looked back to Jordan. “When I am put on trial—” She stopped, the cords of her throat showing, and a trace of her old German accent crept back. “When I am put on trial, will you be there?”
“Yes,” Jordan heard herself say. Why? But—“Yes,” she repeated.