by Kate Quinn
“Der’mo,” Nina swore, and they were all rushing inside.
The photograph of a young Lorelei Vogt, yanked out of Ian’s file with such force the corner had torn. Another photograph of a woman with a dish towel, standing beside a sink, looking back over one shoulder, eyes strangely alight.
Nina’s breath caught in her throat, Ian heard it. He looked at her, mouth suddenly dry. “Is it—”
His wife stretched a fingertip toward the new photograph, eyes suddenly incandescent. “Is her.” There was no doubt in her voice.
Ian picked up the sheet of paper beside the photographs. Jordan McBride’s handwriting, Ian had seen it on shop paperwork. She had scribbled five words in pencil, nearly engraving the letters through the paper.
Lorelei Vogt is Anna McBride.
Part III
Chapter 49
Jordan
September 1950
Boston
Can you drive faster?”
The cabbie sounded aggrieved. “Slow traffic, miss.”
Jordan’s heart was racing, her feet pressing against the cab’s floor as though she could bodily push the car along. But horror sat cold and heavy in her stomach like a stone ball.
She’d wept in that Scollay Square apartment, choked sobs tearing out of her throat as she sat surrounded by the paper-trail bloodshed and horror of Anneliese’s past. But only for a moment. There was no time to weep, no time to scream, no time to stay here and confront Tony when he returned. No time to fall on him and scream why, why had he been taking her to ballet studios and kissing her in the darkroom when upstairs a soft-spoken murderer sat humming at a sewing machine. Jordan had swallowed her sobs, swept the table clean with one violent motion, slapped down the photograph she hadn’t dared leave in her darkroom anymore, wrote a note, and run for the stairs. The team didn’t know who Anneliese was, that was plain from the file, and Jordan wasn’t going to wait to tell them, as much as she wanted to. She burned to stay and demand answers, and goddammit, she was going to come back here and get them, but she had no idea when Tony and his friends would be back—and Ruth was at home right now with the murderess who had nested in their family like a poisonous spider. It didn’t matter that Ruth had passed years in Anneliese’s company unharmed; Jordan could not delay one minute before getting her sister out of the clutches of a woman who had murdered six children in cold blood.
Her breath left her in a harsh, guttural scrape. The cabbie glanced over his shoulder, but Jordan turned her face to the window. A beautiful summer morning was passing by outside, so many people out for a stroll—couples arm in arm, girls blowing along in giggling groups, men in checked shirts arguing about the Red Sox; none dreaming that there were monsters hiding in this American paradise they were so proud of. Jordan looked at the sunny street but saw instead the exquisite man-made lake in western Poland, conjured up so clearly in Ian Graham’s flat, factual journalist’s notes. Anneliese standing beside it, not much older than Jordan was now. The huddled Jewish children . . .
Jordan had read through the file of her stepmother’s other crimes. Ian’s murdered younger brother, a prisoner of war. The nameless Poles hunted for sport through the trees as a party game. But it was the children Jordan came back to. The children like Ruth.
Why didn’t she kill you? Jordan wondered in numb horror. She killed your mother. Why not you?
The team’s notes on Anneliese/Lorelei’s time in Altaussee had been jotted colloquially in Tony’s hand, as though he were musing aloud. Our girl was living with Frau Eichmann after the war. No money, nowhere to go, lover dead. Frau Eichmann doesn’t like her, tells her to leave autumn ’45. Scared to apply for a visa in case name is flagged, terrified to be found/arrested. How does she get from Altaussee to America???
I think I could tell you how, Jordan thought, remembering Anneliese’s two very different stories about her time in Altaussee. After Thanksgiving, when she couldn’t deny she hadn’t given birth to Ruth, she came up with the story about finding her as an orphan abandoned beside the lake . . . but at first, when she was explaining Ruth’s nightmares, hadn’t there been a story about how a refugee woman had attacked them on the lakeshore and frightened Ruth? Had Anneliese been telling the truth, as much of it as she could? It was the cleverest way to lie, after all.
She wasn’t the one being attacked, Jordan thought. She was the one who did the attacking. Desperate to leave, desperate not to be caught, desperate to get away, she had met a woman by the lake—a Jewish woman named Anneliese Weber who had papers, boat tickets, refugee status, and a little girl. The answer to every prayer. Just murder her and take it all. Ruth—with her strained seeking eyes, her musicality, her sudden vacillation between laughter and fear, pulling toward Anneliese and then pulling away—had watched her mother murdered by the woman who then became her mother.
“Why did she take you?” Jordan whispered aloud. It would have been easier to travel unencumbered, surely. And she had no qualms killing children before.
Numbly, Jordan shook her head. The old admonishment rang in her brain of Jordan and her wild imagination! In the space of a single morning the world had turned into a wilder and more horrible place than her imagination could ever have conjured up.
“Here we are, miss.”
Jordan shoved a handful of change at the driver and tumbled out of the cab. The car was here; Anneliese was home. Of course she was. Jordan drew in a shaky breath. Pretend nothing has happened, she thought. Make up a story, get Ruth out of the house. Just do it.
She squared her shoulders and went to face the huntress.
“DON’T CRY, JORDAN.” Anneliese opened her arms, brows creasing. “He’s not worth it.”
No way to hide her reddened eyes, not from Anneliese’s penetrating gaze, so Jordan hadn’t even tried. The moment Anneliese came out of her sewing room with Taro wagging at her heels, Jordan released the sob hovering in her throat and exploded into tears, choking out as incoherently as possible that he’s broken my heart.
“Your young man disappointed you?” Anneliese’s embrace was soft and lilac scented; Jordan managed not to shudder. “I thought he wasn’t anyone serious.”
“I got a lot fonder of him than I meant to,” Jordan choked, realizing she was telling the truth. Somewhere in this welter of horror and fear there was a stab of betrayal all for Tony. Tony in the darkroom, arms about her waist, wire strong and wanting against her as she asked if he’d tell her a secret. There’s one I want to tell you and can’t. Letting her think that as long as there weren’t wives or children or warrants to worry about, it was all fine. As all the while, he and his friends staked out her shop, her family, her life.
Use that, J. Bryde, Jordan told herself as she cried in her stepmother’s arms. Use the tears, use the anger, use it all. She pulled back at last, wiping her eyes, tremulous smile not one bit faked. “I’m sorry to cry, Anna. You’re right, he isn’t worth it.”
“You’ll meet someone else in New York. Some dashing young man who brings you roses.” Her brows were creased with worry. You shot six children in cold blood, Jordan thought. Now you wring your hands over my boyfriend problems. But she pushed that away, hard.
“I thought I’d go out for an ice cream, take Ruth with me. I need something sweet.”
“A bruised heart definitely calls for ice cream. Ruth just got into her bath, but I’ll hurry her out.” Anneliese smiled, arm still about Jordan’s shoulders, and Jordan’s heart cracked because that smile was so warm and soothing that she still had the urge to trust it. Like Taro, who sat shoving an adoring black nose under Anneliese’s free hand, Jordan felt the same instinctive surge of comfort as her stepmother’s soft, murderous fingers stroked her hair.
First horror, then fear for Ruth had carried Jordan through the last hour of shocks. Now the third reaction rose, more terrible than the first two, and it was shame, because she couldn’t help the reflexive leap of affection at Anneliese’s touch. She’s a murderess. A Nazi murderess—but there was still the
urge to lean into that calming hand, to want to doubt the truth even after seeing all the evidence. Because this was Anneliese, who had encouraged her to dream beyond Garrett Byrne and his pear-shaped diamond; who had admitted her own fears and listened to Jordan’s; who adored the family dog and made the best cocoa in Boston.
So much for dogs knowing good people from bad, Jordan thought. Or stepdaughters knowing a wicked stepmother in the flesh.
Except some part of her had suspected, right from the first. If only I’d convinced Dad—
But she shoved that thought away hard too.
“Oh, Anna.” Jordan squeezed that soft hand. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’ll miss you when I leave for New York.”
“We’ll always be here, Ruth and Taro and me. New York isn’t so far away.”
A prison cell is a lot farther, Jordan thought. Whoever Ian and Tony and Nina really were, they were clearly looking to build some kind of case against Anneliese. And with a sudden surge of implacability, Jordan brushed aside the fact that Tony had lied to her. If he’d done it to put Anneliese in a cell, she was going to help.
“Ruth,” Anneliese was calling up the stairs, “hurry out of the bathtub, your sister is taking you for ice cream.”
I love you, Anneliese, Jordan thought, looking at that serene profile. But I’m still taking you down.
Chapter 50
Ian
September 1950
Boston
Let’s admit we’re idiots.” Tony broke the silence. “She was under our noses the entire time. I saw her with my own eyes, I talked with her—”
“She looks almost nothing like that picture we have,” Ian said tersely. “It was too old to be useful. Only someone who knew that face very well would—goddammit, can’t you make this car go faster?”
Tony had the Ford’s gas pedal mashed to the floor, but the lunchtime traffic poured like slow honey. “I looked at her neck the day we met. There was no scar!” His hands were clenched around the wheel.
“She covers it,” Nina guessed from the backseat. “Is makeup, maybe. Blyadt, how far is McBride house—”
Not far, but who knew how long ago Jordan had left Scollay Square? She went for her sister, Ian thought. That’s what I would do, if I learned my stepmother was a murderess.
“I should have known when we spoke,” Tony muttered. “That she wasn’t a native speaker, the rhythms—”
“You said she had no accent, even dropped her R’s like a Bostonian.”
“Still should have brought me in to check,” Nina snapped. “I would have known her, more than you only seeing the old picture—”
Ian cut them both off. “We all could have done better, yes. But we had no reason to think Lorelei Vogt had stopped in Boston rather than passing through as all the others did; we had no reason to think Jordan’s stepmother had connections to Europe—not with a name like Anna McBride, listed as born in Boston, no accent to give her away. There seemed nothing suspicious about her to investigate, and we had Kolb in front of us, looking suspicious as a rotting fish.”
“And she kept her distance from the shop,” Tony said. “Jordan said her father took pride that his wife didn’t have to work, and I didn’t think anything of it. But she kept her distance so if anyone took a second look for shady business, what they’d see was Kolb. And we did, damn us all—”
“Stop this. Stop it now.” Ian pushed steel through his voice, slicing through the discussion. “We finally know who she is and where she is. Let’s focus on that and assign blame later.”
“Holy hell, I hope Jordan grabbed Ruthie and got out of that house,” Tony muttered. “If she’d just waited—”
“Why should she?” Nina said. “Has no reason to trust us, or know what we do.”
“We should have brought her in. Told her.”
“We saw no reason to. We’ve never brought in outsiders before. Once and for all, stop the what ifs and should haves.” The last thing this team needed was to careen into recrimination. But Ian’s hands were clenched so tight around his panama that the brim had crumpled like paper, and the same tense fear was vibrating through the car between all of them, unspoken.
If Jordan or her sister came to harm because of this, the team was finished.
In a squeal of tires, Tony brought the car around the corner onto the street with the McBride house. “If Lorelei Vogt is there,” Ian said, “we confront and apprehend on the spot.”
“On whose authority? We have no warrant!”
Ian thought he could bluff around that. He was damned well going to try. This wasn’t how they normally handled confrontations; usually there would be a careful plan laid and backing authorities notified. No time for that now. Ian looked at his partner and his wife, blood sparking in his veins. “Be on your guard every bloody minute. We’ve never confronted someone like this. Most of the men we find are no more dangerous without their Third Reich than field mice, but she is different. If she so much as lifts a finger toward herself or anyone else, stop her. By any means necessary.”
Nina flicked her razor, and for once Ian was glad to see it.
They were spilling out of the car before it even stopped moving in front of the brownstone—and were greeted by the sight of an open door and an empty house.
Chapter 51
Jordan
September 1950
Boston
Hurry up, Ruth, Jordan prayed.
Her sister was finally out of her bath, calling “Can I get strawberry ice cream?” down the stairs as she trailed off towel wrapped to her room. Jordan couldn’t rush her without looking suspicious, and she couldn’t take another moment keeping her guard up with Anneliese, so she busied herself first in leashing up Taro—Jordan was no more leaving her dog in this house than her sister—and then muttered about getting something in the darkroom. “Go tear up any pictures you took of that young man,” Anneliese advised. “It will make you feel better!”
Once down in the darkroom Jordan sagged against the door, realizing she was sweating as though she’d run a race. “Calm down, J. Bryde. Stay cool—” she told herself as she rummaged for a rag to pat her face. Where are you going to go? The thought hammered. Where are you going to take Ruth?
Back to Tony’s apartment for some answers. That was a start.
She turned and nearly leaped out of her skin. Anneliese was standing at the top of the darkroom stairs, looking down with her warm smile. She’d made no sound at all.
“Anna, you startled me!” Jordan smiled, heart nearly leaping out of her chest. “Is Ruth ready?”
“Tying her shoes.”
“I can’t remember when you were last down here.”
“It’s always seemed very much your sanctum.” Anneliese looked around at the equipment, the walls, the lights. She had her pocketbook over her arm. “I was thinking I’d come with you girls. It’s been a long time since I had an ice cream cone.”
“I thought you had to finish that skirt you were running up on the Singer.” Jordan kept her smile in place.
“Hemming can always wait.”
“Are you sure? I could bring a cone back for you—” Jordan cut herself off. Too suspicious to keep throwing up objections. “You know what, never mind. Anything I bring you will just melt in this sun. Come with us.” She would sneak Ruth out when they got back.
“I’ll just get my hat.” But Anneliese didn’t move, just stood looking thoughtful. “You know I went to the bank this morning? Miss Fenton said you were asking about the savings accounts.”
Jordan kept her tone normal, relaxed. “I know you say there’s no need to worry about money, but I still do. It was a relief to hear about that extra insurance policy.”
“Miss Fenton said you looked a bit upset.”
“I got a whiff of Dad’s aftershave suddenly—one of the cashiers wearing the same brand. You know how it is . . . I left quickly before I started bawling.”
“Mmm. Well, that sounds reasonable.” Anneliese looked at th
e railing under her hand. “Do you know any tall Englishmen, Jordan? A man asking questions?”
“What? No, I told you that already.” Jordan’s heart started to speed. “Weeks ago.”
“I know.” Anneliese sounded apologetic. “But there is one, isn’t there? Kolb was quite firm about that. He also seems to think he’s been followed, and I was inclined to blame such paranoia on his liking for the bottle, but perhaps not. Then you turn up at the bank asking about my savings accounts, and here you are looking upset about a boyfriend, and you explain it all very nicely, Jordan, but it makes me uneasy. It really does.”
“Why would it?” Jordan made herself look up, give a puzzled smile.
“Because when you’ve lived through a war,” Anneliese said, “when you’ve been hunted, you pay attention to any little things out of the ordinary. However nicely they’re explained away, they still . . . ping.”
The silence fell between them as dark and heavy as lake water. Jordan stood, hands behind her gripping the edge of the worktable. Anneliese stood in her crisp black dress and dark chignon and perfectly painted lips. Jordan couldn’t think what to do, except to look confused and innocent. Her heart hammered.
“Scheisse.” Anneliese sighed. Setting her pocketbook down, she reached into it and pulled out a pistol in one firm, expert hand, and Jordan’s mind went white with terror as a shot crashed out.
THE METAL TRAY at Jordan’s right spun off the table in a clatter, even as she flinched back with a choked scream. It took her a moment to realize she hadn’t been hurt. “Let’s talk honestly now,” Anneliese said, matter-of-fact.
Jordan’s knees were pudding. She looked at Anneliese, at the pistol in her hand, and wanted to scream, but in this thick-walled space set below the ground, no one on the street was going to hear. She doubted anyone had heard the shot either. She opened her mouth.
