The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

  “Whatever you’re about to say, it had better not be a lie,” Anneliese said. “I don’t want to shoot you, Jordan, but I will if I have to.”

  “I believe you,” Jordan said in a thin voice. “You murdered Ruth’s mother in cold blood for her passport, you murdered a young English POW by a lake, and you murdered six Jewish children after feeding them a meal, so no, I don’t think you’ll hesitate to kill me.”

  She expected Anneliese to deny it—weep, protest innocence, flow gently with emotion the way she had that Thanksgiving when she looked at the photograph of her SS lover and managed to convince Dan McBride and Jordan both that it was her father. But Anneliese merely moved down the staircase into the darkroom with a sigh. “I see you’ve learned a few things.”

  Jordan found herself trembling. “What are you?” She couldn’t stop herself from asking the question, the great cry that had taken root in her mind since realizing the truth of it all . . . and even outside that primal cry was the cooler speculation: If I can distract her, maybe I can get away. Or maybe someone will come. It was not much of a hope, but staring down the barrel of a pistol, a slim chance looked better than none. “How could you do such things?”

  Anneliese didn’t answer. She just sighed again, a sound so mortally exhausted it seemed to have been dragged from the soles of her feet, and sat down on the edge of the rumpled darkroom cot. “I’m so tired of running . . .” Looking at Jordan, her mouth trembled. “Why couldn’t you leave it alone?”

  “Why couldn’t—” Jordan pushed away from the table, only to freeze as the pistol’s barrel came up.

  “Sit down on the floor. Sit on your hands.” Just like that, the tremble was gone. Anneliese’s voice was weary, but her hand was steady.

  Jordan sank down on the floor, tucking her hands under her, feeling the cold seep into her flesh. She expected Anneliese to rise and level the weapon, but she remained seated on the cot, seemingly too tired to move. Maybe she wouldn’t run at all. Maybe she was ready to turn herself in. Jordan didn’t really think so, but she tried a different tack.

  “Whatever you do to me, don’t hurt Ruth.”

  Anneliese looked surprised. “What reason would I have to do that?”

  “She’s not your daughter. Do you even love her?”

  “My poor Mäuschen.” Anneliese ran a finger along the cot’s blanket. “I didn’t mean to grow fond of her, you know. A Jewish child . . . I only took her with me because a mother with a beautiful little girl in her arms, well, no one suspects a woman like that. And she was so pretty. With that blond hair and none of the features one usually sees, the nose, the coarseness, perhaps there wasn’t much Jewish taint. I thought I could raise her free of all that. A way to make amends.”

  “Amends,” Jordan said. “For murdering her mother.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “You really believe that.” Wonderingly. “You had no choice but to kill a woman and push her in a lake after robbing her of everything she owned? No choice?”

  “You have no idea what cornered prey will do when desperate.” Anneliese touched the gray pearls at her neck. “I was very sorry I had to do it. She didn’t suffer, at least. I wear her pearls to remember her by.”

  For a moment Jordan thought she was going to vomit. “You aren’t going to deny any of it,” she managed to whisper.

  “I don’t see the point, really. You clearly know enough.” Anneliese straightened. “How did you find out? Who’s been telling you about me?” The barrel twitched on her knee. “Is someone coming?”

  “Yes. A team of Nazi hunters who tracked you all the way from Austria.” Jordan used the melodramatic term without hesitation. Anything to make Anneliese flinch. “You are never going to escape them, ever.”

  “Who are they? Do they have the police with them? Don’t lie,” Anneliese said as Jordan hesitated. “I know you very well, Jordan. I know when you’re lying.”

  “An English journalist. His partners.” Jordan was disgusted by the shake in her own voice. “They’re coming for you.”

  “And what are they going to do, drag me before a jury? Extradite me?” Anneliese shook her head before Jordan could answer. “I suppose that doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, I doubt I’d find it pleasant. People are such hanging judges over some things.”

  “Things like murdering children and prisoners of war?” Jordan shot back, shaking voice or not.

  “I’m thirty-two years old, and my life is the sum of many moments. Why do some moments outweigh all the other, better moments? When is there enough running, enough punishment?”

  “You think you’ve been punished?” Jordan nearly choked on a swell of incandescent fury. “You stole another woman’s name and life and child, then nested yourself in my family so you could live every day in complete ease and comfort, and you think you’ve been punished?”

  “Do you have any idea how much I’ve lost?” Anneliese returned. “A life I loved, a man I loved, contact with my mother except for the occasional cautious letter, which I don’t even dare post myself. Every day I’m afraid and every night I dream.” She shivered. “Strange how many nightmares I have in this house, where everything is so safe. My house on the lake in Posen, it was so isolated . . . no servants by the end of ’44, everything falling to pieces, Manfred away for days at a time, yet I slept so soundly there. It was so beautiful. And I can never go back.” Looking at Jordan. “You think that isn’t punishment?”

  Not enough. “So turn yourself in and fight the charges,” Jordan said, switching tack. “Defend yourself. Whatever else you are, I never thought you were a coward.”

  She’d hoped that would sting, but Anneliese just gave a faint smile. “Cowardice doesn’t exist, you know. Nor does bravery. Only nature. If you’re the hunter, you stalk and if you’re the prey, you run, and I am quite realistic enough to know that I have been the prey ever since the war ended and the victors decided I was a monster.”

  “You are a monster,” Jordan said.

  “Because of those children?” Anneliese shook her head. “It was an act of mercy. They were Polish Jews and the directive in Posen was to eliminate the Jews first, eventually the Poles.”

  “The war was ending, and you were losing. Why carry that directive out, with everything falling apart?”

  “Because the executions and shipments were still proceeding. Those children died far more kindly at my hands, fast and painless, with full bellies, than they would have fared starving to death in huts or dying of thirst on packed trains. I take no pleasure in suffering. If something must die, kill it cleanly.”

  Jordan thought she’d scream if she had to hear more of this, but she made herself continue. Keep her talking. “Why kill that young prisoner of war?” Sebastian Graham, Ian’s younger brother, whose name she’d read in the file this morning. “There are rules about prisoners; you should have returned him to his camp alive. Why kill him?”

  “Guards don’t like it when prisoners escape. I likely saved him from a far more nasty death.” Anneliese rose, business-like. Don’t lose her.

  “I loved you, you know.” Jordan flung it down like a challenge. “I really did. And I thought you loved me. It was all lies, wasn’t it?”

  A look of surprise. “Why would you think that?”

  “Ever since Dad died you’ve been trying to ship me off. To college, to work, to New York, anywhere, as long as you could get me out of the door.”

  “Only because I have to keep up my guard around you, all the time. I thought that would be easier if you were in another city. But it doesn’t mean I’m not fond of you.” The old smile, that woman-to-woman ease they’d had the last few months, relying on each other. “You’re clever and levelheaded and gifted; you want things for yourself; you dream. I did too when I was your age. I wanted more than some Austrian Advokat husband no matter what my mother said, and you wanted more than that nice muttonhead Garrett Byrne no matter what your father said. I encouraged you to aim higher because I wanted to see you soa
r. It was a pleasure to watch.”

  “I don’t believe you, Anna.” Jordan said it defiantly, but inside she flinched. “Anna, Anneliese, Lorelei, whatever you call yourself.”

  “I hate that name.” A shiver. “Lorelei. Like rusalka. Another water witch.”

  “Who really came out of that lake and gave you the rusalka nightmare?” Jordan pounced on the new angle of attack. “Someone who didn’t agree with your definition of mercy?”

  “I did tell you about that dream, didn’t I?” A blink. “She was no one, really. Just a refugee woman in Posen.”

  “Did this one hurt you instead of the other way around?” What does a monster fear? “Is that why she makes you afraid? Why you dream of her?”

  “I don’t fear her. Why would I?” Anneliese’s hand drifted up to her neck, unconsciously. The old scar, Jordan thought, hidden by makeup. “She’s probably long dead.”

  But her face flickered, and Jordan knew it was fear. I can read you too, you know. Why had Anneliese told her the rusalka nightmare in the first place?

  Because it was midnight, and she was frightened, and I was there. Because sometimes even monsters need to talk.

  Jordan made her voice soft, as she gathered her feet beneath her. “Anna, won’t you let me—”

  The pistol rose again. “Sit back down.” Jordan sat. “I’m aware you’re trying to stall me,” Anneliese said. “I confess it’s tempting to sit here and wait until your friends arrive. I really am very tired of running. But that would be giving up, and it was my last promise to Manfred that I not give up. He died in a hail of bullets in Altaussee rather than let himself be taken; the least I can do is run.” She looked at Jordan, very direct. “Don’t look for me. You won’t find me, not this time, and what harm can I do? I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to live quietly.”

  “You don’t want to hurt anyone, but you will if you think you’re threatened. Dad suspected something at the shop, didn’t he? He saw traces of your little scheme with Kolb. He just thought it was a swindle, not anything to do with war criminals, but he died before he found out more. How did that happen, Anna?” Jordan’s eyes bored into her stepmother. “Did you murder my father?”

  That was the other suspicion that had been growing like a monstrous flower in the back of her mind. Even in her frantic drive to get Ruth, some part of Jordan had been reflecting quietly that while Anna McBride knew nothing about firearms, a woman nicknamed the huntress surely would have known what kind of ammunition would make a twelve-gauge shotgun with soft steel Damascus barrels explode. Could have driven out to the lake cabin, slipped a handful of deadly rounds in among the innocent, then taken her stepdaughter shopping for a wedding dress when her husband next went on a turkey hunt . . . “Did you kill him?” Jordan asked, voice breaking. “Did you?”

  Anna’s face never moved, not so much as a flicker.

  Oh, Dad. Jordan’s mind in its iced-over horror stuttered. Dad—

  “I was very fond of him, you know,” Anneliese said at last. “If you hadn’t pushed things—he never really trusted me after that first Thanksgiving. Not deep down. I’d catch him looking at me, in bed when he thought I was asleep . . . I suppose that’s why he found it easy to be suspicious of Kolb, start asking questions.” Anneliese shook her head. “I still wonder how you did it. Putting it all together, just seventeen . . . well, I did say you were clever, didn’t I? I never dared keep anything in the house after that, for fear you’d sniff it out.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me Dad’s death was my fault,” Jordan grated.

  “I won’t tell you anything. Go live your life, leave me to live mine. I just want to disappear with Ruth.”

  Terror swamped Jordan again in a wave. “You are not taking Ruth!”

  “Of course I am. She’s my responsibility—also my surety, Jordan. Because if I ever feel I’m being tracked again, I will shoot her and then I will shoot myself.” Anneliese’s gaze was candid, earnest. Jordan sat pinned by it, dry mouthed.

  “Please—” she began, but Anneliese overrode her.

  “I won’t run a third time. I can’t bear it. I’ll take the easier way, and I’ll take Ruth with me. One doesn’t leave a child alone, that would be a great cruelty. So don’t try to find me again, you and your friends. It will be much better for Ruth if you don’t.” Anneliese mounted the stairs, pistol glinting at her side. At the top of the staircase she looked over her shoulder. “I’ll miss you, you know. Very much. I really wish you had left well enough alone.”

  The door clanged shut, the outside bolt screeched as it was turned, and footsteps retreated outside as Jordan flew up the stairs, flung herself against the locked door, and began to scream.

  Chapter 52

  Ian

  September 1950

  Boston

  She took nothing.” Jordan was pawing through her stepmother’s closet. A floral, feminine bedroom, all Alpine landscapes and arrangements of dried flowers. Too late, Ian kept thinking. We are too late. “The only thing gone is Dad’s car. Her traveling case is still here, her clothes and underthings, even her checkbook and driver’s license—”

  Because she’s leaving it all behind, Ian thought. Lorelei Vogt had shed Anna McBride and walked out to some new identity with nothing more than the clothes on her back. Rage swept him in a cold wave. We did not come this far to start all over again at zero.

  “She took nothing,” Jordan repeated. She looked white and wrecked, her rosy all-American prettiness drowned by shock. Ian had never been so relieved in his life as when they’d wrenched back the bolt of the darkroom door and she stumbled out—face tearstained above an old red-checked shirt, blond hair wild, hands shaking, but alive. Ian’s relief was nothing to Tony’s, whose olive-skinned face had turned gray as the door came open. Jordan had pushed straight past him, running inside calling her sister’s name, and that was when they realized Lorelei Vogt had taken something, after all.

  Ruth.

  “Suka,” Nina muttered. She flipped her razor open and closed, yearning visibly for a throat to cut. Taro trailed after her, whining nervously. Ian managed not to pace, but he’d already left white fingernail crescents in his own palms.

  “There has to be something to tell us where she’s gone. Something—” Jordan was raking through her stepmother’s handkerchiefs now, eyes flashing up to pin Ian and Tony with a stony gaze. “If you people had just told me—”

  “I wanted to.” Tony was searching the drawer beside hers; he reached out and touched her shoulder. “I’ve been wanting to bring you in. But we didn’t know if your father might have been involved, and—”

  She jerked away. “Dad would never—” Her voice choked. “Why did Anna even start these under-the-counter deals with Kolb, helping war criminals? If it hadn’t been for that, nothing would have come to light for you to trace all the way to Boston. Why did she risk it?”

  “Perhaps they were friends of hers,” Tony suggested. “She wanted to bring her mother over too.”

  “She could have brought them legally, sponsored them as refugees. No one would have blinked at that.”

  “Money,” Ian said tersely, starting to pace despite himself. “She wanted money of her own in case she ever needed to run again.” And now she has it, he thought in another surge of ice-cold fury. Enough money to run a good long way.

  No. You are not escaping us. You are not taking another innocent child. Not this time.

  “I don’t want you thinking my father was stupid for falling for her.” The words burst out of Jordan even as she moved to search under her stepmother’s bed. “She was so eager to lose her accent and join his church and be a proper American housewife. So proud to learn Boston slang, change her name from Anneliese to Anna when she got her citizenship. She fooled everyone.”

  “Not you.” Tony rummaged among the linens. “Seventeen years old and you sniffed her from day one, which is more than the three of us professionals managed to do. You’re a goddamn genius, J. Bryde.”

&nb
sp; “My father still died. I didn’t make him realize—”

  “Don’t.” Ian took her by the shoulders as she straightened from looking under the bed, nailing his eyes to hers. “Down that road lies madness, believe me. Put the blame where it belongs—on her.” Where did you go, where . . .

  “She cried for him, in the hospital. She was so devastated. I wonder what she would have done if he’d recovered from his injuries—”

  “She had a plan for that,” Nina stated without a shred of doubt in her voice.

  Nothing was missing from Ruth’s room either. Jordan rubbed helpless empty hands up and down her old blue jeans. “She didn’t pack Ruth so much as a spare pair of shoes.”

  “Which means she has a bolt-hole somewhere.” Tony was prowling the length of the cozy little bedroom. “She’ll have stashed clothes, money from her closed-out savings account, new identification courtesy of Kolb.”

  “Yes.” Jordan scrubbed a hand down the side of her face. “In the darkroom, she said she didn’t dare keep anything in the house after I searched her room years ago.”

  “So where would she keep a bolt-hole?” Ian asked.

  The four of them looked at one another.

  “She went somewhere for a month, when she told me she was in Concord and New York,” Jordan said at last. “She must have been setting something up. Making preparations to run, just in case she needed to.”

  “Must be somewhere close,” Nina said. “Somewhere she could go, no one would ask questions. We have to catch her there, or—”

  “Or she’s gone,” Jordan finished. “She and Ruth, off who knows where. She might not even stay in this country.” Jordan’s face collapsed. Tony pulled her into his arms. Nina and Ian just looked at each other, helpless and furious. Ruth, Ian kept thinking. Poor little pilgrim stumbling through the alien corn. Lost forever, unless—

  “Her bolt-hole would need to be somewhere close, but removed.” Ian drummed his fingers on Ruth’s bedpost. “A place to hide, change her appearance. A place no one could see her coming or going or have any reason to question her being there. Do you know of any—”