Nemesis: Innocence Sold

by Ross, Stefanie

  Completely baffled, Daniel got his laptop out of his backpack and sat down at the desk, ignoring the chaos around him. It looked like an unexpected mission had come up, but why were the guns lying in the hall? He glanced through his in-box and then logged on to the Navy’s server. Nothing revealed to him where his team was. He hesitated, unable to decide what to do. He should have contacted Mark long ago. In the beginning he had simply been angry and would have sworn that his team leader had known of Russell’s true motives and had supplied him with their mission reports. Once he had realized that this would have been completely atypical for Mark, it was already too late, and he didn’t see any sense in sending an e-mail or making a call when they’d be able to speak to each other in person only a few hours later.

  No wiser than before, he closed the laptop and quickly restored order. The refrigerator was empty, and the freezer didn’t offer anything appetizing. After a brief search, Daniel found the car keys in the bedroom on the nightstand and decided to make a quick shopping run. First he would eat, then he’d sleep, and sometime after that he’d make the long-overdue call to his boss.

  Daniel’s gaze swept from the meat counter to the deep freezer. If he knew when he could expect Tom to return, there’d be no reason not to heat up the grill on the terrace, but as it was, pizza was clearly the better alternative. He groaned when he saw that the freezer was practically empty. A woman, obviously irritated, was looking through the shockingly small pile in search of an acceptable kind of pizza. When he unexpectedly discovered a package of pepperoni pizza, he grabbed it, provoking a quiet curse.

  “Great. I’m freezing my fingers off here, and then you come along . . .”

  If she hadn’t spat the words out as she had, he might have taken pity on her. As it was, he just shrugged. “Maybe there’s another one down there somewhere.”

  “I’m sure there isn’t. The absolute high point of a crappy day.” She threw a four-seasons pizza into her cart. “Looks like it’ll have to be this one,” she said and gave Daniel an angry look that categorized him somewhere between an annoying fly and a serial killer. Nevertheless, her bristling manner appealed to him.

  “At least there’s pepperoni on that one, too,” he said.

  “And spinach. I hate spinach.”

  He could no longer suppress a grin. “So do I. Well, take a different one, then.” She gazed at the box in his hand. “Oh, no. I mean from the freezer. I found this one fair and square.”

  “Fair and square? After I’d gone through all of them? Typical male logic.”

  After giving him another scathing look, she stormed off toward the checkout lanes.

  Daniel looked after her in amusement. He had noticed that brown-haired bundle of temperament on a number of occasions at the store. He figured she lived nearby. Maybe the next time he met her he’d have the opportunity to invite her to share a pizza. The prospect of this appealed to him, as did her glittering brown-green eyes and slim figure, which had curves in all the right places.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a movement that brought his thoughts to a sudden end. Two men had also been watching the woman. One followed her down the aisle; the other was hurrying toward the entrance of the store. Coincidence? Was he reading too much into their behavior? Daniel was tired and certainly not in top form, and there could be countless innocent explanations, but he nevertheless followed the man in the aisle. With some difficulty, he carried the pizza, ingredients for a salad, and a bottle of wine to the checkout counter and dropped them onto the conveyor belt. While he paid and loaded his items into a plastic bag, the woman in the next line didn’t let him out of her sight—and she wasn’t the only one. Automatically, he stored a description of the man staring at him: gaunt, late forties, sparse gray hair, well groomed. Under his pushed-up jacket sleeve was part of a tattoo, a kind of banner.

  Typical—on an occasion when he wanted to waste time, he got a cashier who performed her work in record time. Daniel was forced to study the little advertisements posted on a bulletin board in the exit area in order to let the woman and her stalker pass by. The woman was occupied with stowing her purchases in a backpack and noticed neither Daniel nor her potential pursuer. Daniel left the supermarket behind the two, keeping a safe distance. His pizza friend brought her shopping cart back to the cart corral and walked to a mountain bike. When she rode off, Daniel turned away in relief and had to grin at his overactive imagination. A strikingly loud engine caused him to turn around. A gray van bore down on the cyclist from the side. Her braking maneuver caused her to fly over the handlebars and hit the ground. The van stopped, and from the supermarket’s entrance area the other man Daniel had noticed ran toward the cyclist. Daniel sprinted that way, too, and was the first to reach her.

  “Lie completely still. I’m a doctor!” he shouted to her, not letting the other man out of his sight. If this had been an attempted abduction, it had failed. Too many people had stopped and were watching what transpired. After scrutinizing Daniel, the man jumped into the passenger seat of the van, and the vehicle roared away.

  “Did you get the license number?” the woman asked in an uncertain voice.

  “Only the first three letters and the last digit. The plate was pretty dirty.”

  Groaning, she tried to get up but remained seated and rubbed her ankle. “I told you—such a crappy day.”

  “I’d agree with you there, though I don’t know what else you’ve been through today. Should I call the police?”

  “No. Nothing would come of it but a meaningless report.”

  For the moment he suppressed any reference to the circumstances surrounding the accident and instead felt her ankle. “Daniel Eddings. Nice to meet you, although I’d have preferred other circumstances.”

  “So would I. Sandra Meinke. Are you really a doctor? Or are you still a student?”

  Daniel was annoyed. He knew all too well that he looked younger than he was. His friends often made fun of him because once he’d been carded at a bar after ordering a whiskey.

  “My studies are far behind me. If it would reassure you, I could quote parts of my dissertation. Are you interested in protein compounds?”

  “No, thank you. I hated chemistry in school.”

  She scrutinized his face, then said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “You haven’t. I suspect your ankle is sprained—if you’re lucky it’s only a pulled muscle. Cycling is out, and not just because your front wheel looks pretty bent.”

  With his help, she stood, adjusted her backpack, and shook her head. Her fighting spirit seemed to have dissipated, and she looked resigned. “A totally successful day.”

  “What else happened?” Daniel asked, more in order to distract her than out of real interest.

  “A crazy computer, a disastrous job interview, and further proof of the depths to which humanity can sink.”

  Daniel didn’t know what to make of the last comment. “And I thought I had had a bad day because the taxi driver at the airport spoke almost no German and insisted on driving me to Ahrensbök, near Lübeck. And the guy sitting next to me on the plane was so afraid of flying that he talked the entire time, and I didn’t sleep a wink. And then there was the overdressed, middle-aged woman who elbowed me in the ribs at the baggage claim because she absolutely had to get to her pink cosmetic case.”

  Sandra laughed. “All right, apparently we’ve both had bad luck today. Are you an American?”

  “Yes. Is my accent that bad?”

  “Not bad—interesting. But your German’s perfect.”

  “Well, thanks to an intensive course provided by my employer and some help from a friend who grew up bilingual and for weeks on end refused to speak English with me. Shall we steer the day in a more positive direction? I can drive you home. We can put your bike in the trunk. I’d like to take a proper look at your foot. It needs to be cooled down, and it might make sense to get it X-rayed.” He understood she didn’t quite trust him, so he raised his han
ds to calm her. “Would you like to see my ID? Or call a friend and give her my name and the license plate number? I’m definitely not a serial killer who waits outside the supermarket for young women to get nailed by hit-and-run drivers.”

  She chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip, then smiled. “Thanks for your offer. Sorry I seem so suspicious.”

  Though there was no sign of the man or the van, Daniel was reluctant to leave her alone. “That’s all right. Will you be able to make it to the car if I take your backpack and the bike and you lean on me?”

  Sandra nodded, but her forehead was beaded with sweat when they reached the car.

  He praised her when she reached the passenger seat. “Good girl.” As he had expected, the patronizing praise didn’t please her; she glared at him. He winked at her. “Who knows—maybe you’ll get a slice of pepperoni pizza as a reward. By the time I get home, it’ll have thawed out and be inedible.” He wrinkled his brow in mock suspicion. “But don’t tell me this was all staged so you could get your hands on my pizza.”

  She had to laugh again as he effortlessly maneuvered the station wagon out of the parking space. “By rights it would have been mine anyway. By the way, we can stop using the formal Sie. Call me Sandra.”

  “I’d be happy to. There are some things that are easier in my language, and I don’t just mean the damned tenses. Können, hat gekonnt, wird vielleicht gekonnt haben oder irgendwann können. And kennen is something else again. A nightmare.”

  Sandra could do nothing but return his grin. His humorous manner appealed to her, but it was difficult for her to evaluate him. Her first impression—that he wasn’t even twenty years old—had proven to be thoroughly wrong. His collar-length hair, which was carelessly combed back but nevertheless flopped down over his forehead constantly, and his blue eyes gave him a boyish appearance, particularly in combination with his suntan and broad smile. “You’re making a good fight of it, though. Turn right at the intersection. Are you from California?”

  He looked at her sideways with amazement. “Correct. San Diego. I swam in the Pacific this morning. How’d you guess?”

  “Turn left up ahead, at the bus stop. Well, because you look like the typical beach boy—all that’s missing is a surfboard under your arm. And are you really a doctor? What are you doing here in Ahrensburg?”

  “I actually work some distance from here. But I’m often in Lübeck or Kiel, and I fly out of Hamburg a lot. Because of that it made sense to live in Ahrensburg.”

  He braked the Mercedes and pointed down a cross street. “Down there, the last duplex half on the right. That’s where I live.”

  “Strange. I don’t live far from here at all. Down the next street to the left and then the red brick house.”

  When Daniel walked toward the entrance of the multifamily building, Sandra held him back. “I’m in the apartment on the ground floor. It is possible to get there via the stairwell, but it’s easier to go through the kitchen.” She managed a pained smile. “And I’ll save myself two doors and a flight of stairs.”

  Daniel looked around the interior of the two-room apartment, and Sandra could sense his thoughts. The furnishings were bright and friendly, but while the work space in the kitchen was covered with dishes, the contents of the shelves in the living room were more functional, almost Spartan. In the absence of other personal items, Daniel looked at her collection of books and DVDs.

  “I’ll slip into something more comfortable and . . .”

  Daniel immediately forgot the DVDs. “Do you need any help?” His cheeks turned red when Sandra’s look made the ambiguity of his words clear to him. “I just mean whether you can manage, not that . . . Speaking purely as a doctor.” His humor vanquished the moment of embarrassment. “Though on the other hand . . .”

  Limping, she fled into the bathroom before the banter ended in a duel of words that she probably would have lost.

  After she had put on a worn and considerably looser pair of jeans, she returned to the living room with a salve for treating sports injuries.

  She held out the tube to Daniel. “Would it be OK to just smear this stuff on?”

  “I won’t know until I’ve checked how serious the injury is. Sit down in the chair.”

  Sandra didn’t care for the unexpected authoritarian tone, and the blinking of the red LED of her answering machine gave her the perfect excuse to ignore his command. “Since I can still walk, I guess it’s not all that bad.” After thinking for a moment, she took the cordless phone from its base. She had no desire to have Daniel listen to her boss’s loud, obnoxious comments about her absence. As she had expected, the first call was nothing more than his rambling about her staying home from work and the short notice, culminating in a smug comment about the imagined afflictions of women. The second number wasn’t familiar, but she immediately recognized Stephan’s voice.

  At first unbelievingly, then joyfully surprised, she listened to Stephan’s brief announcement that he would like to visit her at home at about six o’clock that evening in order to discuss a few questions that had remained unanswered. His remark that he wished to spare her another trip to police headquarters wasn’t necessary. She knew he lived in Ahrensburg and sensed that such considerate gestures toward his employees were typical of him. Even when the message had long since ended and the receiver was no longer emitting any sound but a quiet hissing, she continued to hold the phone to her ear. This was the second chance she hadn’t dared to hope for, and this time she wouldn’t mess it up.

  “Bad news?” Daniel asked with concern.

  “No—on the contrary. The guy I interviewed with today wants to come by later. Apparently I didn’t completely blow it. I’ll do it right this time—I’m sure of it.”

  “Just a second. I don’t understand. What kind of company makes house calls after an interview? Are you sure this guy isn’t looking for some other kind of . . . persuasion?”

  Although she found Daniel’s concern touching, she laughed out loud. “You’re totally off the mark. He’s a new father and loves his wife very deeply. By the time I got to the other end of Hamburg, the workday would be over, and he lives just around the corner. Besides, this is really about something like a move between departments within a company.”

  “All right, if you say so, but sit down now so I can take a look at your ankle.”

  While he felt her ankle with practiced movements, Daniel asked about her DVD collection. “Are those your movies, or do they belong to your boyfriend?”

  “Why? Is there a law against women watching action movies?”

  “No, but a collection like that is pretty unusual, and you have some real classics. I particularly like the Lethal Weapon collection—I’ve seen those movies at least half a dozen times.”

  She jerked when he touched a sensitive spot and was grateful to him for having distracted her.

  “Stretch slowly once and then release. That opening scene with the blue or red wire is pure genius.”

  “True. Or the guy in the fireproof clothes who plays around with the flamethrower until Riggs blows him away while his partner’s running around in his underpants.”

  Daniel smiled and nodded. “The ligaments are stretched—that’s what is also called a sprained ankle. I don’t think anything’s torn. Rest, and keep it iced and elevated. When’s your future boss coming?”

  “Around six.”

  Daniel looked at his watch. “Still an hour and a half to go—that’s enough time for some pizza and a glass of wine to calm you down after this ordeal.” He dismissed Sandra’s incipient protest with a wave. “I’ll disappear long before the guy shows up. But if the pain hasn’t lessened significantly by tomorrow morning, you’ll need to see a doctor.”

  “I thought you were a doctor.”

  “I rarely go shopping with mobile X-ray equipment or a magnetic resonance tomograph.”

  “All right, but you don’t have to . . .”

  “What? Save my thawed-out pizza? Yes, I do—that’s a component of
good patient care. I have nothing else planned, I’ve demonstrated that I can behave myself, and you might have a chance to get your hands on a piece of my pizza.”

  Sandra nodded.

  “What?”

  “I’m just amazed. I spent a year in the United States with a school exchange program, and I thought I knew English pretty well. But the way you speak—all the expressions you use—it’s astonishing.”

  Daniel smiled. “Am I hearing a trace of suspicion again? In my job, it’s important for me to understand every word correctly when I work here. On my team we intentionally switch constantly between German and English.”

  “Team?”

  For the first time, Sandra had the suspicion that Daniel was avoiding giving her a precise answer. “The people I work with directly. Incidentally, my boss went to school in Germany and speaks the language just as well—better, if anything. He rushed us through some courses, and I’ve mentioned my friend. He speaks German fluently and spoke only German with me for weeks, until he was satisfied with my grasp of the language.”

  “That’s true—you had mentioned that. Sorry, distrust is . . .” Sandra managed to suppress the words occupational hazard. “It’s all right,” she said.

  “Well, OK, then. You sit down. I’ll find my way around the kitchen. First we need ice for your foot.”

  “All right, but would you give me the laptop on the desk first?”

  “At your service,” he said with a grin.

  CHAPTER 7

  Daniel was happy that Sandra was already limping considerably less when she left the living room. He had initially worried that their meal together would be a disaster. Something about her laptop seemed to have ruined her mood, but then they had had a lively discussion. Their interests overlapped to some extent, and he liked the insolent way she pushed the spinach part of her pizza at him and then went after his last piece of pepperoni pizza. And her thoughtfulness in relation to other topics excited him. It was too bad he had to leave soon—he would have liked to stick around to make sure her strange new boss behaved himself.