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 Jägerin 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.
“Ruth,” they heard Anneliese call, closing the Ford’s trunk on the cases and tossing the keys into the front seat. “We’re leaving.”
So close, Jordan thought. Even flying, they had barely got here in time. By car they would never have made it. A few fast-murmured plans flew, the first part of which was Get Ruth. Until Ruth was removed they could do nothing or Anneliese might kill her.
Nina slanted off toward the east, away from the cabin and the dock. Tony peeled left toward the cabin’s far side where Jordan had told him about the back window. Ian and Jordan continued on straight, stopping well inside the tree line, where Ian cupped his hands around his mouth and gave a whistle: the haunting four-note opening of the simple Siberian lullaby he had learned from Nina and taught Ruth to play on her violin.
Anneliese, slamming the car door, didn’t hear. At the end of the dock, Ruth looked up.
Ian whistled the opening bar again, low and calling. Jordan bit her lip, watching Ruth’s eyes hunting for the music. Anneliese paused, clearly puzzled, but she didn’t play the violin, she didn’t know the ancient cradle song Ruth played so beautifully. Anneliese stepped onto the dock, her back to the cabin as she walked out over the lake. “Ruth,