how I left Seb behind, think maybe you wouldn’t want me to stay. Once huntress is caught.”
That memory hurt, Ian couldn’t deny it, but casting all the blame on Nina would be unjust. “My brother was a grown man. He made a decision, and you couldn’t dissuade him from it. There it is.”
She nodded. There was guilt there, and probably always would be, but overlaid by that Russian fatalism of hers. Battered souls like ours, Ian thought, tramping out of the wreckage of wars, always have guilt. Ghosts. Lakes and parachutes. They could both bear that weight, going on. “I want you on this team, Nina. On the hunt, wherever it leads. With me or not, but always on the hunt.”
She considered that. “Then I come back to Boston.”
Ian couldn’t hide the grin that broke over his face. Nina almost grinned back, but scowled instead. “We still divorce,” she warned.
“All right.”
“Because after Yelena I don’t—”
“Who asked you to love me?” Ian said lightly. “That’s not what I’m saying at all, you Red Menace.”
“What do you say?”
He had searched for what to tell her on the beach in Florida and got it wrong. But something tense and jealous had unspooled in him since die Jägerin’s capture, and there had been many hours to reflect on the Atlantic crossing, staring at the waves.
“I am only saying that I will find you mad wolves to hunt,” Ian told his wife, “and that I will never break your heart.” If part of that heart was always out of reach, that seemed entirely fair to Ian. You did not get a whole heart when you pinned yours to a splendid, battered, high-flying hawk like a Night Witch. Nina’s soul would always in some deep place yearn to be soaring under a bomber’s moon with her dark-eyed Moscow rose, and that was fine. Ian thought there was a chance, despite her prickles, that a bit of that remaining heart might thaw enough for him.
Or maybe I’m wrong, he thought. Maybe they’d divorce, after all. But he would still have a Night Witch on his team, and there wouldn’t be a war criminal in the world out of their reach.
He was happy to wait as Nina decided what she wanted.
His wife was peering upward, smiling. He followed her gaze and saw she was looking at the silhouette of the great Prater wheel above the amusement park. “You want to go?” she challenged.
Sixty-five meters up. Ian had nearly come to pieces the last time he rode it. But he’d gone flying since then with a Hero of the Soviet Union, far higher than sixty-five meters. With the bloody engine turned off. Smiling, he shook his head.
“Why not?” Nina asked. “Kill the fear, luchik.”
He slipped his trigger finger through hers and tugged her back in the direction of their hotel. “Already done, comrade.”
Epilogue
Nina
April 1951
Fenway Park, Boston
Nina didn’t understand baseball. “Why are they arguing?”
“The batter doesn’t like the umpire’s call,” Jordan explained, ponytail swinging. “It’s been a very generous strike zone.”
“Strike zone? He hits him now?” This was a boring game, Nina had decided. Hitting people would liven it up.
“No, no. He’s just arguing to make a point.”
“Should hit him with the bat,” Nina grumbled. “Why have a bat if you don’t hit people?”
“I’ll hit Kinder with a bat if he doesn’t stop coming inside on the fastball. He nearly winged Rizzuto.” On Jordan’s other side, Tony glared down at the Red Sox pitcher. In between putting in hours for Ian and filling in behind the shop counter when Jordan needed it, Tony was signed up for classes at Boston University. The center has always needed a legal expert, and I just happen to have the G.I. Bill on my side, he’d said last Christmas with a gleam in his eye. We can’t keep burning up the telephone lines to Bauer for advice by the time it comes time to try our first extradition case.
You, a lawyer? Nina had snorted.
I can sell ice to Alaskans and charm birds out of trees. It’s either be a lawyer or a shoe salesman.
“Keep whining.” Jordan laughed now, as Tony continued to grumble about the strike zone. “Your precious Yankees are down five runs.”
“Not for long, J. Bryde . . .”
“This game is stupid,” Nina told her husband.
“Agreed.” Ian was stretched out long limbed and relaxed in his seat, hat cocked back, collar unbuttoned. The smell of mown grass and chalk rose from the field, and the crowd hummed with cheers and groans, cracking