Catching the Wind(72)

What would the man do when he realized his wife had been taken away?

Even though Frau didn’t like her, she’d been a sliver of a shield between Brigitte and her husband. Now that she was gone, Brigitte feared he wouldn’t have any use for her or Rosalind. Or for a baby.

“Wait for me,” she whispered, laying baby girl in a tuft of grass beside the garden. The baby stirred but slept, exhausted from her sleepless night and hunger pangs.

Brigitte wouldn’t let Herr touch this child.

“I’ll return,” she promised, like Dietmar had done with her long ago. Then she reached for the mud-caked hoe beside a tree, the one Herr had brought them to plant a garden.

Clutching the handle, Brigitte crept through the front door and past the fireplace. Herr was talking to Rosalind inside the bedroom. His voice was calm, and it scared her more than his yelling.

“Where were you in Germany?” he asked.

“I wasn’t in Germany. I was in Austria.” Rosalind wasn’t commanding this time nor did she seem scared. She sounded bored, as if she’d already tired of talking. “With the father of my child.”

“I don’t care about the child’s father. I want the name of the man who fathered you.”

Her laugh was hollow. “Are you going to kill him too?”

“Tell me his name,” he repeated, the calm in his voice tightening into a demand.

“Ask your lady.”

“She won’t tell me.”

“That’s because Mummy loves him much more than she’d ever love you.”

Brigitte stood at the bedroom door, her fingers washed purple as they clenched Herr’s hoe. But he didn’t turn around. His eyes were fixed on Rosalind, and in his hands he had something as well, pointed at her friend. Like Roger when he’d pointed his gun at Brigitte.

Herr stepped closer to her. “Too bad your mummy wants you dead.”

“Dead or fed,” Rosalind said with a shrug. “It won’t be long before she wants you dead too.”

“Lady Ricker needs me.”

Rosalind laughed again. “She doesn’t need anyone, except my father.”

“Where’s the girl?”

When he glanced toward the window, Rosalind signaled Brigitte forward with her finger, ever so slightly. “Which one?”

“The—”

Brigitte cringed at the vile word on his lips, but in that moment she found her English voice. Rich and strong. Calm and controlled. “I’m right here.”

When Herr swiveled, she hammered him in the head with the hoe, and he fell like one of the toy knights in Dietmar’s army, crashing onto the wood floor.

Rosalind swept the gun out of his hand, and as he groaned, Brigitte raced out of the room, out of the cottage, and retched in the brush. A blast of gunshot reverberated through the trees, and in that instant, she knew she’d been fully liberated from the Terrell family and this miserable house.

Rosalind stood at the front door, her black dressing gown whirling like a storm cloud around her. “We have to leave.”

Wiping off her mouth, Brigitte followed her back into the house, stepping over Herr’s body as she reached for the sack with cloth diapers in the bureau and the extra layette Lady Ricker had sent before the birth.

Her hands shook as she packed Dietmar’s wooden knight and a change of clothing for herself, but Rosalind didn’t seem to tremble at all as she slipped the key for the Wolseley out of Herr’s pocket.

“Should we bury him?” Brigitte asked, unable to look at Herr again.

Rosalind shook her head. “The rats can have his body.”

Brigitte felt as if she were drowning in the rusty smell of blood, the lingering smoke from Herr’s gun.

“We must hurry,” Rosalind urged, her suitcase in hand. “My mother will kill us both if she finds us.”

Apparently Lady Ricker no longer wanted to feed any of them.

Brigitte froze on the doorstep, images swirling in her mind. For more than two years, this cottage had been her den. An unsafe place, and yet she could hardly remember the world on the other side of these trees. The outside seemed large and looming. Impossible and terrifying.

How was she going to live out there?

Rosalind was in the driver’s seat of the car, starting the engine. And Brigitte heard baby girl crying in the garden.

Lauf.

She could almost hear Dietmar whispering to her again. And she knew she had to run, for her life and for this baby.

Gears grated as Rosalind began reversing the car, and Brigitte pounded on the hood.

“Wait,” she demanded before rushing to the garden.

If she hadn’t stopped her, Rosalind would have driven off, without Brigitte or her daughter.





CHAPTER 43





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A steel-colored Porsche was parked along the river road, beside the Range Rover. As Quenby stepped out of the forest, the door opened and a man in his early sixties emerged. She stared at him in shock.

“Mr. Graham?” No one at the syndicate called him Evan to his face.

He rounded the car, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved plaid shirt. She’d never seen him wearing anything except a business suit.

“Good morning, Quenby.”

“What—?” She forced her words to form. “What are you doing in Newhaven?”