Chapter Twenty-One
Caroline
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I COULDN’T STOP CRYING. I’d been sitting by the window, steaming up the glass and watching the rain fall ever since the unknown officer had left me in the impersonal room with only a tissue and an insipid cup of coffee for moral support.
And in all that time, as the minutes crawled past on the clock ticking happily on the other side of the space, I hadn’t been able to prevent my tears from cascading down my face with grief.
Pulling in a shaky breath, I accepted that was what my emotion was.
I was grieving. For Harper, for the love I bore him and for the relationship I’d thought we’d share.
For the future I fucking deserved. After everything I’d been through, all the hardship and suffering I’d seen and endured, I warranted that happy ending, didn’t I?
“Well, don’t I?” I croaked the words into the pane, resting my temple against the cold glass as the pain washed over me again.
So much hurt, and for what?
Harper was gone. Nobody there would let me see him, and I was alone.
Not alone in the ominous Fortorus way, which meant locked up and waiting for a whipping, or alone and hiding from dangerous armed sentries. But alone in a different and somehow altogether more desolate way. Alone in the entire world—a woman cut free from every anchor she’d known.
I was finally emancipated, but what good was my liberation without the man I loved?
I’d always known that his arrest was a hypothetical possibility, but once we’d made it to Zurich and been to the bank, I’d put the idea out of my mind, the threat fading with every passing day.
I hadn’t seen the day the police banged on our door coming, or foreseen Harper’s imminent incarceration, and my lack of preparedness made the reality all the harder.
Cuddling the gray blanket one of the police had given me around my shoulders, I imagined it was Harper’s arms around me and regretted the flimsy outfit I’d chosen in the five minutes they’d given me to dress.
The truth was, I didn’t really own anything warm anymore.
Hell, I didn’t technically own anything, and in the time we’d had together, Harper had brought me the kind of attire we’d both thought would be playful and sexy while we hunkered down in Fabian’s house.
I snorted at the absurdity of that idea in the shadowy light of the cold police station. There would be nothing playful or sexy about my future anymore. I couldn’t even see anything to muster a smile about.
Reaching for the cold coffee, I acknowledged that the worst of it all was that I couldn’t argue with the police’s actions. I couldn’t defend Harper. What he’d done was indefensible, and if I hadn’t been in love with the guy, I’d have been baying to see his tight ass in prison.
It was only justice, after all. Justice for Fern, for Jean, and for all the others.
Justice for every woman who’d been held hostage by the state and treated badly.
Harper’s wasn’t the scalp most of those women really wanted—that was Jackson—but I knew, given the opportunity, they would have taken Adam’s.
It might have helped ease their suffering to know he’d finally got what he deserved.
Sipping at the unappealing liquid, I realized if those women were to have fairness under international law, then that meant Harper had to go to jail, and I had to suffer on without him. Or, alternatively, if I was to have personal joy, then those women had to forfeit their justice.
Whichever way I looked at the conundrum, there seemed to be no end to the woe.
“Miss Craness?”
I turned to find the officer who’d arrested Harper standing in the doorway. God knew how long she’d been there waiting for me to notice her.
“Yes.” My voice was hoarse.
“I’m Officer Ilsa Kaspar.” She closed the door behind her. “We met earlier.”
“I remember.”
“Has someone offered you something to eat?” She tilted her head at me in what I assumed was feigned sympathy. I was sure she didn’t really have any compassion for a woman who’d fallen for an international war criminal, but she was doing her best to pretend she cared.
“No.” I coughed to try and clear my throat. “But I’m not hungry.”
“I apologize for how this has been for you.” She gestured around the ashen room. “We know you are a victim and not a perpetrator.”
Staring at her through swollen eyes, I considered how to respond. “It doesn’t make much difference now. Adam was my ticket to a future I wanted, and now, he’s gone.”
“You are safe here.” She stepped closer. “You’re eligible to claim asylum in Switzerland, and you will be given somewhere to stay.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, turning back to the window.
I didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but life as a single refugee in a country where I couldn’t even speak their languages hadn’t been top of my wish list.
I missed Harper, missed the warmth of his body and the way he always seemed able to deal with crazy situations with an enticing air of authority.
Rightly or wrongly, I trusted him, and even though I could intellectually rationalize his loss, I couldn’t wrap my head around the vacuum emotionally, couldn’t envision an actual existence without him.
I was in love with him. I’d made promises to him, and he to me. How could that have evaporated with the issuing of an arrest warrant?
“He wants to see you.” Her brow furrowed as though she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to tell me so.
“Adam?” My attention slid back to her in an instant. “Is that possible?”
“Not really.” Her hesitant tone belied her decision.
“But...” My pulse picked up its pace. “It is, technically.”
Her lips tugged into a smile. “Technically, yes. For what it’s worth, I do think he might actually love you.”
“You’ve seen him?” There was unexpected consolation in that. If I couldn’t be with him, then at least I could be close to someone who had.
“I’ve been interviewing him since we brought him back here.” She sighed wearily.
“Is he okay?”
Despite everything he’d done at home, all the blood that was on his hands thanks to his compliance and the way he’d overseen the nightmare at Fortorus, I didn’t feel anything but affection for him.
He might have been a war criminal, but he’d also been the man who saved me, and there was no getting past that.
The whole situation was totally fucked up.
She laughed dryly. “That’s what he asked about you.”
My lips curled at that. It was good to know that, even as he faced a life sentence, he still gave a damn about me.
“So, can I see him?” I spun in my seat to face her. “I know it’s not allowed, but even the worst prisoners deserve visitors, don’t they?”
“And is he?” She stalked closer and pulled at the seat opposite mine.
“Is he what?”
“Is he as bad as his track record suggests?” Her gaze was on me as she sank onto the seat. “The commander general of the largest concentration camp Europe has seen since 1945.”
“I know he’s done terrible things.” My brow furrowed, thinking of the dank portion of hell he’d been responsible for. “But I’ve never witnessed any of those things personally. To me, he’s always been caring and supportive.”
And as sexy as fuck.
I held back the final line, but it was there on the tip of my tongue. “He rescued me from sentries who wanted to hurt me, and he released scores of women as we fled the camp.”
“So, he can be reasonable?”
Magnificent. I blew out a breath to suppress the urge to say the words aloud. He can be magnificent. “Yes, very reasonable.”
“That’s good to know, danke.”
“So?” I probed, increasingly hopeful that the officer might yet be pliant to my demand. It had, after all, been her who’d mentioned the idea of me seeing him. “Can we have a few minutes together?”
She eyed me thoughtfully. “Possibly. We’re looking for his cooperation on a number of matters, and, if we get what we want, then you could be a wonderful reward.”
“Reward?” I spat the reply at her. “I’m not a fucking sweetener, Officer. I’m a grown woman.”
After so many months of being degraded by my own government, I couldn’t believe I even had to tell her so. What had happened to human rights? After everything our ancestors had fought and died for, when had we become so content to give them away?
“I understand.” She patted the top of my hand as if I were a small child. “Give me some time, Miss Craness. I shall try to help.”
Time? I glanced at the ceiling. Endless, relentless time seemed to be all I had.
“In the meantime, come with me.” She climbed deftly to her feet and headed for the door. “Let’s see if I can get you something to eat.”