Chapter 11 Will
Will
The Baroness left in the morning. I stood at the window of the safe house, watching the street below without really seeing it.
The gray Bern morning pressed against the glass like something desperate to get in.
Somewhere out there, the Baroness was walking into another meeting, another risk, and another opportunity for the conspiracy to claim another victim.
And there we were. Watching. Waiting. Observing.
Just as Manakin had ordered.
Thomas was pacing again—back and forth across the sitting room, his footsteps marking time like a countdown to something neither of us could name.
Bisch sat motionless in a chair by the door, his pale eyes fixed on nothing, his weathered hands resting on his knees.
Otto had taken the car and followed the Baroness at a distance, despite her explicit instructions to stay behind.
“She will be furious,” Bisch had said when Otto left.
“She will be alive,” Otto had replied.
That had been the end of the discussion.
Now we waited.
“She should have checked in by now,” Thomas said, stopping mid-pace. “The meeting was scheduled for nine-thirty. It’s nearly ten.”
“The clerk might have been late. These things take time.”
“Or something went wrong.”
Bisch stirred in his chair. “The journalist keeps a suite at the Bellevue. If the meeting went long, she may have moved there for privacy.”
“Or she could be dead in an alley somewhere with a spearhead card on her chest.” Thomas’s voice was harsh. “Like everyone else who’s tried to help us.”
“Thomas.” I turned from the window. “Breathe. We don’t know anything yet.”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? We never know anything until it’s too late.”
He resumed his pacing. I turned back to the window.
The minutes crawled past like wounded things.
The phone rang at eleven-thirty.
I crossed the room in three strides, snatched the receiver from its cradle, and pressed it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“William.” Otto’s voice. “Something has happened.”
My blood turned to ice. “Where is she?”
“I do not know. I followed her to the hotel and watched her go inside. She was supposed to meet in the lobby bar, but she never appeared.” His voice cracked.
“I waited twenty minutes, then went inside to look. The suite—she must have gone there instead—it is destroyed. There are signs of struggle and . . . there is blood on the carpet.”
Thomas was at my shoulder now, his face pale. I tilted the receiver so he could hear.
“The concierge?” I asked.
“He says he saw nothing, heard nothing, but he is lying. I can see it in his eyes. Someone paid him, or threatened him, or both.” Otto’s breath was ragged.
“I found a witness, a maid. She saw men taking a woman down the service stairs. She described the Baroness. They put her in a black van with no markings. It left the car park and drove east.”
East. Toward the mountains. Toward Adlerhorst.
“Otto, where are you now?”
“Still at the hotel, but I am leaving. I am going after them.”
“Wait for us. We’ll come to you. We’ll—”
“There is no time.” His voice hardened with something that sounded like grief transformed into purpose. “I know the roads and the shortcuts. If I leave now, I may be able to reach them before they get her inside those walls.”
“Otto, if you go in alone, you’ll die. You know what that fortress looks like. One man against—”
“Then I will die trying.” His words were quiet. “She saved my life, William. She gave me everything I have. I cannot sit idle while they take her to that place.”
“Otto—”
“Tell Bisch that he was right about the eastern drainage channel. It is the way in.” A pause. “And tell him . . . tell him I am sorry I doubted him. He is a good man. I should have seen it sooner.”
The line went dead.
I stood there holding the receiver, listening to the empty static. Thomas’s hand was on my shoulder, gripping hard enough to bruise.
“Will.” His voice was rough. “Talk to me.”
“They have her.” The words came out flat, detached, as if someone else were speaking them. “They took her from the hotel. Otto is going after them alone.”
“Then we go, too.”
I set down the receiver and turned to face him. Behind us, Bisch had risen from his chair, his face unreadable.
“Manakin ordered us not to take active measures,” I said slowly. “If we do this—”
“I know.” Thomas’s jaw tightened.
“And you’re still okay with that?”
Thomas stared for a moment. I watched his face. Fear, anger, and determination all warred beneath the surface. Then something settled in his expression, and I saw the man I had fallen in love with years ago, the one who would walk into fire for the people he cared about, consequences be damned.
“Will, they have the Baroness. Observation isn’t going to cut it anymore.” He reached out and took my hand. “We knew this moment was coming. Whatever it takes, remember?”
He was right.
The time had come.
“Bisch.” I turned to face him. “You know Adlerhorst and the drainage channel Otto mentioned. Can you get us there?”
Bisch studied me for a long moment. Then he nodded once. “I can try.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It is all I have.” He moved toward the door, his limp more pronounced than usual. “I will get the weapons. We leave in five minutes.”
He disappeared down the hallway, leaving Thomas and me alone.
“This is really happening,” Thomas said quietly. “We’re really doing this.”
“Yeah.”
“No going back.”
“No.”
He pulled me close, one hand on the back of my neck, his forehead pressed against mine.
We stood there for a moment, breathing together, saying without words all the things that needed to be said.
Then he stepped back, and something like a grin flickered across his face. It was sharp, reckless, utterly Thomas.
“Well,” he said, “there goes that career. Think the Baroness will hire us when this is all over? Or maybe I could go to culinary school, actually learn to cook. You’re pretty useless, but at least you’re pretty.”
Despite everything, despite the fear, the uncertainty, the knowledge that we might not survive the night, I smiled and shook my head.
“If we get her out alive, I’ll ask her, but no culinary school. You’re really a terrible cook.”
“Hey!” He jerked back, a sadistic grin curling his mouth. “You take that back!”
Bisch reappeared with a bag over his shoulder, heavy with weapons we weren’t authorized to carry for a mission we weren’t authorized to run in a country where we had no business being.
“The car is ready,” he said.