“Well, that was my stepmother,” he said. “I do wish I’d had more of a relationship with my real mother. But she’s safe in Oxford. And that gives me comfort.”
Ilse swayed as the car rolled over a bump in the road. “Do you think you’ll see her again?”
Friedrich shifted his hands on the steering wheel. “I hope so. Though none of us knows what all of this will bring to our doorstep. I would hope a great many people will be reunited with their loved ones in the end.”
Ilse held Daniel closer to her and stared out the windscreen.
Not long after, Friedrich handed Audrey the directions he’d been given to the Von Albrechts’, and she navigated them the final few minutes. They pulled off the main road onto what could hardly be called a side road—it was more of a beaten path through the forest—and Friedrich had to slow the car to a crawl to avoid bottoming out on the large tree roots and holes of the forest floor. The house was well concealed, and Audrey was reassured. After a kilometre or so, the path widened at the edge of a clearing and a large stone house came into view.
“What’s that?” Ilse said suddenly. “There, on the grass. Just there.”
Audrey craned her neck.
“Oh fuck,” Friedrich swore, braking to a stop.
“What is it?” Audrey demanded. “What do you see?”
“There’s a body,” Ilse said shakily. “There’s a body on the lawn. A man, I think.”
Friedrich shifted gears and backed the car into the woods again, a good twenty feet away from the clearing.
“Stay here,” he said sharply, opening his door.
“What are you doing?” Audrey hissed. “You don’t have your gun!”
“Yes, I do,” Friedrich said, and he disappeared beneath the car for several seconds before emerging, pistol in his hand.
He strode toward the house, gun raised.
“I’m going, too,” Audrey said, scrambling out of the back and hurrying after him.
“Audrey, no!” Ilse called. “Wait!”
“Audrey, for God’s sake,” Friedrich muttered. “Stay behind me then. Right behind me. And keep an eye on the trees.”
She crept along in his wake as he entered the clearing. A crow took flight from a nearby tree, cawing and flapping its wings. Audrey scanned the tree line but saw no other sign of movement.
They reached the prone man on the ground. The grass around him was smeared with dark brown, dried blood. Audrey looked away as her stomach turned, but Friedrich knelt beside him.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“I’m guessing Henrik Von Albrecht, Wendelein’s husband. He matches the description I was given, and this is their house. He’s been shot in the chest. Dead a while. At least a day or two.” Friedrich was still for a moment, then slid the man’s eyelids shut.
As he rose, Audrey took a deep breath. “Friedrich—” she began, but he cut across her.
“Do you smell that?”
She sniffed the air, then looked up at the house. “Smoke.”
“Not from the chimney though,” he said, pointing. “The house is smouldering.”
It was. Dark grey curls drifted skyward from the roof and what remained of the broken and burned-out windows. The grass around the foundation of the building was scorched and littered with debris. This place was meant to keep Ilse safe from harm, but all that remained was the blistered detritus of a defeated possibility.
“This was targeted,” Audrey said. “It has to have been.”
“Yes.”
They stood together on the lawn as the reality of their circumstances hit. Everything they had done, the risks they had taken to get Ilse and Daniel here, were all for naught. They would have to turn around and go back to Berlin. Audrey’s mind began to spiral. To escape to the Netherlands had been their best answer to the cell’s ultimatum, and the futility of the whole venture settled itself inside her chest like some crouching spider.
She glanced back at the woods, the car. How would she break the news to Ilse? What would happen to them now?
The sun shone overhead, glowing against the robin’s-egg-blue sky, the hint of early spring, and a breeze blew through the clearing. The man’s body and the smoking house clashed impossibly with the idyllic scenery.
A thought occurred to Audrey. “What about his wife? Wendelein?”
“She could be anywhere. Abducted? She could have made it farther than him and been shot in the woods.”
They both scanned the edge of the forest around them.
“It’s too big to search,” Audrey said dully, turning her attention back to the house. “She could be inside. Let’s go look.”
The front door was open, scorched from flame.
“I don’t know whether it’s safe to go in,” Friedrich said. “Likely not. It could collapse at any moment given the state it’s in.”
“Nothing we’re doing is safe, Friedrich. We have to at least look,” Audrey said.
He sighed in resignation. “Come on, then.”
