“No! It’s Unferth’s. You told me that.” Next to her, he struggled with his bonds. “And you’re not stupid. You got in that vehicle because you cared.”
“Everyone says I’m a hero, but I’m just stupid, stupid. And now Ray’s dead.” She collapsed onto the pillow, drained but still heaving. “Ray’s dead and Mom and Carl are—are—”
“They’re safe. You’ll see them soon.”
His voice sounded strong and reassuring, as if she could invest hope in him, but nothing he promised could change how empty and crushed her chest felt. “I’ve lost everything.”
“Not me,” he said. “You won’t lose me. Not ever.”
He couldn’t mean that, not after what she’d done. She’d become the type of person she’d been required to report when she found bruises in an exam, a nut job who ought to be in jail.
“I love you.”
Despite her violence and tears, instead of telling her off like she deserved, he’d said...he loved her. Her next breath wasn’t so loud in the quiet room, not so hot and achy, so she took another while his words ricocheted and expanded in her soul. He loved her. What he’d said a little while ago about digging up, not down, when life turned into a pile, wasn’t as useless as she’d thought. If she chose to start over with him, wherever they lived, whatever she decided to do, maybe they could build a future. Because he loved her.
She wanted to share her discovery, and she knew how to begin. Stretching, she shifted closer and looked into his face. The blindfold was askew enough that he could probably see under the edge as she bent to his lips. This kiss was slow, not rushed. Felt in her soul, not merely in her body, it linked two people who shared everything, and she didn’t think it would ever stop.
“I love you.” His words wrapped her in security. “Untie me so I can hold you.”
“I love you too.” The words felt right, but they sounded too quiet and tiny to mark the decision she’d made. She could turn off the lamp next to the bed, or she could take her chances that his love was strong enough to see everything. “I love you.” This time she said it louder, louder than the tearing sound of the restraint straps as she pulled them apart, louder than her heart pounding in her chest as she ignored the light switch.
Freed, his arms crushed her into his embrace.
She slid two fingers under the towel and lifted. Nothing on her outside could be worse than the inside she’d showed him, and he loved her. “Look at me.”
The shop around the corner was a type Theresa recognized as universal, one that displayed today’s pastries in front of yesterday’s plastic-wrapped sandwiches and cigarettes. While Wulf ordered breakfast in tourist English, she glanced at a stack of newspapers. A photo above the fold featured the stone facade of the National Museum disrupted by an ambulance and three police cars.
“Buy the paper.” Her stomach churned as if she’d slammed five espressos, even though she hadn’t yet had her first. From the front page an official portrait of Direktøren Olaf Haukssen, 1935—2014, stared at her. His aristocratic white eyebrows were lost in the gray newsprint.
“Here.” She pulled Wulf away from the register, but the shopkeeper and the glass windows made her shoulders creep with anxiety, so she stepped outside and put her back to the stone wall before she pointed at the article. “What’s it say?”
He traded her for the bag of pastries. “I don’t read Danish.”
“What?” She had to remember to close her mouth. “You freaking speak forty languages.”
“Not modern Danish.” With his eyebrows bunched toward his nose, he studied the paper. “Guys in my profession like hot spots, not cold, stable ones.”
“I thought you were pretending with the cashier!” Reaching over his arm, she jabbed at the image of the museum. Snowflakes melted on its surface, leaving splotches like pockmarks. “Police can’t be a good thing. And two dates by Dr. Haukssen.”
“Død.” His finger paused under one word. “I’m sure that means dead.”
When a dark, forgotten thought flooded out of her stomach, she had to grab his arm to steady herself. The contact didn’t halt her spreading fear. “We overlooked something yesterday.”
“I think stikke means stab.”
“Dr. Haukssen said he’d heard Geatish twice before. Once when his father was killed.”
“Uh-huh.” He frowned at the page.
“The second time.”
Wulf raised his eyes from the paper, and she saw comprehension. A passing cross-country skier who had to step sideways said something rude to them, but she didn’t care.
She spoke the thought they must have shared. “We forgot to ask when he heard it again.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Theresa’s head bobbed as the taxi van, its defroster maxed to counter the body heat produced by four men and her, slogged west from Copenhagen. After she and Wulf had explained the news of Dr. Haukssen’s murder, the interior had fallen into silence. Jammed between Wulf and Chris Deavers, she fought to remain alert despite the hypnotic effects of continuous white-on-white swirling snow.
“Rest.” Settling his arm around her shoulders, Wulf tucked her as near as their lap belts allowed. “It’s probably another half hour.” On the map the Lejre exit was twenty-five miles from the outskirts of Copenhagen, but blizzard conditions tripled the driving time.
If she didn’t talk, she’d fall asleep, likely with her mouth open, which wasn’t her ideal pose. “So how’d you know the guy who gave you the weapons?”
Cruz half turned from the front passenger seat. “Yeah, before I go loco from all this damn snow, what’s the story with your friend Guleed?”
Wulf shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
“Dude, this van is not in a hurry.” Even Kahananui sounded tense. He’d kept both hands on the steering wheel for the last hour, counter to his normal laid-back attitude.
As if to delay, Wulf lifted a paper coffee cup that she knew was already empty.
“Well?” Theresa prodded.
“Fine. Guleed impressed me when he was a kid, and I felt like doing a good deed, so I helped him get an education. After the shit hit the fan in Somalia, I put him in touch with someone who arranged a refugee visa.” His shrug brushed her shoulder. “That’s all.”
“Last night he made it sound like more.” Cruz kept pushing.
“Gave him some money to buy his first grocery. Wasn’t much.”
“Well, now he has four,” Cruz said.
“And apparently a crate of guns under his bed,” Theresa added. Judging from what she’d seen the team load in the back, Guleed had probably handed over all the assault rifles in Denmark.
When Cruz snickered, Wulf knuckled the back of his head.
“What?” Reaching past Wulf, she cracked the window to blast away her fogginess, but she couldn’t endure the wind for longer than five seconds. “What’d I say that was funny?”
“He’s laughing at your word choice,” Deavers said from her left.
“Guns? Oh, that.” She rolled her eyes, replaying the ditty sergeants liked to drill into lieutenants who misspoke. This is my weapon, this is my gun, this one’s for shooting, this one’s for fun. “Glad you enjoy twelve-year-old humor.”