“Who is she?” one of the British officials asked.
Teri didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But the observers’ tent was small. And the sun was scorchingly hot this time of the afternoon, so she, like they, were beneath it, watching the SEALs practicing the takedown of the plane. It was kind of hard not to hear their conversation.
“Alyssa Locke,” Lt. Tom Paoletti answered. “Former Navy, currently with the FBI. Counterterrorism unit.”
“Ah,” said the one who looked like James Bond. Suave and sophisticated, charismatic and handsome with a touch of gray at his temples, he was obviously in command.
All three of the Brits were from the Secret Intelligence Service or SIS, although they’d probably never admit it.
“She’s quite good,” said the one who looked like a younger version of Q.
The SEALs had just completed another practice run, and, second time in a row, Alyssa Locke had killed one of the SEALs before being killed herself.
“This isn’t even her real strength. She’s one of the best snipers I’ve ever worked with,” Tom Paoletti said easily. “But her instincts are excellent across the board. It was a lucky day for the Teams when she went into the Bureau. I know I sleep easier knowing she’s part of the FBI unit backing up my men.”
All four of them were silent for a moment, watching as Alyssa and the others who’d been recruited to play mock terrorists came out of the plane—the real World Airlines 747 that had finally arrived.
As hot as it was out here, there was no doubt it was really heating up on board the aircraft.
And what it must be like on the hijacked plane with the doors locked shut and no working sanitary facilities was too terrible to try to imagine.
“Lieutenant Starrett’s still working the kinks out,” Paoletti continued. “Having Locke play tango would be a challenge for anyone. He’ll get her next time.”
As they watched, Alyssa Locke accepted a bottle of water from the senior chief with a smile. She opened it and drank deeply, nodding as he spoke to her.
“Lovely woman,” commented James Bond.
Alyssa Locke was lovely to look at. She’d changed her clothes since this morning when Teri had first officially met her. She’d put on some kind of lightweight jumpsuit that covered her from her ankles to her wrists as per the customs of K-stan. But the suit was belted, which accentuated her trim figure. She wasn’t a voluptuous woman by any definition, but in that outfit, surrounded by a crowd of testosterone, she was unquestionably, strikingly female.
It was more than obvious that Alyssa was old friends with Stan Wolchonok. But how old and how friendly Teri didn’t know.
She walked toward them, wishing that she didn’t have to check in with Lieutenant Starrett, knowing that it would look strange if she walked past Stan without saying anything, hoping it wouldn’t look as if she were checking out the competition if she stopped to say hello while he was talking to Alyssa Locke.
“Hey, Lieutenant.” Stan greeted her first, and her heart leapt at his welcoming smile. “Where’s your flack jacket?”
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Up by the observers’ tent.”
“Better than in the helo but not by much. It belongs on your body. Hey, Mike Muldoon’s looking for you.”
Great. So much for leaping hearts. She didn’t stop walking. “Thanks, Stan.”
She headed away from him, toward Sam Starrett, who was deep in discussion with two other men.
“Hey, Lieutenant, how’s the head?” Jay Lopez asked as she walked past. He was sprawled in the shade of the wing, next to Cosmo and Silverman, but now he sat up.
“The head ... ?” She was clueless.
“The bump,” he reminded her. “Uh-oh,” Silverman teased. “Amnesia strikes. That’s not a good sign.”
“No,” she said. “No, I’m fine. I just ... It was so not a big deal, I didn’t even ...”
Silverman was grinning at her. “Maybe Lopez should, you know, check you out again, as the team’s medical corpsman, huh? Like maybe during dinner tonight?”
Jay Lopez was a handsome man with heavily lidded brown eyes and exotic cheekbones that were flushing with embarrassment.
“You’re Reserve, Lieutenant, right?” Silverman continued. “Which means in a few weeks you’ll be a civilian again. Which means the fact that Lopez here is enlisted won’t matter. Which means—”
“Stop,” Lopez said. “Sorry, Lieutenant.” He met her eyes briefly, then glanced past her.
Teri turned to see that Stan had come up behind her. He wasn’t close enough to be part of the conversation, yet it was more than clear that he was there if she needed him.
But there was nothing threatening in either Silverman’s or Lopez’s eyes. Silverman was teasing, claiming that Lopez was interested in her. Although ... was it possible this was just another exercise Stan had set up in advance?
But then Silverman suddenly looked as if he’d swallowed a pincushion as Cosmo said something into his ear. “I beg your pardon, Lieutenant,” he said. “I didn’t realize you and the senior were, uh, special friends.”
She glanced behind her again, uncertain how to reply to that with Stan listening in, but the senior chief was gone.
She murmured some nonsense—“Don’t worry about it”—and went to find Starrett.
A quick “I’m here if you need me, sir,” and she was heading back toward the observers’ tent, trying not to be too obvious as she looked around for Stan.
But then there he was. Maneuvering Muldoon to an intercept point directly in her path.
“Hey, Teri.” Mike Muldoon really was remarkably good-looking. Even with a smudge of dirt on his face.
“Hey, Mike.” She forced a smile as Stan all but pushed Muldoon toward her. Dammit, Stan, don’t do this. “Sorry about this morning.”
Muldoon shook his head. “It’s not your fault that I choked.”
“Let’s go,” Lieutenant Starrett called. “Time out’s over. Let’s do this again, and let’s do it right this time.”
Muldoon looked about as relieved as she felt. Saved.
“See you later,” she said.
“Sure,” Muldoon said. “Ouch! I mean, do you, um, have plans for dinner?”
Teri hadn’t seen it, but she was pretty sure that Stan had stepped on the back of Muldoon’s boot. Hard.
“My only plan is to eat in the glorious basement of the hotel as usual,” Teri said. She included Stan in her reply, looking directly at him. “Maybe I’ll see you guys down there.”
“Great,” Muldoon said.
Stan said nothing. But he glanced at her. Just briefly.
She couldn’t begin to guess what he was thinking.
Which was probably just as well, since she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know.
“... let the passengers go?” Max was saying as Gina started awake. “Over.”
She was exhausted, it was hotter than hell with the sun pounding down on the plane, and the stench of humanity was close to unbearable. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept.
“Over,” Max said again, his rich baritone voice coming through clearly over the radio’s speakers. He’d been talking to her—and through her to the hijackers—nearly nonstop for more hours than she could count.
It was almost funny. She had talked more with Max than she’d talked to any other man—including the ones she’d slept with.
Trent Engelman was not the master of conversation, that was for sure, unless, maybe, he was talking about his new car or his microbrewery or his plans to get work as a musician with Wynton Marsalis’s touring band after graduation.
Yeah, right.
When Trent did talk, it was without listening. Gina got the feeling that when she spoke, Max listened with every cell in his body.
“Max, how old are you?” she asked now. Bob was dozing, anyway. And Max didn’t have to convince her to let the passengers go. “Over.”
He didn’t hesitate, the way some people might’ve at her non sequitur. “I’m forty. Over.”
Oh, man. Her own father wasn’t even forty-five.
“Are you married?” she asked.
His answer came back as quickly. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Because no one in their right mind would ever marry me.”
“Why? Are you hideous looking?”
He laughed. “Yeah.”
She smiled. “Warts and long, greasy hair?”
“Mostly it’s the fangs that keep the women away,” he told her.
She glanced at Bob. He was definitely asleep. Al was awake and glowering but he didn’t speak English. “Helga told me you’re really good-looking. I think the phrase she used was blindingly handsome.”
“Yeah, well, she’s good at telling people what they want to hear.”
“I didn’t want to hear that,” Gina told him, trying to get comfortable in her spot on the floor. She had to keep her legs crossed, tailor style, or her knees tucked in against her chest.
It wasn’t just that there was no room in the tiny cockpit. It was mostly the way creepy Al started drooling when she stretched out her legs. She alternated between wishing she were wearing jeans and being grateful as hell—because of the heat—that she had on her shorts. “I wanted you to be short and rumpled. Kind of like—you know, if they made a movie of this?—Richard Dreyfus would play you.”
She’d always had a major thing for Richard Dreyfus. Ever since she saw Close Encounters when she was ten.
“We’re getting a little off track here,” he said, his FM radio announcer’s voice like velvet in her ears.
“Bob’s asleep,” she said. “Will you meet me for a drink after this is over?”
That one made him pause.
And Gina knew. There wasn’t going to be an after, at least not for her. Max thought the hijackers were going to kill her. The senator’s daughter would certainly be the first person they’d shoot if commandos stormed the plane, that was for sure.
“They’re going to kill me, aren’t they?” She’d suspected it all along. She knew that her fate had been sealed from the moment she’d first stood up and told the hijackers she was Karen Crawford.
When Bob and Al and their buddies decided it was time to play hardball, she was going to be the ball. They were going to kill her, but first they were going to hurt her. Badly.
“No,” Max said now, “they’re not.”
She didn’t believe him. “I’m scared,” she whispered.
“I’ll meet you,” he told her, something different in his voice, something rough, something no longer so cool and collected. “All right? I will. It may not be until you’re back in New York, but I’ll meet you for a drink. No, for coffee. It has to be a cup of coffee. God damn it.”
Yeah, she was definitely going to die. He, like Helga, was good at telling people what they wanted to hear. “Max, after this is over, will you go see my parents?”
Another pause. When he spoke, his voice was relaxed again, but she knew he was working hard to get it to sound that way. “Hey, I really need you to stop thinking in terms of worst case scenarios.”
“Tell them it wasn’t as bad as they probably imagined. Tell them I wasn’t alone, that you were with me the whole time. Tell them because of that, I was okay.”
There was another long pause. Then, “How about you tell them that yourself? Because I’m going to get you out of there. Alive. In one piece. Trust me on that, all right?”
“Sure,” she lied. He could try to convince her all he wanted, but his hesitation earlier had told her all she’d needed to know. “But just in case ... Thank you. For everything.” Gina cleared her throat, forced away her fear and self-pity. She wasn’t dead yet. “As long as Bob’s asleep, why don’t you give me a crash course in negotiating. Teach me how to talk these assholes into letting the women with babies get off this plane.”
The emergency exit over the starboard wing silently popped ajar under Muldoon’s expert touch, and Stan gave the hand signal to the surveillance team hidden among the dust and rocks a hundred yards away.
Two clicks over his radio headset was the ready signal, meaning Starrett and Jenk, WildCard and Lopez, and Cosmo and Silverman had all succeeded in quietly unlocking their various egresses onto the practice 747. They were set to rock and roll.
When they did this for real, Lt. Tom Paoletti would be the voice of God. He’d give the go command, his omnipotence coming from the surveillance teams’ reports of the tangos’ exact locations on the plane and from the information from the video cameras. Provided, of course, MacInnough had the cameras up and running by then.
Tonight. The cameras should be in place and working by tonight.
Tom Paoletti would give that go command from the negotiators’ HQ, where Max Bhagat would be helping out. The chief negotiator would request that as many of the terrorists as possible gather in the cockpit to discuss some outrageous proposition that he had absolutely no intention of following up on. But he’d use his powers of persuasion and make it sound really good.
Then, on Paoletti’s go, the team’s snipers would take those tangos out, shooting right through the glass, as the SEALs in Starrett’s team burst into the passenger compartment with a flash and a bang and took out the rest.
It would all be over in a matter of seconds.
Go, go, go!
Stan went through their door with Muldoon in choreographed precision, adrenaline surging, his focus sharp. A target. In his kill zone. He eliminated it, clean and clear.
And then, just that quickly, they were secure.
“Karmody!” Sam Starrett yelled.
“Passenger casualties.” WildCard Karmody consulted his computer. He looked up and grinned. “Zero.”
“Okay,” Starrett said grimly. “Let’s do it again.”
“What, perfect’s not good enough for you?” WildCard asked. “Jesus, Sam, we’ve been going practically nonstop since 0400.”
“What, doing it right once is good enough for you?” Starrett countered, his usually warm drawl clipped and cold. “And it’s Lieutenant, Chief. Next time you question my authority, at least make the effort to address me by rank.”
“Excuse me, Lieutenant Asshole,” WildCard shot back. “Maybe I didn’t go to officer’s school and take a class in how to be a hard-on 101, but it sure as hell seems to me that something needs to be said here besides fucking okay.”
Stan pushed his way forward. The look on Starrett’s face left him little doubt as to his lack of patience. They were all strung pretty tight here, Sam Starrett more than usual. On top of that, stress plus adrenaline plus a whole hell of a lot of testosterone made for some pretty aggressive and uncomfortable physical pressures.
WildCard put that thought exactly into words. “Man, you need to relax.” He laughed. “You need to get laid.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Stan ordered him. He turned to Starrett. “You want him off the team, Lieutenant?”
“Whoa,” WildCard said. “Senior Chief, I—”
Stan silenced him with a single dark look, then turned back to Sam Starrett. Come on, Lieutenant, you know what you have to do to be the kind of leader that Tom Paoletti was.
It was possible that every man there—and woman, because Alyssa Locke was standing there, too; she and her partner and the SAS guys were trying their best to be invisible—understood why Starrett had to get WildCard off his team.
Everyone but WildCard, that is.
“Yeah,” Starrett ground out. It wasn’t easy to kick your best friend off your team. But the man had called him an asshole in front of an audience. How could he do anything else? “Replace him with Knox.”
For the briefest split second, Stan was almost certain that WildCard was going to start to cry. But he didn’t. He also wisely swallowed whatever knee-jerk and probably profane exclamation had been on the tip of his tongue—the kind of expression a man could say to a friend, but not a commanding officer.
Instead he stood at attention, eyes straight ahead. “Lieutenant Starrett, sir,” he said in his best imitation of a real military man. “My sincerest apologies, sir. Request permission, sir, to stand in for Knox until he can be brought out here and up to speed.”
Starrett nodded curtly. “Fine. Let’s run this drill again.”
“How about we do it five more times, just the way we did it this last time, starting with the doors already popped, and then we head in for a rest.” Stan looked at Starrett, knowing that if he had his way, they’d run it fifty more times. “That okay with you, Lieutenant?”
Starrett nodded grudgingly. “Tonight we’ll do it again—in the dark.”
It would be easier across the board under the cover of darkness. If they could do this in broad daylight the way they’d just done, taking down the plane at night would be a walk in the park.
As Stan watched, Starrett moved farther away from the group, away from WildCard Karmody. Up until today he’d managed to be both leader and friend to this group of men, many of whom he’d gone through BUD/S training with as an enlisted man. But in truth, he’d left them—left WildCard—behind a long time ago, when he’d crossed over into officer territory.
And today reality had caught up with them both.
“Chief Karmody.” Starrett gestured with his head for WildCard to step aside, to speak to him privately. He lowered his voice, but Stan knew what he was saying. “You want to stay? Then you continue to address me only with respect.”
“Jesus, Sam—”
“That’s Jesus, Lieutenant Starrett,” Starrett corrected him coldly.
WildCard exhaled a disbelieving burst of air. “Even now? No one can fucking hear us—”
“You better put a sir on that, Chief, or I’ll have Knox out here so fast your head will spin.”
“No one can fucking hear us, sir.”
“I can hear you, Chief,” Starrett told him. “Let me give you a refresher course in the way this team works. I give orders, you follow them. This is not a democracy, there is no discussion unless I ask for one. You keep the wiseass comments to yourself or you’ll be off my team. And on report.”
“Well, that’s fucking lovely. Sir. Some fucking friend you are. Sir.”
“I am your friend,” Starrett said tightly. “But I’m also your commanding officer. If you can’t learn to separate the two and treat me with the same respect you give to Lieutenant Nilsson and Lieutenant Paoletti in a command situation, then I’m going to have to choose for you. And you better believe I’ll choose to be your CO.”
“Yes, sir,” WildCard said. “It’s more than obvious that you already have. Sir.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Starrett growled. “Don’t make me sorry that I’m letting you stay.”
But it was Starrett who turned and walked away. Separating himself even farther from the rest of the team. Heading farther out into officer’s territory. All alone.
“Hey, Senior Chief!” Jenkins pulled Stan’s attention back to the rest of the team. “How about a little extra incentive for those five more times?”
Jenk gave him his best choirboy smile. Uh-oh. That was never good. The petty officer was trying, like he always did, to lighten the mood after an emotional storm. Look out. Someone was going to be in trouble. “How about we do each drill in the same number of seconds or less as we did this last time,” Jenk suggested, “and you get up during chow and sing karaoke?”
Stan. Stan was going to be in trouble. Sing karaoke. Goddamn Jenk. Jesus Christ.
But he looked at the tired and dusty faces of the men around him. With the exception of Starrett and WildCard, who both looked as if their best friend had just died, they all were starting to smile.
“Come on, Senior Chief,” Lopez said.
Stan nodded. “I get to pick the song.” What were the chances they’d have anything he knew and liked on tape? Slim to none. Still, if he left it to them, he’d be up there singing “Like a Virgin” or that teen pop song that Izzy liked so much.
Help.
“And if our timing’s not as tight?” Silverman asked when the whoops and laughter died back down.
Stan looked at them, one at a time. “Then I get to pick your songs.”
Instant energy. It was the kind of challenge this team couldn’t resist. Their timing would be as tight. No, it would be even tighter.
He was so screwed.
No one sat down in the observers’ tent. No one but Helga, that is.
The pretty helicopter pilot—Helga was blanking on her name—stood leaning against one of the support poles, watching Stanley Wolchonok, her heart so painfully obviously on her sleeve. Oh, to be that young again ...
The commander of SEAL Team Sixteen—his name was Lt. Tom Paoletti, Helga knew from consulting her memo pad—stood on the other side of the tent in that feet planted, legs widespread stance of the alpha male. It was an international phenomenon. Avi, her own husband, had stood the very same way as Tom.
Tom. Helga liked to think of the military men by which she was often surrounded by their first names. It was a great equalizer in a world filled with ranks and rates and big egos.
Tom stood talking to three men, all British. Helga flipped repeatedly through her pad, searching for who they might be.
No, they weren’t listed there. There was no mention of any involvement by Great Britain. She hadn’t met these men. Of that she was certain.
Almost certain.
Almost. Dammit.
Out by the plane, the SEALs prepared for another practice run of the hostage rescue. She could see Marte’s Stanley, smack in the middle of a group of strapping young men. They were laughing now.
He’d been right in the middle of things, too, a few minutes ago when they hadn’t been laughing. The observers’ tent was too far away for them to have heard the conversation, but it had been pretty obvious there was a huge amount of tension out there.
And why shouldn’t there be? These few brave men were directly responsible for the lives of the 120 innocent people aboard the hijacked plane.
Helga had glanced at Tom Paoletti as the tension among the SEALs built, but he hadn’t moved an inch, hadn’t unplanted his big feet. He’d kept one eye on his men, sure, but it was obvious that he trusted them to solve whatever problems had come up between them.
Someone’s cell phone rang.
It was the tallest of the Englishmen. The too-good-looking one who fancied himself James Bond’s smarter, more handsome brother. Yes, she’d seen his type plenty of times before.
He answered his phone with a businesslike, “Pierce.” His name, no doubt. After that he just listened, and finally ended the call with an equally brief, “Right. I’m on my way.”
“Trouble?” Tom asked.
Mr. Pierce deposited his phone back into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I’m needed at the airport immediately. Might I talk you into a chopper ride? That way Hawking and Franz can stay here with the car, continue to observe.”
Tom took out his own cell phone, considered it for a half second, then stepped out from under the tent, repocketing the thing. “Yo, Jenk!” he shouted over to the SEALs.
Helga had to smile. He was an awful lot like her husband.
One of the SEALs, freckle faced and adorable, impossibly young-looking, came running. “Yes, sir?”
“Check with Starrett and the senior chief. See if it’s okay with them if Lieutenant Howe makes a quick trip to the airport. Rob Pierce needs to get there pronto.”
“Aye aye, sir!” The baby SEAL toddled off.
Teri Howe—that was her name—had stopped leaning and stood up. As Helga watched, she eyed Rob Pierce, surreptitiously checking him out.
Yes, indeed, young lady—definitely beware. Robbie was the sort who would manage to put his hands all over her as he got into the helicopter, unless she made a point to keep her distance.
Over by the plane, Jenk spoke earnestly, first to the cowboy—Helga checked her memo pad: Lt. Roger Starrett—and then to Marte’s Stanley.
Stanley turned, shielding his eyes against the glare, and gazed over toward the tent. He looked at them all—Teri, Helga, Tom, and Robbie and Co.—then spoke briefly to Jenk, who came running back.
“No problem, L.T.,” Jenk reported. “Senior just wanted to let you know that we were going to be finishing up within the next thirty minutes, so Lieutenant Howe should make an immediate return trip.” He grinned. “I think he’s in a hurry to get dinner over with. We’ve got a wager going, and if he loses—which he’s gonna—he’s going to have to get up and sing with the karaoke machine.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Tom told the younger man with a laugh. “Although I’m not sure whether to be there or to stay far away. Lieutenant Howe.” He gestured for her to approach. “Have you met Robert Pierce?”
“No, sir.”
Robbie held her hand just a little too long, gazed into her eyes just a little too deeply. When Helga glanced over, Stanley was watching. Intently.
Okay, maybe this attraction wasn’t so one-sided after all. In fact, if looks could kill, old Robbie would’ve been a smoldering pile of ash.
“Pierce is with the SIS,” Tom said to Teri. “He needs a lift to the airport, but then we’ll need you right back here for transport to the hotel.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“How long have you been flying choppers?” Helga heard Robbie ask Teri as they walked away. Come here often, babe?
Stanley watched them all the way to the helicopter. Watched them lift into the sky. He would’ve kept on watching, but the cowboy—she consulted her pad: Lt. Roger Starrett—called him.
Stanley glanced at Helga briefly, as if suddenly aware that she was watching him. Glanced at her again as he was walking back to the plane.
Ah, yes, she’d caught him doing something he didn’t want anyone to see. There was something going on between him and Teri Howe, of that she was now certain.
But was it love or was it merely sex?
Helga suspected the answer to that question was something Stanley didn’t even know himself.
It was a tough one, all right.
Almost as tough as the question she’d first asked as a ten-year-old. How do you know when you’re in love?
She’d asked Annebet Gunvald one morning, after she’d gone to visit Marte, only to find that her friend had left to tend to an ailing aunt with her mother.
Annebet had been heading to the barn to do her chores and Helga had tagged along, willing as always to help. She would have done anything—even muck out the horse’s stall—to remain in Annebet’s golden, glowing company.
“How do you know when you’re in love?”
Annebet didn’t laugh, didn’t tease. She just kept on sweeping the floor by her father’s workbench. And when she answered, it was slowly. Carefully. As if she were giving Helga’s question great thought and consideration.
“When you look into his eyes, and you’re more alive than you’ve ever felt,” Annebet said. “When the very breath you take sends both fear and joy rushing through you, and you feel as if you might die if you can’t see him again—right now. When you want to shout and laugh and cry and curse all at once, when you burn for him to touch you, to make love to you, even though all your life you’ve been told that you mustn’t, that you shouldn’t, that you can’t. It’s when you feel yourself on the verge of becoming everything you’ve ever dreamed of being, when you can nearly touch your own potential because this other person gives you all of his strength and his power and you know he’d give you the very breath from his lungs if you asked. And you realize that you’ll never be alone again because there’s a piece of him that you’ll carry with you, forever, in your heart. A heart that is infinitely bigger than it was just a week or two ago.”
Helga was silent. Wide-eyed. Terrified. She wasn’t quite sure she wanted to fall in love if it was going to make her feel all that. Fear as well as joy?
“It’s important, mouse,” Annebet said quietly, “that the boy you love feels all these things about you, too. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way. You must be very sure of his feelings before you let him make love to you.”
Make love. Marte had told her all about making love. “Do people really ... do what dogs and horses do?” Helga dared to ask. “Marte said that men turn into snarling beasts.”
Annebet laughed. “She’s been talking to crazy old Fru Lillilund again. Can you really picture your father—or mine—acting like a snarling beast? And our mothers letting them get away with it?”
Helga hadn’t considered that.
“It’s not like that at all, mouse. It’s beautiful and tender and the most wonderful, special thing, and ...” Annebet laughed again. “Listen to me. I hope it’s all those things. I’ve heard that it can be. But the truth is, I have no more experience than you.”
She gathered up the sawdust, carrying it to the barrel.
“But you said you love Hershel,” Helga blurted. “And you must know that he loves you. He wants to marry you.”
“If the world were a perfect place,” Annebet said as she hung the broom back in its place on the wall, “I would have gladly made love to Hershel many times by now. But I know that—as often as he asks—we’re not going to be married. And as much of a freethinker as I am, I can’t compromise myself that way. Someday you’ll understand.”
“But ...” Helga had to ask. As dreadful as the words felt coming out of her mouth, she had to know. “Is it because we’re ... because Hershel is Jewish? Is that why you won’t marry him?”
Anger flashed in Annebet’s eyes. “How dare you suggest—” She took a deep breath. “No, don’t answer that. And forgive me for shouting. I know why you asked. In this crazy world ...” She gave Helga a hug, enveloping her in her soft warmth, surrounding her with the marvelous scent of flowers and sweet berries.
“Helga, the prejudices here aren’t mine.” She pulled back to look at her. “I wouldn’t care if Hershel were Muslim or Buddhist or ... or a pagan sun worshiper. His faith only matters to me in that it’s a part of him—a part that I admire. I love his faith. It’s so deep and strong. It makes him the kind, thoughtful, gentle, loving man he is. I would marry him in a heartbeat if I didn’t know for sure that it would put a rift as wide as all of Denmark between him and your parents. I’m the one who’s lacking here. I’m the one who is less than what they want for him.”
How could she say that? “No, you’re—”
“They’re right,” Annebet told her. “I understand them. Hershel has a great future as a doctor, as a researcher at the university in Copenhagen. Marrying me would put that into jeopardy. He would be talked about, looked at sideways, passed over for promotions. He would be that fool with the fortune-hunting shikseh for a wife.”
“You don’t care at all about his money!”
Annebet smiled, pushed Helga’s hair back behind her ear. “You know that and Hershel knows that and I know that, but no one else knows. Including your parents. He’s rich, I’m not. He’s Jewish, I’m not. The world will see it the way they want to see it.”
“But ... Hershel has no future in Copenhagen while the Germans are here. You’ve said so yourself.”
Annebet hugged her again. “You’re full of fight today—Mouse the Mighty.”
Helga was on the verge of bursting out crying. This wasn’t fair. “But you love him!”
“I do,” Annebet agreed, tears in her eyes, too. “I love him so very much. Enough not to marry him. Someday, sweet girl, you’ll understand that, too.”