Frank had torn her soul right out so they could fill it up with what they wanted. In a monotone she told him the second phase of what he needed to know. Nothing was ever written down, so he memorized every detail. If he made one slip he was dead. It was that simple.
He rose, dressed, and looked once more at the book Anna had inscribed for him.
Love without trust is nothing.
She’d be asleep. He called anyway. Surprisingly, she answered on the second ring.
“I hoped it might be you,” she said, her voice wide awake. “How was the trip?”
“I read the inscription.”
She said nothing.
He swallowed hard. “I want to trust you. I do trust you. I told you what I did. Do you realize how hard that was for me?”
“Yes, but there are obviously things you can’t tell me.”
“There are,” he admitted.
“So after we’re married, you will go away without a word and show up without one either?”
“I’m retiring. I told you. And I have a desk job.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence with tales of luggage falling from aircraft bins. And people behind a desk don’t go to castles without bothering to take a tour. Or take the time to travel by ferry from Ireland to Scotland. Was it to meet someone?”
Her words stung him. “You followed me?”
“Of course I did. I’m planning on marrying you. And I hate that I have to even think of following you, much less do it.” Her voice shook and he heard a small sob. Shaw wanted to reach across the phone line and hold her, tell her everything would be okay. Yet he had lied to her enough.
He found his own voice. “There’s still time to back out, Anna. You said yes, you can also say no. I’ll understand.”
Her tone became harsh. “I don’t like that you would understand. You should not understand. The same for me if you walked away. I would not understand.”
“I love you. I will make this work. I will.”
He thought he heard another sob escape her lips and his guilt increased.
She said, “And how you will make this all work, you can’t tell me?”
“No,” he admitted. “I can’t.”
“Where do you go after Scotland?”
“Heidelberg.”
“My parents live about an hour from there. In a small village called Wisbach, near the town of Karlsruhe. They run a bookshop, the only one in Wisbach. Go to see them. Their names are Wolfgang and Natascha. They are good people. Kind people. I wanted you to meet them before now, but you were always too busy.”
He hadn’t always been too busy, Shaw knew. He’d been too afraid.
“You want me to see them without you?”
“Yes. Ask my father for my hand in marriage. If he says yes, we will be married. If you still want to.”
This request stunned him. “Anna, I—”
She rushed on, “If you think it is worth it, you will go. I will tell them you are coming. If you do not go, then I will have my answer.”
The line went dead. Shaw slowly put down the phone and looked at the blotting paper on the desk where he had written the name Anna Fischer over and over, driving the letters hard into the thin surface. He tore the paper up, left the Balmoral, and walked down Princes Street, past all the closed shops. Two hours later he was still wandering through the ancient Scottish capital as the sun started to creep up, illuminating the aged stone bridges and casting shadows behind which Shaw could imagine every single one of his nightmares. And he had more than most.
He would go to see her parents at the bookshop in Wisbach. He would ask for their daughter’s hand in marriage.
Yes, he would do all that. If he was still alive.
“Where’s Mudder?” he whispered to the semidarkness as he walked back to the Balmoral to prepare for what might be his last few hours on earth.
CHAPTER 19
T HE HIGH-RISE ALONG the dulles High-Tech Corridor was mostly dark. One firm, Pender & Associates, owned the entire building, having paid eight figures in cash to buy an office tower smack in the middle of some of the priciest