My stomach clenched. I could imagine the woman’s desperation, and it made my body shake.

“I didn’t know about the case until after she was murdered, but it was like a polestar for me,” Adinah said. “I thought, ‘What could have saved Deisy?’ Some of it is activism, forcing the courts to change and the police to pay attention. But we can’t wait for laws to change. Seventy-five percent of women who are killed by their partners are murdered after they leave. They need to go to great lengths to escape. Sometimes that means they need fake IDs and other help that’s not considered legal.”

I was suddenly struck with new respect for my sister.

“These days, you can’t get a burner without ID,” Adinah went on. “It’s an antiterrorism measure, and it makes sense when you look at it that way, but it does no favors to abuse victims who need anonymity. Ours is not an approach most people approve of. They want things done cleanly and legally. But that’s a luxury we don’t have in every case. Sometimes, it’s a life-or-death situation. Caroline understood that. She stopped working the hotline when she finished school, but she gave us a lot of money.”

“Thraxton money,” I said, but my brain was stuck on the burner phone. Ben had mentioned my sister having one, and I hadn’t believed him because I couldn’t picture how Caro could get one. Turned out my imagination was lacking.

“Now that she’s gone, there’s something I should show you. Her message says Theo’s the threat, but . . .” She punched a code into a desk drawer, and I heard six beeps. “Caroline asked me to arrange this for her.”

She handed me a pair of passports. I opened the first one and saw my sister’s image next to the name Deirdre Jane Brooks. The second passport made my heart skip a beat. Teddy’s face was identified as belonging to Edward Ryan Brooks.

“What the hell is this?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

“She didn’t really explain, except that she had to get away from the Thraxtons,” Adinah said.

“Not just Theo?”

“The whole family. Her sister-in-law made her miserable. Her mother-in-law . . .”

“Ursula? I thought they got along.”

“You know there was some strange issue about Caroline’s stuff being moved around, right?” Adinah said. “Caroline blamed Theo for it. But Theo was gone a lot, and it went on. Then one day, Caroline found her mother-in-law in her room.”

“Ursula was the gremlin?” It sounded crazy, but Adinah’s face was serious.

“Apparently she was going through Caroline’s things,” Adinah said. “I asked Caroline about it later, and she claimed everything was fine. She and her mother-in-law had talked it out, and they understood each other. She said Ursula was on her side.”

“That’s something, I guess.”

“That was also the day Caroline asked me to get passports for herself and Teddy,” Adinah said. “Caroline told me the whole family was like a Greek tragedy, and she had to get her son out of there.”

CHAPTER 34

THEO

My instinct was to jump on the next plane to New York and strangle Harris with my bare hands. It was easiest to hate him, even though I had enough reasons to know that Juliet and my father had been involved as well. My sister had been there in person, after all, and my father had lied to me about my calling him for help. After being trapped for so many years with the belief that I was a murderer, I felt as if I’d been released from prison. Mehmet Badem didn’t know who had killed Mirelle, but I did: Harris. The only question was who had come up with the plan. I couldn’t head back to New York with only the word of an ailing drug addict to support my accusations. I needed more.

I hadn’t laid eyes on Klaus von Strohm in four years, and while I didn’t know where to find him, I knew how to reach him. I dialed a pager number and waited for the call back. One of Klaus’s henchmen phoned me within the quarter hour. “This is Theo Thraxton,” I told him. “I’m in Berlin, and I need to see Klaus as quickly as possible.”

Half an hour later, I received another call. “Klaus will meet you at your hotel at seven thirty. Be dressed for dinner.”

As I hung up, I realized that I hadn’t told Klaus where I was staying. Not that it mattered. Berlin was his town, and he owned it.

A black Mercedes was waiting outside my hotel at the appointed time. The driver opened the door, and I slid inside. The car was empty.

“I take it Klaus is meeting me at the restaurant?” I asked the driver in English as he settled into his seat. He was nineteen or twenty, olive skinned and dark haired.

“Yes, sir,” he answered.

The drive into the heart of Mitte took fifteen minutes and brought me back to the Brandenburg Gate—now lit for evening and looking exactly as I remembered it—and to the grand boulevard of Unter den Linden. The driver turned right on Friedrichstrasse and right again on Behrenstrasse before stopping suddenly in front of an alleyway. “Here you are, sir.”

“Where’s the restaurant?”

“Here you are, sir,” the boy repeated. He wasn’t going to be of any help. I got out of the car.

The street wasn’t well lit, but the empty alley was forbidding. There was a light near the end, and I followed it all the way back. The lighted area turned out to be a loading dock, but it was empty. I stepped inside and followed it to the end. Another alley was to my left, this one filled with blue and red dumpsters. If Klaus wanted to murder me and dispose of my body, this was his chance. I took a deep breath, and my nose immediately regretted it, but I plunged ahead.

Up a small set of stairs near the end of this alley was a metal door with two lights above it. An unmarked buzzer was on the wall. I pressed it and waited. There was a buzz from inside, and I pressed the door; it swung open.

Inside was almost as forbidding. I pushed past the velvet blackout drapes into a dimly lit room. There were two men standing behind a wooden bar.

“I’m having dinner with Klaus von Strohm,” I said in English.

“Take the stairs to your right,” one of the men answered. “He’s waiting for you.”

That thought echoed ominously in my head as I followed the narrow staircase up. After the desolation of the street and alleyways, I wasn’t prepared for the buzzy dining room. It looked boxy and industrial, but it had been painted white, with silver orbs dangling from the ceiling. Cylindrical lights and candles illuminated the space, and metal pipes ran from ceiling to floor, reflecting the glow. The only art was a giant framed poster with ficken—fuck—written in the center.

Klaus was waiting on a red velvet banquette. A smile stretched across his face as I approached. He stood, taking my hand. “My dear Theo, it has been too long. It is good to see you looking so well.” His smile faded. “I offer you my deepest condolences about your wife. I only met her at your wedding, but she was such a lovely young woman.”

“Thank you.”

I looked him over as we sat down, oddly isolated in our quiet corner of the busy restaurant. Klaus was—as far as I knew—the closest thing my father had ever had to a friend. They were roughly the same age—in their early seventies now—and while their personalities were dissimilar on the surface—my father gregarious, Klaus the saturnine former Stasi cop—they were united in being total bastards.

“How did you know where I was staying?” I asked.

“Come on, Theo. Don’t I get to be a little bit mysterious?” He was dressed in what I was positive was once a bespoke gray Hugo Boss suit, but it sagged on his frame. Klaus had been close to three hundred pounds at one point, but he had downsized. I wondered how voluntary that was; he looked frailer than I’d ever seen him.

“About that, fine. But not about the night Mirelle died,” I said. “You’re going to tell me the full story.”

“You may find this hard to believe, but I had absolutely nothing to do with that.”

“You’re right—I find that impossible to believe.” I shifted in my seat. “You and my father were always partners in crime.”

“Not in that girl’s death, Theo.” He leaned forward. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering everything on the menu. It’s all vegetarian—don’t laugh, I haven’t eaten meat in over a year. Let them bring us some wine, and then we’ll talk.”

Klaus always had been a control freak, but I couldn’t care less about the food or drink. “As long as you answer my questions, I don’t care what’s on the menu.”

The table service took a moment, with a waiter opening a bottle of riesling. Then he was gone, and Klaus lifted his glass.

“To the memories of those we’ve lost,” Klaus said.

We tapped glasses.