Chapter 14: What He Kept

Matthias's POV

I left Ilse at the Kell house with six men on the doors and told her I was going to look for her father.

That was true, and it was all I told her.

At dusk the driver and I parked across from the Reinholt gates and waited for the steward.

He came out at nine in the dark sedan, alone, with a thermos on the seat beside him.

We followed him forty minutes with our lights off, out past the city and down a road of pines to the water.

The Reinholts had a boathouse on the Magothy River, with a pier and a lit upstairs room.

The steward went in carrying a paper bag from a pharmacy.

From the trees I could see the window, and in the window a hospital bed with a thin gray man propped up in it.

Anton Brandauer had his face turned to the glass.

Two men with rifles stood on the pier, and a third sat on the porch steps smoking.

"Eighteen men," the driver said quietly. "We could take it."

"The first shot goes through that window."

"Yes."

"Then we don't take it."

I stood in the pine needles and went through the numbers once more.

I was good at numbers.

Every one of them ended with Ilse standing at a grave, and me being the man who had walked into the trap and left her holding the pen.

I took out my phone and called a number I had never wanted to use.

She answered on the second ring.

"Matthias, dear. I wondered how long you'd be."

"Where can we talk?"

"The glasshouse, at the house. One hour. Come alone, and leave that sweet driver of yours at the gate."

I put the phone away.

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