Rosemary interrupted. “She has me.”
He laughed. “Please. She’s leaving town with one bag. She hasn’t thought of you. The only thing she loves is money,” he said, regaining his strength of character, his words dripping with disdain. “And watching men grovel.” Madame’s flowery perfume wasn’t enough to cover the acrid fear in her sweat.
He continued. “David’s company would’ve ruined you once it revealed your little side business to everyone in Vienna, including him, destroying your family’s reputation and disgusting David when he learned who you really are. Your precious boy wanted people like you in jail,” he said, twisting the knife of his words.
Madame’s heels clicked as she stepped back to her suitcase, where she toyed with the zipper pull, like she might go for the gun. She didn’t strike him as the type to get her hands dirty, but he couldn’t risk it. He had to move fast.
Andreas glanced at Beate. She tensed in understanding.
Madame dragged the zipper, slowly. “Detective, I’m not going to prison. Do you think there’s a judge in this city without a skeleton in his closet?” she said with sinister certainty, “It’s my job to keep secrets.”
“Last I checked, that was Sterling’s job. Can’t handle a little competition?” He stepped towards Madame, luring the attention of Rosemary’s revolver. As intended.
He carefully emphasized every word in his next sentence, transmitting a message to Beate: “Don’t let her talent get youdown—”
Taking his last word as a signal, Beate crouched, grabbing the gun at her ankle. Andreas lunged at Rosemary, knocking her arm aside as she cocked the hammer and fired. The bullet tore through a rack of champagne, setting off a cascade of exploding corks, popping loud as the gunshot.
Bubbles sizzled to the floor.
Blanc de Noir’s alarms shrieked as Andreas tackled Rosemary and wrestled the gun away. Her bullet had pierced the wall and gone through it into the jewelry shop next door, triggering its security system. One by one, alarms on every store on the block blared. Flashing lights stained the street orange, and police sirens swarmed towards them from every direction.
Weiss froze in the gaze of Beate’s gun. Beate bent her over the counter and cuffed her wrists, each cuff right alongside a diamond and sapphire Cartier Love bracelet. A matched pair, hersandDavid’s. Reunited.
Andreas figured the Third Man stole it, then tried to sell it, likely how Madame’sassociatesfound him. Then killed him and framed Sterling.
Andreas cuffed Rosemary to a metal wine rack. Beate had Madame pinned down, and her gun pointed at the assistant. She cocked her head towards the exit. “Go. I’ve got them.”
He flipped the switch behind the desk and the gate slowly whirred up while he grabbed his utility belt from Weiss’s bag. He army-crawled underneath as soon as he fit, scraping across rough ground, icy water seeping through his shirt.
Four a.m. When Vienna was tucked beneath a blanket of silence. But not tonight. Curtains on windows above were drawn aside. Wrinkled eyes of aging First District millionaires peered down.
Good. The rich Omas were awake to see the ruckus. Step one of his plan had worked.
Step two rounded the corner, shutters clicking. He shielded his face as an army of photographers appeared, flashbulbs ablaze, cued by his exit from Blanc de Noir.
As Mr. K had arranged.
Before Andreas woke up Beate, he and Verena had made twostops, first the Orient, then the Eden Bar, over which Mr. K presided. The man had spent decades keeping his clientele out of the papers and compiling a list of influencers banned from the Hotel Orient.
Andreas had pulled him aside and said, “I don’t know what you pay them to keep quiet. But what would it cost us to do the opposite? We need this to hit the morning headlines. Loud.”
The price was twofold. Andreas now owed Mr. K a favor. And he’d been warned to keep his hands off Sterling.
Andreas scrambled to his feet, covered in mud and road salt. He wasn’t sticking around for a cameo in the arrest shots. Beate could enjoy her moment in the spotlight.
He jumped into his cruiser and slammed the door. Lights flashing on the icy road made it appear to be aflame. Every emergency vehicle in the First District was descending on the tiny alley, sirens blaring.
Except one.
Andreas sped off into the night, tires screeching. His headlights sliced a lonely beam through grim shadows on Vienna’s winding, empty side streets, guiding him to the Hotel Orient.
To her.
— 50 —Fünfzig
Sterling and Fernando were held captive in the gilded cage of the empty Orient, doing her least favorite activity: waiting for a man to call. On the bar radio, Maximilian introduced an hour of soft, soothing jazz. It had a dreary elevator-music character, like being on hold with the bank, and it did nothing to calm her nerves.
Verena’s rushed news had left Sterling excited and confused. They were arresting Madame… who was also David’s mother? Verena had darted out before she could ask questions. Mr. K phoned shortly after, said Rita and Verena were safe at the Eden Bar, and gave Sterling and Fernando strict orders: “Do what you want, drink what you want, but don’t leave the Hotel.”
