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I open my door and step onto a paved driveway. My feet are bare. I’m pretty sure I’m never strapping stiletto heels around my ankles again.
My teeth start to chatter. Trap reaches inside the car and retrieves the jacket I used as a pillow. I drape it over my shoulders, but he makes me put it on all the way, slipping my arms through the sleeves.
It smells like his rosemary soap. I immediately stop shivering.
An iron gate blocks our way. A brick fence stretches to the right and left, at least ten feet high. It’s topped with razor wire.
“So?” Trap asks. “How do we get in?”
“I don’t know. I was never allowed out here.”
There’s a security pad to the left of the gate. When I cross to it, a floodlight snaps on, streaming down from the top of the brick fence. I shield my face with my hand, trying to blink away my sudden blindness. This type of spotlight feels familiar, and I realize I’m thinking of the kitten auction, of standing onstage next to Gage Rider.
“There’s no number pad,” I say. “No combination.”
Trap scowls. “Those are biometric scanners. Fingerprints at the bottom. Retinas in the box above.”
I should know that. I’ve seen the scanners at the freeport. My brain isn’t working right.
There’s a button by the scanner. I push it.
“Don’t bother,” Trap says. “According to Asher, the place is abandoned.”
But before we can turn back to the car, a reedy voice trembles through the speaker: “Wer ist da?”
Trap swears. My stomach churns with sudden acid. I think I know that voice. I press the button again. “Ursula?”
It takes a moment, but the speaker crackles again. “Who is there?”
This time I’m certain. “Ursula? It’s me. Alix.”
“Alix!” she says. “Lobe Gott!You’re back,liebes Mädchen. You come home!” Her accent always bristled, but now it’s as thick as the wall beside me.
“Can you let me in, Ursula? Can you open the gate?”
“IsMeisternwith you?”
Trap waves his hand in a hurry-up gesture. If I say no, I don’t know if Ursula will open the gate. I lie and say, “Of course.”
There’s a pause, where I wonder if she understood me. But then gears start to move, and the iron gate slides to the side. Trap looks back at Charles, who’s standing beside the Mercedes. Trap says to me, “Can you make it, walking up to the house?”
I don’t know. I say, “Yes.”
Traps issues an order to Charles. “Wait for us here.”
“Of course, sir.”
I wish we could drive all the way there, but I understand the danger. We don’t want our getaway car trapped inside the gate if we need to escape fast.
We start to walk up the driveway. Weeds break through the asphalt. The grass on either side of the path grows up to my knees.
We round two bends before we can see the house. In the three years I lived there, I never ventured past the huge lawn that surrounds the mansion. At first, I wasn’t allowed outside at all. Then, I didn’t care about anything that lay beyond my prison.
The yard is growing wild now. The house looks deserted. But as we approach the great circular driveway, the front door opens. A black shape is framed in the golden light that streams down three weed-strewn steps.
I wait until Trap and I are on the bottom one before I say “Ursula?”
She steps back, just enough for me to see her face. I know those Slavic cheekbones as well as I know my own. I recognize the flat brown eyes, the mouth carved into a permanent frown, the hair pulled back in a painfully severe bun.
