“Do you have that letter?” the Baroness asked.
“I burned it.” Weber’s voice cracked. “After I heard he was dead, I burned everything. I was afraid. I am still afraid they will come for me next.”
“Who is ‘they’?” I asked.
“I do not know.” The words came out almost as a moan. “That is what terrifies me so. I do not know who to fear or where the danger may come from. I only know that Aldric is dead, and that he died because he knew too much, and that I—”
He stopped mid-sentence, his face going white.
Hewas staring at something over my shoulder.
I resisted the urge to turn around. Instead, I reached for my coffee cup, using the motion to shift my position and glimpse the café’s entrance in the mirror behind the bar.
A man had entered.
He wore a dark coat and possessed the kind of unremarkable face that would blend into any crowd. He was ordering at the counter, not looking in our direction.
Weber was already pushing back from the table. His chair scraped loudly against the floor.
“I must go,” he said, his voice high and tight. “I should not have come. This was a mistake.”
“Herr Weber—” the Baroness began.
“No.” He was on his feet, backing toward the rear exit. “I have told you what I know. It is all I have. Please—please do not contact me again. Do not send your man. Do not—”
He turned and fled.
Just like that.
One moment he was there, the next he was pushing through the kitchen door and disappearing into whatever back alley lay beyond. The other patrons barely glanced up from their conversations.
Will was already half out of his seat. “Should we—”
“No.” The Baroness’s voice was calm, but I saw the tension in her jaw. “Let him go. He hasgiven us what he can. Pursuing him now will only frighten him further.”
“And the man at the counter?” I asked quietly.
The Baroness didn’t look toward the entrance. “What about him?”
“Weber recognized him. Or he thought he did.”
“I noticed.” She lifted her coffee cup and took a deliberate sip, the picture of casual unconcern. “He is still at the counter. He has not looked in our direction once.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“No, it does not.” She set down the cup. “We will finish our coffee and leave by the front entrance. We will see if we have just acquired a shadow.”
We did exactly that. Once outside, we walked three blocks through the winding streets of the Altstadt, taking turns at random and doubling back once through a covered passage.
No one followed.
But that didn’t make me feel any better.
The safe house felt colder when we returned.
Bisch met us at the door, his pale eyes sweepingover us. He didn’t ask how the meeting went. He didn’t need to. Our faces must have told him everything.
“The kitchen,” he said simply. “I have tea.”
