Page 55 of In A Faraway Land

There, they purchased some of the cheaper coffees for themselves and a glass of milk spiked with sugaryvanilla syrup for Alina.

Alina sat in a chair with her little feet sticking up. She held the small cup with both hands, concentrating intently while she drank it, her green eyes enormous as she sucked on the straw.

“Uh oh,” Dieter told Flicka. “I don’t think Suze Meier let her have sweets very often.”

“Cool,” Flicka said. “Buy her a cookie.”

Flicka connected her phone to the WiFi and usedthat to navigate to her trust fund’s discretionary funds. The usual fields popped up, and she entered her username and password.

Small, red writing appeared, saying that her password was wrong.

She tried it again, typing her password with just one fingertip on the phone’s keyboard. The password was a string of letters and punctuation that she’d memorized.

Still wrong.

Weird.

Flicka startedthe recovery process, typing her email address into a field to get a new damn password.

Dieter leaned over from where he sat against the wall, watching the coffee shop from behind sunglasses. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not typing my password right. I’m getting a new one.”

“Don’t log into your email.”

“It’s just a quick login. He won’t find it. And even if he did, he obviously knows we’re inLas Vegas.”

“Flicka—”

But when she entered her email at the bank’s website, her access was still denied.

She sat back in her chair. Panic flushed through her skin.

She clicked the box to ask security questions to recover her password.

The site said there was no account in her name.

Flicka typed in her bank account numbers, the digits flashing colors in her head as she typed.

The websiteflashed a message that the accounts did not exist.“Dieter.”

“What?”

“Pierre has locked me out of my bank account. He’s got everything.”

He stood and scooped Alina out of her chair. “Let’s go.”

They walked around the block to a different corner and called another ride service.

They got home safely and locked the doors.

Flicka was shaking as she collapsed on the couch. “He shouldn’t havedone that. That money ismine.It’s Hannover money, not Monaco’s.”

“I can’t believe Wulfram didn’t have fail-safes around it. Did he hack your password?”

Flicka bit her lip. “I put Pierre’s name on the accounts.”

“Youwhat?”

“We were married. You know how it is. How did Gretchen get into your business accounts and steal all your money?”

Dieter flinched and sat beside her. “It’s hard not toput your spouse’s name on accounts. It looks like you don’t trust them, even when you shouldn’t, and money is often used as a weapon in divorces. Yeah, I get it.”

“Okay,” Flicka said, clutching her hands together to keep them from shaking so hard. “I’ll go out and get another job at another casino, and we’ll take it from there.”

“I don’t like you walking around out there,” Dieter said. “It’sbetter if you—”

“I will not be a goddamn prisoner,” Flicka said. “I won’t let Pierre make me a prisoner in Monaco or a prisoner here.”

“All right,” Dieter said, sighing. “We’ll figure out how to make it work.”