Page 92 of The Little Liar

Nico felt a shiver in his midsection. His muscles tightened. Perspiration formed on his forehead.

He rose quickly.

“Sir?” the director asked. “Did I say something wrong?”

“I’ll think about it. Goodbye now.”

He hurried out the door, leaving the man alone in his office.

***

Nico did not sleep that night. He walked the streets of his neighborhood in the dark, then sat in the backseat of his car until the sun rose. He drove to the synagogue and prayed alone for two hours. Then he went to the front steps of Fannie’s apartment building and waited until she emerged for work. She smiled upon seeing him.

“I need to tell you something,” he blurted out.

“How did you know where I lived?”

“Sit down.”

She sat. “What is it?”

“I need to leave.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Where are you going?”

“Away.”

“Why?”

“I can’t say.”

Fannie saw the way his chest was heaving and the sweat on his forehead. She believed this was a form of panic. She herself had felt it many times, alone in her car or in the middle of the night. She reached for his hands.

“Take one deep breath, then another,” she urged.

You might think Nico was upset by what the director had said. But he knew all about the Nazi Hunter. In fact, he’d been the man’s biggest funder for years, sending anonymous checks that kept the agency going.

Nor was it the idea that the Hunter was looking for Nazi accomplices. Nico knew everything about the man’s work, who he had found, who he was chasing.

No, what haunted Nico was something he’d realized the moment the director told him of the march in Greece, something worrisome and dangerous, something Fannie could not know.

“Look at me,” she whispered. “You’re going to be all right.”

Nico’s story was bubbling so close to the surface, it forced tears down his cheeks. He placed his hand gently behind Fannie’s neck, and for the third time in their lives, and the first time by Nico’s initiative, their lips met, softly, lovingly.

And then, right there, on the steps of an apartment building, under the cloudless sky of a California morning, Fannie blurted out what she’d been holding back since the night she first saw him at the traffic light.

“Nico, it’s me, Fannie. Talk to me. I know it’s you.”

Udo circled the date on his calendar.

March 15 in Salonika. He would need a disguise. And a gun.

He took a swig from a bottle of brandy, then capped it and placed it back on the shelf. His father had become an alcoholic in his later years, and Udo was determined not to follow suit. Lately, he’d been denying himself even the glass. Just a taste from the bottle when he wanted one, which was more and more these days.