Why now—and why did he pick on you in particular?”
“Why now? I think it’s obvious. With Valbrand gone, he can’t help but think of the daughters he’s never known.”
“Then why you?”
“I don’t know. But I intend to find out, I promise you that.”
“If anything happens to you in that place, I swear I will kill you.”
Elli couldn’t help smiling. “I love you, Livvy. I’ll be fine.”
“You’d better keep in touch on this.”
“You know I will.”
Ingrid took the phone again to say goodbye. The minute she disconnected the call, she tried Brit’s apartment in L.A. Brit’s machine answered. Ingrid left a message. After that, she dialed Brit’s cell, and then her other cell—Brit was forever losing her cell phones.
Increasingly frantic, Ingrid tried the numbers she had for three of Brit’s friends. The third one finally picked up the phone. She suggested Ingrid try to reach Brit at work.
Brit was a licensed pilot. She’d eaten beetles and jumped from a skyscraper on Fear Factor. She’d trekked the Amazon and the New Zealand wilderness. She’d also dropped out of college after only two years. Like Elli and Liv, Brit had a hefty regular income from a well-managed trust, but Brit was forever giving her money away and inevitably ran short before the next check came in.
So she worked. At a series of menial jobs.
Currently, she was waiting tables at an Italian restaurant on East Melrose, where the owner was Greek and all the cooks were from south of the border. Everybody hated to call her there. The owner did a lot of shouting whenever Brit used the phone.
But Ingrid was desperate. She dialed the number—and sighed in relief when Brit came on the line.
Ingrid asked her youngest daughter the same questions she’d asked Liv. She got the same answers. Brit was fine, too. No sign of any Vikings in her life. And she wanted to talk to Elli.
So Elli took the phone and explained what she’d already explained to Liv, while in the background, the owner of the restaurant yelled at Brit to get to work and Brit had to pause every couple of minutes to shout at him to get off her back.
“Just stay in touch, okay?” Brit demanded, echoing Liv.
“I will. I love you. Don’t work too hard.”
“Hah. Like I’ve got a choice in this place. It’s a hellhole, I’m telling you.”
The call to Brit seemed to get Ingrid more upset than before. But Ingrid always got upset when it came to her underemployed, fearless, free-spirited youngest daughter.
Elli tried again to soothe her mother, promising over and over that she’d be all right, she’d keep in touch.
Hilda finally called them to dinner. They sat at the big table in the formal dining room—and Ingrid turned her fear and fury on Hauk.
“What is going on between you and this man, Elli? Why did you bring him here? He watches you—” she gave a frantic laugh “—like a hawk.” The laughter died in her throat and she glared at Hauk. “You behave like a bodyguard. Is there some reason my daughter needs a bodyguard?”
Elli spoke up. “Of course I don’t need a bodyguard, Mother. I told you why Hauk is here. He’ll escort me to Gullandria. I invited him to dinner because it seemed the polite thing to do.” Yes, it was an outright lie. But what help would the truth be at this point? In the end, in spite of her mother’s endless and convincing arguments, Elli intended to keep her word and go to her father.
She said softly, “I realize now it was probably… unwise to bring him to dinner. I’m sorry.”
Hauk let Elli’s answer stand for him. He was not a stupid man. He must have understood that anything he said would only make matters worse.
In the end, Ingrid seemed to realize that nothing she could do would stop Elli from going to Gullandria. She agreed to care for the cats and extracted a promise from Elli that she would call as soon as she reached her father’s palace.
At a little after nine, Ingrid stood in the driveway, waving, a brave smile on her lips, as Elli and Hauk drove away.
“I think you should pack now,” Hauk announced right after Elli unlocked her apartment door and let them both inside.
Elli didn’t want to pack. She didn’t want to do anything right then, except maybe sit on the couch in the dark and watch something mindless on TV and pretend that she hadn’t told all those lies to her mother, pretend that she hadn’t heard all the troubling things her mother had said about her father and her brothers and the land where her father lived.
Hauk stood before her, huge and unmoving and waiting for her answer.
“You think I should pack, huh?” she asked provokingly.
“I do.”
“Well, what you think is your business. I’m not packing now.” She dropped her purse and keys on the table.
Hauk said, “The royal jet is ready and waiting, with the crew on call, at Sacramento Executive Airport. If you pack, we can leave tonight. The Gulf-stream has its own bedroom suite. You will be comfortable. You can sleep in flight.”
Elli had wandered into the living room and picked up the remote. She tossed it back down again. “I was just thinking that what I’d like to do more than anything right now is watch TV and forget everything that’s happened around here since you showed up yesterday and turned my whole life upside down. But just this moment, I realized, that if I watch TV, I won’t be able to forget anything. Because you’ll be here, sitting in that chair, watching me, guarding me against the possibility that I might do something I want to do rather than what my father wants. I have to tell you, Hauk, I find that upsetting. You could say that it really ticks me off.”
“You should pack. We should leave.”
“I’m not packing now. I’m not leaving now. And you have nothing at all to say about that, because it’s not Thursday and I have until Thursday if I want until Thursday.”
“There is no need to linger here.”
“Not to you, maybe.”
“Other than to pack, you’re ready to go now.”
“You’re not getting it. I may be ready, but I’m not ready.” She turned for the hall, then paused and turned back to him. “I’m taking a bath. This time, I’m staying in there awhile because it’s the only place I can go right now where you won’t be.”
He had that soldier-at-attention look he liked to get when he wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do next—let alone how he ought to handle what she was going to do next.
She glared at him. “I want an hour. To myself. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
She went to her room and from there to her bathroom and the second she got in there, she shut the door. Hard.
Sixty minutes later—she had a travel clock she kept on the bathroom shelf, so she was able to time herself—she emerged from the bathroom. Hauk was waiting, boots off and bedroll at the ready, by the foot of her bed.
She considered heading into the living room to channel surf in the dark for a while as she had threatened to do earlier. But he’d only follow her. Might as well channel surf from the comfort of her bed.
She climbed under the covers and the cats came and cuddled in with her. Hauk continued to stand, staring off toward the door.
“Is there some problem?” she demanded sourly. He wasn’t in the way of the TV, but he was distracting in the extreme, just standing there. It was like having a giant