Risky Obsession (Wolf Security #3)

8. Kane

CHAPTER 8

Kane

T he warm interior of the German pub provided instant relief from the cold and biting wind racing up the steep street outside. Tory and I found a well-worn, wooden table at the back of the pub, away from the ten or so other patrons in the dimly lit bar.

“Oh yay, this menu has English descriptions,” Tory said as she scanned the menu. “Hmmm, should I have the bratwurst and sauerkraut? Or maybe the Wiener Schnitzel?”

“Bratwurst sounds good.” My stomach rumbled at the thought of the savory sausage. “And a couple of pints of beer to wash it down.”

“Good idea.” She slid the menu to the side.

I signaled to the waitress, who approached our table with a welcoming smile. “ Hallo, was kann ich für Sie tun ?”

“Do you speak English?” I grinned at the young woman.

“Yes. What would you like?” Her English was excellent.

“Fantastic. I would like the Bratwurst. What about you, Tory?”

“The schnitzel for me.” Tory scooped her hair around her ears, revealing a moon earring in one ear and a star in the other. The mismatch suited her.

“And we’ll both have a beer,” I added. “Whatever is the most popular.”

Our beers arrived first, two hefty steins filled to the brim with golden liquid.

“ Prost !” I said, raising my beer to Tory .

“ Prost .” She clinked her glass against mine. I took a gulp of beer, and the tangy bitterness washed away the remnants of today’s tension from the castle. Goering had authorized the destruction of Carinhall at the end of the war. Nature was doing its best to eradicate what was left. But the gruesome memories and legacy of that castle will linger forever.

I had another drink and licked foam off my upper lip. “That hits the spot.”

“Agreed.” The candle in the chunky beer stein on our table cast flickering shadows across Tory’s face as she took another hearty swig of her beer. Her choice of drink surprised me. I had pegged her as more of a wine person.

The bratwurst and schnitzel arrived quicker than I anticipated, and the mouthwatering aroma made me realize just how hungry I was.

As we ate our meal, three more patrons filed into the pub and joined the lively chatter and laughter from the two groups of middle-aged men. Three couples were seated at individual tables nearby, two looked to be in their twenties, and the final couple had to be at least over seventy years old. Nobody seemed to take any notice of us, which was fine by me.

Tory’s gaze drifted over the crowd like she was assessing everyone, and I had a sense that she had already figured out where the exits were. I hated that she seemed to have her guard up, and wondered, once again, if her injuries were caused by some bastard who had hurt her.

“How are your fingers?” I nodded at the blue splint on her hand.

She frowned as if she’d forgotten the wound was there. “They’re fine. Don’t hurt too much.”

“How long do you need to keep that on for?”

“At least a month. Annoying. How’s your meal?”

She was a master at changing the subject when it suited her.

“Good. Want to try my sausage?”

She released the cutest giggle. “No, thanks, keep your sausage to yourself. Want to try my meal?”

She carved a chunk of her schnitzel.

“Sure.”

She handed the breaded piece over to my plate. As we continued eating, her gaze was constantly on the move, from the crowd around us, to the woman behind the bar, to the fire, to her meal. Every once in a while, she glanced at me. She was alert and observant, and I wondered if our time at the ruined castle had triggered her wariness, or if she was always like that.

“That guy at the bar looks like he’s had one too many,” I said, nodding at the middle-aged man whose head continued to roll as if he was struggling not to fall asleep.

“I noticed,” she said. “He looks harmless enough though.”

Her eyes met mine before returning to surveil the room.

“I’m full.” I puffed out my cheeks and shoved my plate aside.

“Me, too.” She sat back, nursing her beer.

As the waitress cleared our plates away, I ordered another beer, but Tory declined.

Once we were alone again, Tory asked, “Are you going to tell me why you brought me to Carinhall today?”

“Like I said, it’s where the gold bars started.” I sat back in my seat. “So, now that I revealed one of my cards by showing you Carinhall, what do you have?”

She sipped her beer and seemed to take her time forming a reply.

“We’re on the same team you know?” I cocked an eyebrow.

“Team?”

“Yeah, you know, people working together?”

Scowling at me, she ran her hand across the well-worn wooden table. “The note you found in your grandfather’s things had the comment about Emmy guarding the treasure, right?”

I nodded.

“And do you agree that Emmy refers to Emmy Sonnemann, the actress who was also the wife of Hermann Goering?”

“Yes.” I leaned forward, grateful that she was making conversation for a change.

“Did you know Emmy Sonnemann was Hermann Goering’s second wife?”

I frowned. “No. Why is that significant?”

“Goering named the castle Carinhall after his first wife, Carin. But it was his hunting lodge at Rominten he nicknamed Emmyhall.”

Blinking at her, I wondered how I’d missed that.

Her grin got bigger. “You didn’t know that did you?”

I opened my hands. “No, I didn’t. Where is Rominten? ”

“Rominten is a settlement in Nesterovsky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia.”

I pulled my phone from my pocket.

“Rominten,” I repeated as I entered the name into Google. “Okay, Rominten, also named Krasnolesye, is situated on the Krasnaya River close to the border with Poland, in the north of the Romincka Forest.”

A group of six rowdy men entered through the front door, bringing a blast of cool air with them as they headed for the bar. Tory’s gaze swept to them, and she seemed to study every one of them before her shoulders relaxed.

“Says here, the village was established after a hunting lodge was built there that dates back to 1572,” I said, reading from my phone.

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“That would make the lodge nearly four hundred years old when Goering was there.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“It’s four hundred years.”

“They built them to last.”

“Okay, so how does this information help?”

She shrugged and I scanned the Google information for a reference to Goering, but nothing stood out.

“How do you know about Emmyhall?” I asked.

“In my dad’s notes.”

I clicked my fingers. “Ah, your father who you refuse to reveal his name.”

The candlelight flickered in her eyes. “That’s him.”

Trying to resist the grin creeping across my face, I returned my gaze to my phone. “According to Google, the entire village of Krasnolesye is now deserted.”

She nodded. “It didn’t survive the war.”

“Do you think it’s worth visiting?” I asked.

“Well, unless you think Salsburg is the better option.”

I frowned. “Why do you say that?”

She squinted at me. “I thought we were sharing intel.”

The six men who had come in were noisy as they pulled out chairs and sat at a nearby table.

I chuckled and sat back. “You want to trade secrets? ”

“So to speak, yes.” She sipped her beer and ran her tongue over her top lip as she lowered the stein to the table. “You go first.”

As I laughed a bit more, I conceded that much of my information could be found on the internet, so there was no harm in sharing. “Emma Sonnemann had a castle in Hamburg.”

“Correct. She did,” Tory said, “but she didn’t go there at the end of the war. She went to Salzburg to Mautendorf Castle.”

I frowned. That was news to me. “You seem very certain.”

“Mautendorf Castle was originally owned by Hermann Epenstein, who was having an affair with Hermann Goering’s mother.”

I bulged my eyes at her. “Interesting side note.”

“Epenstein died in 1934 and left the castle to his wife and she in turn bequeathed the castle to her godson, Hermann Goering.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t find any of that info in my research.”

“My father made a lot of notes on castles in Europe that were owned, seized, or ruined by the Nazis. It’s fascinating reading . . . if you like that kind of thing.” A tiny smirk crossed her lips as she continued.

“I do, actually. Okay, you have my interest, because I never found that in my research.”

“You wouldn’t have. Goering was never formally detailed as the owner of Mautendorf Castle, and it was proven that no such entry of his title was ever listed in the land register. That fact was proven during a yearlong lawsuit between Epenstein’s heirs and the state of Germany.”

I frowned. “What’s the significance of this castle?”

“Where did Goering go at the end of World War Two?” she asked, although her expression suggested she knew this answer.

She’s testing me.

“He surrendered to the US Army,” I said.

“Yes, but do you know why?”

I frowned. “Because he was an evil bastard.”

She chuckled and her grin made my heart dance. “Goering tried to flee to Mautendorf Castle, but he gave himself over to the US Army because the Red Army troops had flooded the valley leading toward Mautendorf.”

My heart pounded as the gravity of her revelation began to sink in. Was that information a pivotal piece of the puzzle?

“Do you think he was heading to Mautendorf Castle because that’s where he sent the gold? ”

Tory shrugged. “Makes sense to me.”

“We know the gold was put on a train. Are there train tracks to that castle?”

She frowned, and it made her look so cute my dick pulsed. “We need a map.”

“Speaking of maps.” It was time to reveal one of my clues. I pulled a yellow envelope from the inside of my jacket pocket.

“What’s this?”

I pulled the map from the envelope and spread the A3-sized copy of the original map out on the table. The map was hand-drawn and had creases from where it had been folded and unfolded in the last eighty years.

“A map!” Her eyes lit up. “Where did you get this?”

She spread her uninjured hand across the drawing and leaned in to study the section closest to her.

“You know the note I found?”

“Yes. Where did you find it, by the way?”

“It was concealed in the back of a painting Pops had stashed in the back of the closet.”

“Huh. If it was concealed, how did you find it?”

I shrugged. “Well, the painting was really ugly.”

A frown drilled across her forehead. “Ugly?”

“Yeah, a really ugly landscape with badly painted cows.”

“Okay, and . . .?” She narrowed her eyes as she traced the rough grooves of the wooden table with a finger.

“Well, it was weird that Pops kept it hidden and hadn’t put it into his antique shop. I found it when I was clearing out his things and it struck me as odd. A section of the brown tape that’s usually used at the back of the painting wasn’t the same brown as the rest. It looked newer. And when I ran my hand over the canvas, I felt a slightly raised portion.” I shrugged. “That’s when I found it.”

“That’s cool. Do you think your pops knew it was there?”

“No idea. I’ve been asking myself that question for nearly ten years.”

She tilted her head, and the candle shimmered in her eyes. “You were close to him, huh?”

“Yes. Very close.”

“But why would he have hidden this map from you?” The question seemed to hang between us .

“I wish I knew. There was also this.” I removed a faded black and white photo from inside my jacket, placed it on the map, and turned it to face her.

“Oh, wow.” Using her splint, she nudged the photo closer. The flickering candle cast a dancing glow on her face, making her look both mysterious and sexy as all hell.

The photo showed bars of gold stacked up inside a train carriage. In the distance, steam puffed from the engine. In the black and white image was a man dressed in a Nazi uniform, but he was side-on to the camera and the image was too grainy to work out who he was.

I pointed at the gold bars in the image. “If you use a magnifying glass, you will see the lion emblem on those gold bars.”

She nodded slowly. “Goering’s gold.”

“Yes. You asked me why I took you to Carinhall today. This is why.” I pointed at a hand-drawn castle on the map. In beautiful script, the word Carinhall was printed beneath the castle.

As the clink of glasses and muffled laughter filled the air around us, I felt an undercurrent of unease. The men on the next table went quiet, and when I looked over, two men were staring at me.

Shit. Did they hear our conversation?

I took a swig of my beer, trying to maintain the appearance of nonchalance. Inside, my thoughts raced at a hundred miles per hour.

I reached for the photo. “Come on, let’s get out of here. You must be tired.”

Tory studied me as I folded up the map, but I was grateful when she didn’t object.

As we passed by the men, I felt them staring at my back.

So stupid.

“Are you okay?” Tory asked as we stepped out into the bitter cold.

“Yep, just felt a bit claustrophobic in there.”

She hugged her chest. “Well, this is much better.”

Leaning into the breeze, we trudged up the hill to the inn. The door creaked as we entered. Pausing in the doorway, I glanced over my shoulder toward the pub, but other than dead leaves tumbling up the asphalt, the road was empty.

Tory shuddered. “Brrr, damn it got cold out there.” She climbed the stairs ahead of me, giving me a mighty fine view of her ass.

We didn’t run into anyone as we crossed the creaking floor to our room.

I used the key to enter and once we were inside our room, I locked the door.

Tory shivered again. “Jesus. I think it’s colder in here than outside.”

I strode to the oil heater against the wall. “We should have checked this was on before we left.”

“You sort that out. I need a hot shower.” She grabbed the handle of her suitcase and disappeared into the bathroom.

Beyond the closed door, the shower turned on, and I tried not to picture her undressing barely five feet away.

I adjusted the heater to full, and it clanged like I’d hit it with a wrench.

Rubbing my hands against the cold, I lifted my bag onto the bed and unzipped it, searching for something to wear to sleep in. I pulled out a T-shirt and a pair of soft exercise shorts.

Tory emerged, wearing a simple pale pink tracksuit that looked much sexier than it should.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about Emmy Sonnemann,” she said as she positioned her case against the wall. “Do you think her connection to Goering has something to do with the treasure?”

“I think that note I found proves that she did. Why are you skeptical?”

Her eyes narrowed, and I could almost see the gears turning in her head. “We know Goering was obsessed with art and valuables, right? It’s possible that Emmy was his silent partner, helping him hunt down these treasures and hide them.”

“That’s possible,” I said, returning my duffle to the floor.

“This is just a theory,” she added, her voice tinged with uncertainty. “But it would explain why her name keeps popping up in connection to the treasure.”

“Let’s say they worked together. How is that information helpful?”

“The date on that note you found. Have you researched that? I wonder where Emmy was on that day?”

That question sent a shiver down my spine. I had been so focused on tracing the origins of the treasure that I hadn’t considered Emmy’s involvement.

“What happened to Emmy Sonnemann?” Tory asked as she sat on the bed. “At the end of the war?”

“I don’t know. Let’s see what Google says.” Sitting a few feet from her, I keyed the question into my phone. “Okay, here we go. After the end of the war, a German court convicted her of being a Nazi and sentenced her to one year in jail, and thirty percent of her property was confiscated.”

“Only thirty percent?” Tory frowned. “Why didn’t they confiscate everything? And only one year. What the hell!”

Her anger surprised me.

“I think they had much bigger assholes to convict.”

“Doesn’t explain her light sentence. What did she do after that?”

Frowning, I scanned Google. “According to this, a few years after she was released, she bought a small flat in Munich, and that’s where she stayed until she died in 1973 at eighty years old.”

Tory groaned.

“Not what you were expecting?”

She shook her head. “Don’t really know what I was expecting.”

“At least she served some time.” I shrugged. “Goering was sentenced to death by hanging, but took a cyanide pill the night before he was to be executed.”

“Gutless bastard.” The venom in her tone was passionate. “I prefer assholes to pay for their crimes.” She swept her hair behind her ear, showing off another tiny earring at the top of her ear. “Do you know how many castles Goering owned?” she asked.

“Too many.”

“Yes, you have that right. He owned seventeen properties. Three of them were castles.”

“Seventeen.” I shook my head. “What about Emmy? How much property did she own?”

“According to Dad’s notes, just the one in Hamburg.”

“Okay, let’s assume you’re right about Emmy being involved in the gold bars,” I said. “What else do we know about her movements during that time?”

She adjusted the Velcro strap on her splint. “Not a lot off the top of my head. But there was one thing that caught my attention, a brief mention of her visiting Rominten.”

“Rominten?” I echoed. It annoyed me that I’d missed that castle and the reference to Emmyhall in my research. “What was she doing there?”

“Rominten Hunting Estate was frequently visited by high-ranking Nazis, including Hitler, Goering, and their wives, although they apparently hated each other. ”

I raised an eyebrow, impressed by her knowledge. Tory continued to surprise me. Sitting next to me without any makeup, and wearing that casual tracksuit, she was more beautiful than any woman I’d ever met.

“If Emmy went to Rominten, it’s possible the gold went there too,” I said.

“Agreed. Especially as Goering used Rominten Hunting Lodge as a storage site for some of his looted treasures.” Tory’s eyes seemed to twinkle in the dull lights.

She’s enjoying this.

I sure was, but it was more because of her than putting these clues together.

“Interesting.” My mind raced with the possibilities of where our combined knowledge could take us. “But surely that castle has been thoroughly searched in the last eighty years, especially if it was known he stored looted treasures.”

“I agree, but let’s use your pops’ painting as an example. If you hadn’t felt the canvas of that ugly painting, it could have hung on a wall for centuries before someone tossed it out one day.”

I frowned. “Okay, then Rominten is a logical place to start. Let’s see if we can find out more about what happened there during the war. A good place to start would be if train tracks lead to the castle.”

“Good question.” She adjusted her position on the bed, and her perky boobs wobbled.

It took all my effort to keep my eyes on hers. “We’ll track down any records or maps that show the layout of the railway system and see if we can find one leading to the castle.”

“Where’s the best place to find old train line maps? Is there a library near here, or archive storage?”

I pulled my phone closer. “I’ll take a look.”

Tory clicked her fingers. “We could start with the antique fair tomorrow. Maybe we’ll find something or someone there.”

“Ha. Genius. I love antique fairs.”

Tory’s stunning smile seemed to light up our dim room. “As long as you keep focused.”

I wriggled my brows. Now that was a hard ask when my partner was smoking hot, and braless.

“No promises. Shiny artifacts can be very distracting. ”

Just like Tory.

She stretched her arms over her head and yawned. “Anyway, time for sleep.”

My damn dick throbbed at the sassy smirk on her face. I sat on the bed, untied my boots, and tossed them onto the threadbare rug.

She pulled down the covers and slipped into bed. “Just remember which side of the bed you’re on.”

She turned on the bedside lamp and as she reached for her phone, her hard nipple glided beneath the fabric of her tracksuit top.

Holy smokes.

“I need to shower first.” A cold shower, and maybe four sleeping tablets.

It was going to be a long night in that tiny bed with her hot body under the blanket with me.

She’s going to be the death of me.

Yet there was still something about her that made me keep my guard up.