Veronika Brand came into view again. The cortex of Ylva’s brain initiated a message that reached her right forefinger, directing it to squeeze-not-pull the trigger.
◆◆◆
An old man came alive during the dual celebration, marking both his company’s anniversary and final birthday of his ninetieth decade at St. Nicholas Cathedral in the heart of Stockholm. As he stood in the great square, surrounded by family, he saw a woman moving toward him.
He knew the woman, knew the way she held herself. In the careful but certain way she moved, Loke Voss saw the woman he loved more than any other, Klara Dalgren. She was Klara. She was his own blood and she was here to celebrate his life’s achievements.
Voss had been waiting. He longed for the granddaughter of his heart. Watching Brand move toward him, his face lit up. As he lurched out from among his children and his children’s children, he careened forward with the sure-footed movement of a man half his age.
He would finally be able to embrace his granddaughter, Veronika Brand—the child of the rape-spawn child, Marta, whom Loke had sired with the love of his life, Klara Dalgren.
“Veronika,” Loke now exclaimed with an old man’s desperate, sentimental despair, the last word he would utter in life.
His forward charge thrust him abruptly between Brand and a tower window eighty meters away.
When the old man’s head fell forward at an awkward angle and a red bloom appeared on his right temple, Brand snapped out of her dream. Adrenaline coursed through her body. She instantly grasped she was in the midst of some sort of firefight. She felt more than heard the hollow ping of the rifle shot echo across the square. She didn’t duck, but bent low to catch her grandfather’s body in her arms.
The two of them stared at each other for a quick, evaporating moment. Love struggled with hate and disgust in her eyes. A plea for forgiveness showed in his. She saw the light fade, the signature gray of Loke Voss’s eyes dying to a flat, lifeless transparency.
No one in the crowd or among the Voss family immediately understood what was happening. Brand had no time to process every thought that came at her, but jumped to the conclusion that somehow Moro Part had been the source of the fatal bullet. She half-turned toward the engagement party, expecting to see the Roma godfather.
Instead she saw the stolid, black-suited male standing beside Varzha step forward. The engaged husband, Luri Kováč. He raised a pistol, aiming it in the direction of the Voss family. Brand had an instant to recognize the weapon as her own Glock.
The sight of the handgun finally ignited panic among everyone standing nearby.
“Unto the third or fourth generation!” Luri Kováč yelled out, his thus-always-to-tyrants exclamation obscured by truck horns.
He fired off a reckless spray of shots—wild ones that harmed nobody but served to further panic the crowd. It turned out that human screams could cut through the sound of a thousand air horns. Bystanders flung themselves every which way, instinctively ducking as they ran.
Luri dropped the Glock and raised his arms in a gesture of surrender. The overheated pistol clattered to the cobblestone pavement of the square.
Trying for gentleness in an impossibly electrified moment, Brand laid the still form of Loke Voss on the ground, hoping it wouldn’t be trampled in the crush. All was chaos. The assembled members of the Voss family scattered.
Brand watched as Varhza Luna stepped forward. Time stuttered, a movie reel sprung loose from its sprockets. As one of the fleeing Vosses stumbled past her, Varzha reached out and struck the figure once. The blow came so quickly that Brand never saw the knife.
“For Lel!” Varzha called out, though no one but Veronika heard her.
Jarl Voss. His face showed a flash of hurt surprise. Momentum carried him a few steps forward. He clutched his side, where blood blossomed along a bloody slash just beneath his ribcage. The wounded man dropped to his knees.
Varzha showed herself to him, making sure her former captor understood that it was she who had given him a mortal wound.
With a brief look over her shoulder, the Romani girl locked eyes with Brand. Varzha gave a sober nod. She then joined the general rush of fleeing pedestrians, disappearing among the crowd. Luri Kováč just stood, dazed, as confusion erupted around him. He looked after Varzha with hurt in his eyes, as if offended that she had disarmed him, as if agonized she was leaving him behind.
A collection of impromptu heroes tackled Luri to the ground.
Brand ignored the tussle. Don’t do it, her mind commanded. Do not pick up that Glock. Your fingerprints will be all over it when the polis come. And they will come. There’s one running in your direction now. Perhaps seeing a weapon in your hand he will shoot you dead. At any rate your prints on the pistol will put you in a Swedish prison for years.
Don’t do it.
Swedish prisons were notoriously cushy, she thought. No life sentences here. She’d be out in no time.
Don’t do it.
Brand bent down and picked up her long-lost duty gun, reuniting with the weapon that had been stolen away by a mohawk crazy-man with pink hair.
As she straightened with the pistol in her hand, Brand gazed over the mad scramble in the square. An arresting sight caught her eye, a pair of figures in a window at the top of a building a football pitch away.
The two were clearly visible. They seemed engaged in an embrace. With a start Brand recognized both of them.
Moro Part attempted to push Ylva Voss out of the eight-story window to her death. Ylva fought to stop him from doing so.
The outlandish biathlon rifle dropped first, plummeting through the air. Again, Brand felt more than heard the impact as the weapon bounced once and settled. Then the shooter and her attacker followed, Moro and Ylva locked in a death grip, tracing an arrow-straight trajectory before also slamming onto the
