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represented. The man had been captured with his eyes toward the ground, but the woman stared straight from the page into Brant’s eyes. Her smile was a twisted sneer—the person she really was. Her eyes still met his defiantly beneath the headline: C OUPLE A CCUSED IN H OLOCAUST S URVIVOR F RAUD .
    Brant had given much of the past year to the Aldrichs. The woman had begged his help to find her family’s lost paintings. They were the last link to her father, who had not escaped the Nazis. More than oil and canvas, they were the only portraits of her childhood. “Please help,” she’d pleaded. “I want to die with those paintings on my wall.” So, of course Brant had helped—that was what his work was all about. More than papers and research and digging into the past, his work at the Austrian Holocaust Survivors’ Organization was for people—for making a difference in the individual lives that had been tormented by war, incarcerated in camps, and tortured. He longed to see Frau Aldrich’s expression when he told her they’d recovered her dream.
    And Brant had done just that. He did find the art in a small collection in the United States. He did see the joy in Frau Aldrich’s face. But he also saw the torment of the rightful owners.
    It had all been an act. The Aldrichs—brother and sister, they said—had come to his office door after another newspaper account reported a victory for one of Brant’s clients, a French woman survivor. They’d told their sad story and walked from his office surely laughing at his concern and commitment to help. Not only were the Aldrichs not Jewish, nor brother and sister, Greta was actually an ex-Nazi camp guard. Her information about the art had come from one of the inmates under her guard. It was suspected that Frau Aldrich had even selected her victim for the gas chamber because of the information she’d obtained. Greta Aldrich had been unable to find the art after the war, but with Brant’s help she’d almost gotten what she wanted.
    He couldn’t believe he’d been duped. Brant tore the soggy paper into several pieces and released them over the railing. The river’s ripples gathered the pieces and carried them away.
    This had not been the first attempt at a fraudulent claim, especially since the opening of Swiss banks. Brant had immediately identified a recent claim as false—an American claiming to be Celia Müller. He had prided himself on the fact that he could not be deceived, and now the Aldrich story had shattered that illusion.
    Angry, Brant turned away from the river. He moved quickly, suddenly aware of the cold that clutched him. When his pager sounded, he paused beneath the eaves of a weathered white-stucco building. Brant was about to turn it off when he noticed the number. Why would she be calling? There could be only one reason. He found his phone in his coat pocket and punched in the number.
    “This is Brant. What happened?”
    “We think he had a stroke,” the woman said.
    “No.”
    “You better come.”
    Brant was already running.

Chapter Three
    Darby saw death in Grandma Celia’s face. It wouldn’t be long. As Grandma’s breath grew more labored, Darby’s day was consumed with watching that breathing. Her mother seemed to accept that this was the end, though her expression shifted from the weariness of waiting to the clinging hope that Grandma’s life wouldn’t slip away quite yet. But Darby couldn’t accept it. She even prayed for the first time in years. God, don’t take her, please, don’t take her.
    Darby’s childhood in an all-female home had been with examples of strength in both her grandmother and mother. She tried to maintain that strength on the outside but felt herself weaken as her grandmother walked closer to death’s door.
    Death is part of life , she reminded herself throughout the week. Everyone loses loved ones. Everyone dies. I need to be ready. But how can I prepare?
    Grandma had been her cheerful self only a few