The Darkest Hour(33)

There’s another crash. Somehow I know that they’ve shoved aside the dresser that’s hiding us from them. I set my jaw. If those soldiers come barreling in, I’d rather go out fighting than surrender.

“They’re coming!” Dorner whispers. “Give me a weapon!”

“No, follow my lead.” A hasty idea springs into my mind. Who knows if it will work, but … I stow the knife in my pocket but keep my grip on the pen. “And stay quiet.”

The panel flies open, and a single Nazi aims a rifle at our heads. “H?nde hoch!”

Dorner and I lift our arms into the air. The panel is narrow enough that only one soldier can squeeze in at a time, but I notice two more Nazis behind this one. That’s three soldiers total. The odds could be much worse, but all three of them carry rifles and pistols while we have next to nothing. I need to play this very carefully—and I better hope that my hands won’t start trembling.

Before the soldier can get another word out, I break into sobs.

“Please, God, don’t hurt us!” I cry out in broken German. “We’ll surrender!”

The soldier isn’t fazed as he steps into the attic. “H?nde hoch!”

“Don’t shoot!” I cry. I’m still holding the pen, but I can’t fire it just yet. I have one shot, and I need to draw him closer somehow. Think, Lucie. Then I blurt out in my paltry German, “I’m with child!”

Dorner’s eyes widen under his glasses. The soldier does the same, but he keeps his rifle close to him.

“Don’t hurt my baby!” I break into even louder sobs and annoyance flickers across the Nazi’s face, but I’d rather have him annoyed than jumpy and trigger-happy.

“Tais-toi!” the soldier shouts in French. He stalks toward me, raising his rifle to swing the butt of it at my wailing mouth, and I know I’ve gotten him. Flicking off the pen cap, I banish all of my thoughts, because I can’t lose my nerve now like I did with Travert.

The bullet pops out of the pen barrel and flies into the soldier’s chest, right into the heart. He collapses in front of me, with his rifle clattering onto the floor. The remaining two Nazis try to push their way inside the attic. I grab the knife from my pocket and hurl it at the incoming soldier. The blade strikes him in the soft spot at the base of his neck. It’s not a death wound—it’ll take him minutes to bleed out—but the soldier is young, probably younger than I am, and he panics. His shots go wide as he tries to dig out the knife, which only makes things worse. The blood flows free and fast, and while he’s busy trying to plug up the hole in his neck Dorner lurches forward.

“No, wait!” I hiss. Is he insane, making a run for it now? But he doesn’t make a break for the door. He’s reaching for the fallen rifle.

The third soldier pushes himself inside, ready to spray us with bullets. I yank the first dead Nazi up to use as a shield for Dorner and me, but he’s too busy unjamming the rifle trigger.

A swear tears out of my mouth. “Get down!”

This is the end. We’re cornered.

But the gunfire never comes. The third soldier gasps and topples onto his fallen comrades. There’s a butcher knife lodged in the back of his head, like a stabbed melon. There’s a new figure standing in the attic, with a bloodied lip and a bruised cheekbone. And I’ve never been happier to see her.

“Sa—” I start.

“Odette,” Sabine finishes for me.

Right. Compromised aliases, new names for both of us. I march over and give her a hug. We’ve never embraced before; in fact we’ve never stood this close to each other willingly. Maybe that’s why Sabine startles at my gesture, but I don’t care one bit. I was beginning to think I would never see her again.

“Where were you?” I ask. I flinch at the sight of her face, especially at the purple blotch that rings her left eye. I want to pepper her with questions. Was she arrested? Where did she get those bruises? But Sabine beats me to the chase.

“I’m all right,” she says in a way that tells me it’s not up for discussion. Then she unravels herself from my arms and looks Dorner up and down. “Is that him? Is it Dorner?”

Dorner blinks from me to her. “How do you know my name?” Then, to me, he asks, “Who is she?”

“A colleague of mine,” I say quickly. I see that he’s still holding on to the jammed rifle, and I snatch it away from him before he does something foolish with it. “And she just saved your life.” Our lives, I might add.

Footfalls travel up the staircase, and Madame Rochette soon stumbles into the attic. She looks much paler than when I saw her last, and she goes even whiter at the sight of three dead Nazis in her home.

“Nom de Dieu!” She makes the sign of the cross and clutches on to Sabine’s arm to steady herself. “It appears you arrived in the nick of time, Odette.”

“I would’ve been here sooner if I hadn’t been … delayed,” Sabine says.

I want to ask her what she means by that, but we have to get out of this house first. “We need to leave,” I say to the three of them. “The Nazis will send more soldiers once these patrols don’t return.”

Madame Rochette gives a trembling nod. “Come, quickly. There’s another safe house outside of the city.”

“What about the bodies?” I ask.