The Darkest Hour(69)

An hour later, there’s a pounding at the door, followed by a flurry of furious German. “Tür auf!” When no one answers, there’s a crash. Footsteps storm into the house, and my heart beats so fast that I go light-headed. I tug Tilly beneath the staircase and cover her mouth in case she has an outburst. One peep out of her and we’ll be done for. I don’t have a rifle or a pistol pen or even one of our daggers on me, just a simple kitchen knife that Ana?s gave me for protection.

The cellar door swings open, and the stairs creak loudly as a lone soldier sweeps down the steps. I feel strangely awake, although I’ve hardly slept in days. Calm and collected, I remember. I’ve escaped a whole facility of Nazis. I can handle one more, if I can get a clear shot.

I hope that the soldier will take a cursory glance around him and depart, but he shuffles deeper into the cellar, kicking aside a box and knocking over a lamp. His boots draw closer to where we’re hiding, and I mouth at Tilly to stay silent. Thankfully she’s in one of her more lucid moments.

Now the soldier is mere feet away. I can hear him sniffing the dusty air, and I can smell the ripe scent of his uniform. I grip the knife handle tight. It’s either him or us, and I promised Sabine that I’d take care of Tilly.

But the cellar betrays my plans. My shoe crunches over an old onion skin, and the soldier spins around, his rifle arcing toward me and his hands fumbling for the trigger. Before he can reach it, I slash the blade at his chest and cut through the gray fabric of his uniform. He falls back, startled, and I kick the rifle barrel away from where he has aimed it—my heart. Swiftly I lunge and drive the knife into his neck. He makes a gurgling sound and grapples at my hands, but I already feel the strength leaking out of him. He coughs out blood that sprays onto my arms, and he crumbles to the floor, twitching.

A shout comes from upstairs. Another Nazi. Merde. A few seconds later, a new set of boots hammers down the steps, but I’m ready for him. Channeling every ounce of hatred I have toward Dr. Nacht, I grab the fallen rifle and shoot. The bullet strikes his cheek and he falls into the cellar, his limbs flailing wildly before he lands by my feet, unmoving.

“Lucie,” Tilly breathes, coming up behind me. She blinks at the two bodies.

“I’m … all right. Are you?” I pant.

She nods. “Your hands.”

I look down to find them covered in blood. Tilly tries searching for a cloth or rag to clean them, but I don’t move to help her. I just stare at my dirtied hands. They’re the same ones that killed Travert and Schuster and even Dr. Nacht, but they no longer tremble and shake like they once did. When did I become the hardened agent that Covert Ops trained me to be? Would my brother recognize this new Lucie? Would I want him to?

But Theo would’ve wanted me to survive, and I’ve done just that. I might not be the girl that he once knew, but I’m still his sister. Even if this war has forever changed me.

“Girls?” I hear Ana?s calling from upstairs. Soon, she looks down in the cellar and her face turns chalk white at what she finds. “Nom de Dieu! What happened?”

“The Nazis came.” My voice sounds tired, dulled at the edges. “I’m very sorry, but we had no other choice.”

“It’s no matter now. Are you hurt?” She waits for me to shake my head before she urges us to come upstairs. “We should go.”

“What about the bodies?”

“Leave that to me. First, we need to get away from the house.”

A punch of guilt strikes me in the chest. Ana?s took us in like Madame Rochette did, and now she’ll have to abandon her home, too, because of us. Exhaustion falls over me at that thought, and I don’t think I can take another step, but Ana?s pulls at my arm and says to please hurry. She gathers some money and wipes the blood from my hands with a cloth. Within twenty minutes we’re on the run again.

We steal away to Verdun. A feeble moon lights our path as we wind across a quiet cemetery filled with crosses from the Great War, and we slip down a road to the humble home of the local Resistance leader. The man must’ve been expecting us because he takes us immediately to his barn and presents us with our options for reaching London. Not too surprisingly we don’t have many—the Nazis have made sure of that. The Germans have bulked up their forces along the coast, meaning we can’t take a submarine like Dorner did. That leaves us with the alternate route of crossing into Spain and smuggling ourselves in a fishing vessel bound for England. It won’t be an easy trip, but I agree to it immediately, and not only for Tilly’s sake. Dorner will be in London, too.

That night, I lie awake in the barn and think about locating Dorner and shooting him in the stomach, where it’d take hours for him to bleed out. A fitting end to a Nazi like him. Come the morning, I brush my hair and put on a floral-patterned dress that the Resistance has given me, all the while imagining my hands wringing Dorner’s skinny neck. I’ll choke him until he blacks out, and then I’ll wake him up to do it again. And again.

Once I’m ready, Ana?s hands me a folder that contains Tilly’s and my new identities. From here on out we’ll be known as cousins élise and élodie Coupe, two farm girls on our way to visit friends in Perpignan, a town in southeastern France that isn’t far from the Spanish border. Once we’ve arrived in Perpignan, we’ll cross over the Pyrenees range by foot and sneak into Spain, which has decided to stay neutral in the war. Still, neutral or not, I’m sure we’ll face a new batch of dangers there. For one thing, I don’t speak a word of Spanish.