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My pulse slammed.
I tapped Thomas’s shoulder three times, our signal to hurry, an alarm louder than any siren.
His fingers twisted and turned. The pick retracted, then dove deeper.
Boots crunched frozen grass.
The pick scraped.
The tension wrench shifted.
Thomas’s brow furrowed.
The bootsteps grew louder, deliberate and unfriendly.
I gripped his shoulder—less a signal than a plea.
He swore and twisted.
Click.
The door gave.
We dove inside.
Thomas closed the door behind us as a flashlight beam swept across the garden behind us. I caught a glimpse of it over my shoulder—the yellowish cone cutting across the ivy wall we’d just cleared.
Inside, the dark of the manse swallowed us whole.
41
László
Ilayinbed,mymind drifting in the space between waking and sleep. Calculations warred with random images, mostly visions of Eszter in a yellow and blue dress, tromping about our home with a book in her hand. She always carried a book.
An odd creak made Eszter’s vision retreat.
Then the whisper of wood straining under some weight—soft butwrong. It wasn’t the house settling, wasn’t the radiator groaning. It was something else.
Something human.
I blinked into the darkness, my heart suddenly thudding in my chest. My room was pitch black, save for the faintest splash of moonlight from the curtain I could never get to fully close, just enough to sketch faint lines on the floorboards, just enough to glimpse movement if someone—
I didn’t breathe. I didn’t dare move. My ears strained until they ached.
There.
Another creak. Closer this time.
Someone was inside.
A prickling bloom of terror surged up my spine, turning muscle into ice. My hand reached for the lamp out of habit, but I stopped short. Light would bring death.
They’d come.
The Soviets.
They knew.