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Eighteen

“Run, or I’ll shoot you.” Rebecca aimed the rifle at Henry’s heart.

“You won’t,” Henry said. The door cracked again. Rebecca fired, plaster exploding around them.

“You don’t know me very well.”

She hated herself. She wondered if he hated her too. She hoped that years from now, he would understand.

“Pick it up.”

He did.

“Now run.”

She held the gun on him until he was out of sight, then turned her attention to the door. She held the rifle steady, watching as the wood split before her eyes, daylight streaming between the cracks.

Wait , she told herself.

The doorframe broke apart with a final snap, and the first Gestapo stepped through.

Rebecca took a breath, held it, and pulled the trigger.

Noise filled the room, and the man’s face disappeared in a spray of red.

His body sank to the ground and landed in a heap.

Blood pooled around what remained of his head and spread across the kitchen floor.

Four left.

There was a brief and frantic retreat. Angry shouts filled the air.

Another face appeared in the doorway but pulled back before Rebecca could fire.

She stood her ground, waiting for them to make another appearance.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head, just in time to see one of the Gestapo standing at the window, gun drawn.

Both fired, the deafening cracks following each other in rapid succession, and Rebecca fell back as a searing pain tore through her left shoulder.

As she stumbled into the shelter of the stairwell, she saw the side of the man’s neck, torn open and hemorrhaging, and he fell out of sight.

Three.

She looked down. Blood bubbled forth from the hole in her shoulder.

She knew that whatever happened next, she needed to keep the remaining Gestapo occupied long enough for Henry to escape.

She pressed one hand to the wound and felt a lightning bolt of pain explode through her body.

She let out a low whimper but did not scream.

Her ears pricked to the unexpected sound of silence. The Gestapo were regrouping. Straining at the stillness, she heard an almost imperceptible click followed by a soft padding of feet. One of them had circled around and come in through a back door. They were trying to get behind her.

She climbed the stairs backward, keeping the rifle pointed toward the bottom step. Blood fell in fat droplets at her feet and left crimson streaks along the wall where she leaned for support. As she reached the landing, she glimpsed an approaching shadow as it crept across the floor.

She ran.

Doors lined the long corridor. She was running blind, her feet carrying her as fast as they could away from the approaching footsteps.

She opened a door and saw that it was a bedroom, musty and unused.

Thinking fast, she smeared her bloody hand across the doorknob and on the frame, leaving the door ajar.

She heard voices behind her and kept running, coming to a stop in front of an open door at the far end of the corridor.

It was a sunny room lined with books. A library.

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

Angry shouts filled the air as the Gestapo searched the bedroom at the other end of the hall.

She had perhaps a minute before they realized their mistake and came looking for her.

There was another door at the far end of the library, and she ran to it, biting back the urge to cry out in pain as she pressed against it with all of her weight, but it was no use. It was locked.

“No, no, no, no. Merde!”

The voices in the corridor grew louder.

“ She’s not in here ,” one of them said in German.

“Do you see the book anywhere?”

“No, it’s not here.”

On the writing desk by the window was an old oil lamp and a canister of matches.

Rebecca turned to the shelf closest to her, grabbing the biggest book she could find—a beautiful leather-bound volume with gold lettering and illuminated pages.

She thought of her father, the hours he would have spent poring over a book like this one, and felt a pang of guilt as she tossed it onto the floor.

“For the cause.” She picked up the lamp. She heard heavy footsteps getting closer by the second. They were coming for her.

She tossed aside the glass chimney and poured the oil from the lamp onto the book. She heard voices outside as she struck a match. The door swung open, and the match fell, instantly engulfing the book in flames.

The Gestapo opened fire, but Rebecca was already on the move, ducking behind the tattered yellow sofa that stood in the center of the room. From where she crouched, she could see her only means of escape—the locked door, mocking her.

“You want the book?” she shouted. “There it is!”

She heard one of the Germans curse. “ She’s burning the book! ”

“Put it out, you idiot!”

Rebecca popped her head above the edge of the sofa, aimed, and fired, hitting one of the Gestapo in the gut. She didn’t wait for him to hit the ground. She ducked behind the sofa, aimed her rifle at the locked door, and fired again.

The lock disappeared in an explosion of splinters.

She heard the two remaining Germans speaking frantically to each other, and to their gut-shot companion, now crying for his mother on the floor.

The two men grabbed their injured friend by the shoulders and dragged him, screaming, into the safety of the hallway.

Rebecca wasted no time. She ran, exploding through the shattered door and down the stairs, running so fast it felt as if her feet could fly, skipping steps as she went.

She’d had dreams like this, panic making her lighter and faster than she had ever known possible.

The pain in her shoulder seemed like nothing now.

Now there was only room for one thought—escape.

She heard shouts behind her.

“She’s getting away!”

“Forget the girl, save the book!”

“Keep pressure on that!”

Rebecca found herself in a dusty room filled with old wooden pews.

A chapel. There was a door, and she threw herself against it, crying out with relief when it swung open.

She saw her car in the distance, knew that the keys were on the seat.

Only when she’d reached the car did she look back.

No one was coming. She tossed the rifle onto the back seat, and a laughing sob escaped from her chest as the Citroen sputtered to life.

She drove as fast as she could and didn’t look behind her again until she was miles away.

···

Rebecca drove. Sometimes she laughed all alone in her car, a high, triumphant laugh of disbelief.

Sometimes she cried quietly, and sometimes she screamed.

For a while she talked to herself, cursing the Nazis in French, English, German, and then in Yiddish, which felt best of all.

Finally, when she was certain she had not been followed, she pulled to the side of the road and turned off the engine.

She inspected her injured shoulder. The bleeding had slowed but not stopped, and the left side of her blouse was soaked through with blood.

There was no exit wound. The bullet was still inside her, and without attention, the wound would fester.

She needed help, and soon, but the safe house was gone, and any hospital she stumbled into was sure to be overrun with Germans.

There was only one safe place she could think of. She sat in the silence of her car for a long time, wondering if dying might not be preferable.

Then she cursed out loud and began to drive once again.

···

She reached the house by nightfall. She was hungry and parched, exhausted to the point of collapse, and yet, when she saw the shabby little farmhouse come into view, she nearly kept driving.

Rebecca stopped the car and got out, a groan escaping her lips as the sudden movement caused an explosion of pain from her shoulder.

The house had fallen into an even worse state than she remembered.

The front gate had come loose and hung limply from its hinges, and the azure blue paint on the front door peeled off in sheets.

They would be watching her, of course. She imagined the commotion happening this very moment behind that closed door, the frantic whispers as she approached.

She raised her hands in the air a moment before the door swung open.

“Hands up,” a young man said. He was barely more than a boy, wearing a black wool beret and holding a machine gun he obviously had no idea how to handle.

“My hands are up.” Rebecca tried to look past the boy. “Where’s Claire?”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m one of you.” She continued her slow approach toward the house, her hands still raised.

“Hey, stop.” The boy’s voice cracked as it rose. “Do you hear me, I said stop!”

“ Claire! ” Rebecca called. Two more men in berets appeared in the doorway, carrying more guns. Rebecca looked up and saw movement behind the curtains. She felt foggier than she had just a moment ago. She must have lost more blood than she’d realized.

“Go get Claire,” she said. Her tongue felt thick.

One of the older men snorted, then turned to the boy.

“Shoot her.”