Page 54 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“Convenient.”

“Very.”

I stood, and the world only tilted slightly. Progress. “I'll see you later, then. At dinner. Which I'll be attending for entirely unrelated reasons.”

“Entirely unrelated,” Art agreed, but there was a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

I walked back to my billet, and even though my ribs ached and my head throbbed and the shakes hadn't entirely subsided, something in my chest felt lighter than it had in months.

Ruth and Noor. Art's people. His protectors in a world that offered precious little protection.

And somehow, impossibly, they'd looked at me and decided I might be worthy of joining that small, fierce circle.

I didn't know if I deserved that trust. Didn't know if I could live up to it.

But I knew I was going to try.

ELEVEN

THE SHOT

TOM

The aircraft banked hard to the left, and my stomach lurched with it.

Below us, France sprawled in darkness, a patchwork of black fields and blacker forests broken only by the occasional pinprick of light from a farmhouse that hadn't learned to fear the sky. No moon tonight. Cloud cover thick enough to hide us from German spotters, thin enough to let the pilot navigate by the rivers that snaked silver through the landscape.

I sat in the belly of the Halifax, back against the cold metal hull, pack strapped tight to my chest. The roar of the engines made conversation impossible, which suited me fine. Nothing to say to the dispatcher crouched near the jump door, nothing to say to the pilot I'd never meet, nothing to say to anyone until the job was done.

My rifle case lay across my knees. I'd checked it six times since takeoff. Would check it again before I jumped. The Lee-Enfield inside was cleaned, oiled, zeroed to my specifications. Fifteen rounds in my pocket, though I'd only need one if Art's intelligence was good.

Art.

I'd seen him before I left. Brief conversation outside Hut X, both of us pretending it was just another escort, just another walk between buildings. He'd looked pale, shadows dark under his eyes, and I'd wanted to tell him everything would be fine, that I'd be back before he knew it, that his coordinates were perfect and I trusted them completely.

The dispatcher held up five fingers. Five minutes to drop zone.

I stood, legs steady despite the aircraft's shuddering, and moved toward the door. The dispatcher hooked my static line to the overhead cable, checked the connection twice, gave me a thumbs up. Professional. Efficient. The kind of man who'd done this a hundred times and would do it a hundred more.

Two minutes.

I closed my eyes and breathed. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.

Not thinking about the drop. Not thinking about the mission. Thinking about Art's face in the lamplight outside his billet. The way he'd saidnanti perisherslike it was a prayer. The promise I'd made to come back, the promise I intended to keep even if the universe had other plans.

One minute.

The dispatcher pulled the door open, and cold air screamed into the fuselage. Below, nothing but darkness. Somewhere down there, a Resistance cell waited with torches to mark the landing zone. Somewhere down there, a crossroads outside Saint-Véran waited for a bullet I hadn't yet fired.

Green light.

I jumped.

The world became wind and darkness and the violent snap of the chute deploying above me. For a few seconds, I was suspended between sky and earth, between the life I'd leftbehind and the death I was about to deliver. The silence after the aircraft's roar felt holy, almost peaceful.

Then the ground rushed up, and training took over.

I hit hard, rolling to absorb the impact, fingers already working the harness releases. Chute gathered, bundled, shoved into a hollow beneath a hedgerow. Rifle case retrieved, opened, weapon assembled in the dark by touch alone. Thirty seconds from landing to ready. Not my best time, but good enough.