Page 110 of Winter’s End

She had known, as surely as if she had been in on the planning, what she would see when she got there. But the sight of Jacob standing on the shore in front of a small motorboat, and Papa Beekhof stowing something inside, filled her with sadness and fright.

Jacob turned to untie the ropes. It was a moment before he saw her.

“Evi…”

She jammed her hands into her jacket pockets, did her best to keep her lips from trembling. “You were going to leave without me, Jacob…”

“Evi, it’s dangerous -”

“Without saying goodbye…”

“I have to go –”

“I know that, Jacob.”

“Then, why are you asking?”

She moved toward him, her voice a whisper. “Because I love you, Jacob…you know that. I cannot let you leave without me…”

Jacob crossed the distance between them, stopped to look at her for what seemed like forever, then reached out and crushed her to him.

“Oh, God, I love you too, Itty Bitty.” His kiss was warm on her lips. “But I can’t let you do this,” he murmured into her hair. “In a small boat, through the North Sea, Evi, can’t you see how dangerous this is? Maybe impossible.”

Papa Beekhof put a hand on her arm. “Evi, behagen, Jacob is right. More than twenty-four hours by sea, my dear girl, and at that, only a faint hope of reaching the English Channel…

But Evi had never been so sure of anything in her life.

She drew back to lose herself in the familiar planes of Jacob’s face. “Where you go, I go, Jacob Reese. I would follow you to the ends of the earth.”

ZOE

Piercing sirens split the air from every direction, and the streets were clogged with Dutch police cars and all manner of German vehicles. Zoe kept the van at a slow but steady speed, avoiding the traffic as best she could, traversing the streets toward the river.

Finally, parking the van across the street from the pier, she slipped out of the driver’s seat and signaled to Kurt to get out.

She grasped his hand, surveyed the landscape, and led the way down the windy pier to theBlijde Tijding.

She had never piloted a barge before any more than she had driven a mortuary van, but Evi had offered her an incredible gift. It was a risk, but a risk worth taking.

“Where on earth are we going,” Kurt muttered in her wake. She did not take the time to explain.

To her great relief, the door to the barge was not locked. It swung open at her touch. She pushed Kurt in ahead of her, then followed him in and locked the door behind them.

Kurt glanced around, then turned his gaze on Zoe.

“The barge belongs to my friend, Evi Strobel” she told him, rummaging in the kitchen drawer for the ignition key Evi told her was there.

She held up the key. “Evi used to live on this barge with her mother,” she said. “But now she has another life – andgodjizdank,her generosity now may now help to us save ours…”

Kurt’s face was a study in astonishment.

“There is a safe house I know in Middleburg,” she told him. “We are safer on the water than on land, I think, and I know people in Middleburg who can help us cross the border into Antwerp.”

Kurt reached for her, his face still unbelieving, and she allowed herself a moment in his arms.

Then she handed him the key. “Can you pilot this thing?”

“I once kept a sailboat on a lake near Stuttgart.”