Bridgette reached up and removed a strand of rank hair stuck to Nicoline’s moist cheek. Her partner in misery was thirty years old, with a striking bone structure. She must have been beautiful once and perhaps would be again, but after nearly four years of incarceration at Drancy in the grip of the Richters, the spirit that gave life to her beauty might never be restored. Even though Nicoline could not claim a drop of Jewish blood, she had been arrested while visiting a Jewish family during the first roundup of Jews in 1941 and interned in the camp. She would have been released had Madame Richter not recognized her as one of the chefs in their favorite restaurant. As Bridgette had been conscripted for her skills, Nicoline had been pressed into service for the Richters because of her culinary talents. Sturmbannführer Richter’s appetites had extended beyond his appreciation of Nicoline’s cuisine, however, and these he indulged with unrestrained gluttony on nights Madame Richter did not lock Nicoline’s door to allow her husband access. Bridgette’s heart wrenched on the mornings after she heard muffled screams coming from Nicoline’s room to see the girl’s once lovely face a wasteland of lost dignity and worth. When Madame Richter caught the commandant forcing himself on Bridgette and saw the blood on the sheets, she had pulled him off her in an inexplicable act of human decency and threatened to extinguish his firecracker once and for all if he touched her again. Apparently, in her thinking, it was one thing to ravish a woman already experienced in sex, quite another to rape a virgin.

“I don’t believe we have to be concerned,” Bridgette said to soothe Nicoline’s worry. “They know the Resistance is knocking on their doors, and they wouldn’t be able to dispose of so many bodies in such a short time. We’ll be free soon, Nicoline. All we have to do is be patient and keep our nerve until help arrives.”

But Nicoline would not be mollified. “What if the commandant returns and decides to shoot us so we won’t testify against him and his wife for their treatment of us?”

Nicoline had a point that Bridgette had not considered, and it made frightening sense. As French citizens, they had been illegally imprisoned without charge, used as forced labor, starved, and beaten, and Nicoline had been repeatedly raped. The commandant would want to dispose of them before they could air their accusations.

“Give me the keys,” Bridgette said. “One of them has to open the bastard’s private cache of guns.”