“Not thieves,” the German shouted. “Just honest soldiers. And we’re hungry.”

“Why should we feed you? Go away!”

“If you don’t open this door we’ll kick it in!”

Nina ought to be telling the refugees to get up the ladder and into the hiding place, but any movement now, even a creaking floorboard, would betray them. Instead they waited, paralyzed, as Rosa unlatched the door and their enemy entered the house.

“Who was here just before?” one of the soldiers demanded.

“No one. I was setting the table for breakfast.”

“It’s the middle of the night.” The soldier was drunk, but he wasn’t entirely witless.

If Rosa was frightened she gave no sign of it. “What of it? We rise before sunrise every day. Will you not tell me why you are here?”

“I told you already. We’re hungry, and the food at our barracks is no good. Me and Meier here want something to eat.”

“How is that my concern?” Rosa snapped, and Nina braced herself for the moment when the German would lose all patience with her.

“We’re lonely, too, and you’re much prettier than the fellow who cooks for us.”

“Get away from me!”

“I’m just trying to be friendly,” the soldier protested, and it sounded, to Nina, as if he was pushing a chair out of the way.

“Leave me alone! My father will be back soon. My brothers, too.”

Where, oh where, was Nico?

The man laughed, a slow and sinister noise entirely devoid of humor. “If they were home they’d be here already. You’re on your own, aren’t you? And those men of yours are off in the hills. Setting traps for good German soldiers—that’s my guess.”

He didn’t sound the slightest bit drunk anymore. Only angry, and vicious, and mean.

“They’re in the stables,” Rosa insisted. “They’ll be back any minute.”

“Liar.”

A clash of pans. A shriek. Rosa’s voice rising in pain. “Leave me alone!”

“Signora—” came an urgent whisper from above.

“What is it?” she asked, not even looking round.

“No ladder. No ladder here!”

She turned, and only then did she realize that none of the refugees, save the man who’d pulled himself up earlier, was in the hiding place. Instead they were huddled beneath the trapdoor, staring at her, too frightened to move.

The ladder was under the bed—Nico had moved it there after Zwerger’s last visit. She hurried across the room and pulled it free, wincing as it scraped against the floor. “Here—take it. Get them up it as quickly as you can, and pull it up after you.”

She had to help Rosa. She had to stop those men from hurting her. Nina ran into the corridor, her lamp in hand, and shut the bedroom door behind her. If only there were a way of locking it from the inside.