She picked up a broken spindle and examined the ragged, pointed end. “You did not tie me securely and gave me three weapons,” she said, frowning. “The rope, the chair, and whatever treasures lay on that table beside the pliers. I chose the rope. Most efficient and cleanest, I thought.”

Sophie saw two of her instructors exchange glances.

“That wasn’t the point of the exercise,” the red-faced man sputtered. “The exercise was merely to measure your resistance to interrogation.” He turned to the instructors sitting beside him and glared at them accusingly.

“We warned you,” the instructor in the middle said with a shrug.

Sophie’s interrogator in the Gestapo costume had straightened and was rubbing his throat and his shoulder, his breaths coming in hoarse, heaving gasps. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he rasped. “Bloody, unnatural bitch.”

Sophie stared at the interrogator. For a moment, she was eight years old again, her stomach churning in a library.

You are an unnatural creature.

Maybe Mrs. Postlewaithe had had it right all along.

“Yes” was all Sophie said.

The interrogator coughed and gagged again.

“You may go, Celine,” the instructor said, addressing her by her code name. “Return upstairs and change. This exercise concludes your training. We will compile our report and final evaluation shortly.” He closed the folder in front of him. “It will be added to your file for consideration.”

Chapter 11

Chapter
11

Estelle

Paris, France
16 July 1943

Estelle slipped the pink ribbon off the small wooden box.

She had kept it hidden in the bottom drawer of her writing desk for the last year, unable even to look at it without feeling like her heart was being torn from her chest. With fingers that weren’t quite steady, she opened the top of the box, the two pendants that still nestled against their bed of velvet gleaming in the low light.

She’d not been able to get to Serge and Rachel. They’d been imprisoned in the Vélodrome before they’d been shipped out of the city. None of the German officers she’d discreetly queried in the days that followed their arrest and deportation from Paris had been able to tell her exactly where they’d been taken. After all, they weren’t the ones who had perpetrated the roundup—that operation had been conducted by French police. But—they had all agreed with a sickening degree of smug satisfaction—the Jews were not coming back. Ever.

A shadow fell in front of Estelle, and she looked up.

Aviva was standing before her in the circle of light, rubbing her eyes.

“I thought you were sleeping.” Estelle stood and slipped the ribbon back on the box before sliding it into the pocket of her robe.

The little girl shook her head, her eyes overly large in her pale, drawn face.

“Would you like me to tuck you back in?” she asked.

Aviva shook her head again.