But what were they returning to? Make sure you come back alive. Jess had repeated those words to herself every day since the party at the chateau and now she was to find out if they had come true. That was if they ever found the battalion headquarters. When at last they did, Jess’s legs almost ceased to function. Because in that building with only two walls and half a roof was Dan, alive. Thank God!

He was standing beside a wall map scribbled with red and blue marks signifying areas of heavy mortar, or panzers, or ferocious small arms fire, and relaying orders on the phone to his men out in the field. She watched him ask a team of engineers to signpost and clear a road studded with mines, heard him say in a soothing voice to someone on a field phone that Company B was on its way in to help, and at last she smiled.

Every man who conferred with Dan did what Dan asked of him willingly. Every man spoke to Dan with respect, even a little hero worship. That was what had kept Bastogne in Allied hands: the leadership of men like Dan, who knew not just how to maneuver companies and battalions, but how to make men believe that what they were doing meant something when, all around, the evidence of obliteration suggested otherwise.

Marty waltzed over and kissed his cheeks. “I know someone who’ll be glad to see that you made it,” she said, indicating Jess, who hung back awkwardly, fiddling with her cameras as if they needed her attention, unable to follow Martha’s lead and kiss him too even though it was all she wanted to do.

“Sir.” Sparrow appeared from behind them and claimed Dan’s attention before he’d had time to offer Jess more than a smile. “You’re needed out there.”

“Coming?” Dan asked Marty and Jess, who both nodded eagerly, knowing they couldn’t venture out to the front without someone who knew exactly where the front was and how hot the hotspots were.

“Jess!” Jennings’ voice broke into the conversation and Jess turned to find her cheek kissed by the perennially smiling Jennings, wearing new insignia—now adjutant, Dan’s administrative assistant.

Jess’s eyes met Dan’s at last and she knew he’d found a more permanent solution to his personal mission to keep Jennings alive and her heart hurt as if it wasn’t quite big enough to contain everything she felt in that moment. Now she wished she had kissed his cheek because Dan deserved at least that much.

“This way, Sir.” Sparrow led the way to the jeep, more serious than Jess had ever seen him, more corporal now than joker—a promotion he’d gained since Bastogne too, as well as landing the job of Dan’s driver. Which only served to underscore just how many had died and how lucky Jess was to find these three men had dodged not just a bullet, but some pretty damn heavy artillery.

“Where are we off to?” Martha asked Jennings as they pulled onto the road, following Dan and Sparrow’s jeep.