Dan knew he was going to be late to meet Jess, and the ATS camp where Amelia was staying was out of his way. So he’d taken a shortcut.

“If you’d been in the jeep with me, Jess, there’s no way I would have taken that shortcut,” he said. “But I just wanted to see you. I wanted to hold your hand and ask you if you’d really said yes or if it had all been a dream. I thought I knew the road well enough to avoid anything…”

He’d had his helmet and goggles on and had refused to leave until Amelia put hers on, even though she’d complained bitterly about the effect on her hair. What he hadn’t realized, because his thoughts were on Jess, was that Amelia had slipped off the protective equipment sometime after they departed, most likely when he’d been distracted by the demands of navigating and keeping alert to any danger outside the vehicle. And the Germans, as so many times before, had strung a wire from tree to tree across the road, a wire that was almost impossible to see in the dusk and without an experienced navigator beside him like Jennings or Jess.

Dan saw it at the last minute, had yelled out to duck, which anyone else would have done without question but Amelia didn’t know that when a Lieutenant Colonel yelled duck, you ducked. He’d swerved, with his head down, meaning his neck had avoided the wire. But the jeep had hit a tree. He didn’t know how badly Amelia was hurt, but suspected it wasn’t a matter of cuts and scrapes. That the wire, the God-awful wire might have…

“It’s not your fault,” Jess said, squeezing his hand, trying not to think about the stories of guillotined bodies left by the Germans’ infernal wires. “She shouldn’t have been out there in the first place, let alone without a helmet. The Major General shouldn’t have left her behind. And you would never have taken a road that you thought was unsafe.”

“But I did,” he said, his face stricken and she led him to a chair and sat him down and kept her arms around him while they waited to find out what had happened to Amelia.

* * *

Hours later, Anne called them over. “She’s resting now. They had to…” She paused.

“Tell me,” Dan said grimly.

“They had to amputate her arm. It was crushed when the jeep crashed.” Anne paused and Jess knew there was more, that the amputation was the best news. Her heart skidded and she felt like cramming her hands over her ears but she kept her arms around Dan.

“Tell us,” she said to Anne.

“The wire sliced into her face,” Anne said. “She’ll have scars, bad ones, for the rest of her life. I’m sorry.” Anne gave Dan a sympathetic look and moved away.

“What have I done?” Dan said, face dropping into his hands.

“You’ve done nothing,” Jess insisted. “Let’s go see her. She’ll say the same.”