She almost cried with relief when she saw it was a U.S. Army jeep like her own. She held out one hand to flag it down, the other shielding her eyes from the glare of headlights. The jeep pulled to a stop. A man climbed out.

Warren Stone.

“Got yourself in trouble?” he asked with a grin.

Jess’s stomach twisted. No spare tire. Warren taking her jeep and leaving her with his. The coincidence of him being the one to find her.

“Who’s this?” he asked, looking into the back of the jeep where Victorine lay stretched out, sleeping.

“Dan’s niece. Lieutenant Colonel Hallworth’s niece,” she corrected herself.

“What a delightful child.” Warren stroked Victorine’s cheek. It was the kind of gesture that might suit a doting elderly lady but coming from Warren, the gesture made Jess’s skin crawl.

“Maman?” Victorine said sleepily, stirring and yawning.

“Maman?” Warren repeated. “My, that is interesting.”

“She’s Dan’s brother’s child. Born before I even knew Dan. She calls me that because she has no one else.”

“And nor do you. Have anyone else. Just me, and a dark road and a broken jeep. Sweet child, you’ll have to excuse your maman and me for a while. We have some business to transact.”

And Jess knew that the thing she’d dreaded since his words, spoken to her in a bar in London—One day, Captain May, you will regret this conversation very much—had finally come to pass.

“No,” she said, but even she could hear the shock in her voice.

He shrugged. “Do you want me to wake the child so she can watch?”

Jess felt her hands begin to shake. “You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

Her Colt was in her own jeep, the one Warren had taken that morning. She didn’t have a knife. She had only herself.

But Warren was bigger and stronger and even though terror would make her fight and kick and punch and scream, she knew he’d win in the end. And although she couldn’t believe that she would ever acquiesce to such a thing, she knew it was better to get it done quietly behind one of the trees at the side of the road while Victorine slept. She would never want Victorine to witness the violence of Jess resisting Warren, a violence that would scar Victorine for life in a way different from the scars Amelia bore, but perhaps the more powerful.

Her stomach roiled and she thought she might be sick. She tried to breathe, in and out. She tried to separate her mind from her body, to send her thoughts elsewhere and leave Warren with only her shell. But she felt one treacherous tear roll down her cheek.

Then she made herself nod, indicating a tree a little way down the road, hoping its carapace of leaves would screen from Victorine’s sight, should she chance to wake, what was about to happen.

“Glad to find you’re so amenable,” Warren said, excitement shining like flak in his eyes.