“They must have run out of ammunition,” Elise whispered, her voice catching, not letting herself speak any louder. “There’s no other reason they’d be walking out without guns.” Or at least no other reason she could think of.

She counted them slowly in her head, trying to keep up with their movements and struggling once they started to stand in front of one other. “There has to be almost a hundred men there!”

“I lost count at ninety,” Adelaide said. “Why would an entire regiment be here in Le Paradis, without any backup? Where is the rest of the army?”

“I don’t know, but they’ll all be taken prisoners of war now,” Elise told her. “They’ll spend their days in a camp until the war is over.”

It had been her worst nightmare, worrying whether Louis could be taken and end up in an enemy prison camp, but in the end she’d decided that it would have been a better fate than death on the battlefield. At least he would have had a chance at surviving if he’d been captured.

Elise was just about to let the soft fabric go, not wanting to watch as the men were rounded up and marched off, when Adelaide’s hand gripped hers.

“Look,” Addy whispered.

Elise tightened her fingers against her sister’s, not breathing, not blinking as she stared at the scene unfolding in front of them.

The German soldier, the one who’d strode forward originally and marched the British troops out, was gesturing to his men. She wasn’t certain, but she thought his uniform was that of an SS officer, and she watched in horror as a handful of the Nazis lifted their weapons. They all had their backs to her, but she saw the lift of their arms, knew exactly what they were about to do. She strained to see the officer’s face, but couldn’t.

“They’re machine guns,” she whispered.

“Feuer!” The order was yelled so loud that they heard it from their window.

Fire.

“What did he say?” Adelaide gasped. “What does that mean?”

Elise’s hand flew to her mouth, unable to answer her sister, a silent scream choking her while she watched the surrendered soldiers, their bodies ricocheting and falling as they were machine-gunned at close range.

“It’s murder!” Adelaide cried. “We have to do something! Elise! We have to help them!”

Elise let go of the curtain then, shutting her eyes, trying to block out the images that she knew she’d never forget for as long as she lived. When she opened them, fear at what they’d just witnessed had her heart racing. What they’d just witnessed went against the simplest rules of war.

“Elise! We have to do something!”

“No,” she said firmly, pulling her sister away from the window. “We do nothing. We go about our evening, we cook dinner, that’s it.”