“You can’t mean that.” Adelaide’s eyes were wild, tinged red and staring.

“If they know we saw that, what do you think they’ll do to two women on their own?” Elise asked. “If they do that to men who’ve surrendered, do you think they’ll even hesitate to rape us and steal all our food? To murder us, too? They’ll see that pretty face of yours and—”

“Enough,” Adelaide said, her hands over her ears. “Stop, please just stop.”

Elise opened her arms, drawing her sister in and holding her. She pressed a kiss to her blonde hair, wondering at how she was barely three years older than her, but felt more mother than sister sometimes.

“This is war, Addy,” she whispered. “Nothing is fair, nothing is just. But we have to be careful if we want to stay alive.”

“I thought it would be over soon. I thought we were going to be safe,” Addy sobbed.

So did I. Elise nodded, knowing she should be soothing her sister with calming words, but not even knowing where to start. When she finally let her go, she stepped toward the window again, braving one last, final peek. Elise froze. There was movement. Not all the troops had been killed.

She pressed herself against the wall, fingers trembling as she kept the curtain parted just enough to watch, not wanting to be seen, not after witnessing such a violent massacre. Was she imagining the movement?

No. She wasn’t imagining anything, because it wasn’t only her who’d seen them.

Elise could hear shouts, but they meant nothing to her in German, and suddenly those British troops that had survived, who were staggering to their feet or writhing on the ground, were being roughly pushed and kicked to get them to move. As she watched, she saw them being yelled at, presumably to empty out their pockets, which they did, some of them bleeding and stumbling, and suddenly they were all marched away.

“What if someone’s still alive down there in that pile?” Addy asked from behind her.

“They’ve taken all the live ones,” Elise replied, taking a few deep breaths to calm herself before she turned. The urge to vomit was overwhelming now.

“Do you think they’ll kill them too?” Adelaide whispered.

Elise nodded. “Perhaps.”

But as they walked down the stairs, hand in hand, ten minutes later, the repetitive thud of machine guns made her legs buckle beneath her. She landed on the stair with a thud, narrowly missing the dog, and dropped her head between her knees, hands over her ears.

Every single one of those men was now dead. She just knew it. And she had no idea how she was going to protect her sister from an enemy who knew no bounds.

CHAPTER FOUR CATE

CHAPTER FOUR

CATE