“Move!” she cried, clutching at his shirt, not about to make a run for it on her own. “This is your chance to get out of this hell-hole!”

“Cate—”

“I’m not leaving you, so either get moving or we’re both as good as dead!” Boots echoed down the hall, like booms of thunder during a storm. It was too late. There was no way they were making it to Lilly. They had seconds before they wouldn’t be able to move an inch without being gunned down.

She didn’t look over her shoulder as Jack gave up arguing and started to hobble. There was no time to look back, and as guilty as she felt at running away from the doctors and those who needed her, and her colleagues, nothing was going to change their fate.

Yells erupted behind them, another gunshot, but still Cate refused to look as she dragged Jack through to the next room, scanning, panic clawing at her throat as she realized she’d mistakenly gone into the wrong room. There wasn’t another door to the outside from here. Her hand was firmly woven around Jack’s arm, hauling him along with her, cringing every time he tripped and almost took her down with him.

“Through here,” she cried, lurching forward and grabbing a footstool that was in her way. She threw it straight through the glass window, shattering it with one insistent swoop, heart in her throat as she half-expected a Nazi to be waiting with a gun on the other side for them, or to find one behind her ready to stop them in their tracks as she pushed herself up and out of the large, low window. Glass snagged on her clothes and cut her skin, digging deep as she leaned in to help Jack, pulling him so hard he hit the ground with a thud before clawing himself upright, his hands bleeding as she took hold of him once again.

But there was no one waiting to execute them. No soldier, no patrols, just the carnage that had been left behind in the wake of the battle and a commotion from around the other side of the chateau.

Lilly!

She watched in horror as the ambulance started to move, hoping on the one hand they could make it to her, but knowing there was no way. Lilly was going, and Jack wasn’t leaving with her.

As she looked to the other side, it was like the British army had just abandoned the fight; they were nowhere to be seen, and she wondered what the beach looked like and how long it would take them to make a run for it. Could they evacuate? Would the ships have left or were the soldiers in danger of being massacred where they waited? She had no idea what to do, where they even were in relation to the beach, what direction she should be propelling them in to find safety.