She nodded and wriggled backward so that she came out at the rear of the ambulance. Her heart was pounding and she could barely breathe, but she forced her feet to move, shuffling as quietly as she could, moving to the driver’s door. Cate paused, listening for danger, but she couldn’t hear anything close by, and she quickly opened the door and looked in. Dammit! There were no keys in the ignition. She moved back around the vehicle and stepped up into the back, immediately seeing a grey wool blanket. There was only one, and it was in a heap on the floor as if it had been accidentally discarded. She scooped it up, sticking it under her arm. There wasn’t really anything else of use except some bandages, so she grabbed them and then carefully, silently, lowered herself to the ground.

Cate was still expecting to hear the click of a rifle trained on her, to be grabbed roughly and marched back to the chateau, but nothing happened. She lowered herself and wriggled forward, side by side with Jack again, conscious that her right side was pressed almost along the length of his left now. She’d touched him before—skin to skin, nursing him—but it felt different to have her body against his. Too intimate, almost, for someone she didn’t know that well, but intimate or not, she wasn’t about to move away from him. She felt safer against him, his body warmth comforting.

“What do you think’s happening in there?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he murmured, his eyes facing forward, chin in the dirt as he stared out. “We haven’t heard any more gunshots, so that’s good. But who knows what they’ll do to them next?”

“Aren’t there rules about this sort of thing? I mean, they have to take them as prisoners of war, don’t they? They can’t just . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“Kill them?” Jack turned, his face inches from hers, his eyes glinting with unshed tears.

Cate looked into his eyes and wondered what he’d seen, what he’d been through out in the field before he’d come into the hospital. She had so many questions for him, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask them, or know the answers.

“Would they?” she asked. “Kill them, I mean?”

He slowly shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve heard stories about their cruelty, about what they’re doing to the Jews, and if they can do that to them, then I don’t know whether they’ll abide by the rules here or not.”