Despite Simone’s proclamations, they did use the stove just long enough to heat up canned broth and toss in some cubes of vegetable bouillon, which was unfortunately all the flavor they could find. They sat around the cabin’s tiny breakfast table as they slurped down their sad little soups. The cabin looked like someone’s hunting lodge, and a modest layer of dust blanketed the bedsheets and tables. If the owners were around, they hadn’t come here in some time.

After another sweep of the woods, Simone beckoned them both onto the porch and held her hunting rifle out in both hands. “Now. I think it’s time you both learned how the hell to use these things.”

Phillip huffed. “I got decent enough marksmanship scores—”

“Sure.” Rebeka reached for the rifle. “I’m too clumsy with the P38.”

“Do you know how to check that it’s loaded? Without blowing your face off?” Simone gestured toward the chamber. “How you slot the bullet, prime the firing mechanism . . .”

Rebeka pantomimed taking the steps. Her breathing seemed to slow as she went through the motions, and some of the tension left her face. Phillip raised one eyebrow at Simone. He’d thought she was just like him—far more at ease with diagrams than people. But even if she didn’t intend to, she knew just the thing to put Rebeka more at ease.

Probably helped that it involved killing Germans.

Simone stretched out, long-limbed, on the cabin’s porch steps. “Now bring it to your shoulder. The thing is, you’ll always know the kick of the butt is coming. You have to be ready for it, but not so braced that it makes you rigid. Think of it like . . . the next step in a dance. If you step too soon, it’ll mess up the step that came before.”

Rebeka smiled faintly at that. “It’s been a long time since I’ve danced.”

Phillip’s mouth—the goddamned traitor—was already opening to offer before he clamped it shut. She’d told him what sent her and her brother into the woods—the halting, panicked escape from Poland she’d recounted the night before. She certainly didn’t need him fawning all over her while she wrestled with everything else.

“Line up your shot, but don’t forget the rules of physics, all right? Gravity, wind, the rise and fall of your own breath. Wait for a space. A silence. See the arc of the bullet, how it will move. And then—boom.”

Boom. Phillip shivered involuntarily. But the woods were a wall of darkness staring back at them, a lazy trickle of birdsong giving comfort that nothing worse lurked in the trees.

Yet.

Rebeka moved through the steps of firing a few times more until her focus drifted. She returned the rifle to Simone and slumped back on her palms, looking for all the world like she was relaxing.