Simone pushed away the memories and shoved through the thick oak branches that slapped her with wet leaves like tongues. Every step, she waited for the whistle and sting of death. But nothing came. Whoever was watching them either didn’t realize they’d been spotted—unlikely—or was waiting for them to act first.

Rifle hoisted, she scanned the forest’s edge across the road below them and waited for something to budge.

There—a flash of gold, then green and gray. Someone was crouching on a tree branch. The branches were stubbornly dense with brown and orange leaves, but Simone made out a slight figure doing their best to hide.

Simone locked the bullet in her rifle chamber, relishing the sharp crack it made that echoed across the ridge.

“Don’t shoot!” The figure’s arms rose. “We’re on your side!”

Simone had heard that before. Thanks to the pose, she could approximate the location of the figure’s chest, their head—

She stumbled backward, rifle slipping from her shoulder. She was going mad. That had to be it. For a moment, she saw a flash of gold and rosebud lips—for a moment, she saw Evangeline—

The figure dropped down from the trees with a crunch of dead branches. Of course it wasn’t. Simone cursed herself. First the agent on the radio, now this. She was losing her edge, and it was going to get her killed.

The figure—the young woman who did, at least, have blond hair twisted up around her skull in braids—approached the side of the road.

“We don’t mean you harm,” she said in slow, deliberate German. “But you should know I have two more companions you haven’t spotted.”

Against her better judgment, Simone turned around. Sure enough, Phillip and Rebeka stood with their arms raised, a German man and woman pressing the muzzles of hunting rifles to their backs.

“Fine.” Simone dropped her rifle. “What do you want with us?”

“We’re supposed to meet Resistance contacts sent from Hallenberg,” the man said.

Simone groaned and bent to pick up her rifle. When the first girl glowered at her, she slung it on her back and held her empty hands out. “You idiots. Suppose I weren’t with the Resistance? Now you’ve just told me that there’s a cell in Hallenberg and one in Wewelsburg, which is where I presume you’re from.”

The cocky smile faded from the man’s face. “But you’re—I mean, obviously you’re not Nazis—”

“They said there would be only two of you.” The blond girl made her way up the escarpment to join them. “The guard and the radio operator.”

Rebeka bit her lower lip. “I don’t want trouble. I can go—”

“Go where?” the man asked. “Don’t you know what Wewelsburg is?”