But she’d lost Simone all the same. Now, with one act, she would lose her country, her whole world. She did not need to be executed alongside the Resistance for France to die around her. She did not have to throw herself in front of a tank to feel the ache, that nagging tug, that told her she could have prevented all of this. She could stay locked inside this beautiful home, its bones built long ago by starving peasants and its floors swept by threadbare immigrants and its wood refurbished by a young Algerian woman that people spat on and called names—she could stay locked inside its comforts forever, but it would not take away the knowledge of the suffering and torment and hatred that continued beyond the seeded-glass windows. If she didn’t fight—there would be loss all the same.

She might as well do whatever she could.

The radio mumbled to life once more, beginning with the code name, long and short, as the operator identified themselves. Evangeline raised the volume just enough to hear it clearly.

CARPENTER.

Simone’s code name.

She bit down hard on her finger to keep from sobbing. Her other hand closed around the thing she had slipped from the pocket of Stefan’s coat, her fingers Magpie-quick. It was not too late. It was not too late to save her own life.

It was also not too late to save Simone’s.

Her fingers flew over the transmitter as she parceled out her response, their back and forth, all the gaps between the letters filled with things they could not say. The static on the line was heavy; Evangeline could almost imagine Stefan breathing into it, excited, delighted that he had caught her in the act. The Magpie. The mole within the requisitions office that had chipped away at the Wehrmacht, bit by bit.

Can arrange safe extraction after two hours, Evangeline told her. Her heart was a fist in her throat. No more.

They signed off.

Downstairs, so far away in the cavernous mansion she barely should have been able to hear it, Evangeline heard the front door splinter in its frame.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

LIAM

Clear the streets for the brown battalion, clear the streets for the storm battalion! Millions gaze upon the swastika, full of hope, for the day of freedom and plenty shall dawn!

The brownshirted thugs of the Sturmabteilun hadn’t had a good public humiliation in a while, and it showed.