Evangeline snorted and reclaimed her cigarette. “Someone said she’s a Gestapo informant. She sells out women like . . .” Evangeline didn’t finish the thought, just huffed out a ribbon of smoke. “Said she reports to Göring himself.”

Simone glowered. “Why? Why would she do that?”

“Protection, of course.”

“That coward. And you were afraid for her to see you.”

Evangeline stared at the ground. “Does that make me a coward, too?”

Simone bit back her instinctive response. They both knew what it would be, anyway.

Evangeline cupped Simone’s cheek with her free hand. Her fingers were always as soft as rose petals, nothing like the hard calluses that crusted Simone’s. Simone tried to look mollified, but the truth hung too heavy between them, thick as the April stink off the Seine as winter’s secrets thawed. Simone would never have patience for surrender, appeasement, acceptance. Evangeline’s gilded cage had been built with nothing but.

“They’re getting more aggressive. I think they mean to punish us for de Gaulle.”

“Because he has the good sense to fight back?” Simone asked. So many in Paris had accepted—been relieved, even—when Marshal Pétain delivered the armistice to the Nazi forces. France would allow themselves to be occupied, in return for a farcical modicum of self-governance. Curfews, deportations, all their liberties stripped off one by one in a great tease, like a burlesque show in Montmartre. And Evangeline’s father was one of Pétain’s accomplices. More and more each day, Evangeline was, too.

From the safety of London, Charles de Gaulle had put out the call on the radio: the Free French would not be stopped. In pockets and alleys and basements, informal plans were hatched and sewn together into a larger piecework quilt of resistance. Even in Simone’s neighborhood, the whispers grew: here was a way to fight back. Not only against the Nazis. But against the French traitors who treated them like invaders when France was the one who had claimed Algeria for its own.

It was a call that grew ever harder to ignore, especially when Simone’s carpentry jobs dried up. She was always at her most dangerous with nothing to occupy her hands. She needed work—a purpose. Craved it. Smuggling messages across Paris, learning how to clean a rifle—such tasks occupied her when nothing else could.

“Simone . . .” Evangeline bit her lower lip, eyes wide and searching. “I know you want to fight back.” It had been an all-too-frequent argument between them of late. “But I’m telling you, it isn’t safe. Informers are everywhere.”

Simone narrowed her eyes. “You think I can’t be smart about it? It isn’t as though I’m going to strut down the boulevard with the Cross of Lorraine pinned to my chest—”