“Nothing yet.” Helene planted herself beside the kitchen counter. She looked sturdy and unbreakable; Simone was glad to have someone like her on their side. “The only forces we get beyond our local Gestapo are those passing through on their way to Siegen, or the Occupied Zone. If it was as bad as you say, though . . .”

Simone winced as she tore off a chunk of dark bread. “We’ll try to be gone quickly.”

Helene made a huffing sound. “You are French?”

Simone swallowed the stale bread she’d been chewing. “Algerian. Though my brother and I have been in France for longer than we were in Algiers.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t feel like home, but then, maybe neither would Algiers.” She thought, with a curious nostalgic itch, of the way their family, their faith had felt like a metronome keeping the tempo of their lives. As it fell away, as the invaders swarmed in, time itself seemed to have fallen apart.

“My parents were Belgian, but I grew up here,” Helene said. “Married a German boy.”

Simone tried to arrange her face into something like sympathy. “Did he . . .”

“Die? No. That would be too good for him.” Helene spat into the sink. “He drives a tank for the Wehrmacht. Poland or somewhere. I get special benefits as a soldier’s wife—Kinder, Küche, Kirche, children, hearth, church, all that rot. That’s how I’m able to do all this.”

“But why do you do it?” Simone asked.

Helene wrenched up the shoulder of her handless arm to rub her nose. “I voted against the Nazi party. Screamed and yelled and fought and marched against every law they passed. Until it became illegal to fight back. And legal to do all the horrible things they’ve done.” She let out a shaky breath. “So I decided that if whatever I did was illegal anyway, then I might as well do it in the biggest, most illegal way I could.”

Simone couldn’t help but smile at that. “France and Belgium thank you.”

“And you?” Helene asked, eyeing her. Simone didn’t miss the way her gaze sliced her open.

Simone swallowed the last bite of pumpernickel. “I show my thanks in other ways.”

After a long shower and a short stint checking the converted church’s tower for vantage points, Simone went to fetch Phillip, who was watching while Liam poked around the film vaults.

“Well?” Liam asked. “Will you go with us to Wewelsburg?”

Simone glanced at Phillip, who was giving her a dubious look. “We can contact the Resistance cell there, and I’m not opposed to doing anything that sabotages the Third Reich.” She narrowed her eyes. “But after that, we part ways.”

“After that, we won’t need to.”