She dropped the stack of decoded transmissions and took a step back. “N-never mind. It isn’t important.” A fist of ice closed around her heart. “Not anymore.”

Even if—if—somehow Evangeline had seen the truth of what Simone fought for every day. Even if she had devoted herself to fighting her way out of her cage rather than nestling up inside it, so comfortable while the world burned around her. What did it matter if she carried a vial of poison with her to every meal with their occupiers if she never found the courage to use it? What did it change for Simone?

Not a damned thing.

Something passed across Guillerme’s face—a wrinkle in his brow, a frown, but gone just as quick. “If there was something you want me to put in the transmission,” he started, “I’d be happy to—”

An electric buzz interrupted him. Karl, his father, bounded to his feet as he and Guillerme looked hard at one another. “Excuse me,” Karl said in English, his face suddenly slack and pale. “I—I think I have a customer in the store.”

Karl limped toward the far end of the room and shoved aside a panel that let out into what looked like a furniture studio. A tiny pang beneath Simone’s ribs reminded her how much she missed her own work. Her fingers itched to reach out and grab a lathe, a sander. But curiosity and fear won out. As he fitted the panel back into place from the other side, she and Guillerme both crept closer to listen in.

“Keep working,” Guillerme told Phillip in English, smile stretched taut across his face. “No need to worry.” But the look he shot Simone was pure panic. Her heart squeezed. She wondered if he was aiding them for similar reasons to Helene’s. A blessing that so many people were willing to risk everything to do what was right, she thought—and a curse that it was still nowhere near enough.

“I’m almost done.” Phillip bound two wires together, then started packing bundles of cords back into place inside the machine. “Do we need to—”

Simone held up one finger as she tried to catch the tail end of Karl’s conversation, but they were too far away. It was safer for her not to hear, but she needed some way to unfurl the tension so tight in her gut. She needed a cigarette. She needed to shoot another Nazi.

At last Karl limped back into the room, face white as paper. “They’re looking for the people responsible for what happened at Siegen.” He looked from Simone to Phillip. “I think you’d better go.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

DANIEL