“Gerda!” His voice ricochets off the walls. He’s growing angry. His footfalls verge on stomps.

If Evelien refuses to leave, how can I force her? I consider climbing out the window without her, but for only a split second. Instead, I steal across the room, chasing after her. I make it into the hall just as she picks up something by the telephone table—her doll. Then she flips around and hurries back in my direction.

“Gerda!” Ziegler is coming back this way.

I scoop Evelien up and run back into the library, this time going straight to the window. Arie is waiting there, anxious, with his good arm out.

“Go to your uncle,” I whisper to Evelien. I try to pass her feet first, but one of her shoes gets caught in the curtains. I’m reversing her body to lead with her shoulders when a light flicks on. I cast a glance through the glare. In the doorway, beneath a peaked visor cap, the man’s eyes are wide with shock.

“Was mach ihr da?” he blurts out, a demand to know what we’re doing. His build and face appear unnaturally square, as if made of cinder blocks. It seems his feet are too, given the weight of his steps as he suddenly bounds toward me.

All at once, my neck jerks back. My scalp is screaming. I reach up and feel his hand in my hair before he yanks me aside and throws me to the floor. Rigged cards fly from my pocket, scattering around me. I look up and see Evelien disappearing through the window. Arie managed to hold onto her waist. But Ziegler is lunging into the drapes.

I scramble onto my knees, disoriented, trying to stand, and spot my pocket knife on the floor. I swipe it and open the blade as a muffled shriek passes through the window. Ziegler has a grasp on Evelien’s leg. She’s kicking hard, yet he refuses to let go.

Sheer instinct overrides any training I’ve had with a weapon. Lurching toward him, I raise the knife high and swing it toward his shoulder. I feel a piercing of skin, a burying of the full blade. A sharp groan bursts from his mouth and his elbow flies up, hurling me backward. He reaches for the knife protruding from his neck. Evelien is gone, saved.

The blade clatters to the floor. Ziegler turns to me with eyes black as ink, hand on his neck, blood flowing over his fingers. With his free hand, he draws his pistol from his holster.

In that moment, when the world shifts to an impossible slowness, the muzzle of the gun angling toward my face, I realize that it’s over, that this is where my journey ends.

Then come the blasts. Two in a row.