are. I was running to warn you.”
“We got out just in time.” He should’ve closed the doors as soon as the women customers stopped making appearances, but if Kat had come looking he didn’t want her finding shuttered windows and him nowhere in sight.
“However did you escape?”
“I had a split-second’s warning to get out before the Gestapo stormed up to my office and found me. Managed to get a few others out, but not nearly enough.”
“Sam?”
His friend’s name stabbed like a hot poker. He picked out a splinter on the plywood tabletop. “Don’t know.”
“Oh, Barrett. I’m so sorry.” Her hand reached out, covering his.
“You take a lot of credit for things you’ve had no part in.”
“Only one person to take credit for this.” Her face hardened. “Eric.”
The splinter snapped between his fingers. He shoved it to the floor. “Should’ve known he was behind this evening’s unexpected meeting. Didn’t think he’d hit us on the same night.”
She looked to Ellie then back at him. “I’m afraid our part was a little more spur of the moment. He forced my hand, so to speak.”
Ellie threw her arms on the table and buried her head in them with a low moan. Barrett stood and motioned for Kat to follow. Whatever she had to say probably didn’t sit well with Ellie.
She stooped down and smoothed Ellie’s platinum head. “Right back. Promise.”
In a corner stacked with munition boxes and radio equipment, he pulled them away from the Resistance members clustered together discussing the events and the best way to hit back. He wasn’t hitting back. He was done. He had the girls, and by the looks of Kat, any safe cover they had was blown. Scraped bare legs, a fancy evening getup that had probably been much prettier hours ago, and hair like yellow brambles clouding her blanched face. Shaken, but unhurt, she was on the verge of dropping. Best to get the information out before then. “What happened?”
She started, haltingly at first from the minutes after she’d left him on the street outside the flat over a week ago, then rising in intensity through the confrontation with Eric and his wife. She reached out and took his hand in both of hers, kneading his fingers as she told of their harrowing climb down the building and the boat patrol under the bridge. Her fingers laced between his as she shuddered to a halt after explaining how Jean had found them on the street just a short hour ago.
Anger quivered in Barrett’s veins. If he ever laid eyes on that despicable bag of scum, he’d thrash him within an inch of his worthless life for torturing her like that. “Aye, I’d say he forced your hand. Shame you didn’t choke him longer for good measure.”
“Blame my last string of human compassion.”
“As if the blighter deserves it. I’ve had Jean watching the place since you came to Paris. Thought an extra pair of eyes would come in handy. Turns out I was right.”
He’d been worried sick when he didn’t hear from her, but Jean had assured him that she was safe enough sequestered inside. The assurance hadn’t been enough to keep him from waking in the middle of the night drenched in nightmarish sweat. What if something happened and he couldn’t get to her? He’d never forgive himself.
She squeezed his hand. “I wrote to you several times, saying I was quite all right and for you not to worry, that I would see you soon. I’d hoped you would read between the lines, but I know now you never got them.”
“When I didn’t hear from you for days, I went to see the truth of Jean’s reports of your imprisonment.” He swallowed hard as the helplessness from that day swarmed him. “You leaned out the window, and I thought about climbing up to you if not for the armed guards by the door. That and the little maid sneaking down the block.”
“Sylvie is Jewish. Eric was blackmailing her.” Her eyes squeezed shut on a groan. “When he no longer needed her, he sent her and her family away. To a camp of some kind.”
Barrett cursed. “Deportation camp.”
“What are those?”
“Work camps that the Nazis have tried to keep hidden from the public. They’ve been rounding up anyone they think undesirable—Jews, Gypsies, political dissidents—and deporting them to ghettos and other places no better than pigpens for containment. A cleansing for the new Aryan utopia they want to create. More often than not, those poor souls are tortured or