Zelie’s cheek stung from the slap, but that wasn’t what had her ears ringing. That roar—pain? Defeat?—that was Marcel. She would know his voice anywhere.
What were they doing to him? Wherewashe? The sound had echoed, reverberated, seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. She tried not to react, but her hands shook, her breath fisted in her chest.
Her interrogator laughed. He’d introduced himself as Gerhard when he’d first come in, as if he expected them to be great friends. “Ah, I see what gets your attention. Which one of your cohorts was that, do you think? Was it perhaps your beloved Greenfinch?”
They must have pulled the note from her pocket while she was unconscious, because it had been there in Gerhard’s hand when she woke up with a gasp and a face dripping from the water he’d thrown into it.
There was a knock on the metal door, and while Gerhard turned to open it, Zelie lifted a hand to probe at her cheek. Her ankles were bound to the legs of her chair, but they’d left her arms free. Presumably from sheer optimism, since the interrogator haddemanded she write down the names of all the agents she knew and their call signs.
She’d stared him dead in the eye and said in a tremulous voice, “I can’t. I can’t remember them.”
No doubt they’d figure out soon enough, if they hadn’t already, that she knew far more than they’d think. But until they left her no other recourse, she intended to play dumb.
It had worked plenty of times before.
She tried to listen to the conversation in the corridor, but it was too hushed for her to make out much more than... Noah? She frowned. Then recalled that they’d taken to calling Alliance Noah’s Ark. That must be what they were talking about.
A moment later, Gerhard returned, and her stomach sank at the smug look on his face. “As it turns out, we don’t need anything from you after all. It seems your esteemed leader has told us everything.”
The very fact that they called one of her colleagues her leader said he didn’t know as much as he thought. But even so, that scream...
HadMarcel let something slip? He wouldn’t if he could help it, she knew that. But men cracked under torture all the time, and that was when they’d had training to resist it.
What training did any of them have in such things? He was a musician, she a wife and mother. Nothing in his years at conservatory would have prepared him for this, any more than her years as...
Actually, come to think of it. Jacques had taught her quite a bit about smiling when she was crying inside. And Marcel? He’d already survived a POW camp. He could maintain order in a group of seventy young men who could be clowns as easily as they could be serious. He’d somehow survived lovingherfor the last year and a half without going mad from it. He too was made of sterner stuff than one might think.
Gerhard folded his arms over his chest. And sneered. “You make me sick, you know that? It’s degenerate women like you who make it clear your people need the guiding hand of the Reich. How many of them did you seduce? Navarre, Noah, Greenfinch—who else? All of them? Were you the company light-skirts?”
She glared... and tried to make sense of the list of names. Who was Noah? And did they actuallyknowwho Greenfinch was or—
“Laurent will be dead tomorrow.” This he delivered cooly, calmly. “Perhaps that won’t even faze you, you whore. But we have the others too. Chamois and Eagle and Beaver and Greenfinch. We have Honey Badger and Wolf and Fox. We have the whole ark, and there’s nothing you can do to save any of them now.”
Gerhard yanked the door open, let it slam against the wall, and barked out, “Take her to her cell!” Over his shoulder, he gave her one last sneer. “Perhaps you’ll be readier to chat tomorrow.”
Her head spun as soldiers untied her and then all but carried her to a cell. Her hip gave out again at the first step. But she didn’t try to still her mind, not yet. Not while they were there, their hands on her arms. Crowding her.
They tossed her into a bare cell, stones on three walls and bars for the fourth, straight out of some kind of medieval dungeon.
Zelie collapsed to the floor. Pressed her forehead to the cold stones. And wept.
They were lying. They couldn’t have Honey Badger—shewas Honey Badger. The other names, they’d been nowhere near that police lorry. They werelying.
And yet... they weren’t about everything. Theydidhave Marcel, and someone must have recognized him, otherwise they’d have no reason to tie his real name to Alliance.
Was that part true, then? Would he be dead by tomorrow? Was that soul-piercing bellow his reaction when they told him? Or... or had they given him a lie too? Perhaps told himshewas dead?
Noah... your leader.
She sucked in a breath and raised her head. He’d known the Nazis called them Noah’s Ark. He must have... idiot man. He’d told themhewas their leader. Did that mean a quick execution, or would they try to pry as much information out of him as they could?
Metal clanged, keys rattled, feet shuffled outside her cell. And then another door slammed, and silence. They’d left her alone.
Easing up, she winced as her hip protested. But it wouldn’t get better down here on the floor. She pulled herself up and went through the stretches that would ease everything back into place.
Urgency weighed heavy on her spirit as she got her body in working order. That same thrumming chant picked up in her mind again, as it had done that last day at the hotel.Hurry, hurry, hurry.
But hurry and... what? Was the Lord trying to warn her that someone would come to their rescue, and she needed to be ready? But who would come? No one knew they were here, no onecould. Everyone else had gone to their new headquarters or scattered.
