Gina was getting frustrated. “It just doesn’t make sense.” She could hear an echo of Max’s warning. Whatever you do, don’t insult them. Don’t make them angry. Don’t give them any excuses to lash out at you.
But Bob the terrorist wasn’t insulted. He smiled. Shrugged. He looked exactly like the guys who came to her dorm room to hang out, maybe listen to music. Easygoing. Too cool to get angry about anything.
“Not much in this life makes sense,” he pointed out.
She tried another tack. “What could it hurt,” she asked, “to let the women and children off the plane?”
She was holding the radio microphone on her lap, and the send button was pressed. Somewhere, in one of those ugly buildings that she could see out the windows, Max was listening to every word they said.
Bob scratched his neck. Yawned. Gestured to her bare legs. “Do you know the police would arrest you for wearing that in my town?” His smile seemed apologetic. “That’s if the ...” He muttered something in his own language, searching for the word. “People,” he said. “The regular people, not the army or the police—”
“Civilians?” she offered.
“Yes.” He gave her a brilliant smile. “Thank you. Civilians.” He pronounced it with four distinct syllables. “That’s if the civilians didn’t beat you to death, first.”
Nice.
“Well, these shorts are acceptable in America,” she told him. “They’re even considered conservative.”
“I know what’s acceptable in America. I watch TV. I watch Dawson’s Creek and Buffy. I watched Survivor and MTV.”
Gina couldn’t believe it. “They have MTV in Kazbekistan? Where women are killed for wearing shorts in public?”
“Of course not,” he said. “But I have some friends who have access to a satellite dish. We watch what we want. Purely in an attempt to understand the evils of Western thinking, of course.”
He was making a joke, wasn’t he? He’d all but winked. Gina laughed despite the tension that was increasing hourly throughout the plane. Snarly Al had been about ready to jump out of his own skin just a short time ago, and Bob had banished him from the cockpit.
Bob was official barometer of the hijackers. As long as he was relaxed, there was no reason to be more afraid than usual. And as long as Al stayed away from her, she was safe. If someone was going to hurt her, it wasn’t going to be Bob.
He liked her. She knew he did. If they’d met on campus, they would have been friends.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked him. “How did you end up here? Holding a gun on innocent people. I don’t understand.”
He gazed at her silently for a moment, but then he shook his head. “You know, I watched Survivor.”
“Yeah,” Gina said impatiently. “You said.” She didn’t want to talk about TV shows. She wanted to get some of these people off the plane. “You and ninety percent of the free world’s population.”
“The whole time I watched it,” he told her, “I was thinking, they wouldn’t last a day here. Susan and Gervase and Richard. What they survived was nothing.”
When he looked over at her, she could have sworn there were tears in his eyes.
Gina’s heart lodged in her throat. What atrocities had he lived through? What horrors had he witnessed on a daily basis? She waited for him to say more, but he was silent.
“Please,” she whispered. “Let the women and children off the plane. Let everyone off the plane. You’ve got me as a hostage—you don’t need them.”
Bob gazed at her, his expression unreadable.
But then the radio squealed, and she quickly released the talk button on the microphone.
And Max’s voice came over the speaker, strong and clear. “Flight 232, come in. Over.”
Bob wiped his eyes. Squared his shoulders. “Ask him if our demands are being met,” he instructed her.
Crap, she had been on the verge of some kind of breakthrough with him. She knew it. And yet she knew why Max had interrupted them. Never offer anything that you aren’t immediately prepared to deliver. And never make it personal.
Gina thumbed the mike. “Bob would like to know the status of their demands, please. Over.”
“The senator—your father—is in a meeting with the president,” Max said. She knew it was total bullshit. The United States didn’t negotiate with terrorists. The end. This guy they wanted released from prison? He wasn’t going anywhere. Not a chance. The senator could meet with the man in the moon and it wouldn’t change a thing.
“Bob,” Max spoke directly to the hijacker. “It’s time for a good faith gesture. Something big, something generous. Something that will tell the U.S. government that you’re serious about keeping the people on that plane safe and alive. Something like—send Karen off the plane. Let her walk off, Bob. Let her just walk away. That’ll send a positive message, I guarantee it. Over.”
“Ask him if he thinks we’re stupid, Karen,” Bob countered.
“Max,” Gina said. “You don’t think Bob is stupid, do you? Over.”
What was Max doing? He’d heard her conversation with Bob, heard her connect with him. He knew the hijacker was vulnerable right now because of that connection. She knew Max knew it—he’d taught it to her himself—told her all about negotiating with someone who was under stress—just hours ago. And yet he was trying to use this opportunity to get Gina free. Just Gina, no one else.
He must really think she was going to be killed. And soon.
“Why don’t you want to release her?” Max asked. “Because she’s the senator’s daughter? Over.”
Gina looked at Bob, who nodded. “Yes. Over.”
“You want an important hostage?” Max asked. “You can have an important hostage. You can have me. I’m one of the United States’ top negotiators, Bob. There are a lot of people who would be having heart attacks if they knew I was offering to put myself in your hands. But I am offering. She comes off, I’ll come on. Let’s do it. Right now. I’m walking out of terminal A, heading right for you, Bob. So let’s do it. Send her off the plane. Over.”
Bob scrambled for the window. Gina looked, too, out into the night.
And then she could see him. Max. A distant, shadowy figure backlit by the lights from the terminal. For the first time, he was more than just a disembodied voice. He was a real man, and he was walking toward them. Ready to trade himself for her. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Tell him to stop,” Bob ordered.
“Max, stop. Please.”
The distant figure stopped moving. He raised what had to be some kind of wireless walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Come on, Bob. Doing this will show your willingness to work toward mutual satisfaction. It’s a goodwill gesture, and it puts you into an even better bargaining position. You are not losing here. Over.”
“Tell him no,” Bob said. “Tell him he’s the one who needs to make a goodwill gesture. Tell him meeting the first of our demands and freeing our leader from prison is the kind of goodwill we’re looking for.”
Gina took a deep breath and gave it another try. “It doesn’t have to be me going off the plane,” she told Bob. “Freeing the women and children would be a gesture of—”
He turned to her swiftly, his voice sharp, his face suddenly angry. “I said no.”
For a moment, Gina was certain he was going to hit her. Right in the face with the butt of his gun.
“Tell him if he comes any closer,” he said, “we’ll shoot him and then we’ll shoot you.”
That was no idle threat. Gina keyed the microphone. “Max, go back inside. Now.”
Stan woke up right before his watch alarm went off.
He wasn’t certain if it was his internal alarm clock that was so accurate or if his watch made some kind of small, almost indiscernible noise or click—something that he’d learned to listen for in his sleep—right before it beeped.
He sat up, switching it off and rubbing his stiff neck, momentarily surprised to find himself on a couch in the hotel lobby. But then he remembered stopping to sit because he was too exhausted and too much of a pouty baby to come face-to-face with Mike Muldoon right after he’d seen the ensign kissing Teri Howe.
Yeah, he remembered that a little too well.
What he didn’t remember was this blanket. It was chilly tonight—the desert effect—and he’d have had a whole lot more than a stiff neck without it.
Who the hell had gone to the trouble to cover him?
He caught a whiff of a familiar scent, and he brought the blanket to his nose. It smelled like ...
No. That was crazy. Besides, he’d seen Teri Howe go up to her room. She’d looked tired, not as if she were about to start wandering the hotel lobby, handing out blankets to sleeping SEALs.
But he smelled it again. No, he definitely wasn’t imagining it. It smelled like Teri’s hair. As crazy as it seemed, he would bet his life that she’d used this very blanket in the not-too-distant past.
Maybe she’d been too tired to sleep. He knew all about that—he’d been there too many times to count.
Maybe she’d been too tired to sleep, so she’d left her room, looking for him.
Oh, yeah, right. That must be it.
Except, damn, maybe that was it. Maybe she’d wanted to talk more about everything she’d told him that afternoon. He still couldn’t believe she’d never told anyone—that she’d been carrying that terrible secret around inside of her since she was eight years old.
That was a real possibility. Maybe she’d come looking for him to tell him something else that she’d remembered or, Christ, maybe just to get a little comfort after stirring up the past, and what had he done? He’d been unavailable. He’d been unconscious and drooling on this sofa.
Way to go, Stanley.
He took the blanket with him and headed up to his room. He’d return it to her later. With an apology.
Right now he had just enough time to grab a shower and some food before he had to report to the roof.
Sam Starrett slapped the off button on the clock radio before it woke Alyssa.
0200. He had just enough time to shower and get something to eat before he had to report to the roof.
He’d slept maybe two hours, max. Yet he felt far more refreshed, far more energized than he had in months.
Because Alyssa was in his bed.
She stirred, burrowing against him, all smooth, warm skin and soft breasts and taut thighs. He kissed her—how could he not?—and she roused.
“Mmmm,” she said, smiling at him sleepily. Reaching down between them, she found him hard again—big surprise. She drew her leg up over his hip, pulling him toward her as she moved closer, too.
Damn, the woman was insatiable. But then again, he couldn’t get enough of her either.
He was starting to hope that she would still want him, come the morning. That she’d wake up just like this—smiling and still hot for him.
Sam looked at the clock: 0202. He could get dressed in a minute. Another minute to take a leak and splash cold water on his face. And if he ran all the way, he could get to the roof in two minutes. That left twenty-four.
He grabbed a condom from the pile Alyssa had put on the bedside table and covered himself. Showers were overrated anyway. And he could always call WildCard—his friend once again—and ask him to bring something to eat and lots of coffee for the helo ride.
Alyssa was barely awake but waiting for him, warm and wet from wanting him—even in her sleep. He slipped into her tight heat and she clung to him, moaning his name.
Oh yeah, showers were way overrated.
By 0215 Teri had run the helo’s checklist. She was ready to fly.
Standing on the roof was no longer as hazardous as it had been when they’d first arrived in this city. Marines were posted everywhere, their presence obvious in the buildings that surrounded the hotel. Still, she was more comfortable waiting just inside the door.
At 0216 there were footsteps heading up the stairs. It was Stan. Had to be. No one else walked like that, with such steady confidence.
“Hey,” he said, when he caught sight of her. It was hard to tell if he looked less tired than last night—he had black greasepaint smeared on his face.
“Hi, Stan,” she said, using the opportunity to practice saying his name.
“Aren’t you sorry you volunteered for this now? This is the time of night I always regret that I didn’t take my mother’s advice to get a job as a plumber.”
She laughed at that. “You do not.”
He didn’t even hesitate. “You’re right, I don’t. Sleep okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Actually, she’d slept better than she had in a long time.
“Really?” he said. “No nocturnal wanderings?”
He was standing right beside her now, and for half an instant, she could have sworn he was leaning closer to smell her still damp hair.
“It was you,” he said. “I thought so. The blanket,” he explained. “It smelled like ... well, like you.”
He had been smelling her hair.
Teri didn’t know what to say. “Should I apologize?” she asked. “I guess it really depends on whether the next thing you say is Teri, you smell great, or Teri, you smell like a barnyard.”
He laughed. “Trust me, you smell great.” He caught himself and began to backpedal. “I don’t mean that with anything other than the utmost respect and—”
“Stop.” Teri let her annoyance show. “I know how you meant it.” As a friend. As in no, she didn’t smell like a barnyard, so yes, that meant, by default, that she smelled great. God forbid he slip and let himself be attracted to her.
He surprised her by holding her gaze. “Okay,” he said. “Good. This isn’t the time or place to talk about this, but after what you told me yesterday, you’ll forgive me if I bend over backward a little to reestablish whatever amount of trust I lost when—”
“How could you think I don’t trust you?” she asked. “After what I told you?”
His gaze softened. “You know, I thought about it all night. What you told me. Christ, I even dreamed about it. I just keep picturing the way you must’ve looked when you were eight and I ...” He shook his head, the muscle jumping in the side of his jaw. “Teri, God help me, I still want to hunt this son of a bitch down and kill him. I have a feeling I’m going to be ninety, and I’ll think about him, and I’ll still want to find him and tear out his throat with my bare hands.”
Teri didn’t let herself think. She just reached for him, and God, he didn’t push her away. He just held her. She wasn’t quite sure who was comforting whom.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“For who?” Stan asked with a forced-sounding laugh. “Him or me?”
He was trying to keep this from being too heavy, too intense.
She didn’t feel like answering. She didn’t feel like doing much of anything—besides standing there in the warm circle of Stan’s arms.
God, she was pathetic. One friendly, comforting hug, and she was ready to melt. Mike Muldoon had kissed her last night, and it hadn’t made her heart race even a quarter of the way it did when Stan so much as looked at her.
What would Stan say if she asked him to have breakfast with her? When the sun came up and they returned to the hotel after running the drill on the practice plane a few million times? What would he do if that breakfast was a private one, in her hotel room with room service and the curtains drawn and the bed right there—the centerpiece of the room.
He would eat his eggs, be polite and gentle as he explained why the two of them getting naked would be a particularly bad idea.
And then he’d try to set her up with Muldoon again.
God, maybe she should just do it. Get with Mike Muldoon. He seemed to want her. Stan sure wanted them together, that was clear. She wanted Stan, she really did, but if she couldn’t have him, Muldoon was certainly a good second choice. He was a nice enough guy. And he seemed to have no problem talking about one of her favorite subjects—Stan.
“If you ever need to talk,” Stan told her now, “just wake me, okay? I woke up with your blanket on me, and I immediately pictured you wandering the lobby all night long, dying for someone to talk to, while I snored.”
“You weren’t snoring. And I was in the lobby for only a few minutes.”
“I’m serious,” Stan said, pulling back to look at her. “Day or night, Teri. If you need someone ...”
Gently he extracted himself even further from her arms, and she realized someone was coming up the stairs. Lots of someones. It was 0225 and the team was finally on its way.
“Did I thank you yet?” Stan asked her, his voice low. “For the blanket?”
She shook her head, wishing he hadn’t let go of her so soon. Wishing he hadn’t let go of her at all.
“Thanks,” he said. “Really. I don’t think anyone’s tucked me in like that since my mother died.”
Great, now she reminded him of his mother.
“Yo, Senior Chief!” It was Mark Jenkins, far too enthusiastic than he had a right to be, considering the hour.
Cosmo, Silverman, Jefferson, O’Leary, and Jay Lopez were with him, all considerably less thrilled. WildCard was next, dragging himself up the stairs, looking like death warmed over—which was pretty standard for him any time of day, come to think of it.
Mike Muldoon was last and then they were all there—except they weren’t. Stan noticed the same time she did.
“Where’s Starrett?”
Their team leader was missing. Sam Starrett, usually fifteen minutes early and tapping his foot for the others to show, had yet to arrive.
They heard him before they saw him, with the slam of a door as it was pushed open echoing in the stairwell. Then pounding feet—he must’ve been taking the stairs two at a time and running full speed.
“Everyone here?” he asked, when he was still a half flight away.
Teri stared. They all stared.
His was hair was down around his shoulders and he was only half dressed. He was barefoot, carrying his boots and socks, with his shirt unbuttoned and his belt undone.
Starrett glanced at his watch. “Oh-two-thirty,” he said. “On the nose. Let’s do it. Let’s go.”
Helga awoke to the sound of someone running.
Hard and fast down a long length of something—a hallway.
It was a sound that signaled danger, the need for flight, and she was up and out of her bed, heart pounding, before she realized she wasn’t sleeping in the Gunvalds’ kitchen, on a pallet that Herr Gunvald had made, between her mother and father.
There was a crash—the sound of a door being smashed open, and she jumped, nearly diving beneath the bed.
But it wasn’t her door being forced. There were no voices shouting in harsh German, no dogs barking, no more noise at all.
Of course not. She wasn’t ten years old. She was a grown woman. No, she was an old woman.
And she was in a hotel room, with generic hotel furnishings and curtains. Generic and shabby. She’d come down in the world from ... from ...
From she didn’t know where. She didn’t even know if it was safe to turn on the light—if she were someplace where there was a nightly blackout to prevent bombers in the skies overhead from targeting them here below.
She listened hard, but she could hear nothing. No sound of distant fighting. No drone of aircraft.
Nothing but the ticking of the wind-up alarm clock she’d brought and set next to the electric clock radio on the hotel bedside table—so that she’d be sure to wake up even if the power went out.
There were Post-it notes all over the room. They were stuck on every available surface. On the dresser, on the bedside table, on the lamp next to the bed, on the light switch, on the door.
Helga could see light through the crack under the door to the hallway. Keeping the chain on, she opened the door. Peeled one of the sticky notes that was posted right there by the lock and angled it to the light.
Don’t leave without your room key, notepad, and purse.
She plucked the note from the light switch by the door. It, too, was written in her own neat handwriting.
It’s safe to turn on the lights.
That was good to know. Helga closed the door and flipped the switch.
Welcome to Kazbekistan, said another. Thank you. Maybe. She hoped she wasn’t here on her vacation. Kazbekistan wasn’t the kind of country one went to relax.
World Airlines Flight 232 has been hijacked by terrorists. Possible GIK connections? 120 passengers on board. Oh, dear. And oh, yes. She remembered. She and Des had come here to make the terrorists believe there was hope of negotiating a settlement. But there wasn’t. U.S. Navy SEALs were preparing—probably right now—to take down the plane, although she couldn’t for the life of her remember the name of the CO or even the number of the SEAL Team. It wasn’t Six, was it?
List of major players in notepad. Thank you, dear self. That would help.
It would almost be funny if it weren’t so damned pathetic. Clearly she’d been having these little lapses in memory with some frequency, hence all the Post-it notes to aid her in moments just like this one.
She climbed back in bed.
Ah, here was an interesting one, right on the headboard. Senior Chief Stanley Wolchonok is Marte Gunvald’s son.
If she closed her eyes and focused, she could picture him. Light hair, broad shoulders, craggy features. Not exactly handsome, but not exactly not. He didn’t smile all that often, but when he did, his face became wonderfully warm and tremendously appealing.
And he had eyes just like Annebet’s.
Helga’s notepad was right there on the bedside table, and Annebet’s name seemed to jump out at her from the page.
“Annebet Gunvald,” she read, also in her own familiar hand. “Went to America after the war. Became pediatrician, died two years ago. Never married.”
Stanley had told her this late this afternoon. She remembered that now.
Annebet had never married.
Again.
She’d married once, though. To Helga’s brother, Hershel. Helga had attended the ceremony.
It had been a strange one, although possibly the nicest Helga had ever witnessed, both before and after. The rabbi—no doubt heeding Poppi’s grim wishes—claimed he couldn’t find the time to marry Hershel and Annebet until the following spring. And the pastor of the Gunvalds’ church had been ready to perform the ceremony right then and there, until he heard Hershel’s name. Then, suddenly, he was also unavailable for a great many months. Anti-Semitic, Annebet had muttered angrily, but Hershel had merely moved on to the next possibility. But every church they approached, they were turned away.
The justice of the peace had been rounded up with a group of known communists five months earlier. No one had heard from him in nearly that long.
By then it was after midnight. Annebet, in true fashion, suggested she and Hershel simply jump over a broom—the way she’d read that slaves had done in the 1800s in America, when they wanted to be married. What did it matter what the government thought—since their government was currently based on a weird amalgamation of Danish beliefs and harsher Nazi rules. What did it matter what anyone thought, as long as Annebet and Hershel believed they were married?
In frustration, Hershel called upon a friend, a woman, a divinity student despite the fact that women were not permitted to be clergy.
This girl—a little slip of a thing—performed the ceremony. It was a beautiful mix of both Jewish and Christian traditions, ending with a crushed glass and a leap over a broom.
It satisfied the elder Gunvalds, as well. They welcomed Hershel into their home with open arms.
Helga’s parents, however, were livid when they found out.
“It’s not legal,” Poppi stormed. “They are not legally wed!”
Hershel and Annebet had gotten a tiny, drafty, one-room apartment in the city. They’d lived there together for a week, and Helga had never seen Hershel happier.
They’d returned to the Gunvalds to pick up the rest of Annebet’s clothes, and somehow the Rosens had found out that they would be there.
Helga’s parents had shown up in the horse-drawn wagon from the store—gasoline being so scarce by the summer of ’43 that few besides the Germans could drive.
Helga and Marte had watched from the barn’s hayloft as their two fathers met, face-to-face, looking as if they were about to have a tug-of-war with Hershel in the Gunvalds’ yard. Or at least Poppi had looked that way. Herr Gunvald was calm. He was smiling, even.
Helga’s mother had sat stiff-backed on the wagon, and Inge Gunvald stood on the porch, wisely holding Annebet back, keeping her from the fray.
“How could you condone such a thing?” Poppi asked Herr Gunvald.
The bigger man smiled again. “Such a thing as love, you mean? Have you even stopped to look at them when they’re together—your son and my daughter?”
Hershel refused to let his father speak over him, ignoring him as if he were nothing more then a naughty child.
“This is not your business anymore,” he told Poppi. “You can’t kick me out of your house and then pretend you have any say in my life.”
“This is killing your mother.” Poppi spoke directly to him for the first time. “It’s not too late to forsake this folly and come home.”
Hershel laughed. “What, you mean desert my wife and the child she might already be carrying?”
In the loft, Marte turned to Helga, glee lighting her face. “They’re going to have a baby! We’re going to be aunts!”
“Dear God in heaven,” Poppi’s face turned from pink to purple. “You got the girl pregnant. That’s what this is about.”
Hershel got very quiet. “That’s not what I said. If you bothered to listen—”
Poppi turned to Herr Gunvald. “How much?”
Herr Gunvald shook his head and glanced back at his wife in confusion, as if she might know what Poppi had meant. She didn’t. “How much what?”
“Money,” Poppi said.
Out of all of them, it was only Hershel who seemed to understand. “Stop,” he ordered his father. “Don’t say another word.”
But Poppi was furious. He wasn’t thinking at all—that was the excuse Helga gave him. It was the only way she could keep from hating him for what he’d then said.
“How much money do you want,” he asked Annebet’s father, “to make this problem—the girl and the baby—go away?”
Herr Gunvald’s reaction was to laugh in disbelief.
Annebet was not quite so easily amused. “How dare you!” She escaped her mother’s grasp and launched herself toward Poppi. Or maybe Fru Gunvald pushed her into the yard. She looked pretty angry, too.
“How dare you come here and say such things!” Annebet was outraged. “You ... you ...”
“Vile Jew?” Wilhelm Gruber suggested from the gate.
Helga hadn’t seen him approach, and they all turned, almost as one, to stare at the German soldier.
He held his gun loosely in his hands, not over his shoulder, his position definitely threatening.
Fru Rosen was still sitting in the carriage, on the same side of the gate as Gruber, within a few short feet of the man. The way he was holding his gun, the barrel was pointing directly at her. She looked as if she were about to faint.
Annebet alone had the presence of mind to cross the yard to her. “Get your ugly thoughts and your ugly face away from my parents’ house!” she said, leveling her anger at Gruber as she went past him. “Fru Rosen, won’t you come inside for a cup of tea? You must be thirsty after your ride over here.”
It was absurd, the ride over had been a five-minute nothing. But Annebet practically lifted her new mother-in-law out of the wagon and nearly carried her past Gruber and up the path, away from him.
Fru Gunvald took over, bringing Helga’s mother into the house. It wasn’t really that much safer, but it had the illusion of being so.
Annebet turned back to Wilhelm Gruber. “Leave. Now!”
Her father stepped up beside her, as if creating a wall between Gruber and the Rosens. It was a very big, very strong, very angry wall.
“There was a commotion,” Gruber explained, “and I came to investigate. In Germany, nine times out of ten, if there are angry voices, there are Jews involved.”
“He’s furious,” Marte whispered to Helga, “at Annebet for marrying Hershel. He’s even more furious at Hershel.”
“In Germany, it’s hard for Jewish civilians not to be involved when thugs break the windows of their stores or attack them on the streets,” Annebet countered hotly.
Gruber addressed Herr Gunvald, Aryan man to Aryan man. “You have to admit, your troubles didn’t start until she married that kike.”
Herr Gunvald got large. “We don’t use that kind of language here. We don’t believe in Dark Age thinking—that race or religion makes one man different from another. We don’t believe in a God who commands us to destroy anyone and everyone who doesn’t think the way we do. Before you Germans closed the borders, people came to Denmark for freedom of religion and we welcomed them. The Rosens are Danish citizens now and while you are in Denmark, when you are in my yard, you will address them with respect!”
“This commotion has nothing to do with anyone’s belief in God,” Annebet added. “It’s about a father who doesn’t realize his son has become a man with a will of his own.”
“It’s about a wealthy man who’s forgotten that there’s far more to make a man rich than money in the bank,” Hershel said.
“Leave my yard,” Herr Gunvald ordered Gruber sternly, “before I call the Danish police.”
Gruber looked at Annebet, all of the fight and anger gone from his eyes, leaving only perplexed sorrow. “You could have had me,” he said. “It won’t be long until he’s rounded up—him and the others. You have to know it’s coming. So why would you choose him over me?”
“I love him,” Annebet said.
“I love you,” Gruber said, tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Annebet whispered.
“And I’m sorry for you.” With one last look at Hershel, Gruber turned and walked away.
For several long moments, no one moved, no one spoke.
Then Poppi started toward the wagon. “Get your mother,” he commanded Hershel.
That was it. No words of apology. No mention of thanks. Helga burned with shame, fighting tears, while Poppi loaded her mother onto the wagon and they silently pulled away.
“Anna, I’m so sorry,” she heard Hershel say to Annebet.
She pulled him into her arms, held him close. “It is coming, you know,” she said. “God help us all.”
And up in the loft, Marte put her arm, warm and heavy, around Helga’s shoulders. “He’ll come around,” she whispered. “Your poppi. Right now he’s scared. My father says he has every right to be frightened, but that he shouldn’t be. Because we won’t let them take you anywhere.”
Helga looked into her best friend’s fierce blue-green eyes.
“We won’t,” Marte whispered. “We won’t.”