She slammed the door, and he shook his head. He’d been more conspicuous than he’d intended, and now he would have to work quickly in case her threat to report him hadn’t been an empty one.

“Okay, then,” he said to himself. He needed to go door to door. His cover would be that he had just come in from the northern coast—which could help excuse an accent that didn’t sound quite right—and that he was desperate to find his wife’s cousin. It was the only way he could think of to explain why he didn’t know the man’s name. Yes, that was it; his wife had recently died, and the only relative he knew of was a man who lived here and walked with a limp, but he’d never met him. It seemed an odd story, he knew, but it was the best he could come up with. Why hadn’t he used his days hiking through the woods to invent a solid cover story? Instead, he had let his mind wander to happier times, before the war came, when his mother was still alive and the future was wide open. The memories had propelled him forward, but now it felt as if he’d wasted three full days.

He walked up the flight of stairs and turned to his left. Might as well begin at the beginning. There was a door there marked 1B, and before he could second-guess himself, he took a deep breath, raised his hand, and knocked.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

October 1941

Monsieur Benoit had been dead for two months now, and Charlotte knew there was more to the story than anyone was telling her. It was impossible for her to believe the official explanation: that he had gone out one day and gotten caught up in a police action that had nothing to do with him. She knew about the secret closet in the hall and the Allied pilots, and she felt certain that his death had been linked to them. Already, the French police, accompanied by two German officers who looked like attack dogs, had come to Ruby’s door three times. Charlotte had tried her best to hear what they were asking Ruby, but she could only catch snippets here and there. It seemed that the men knew of Marcel’s involvement in the escape line, but that they ultimately believed Ruby when she said she’d had no idea what her husband was up to. “He treated me like I didn’t have the brains to understand anything,” Charlotte had heard Ruby say on their last visit.

“Well, you are merely a woman,” a deep French voice had replied.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Ruby had responded, and Charlotte had felt a surge of pride that her neighbor was getting the last laugh.

Finally, the police and the Nazis stopped coming. “She clearly doesn’t know anything,” one of the French policemen had said on their way out of the building at the end of the last visit.

“Clearly,” one of the German officers had replied with a snort. “But what a piece of ass, yes?”

His words had been followed by a nauseating stream of sexual comments, each of the men sniggering about what they’d do to Ruby if they had a chance to get her alone. And while Charlotte longed to come to Ruby’s defense, she knew that in the end, what the men had said was better than their realizing that Ruby had played a role—albeit a small one—in the escape line too.

Charlotte suspected that her neighbor felt more alone than ever now; after all, she really had no one to turn to. Ruby rarely went out anymore, except to pick up her rations, and Charlotte had never seen her have a visitor.

Charlotte was still seeing Ruby once a week for English lessons—her parents were very firm on that—and while she tried to ask how Ruby was doing, most of their conversations were only about schoolwork and mundane details of daily life. Charlotte had tried to raise the subject of the British pilot more than once, for she wondered and worried about what had happened to him, but Ruby always cut her off. “You never know who’s listening,” she would whisper. “We mustn’t speak of these things aloud, Charlotte.”

But Charlotte was tired of avoiding what was obviously the defining moment of their friendship, and so on one early autumn night, she made a decision after dinner. She would go and let Ruby know that she could be trusted and that she wasn’t scared of the Nazis.

She had her hand on the door to her apartment, ready to step out into the hall, when she heard a noise that startled her. She peered through the peephole just in time to see a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man lurching toward Ruby’s door. He knocked loudly, and Charlotte, suddenly paralyzed by doubt, held her breath. Was he another Nazi? Was he there to hurt Ruby? But as he knocked again, harder this time, Charlotte realized he was dressed in ill-fitting clothes caked with dirt and grime. Certainly no German soldier would wander around Paris looking like that. But he wasn’t wearing a pilot’s uniform either. So who was he?

Ruby’s door finally opened a crack.

“Excuse me,” the man said in French with an accent that sounded familiar. Where had Charlotte heard it before? “I’m just coming from the north. My wife has died, and I’m looking for her cousin. I’m sorry, but I don’t know his name. I only know that he lives in this building and walks with a limp.”

Ruby regarded him in silence, and in that sliver of quiet, a realization hit Charlotte: His accent was the same as that of the pilot she and Ruby had hidden in August. She was almost certain of it. But why was he telling such a ridiculous story? She peered back out the peephole just in time to see Ruby’s expression. She looked confused, but not scared.

“A man with a limp, you say?” Ruby asked carefully, and the man nodded, although he was already backing away.

“Perhaps I have the wrong apartment. I’m very sorry,” he was saying, but there was something about his voice that sounded strange now. His words were melting together, and he sounded suddenly weak. He seemed to rock back and forth on his feet, and then he fell to his knees with a great crash and appeared to waver there for a moment. “Very sorry,” he said, but this time, his words were in English, and then he toppled forward, passing out cold in Ruby’s doorway.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

October 1941

Three facts were immediately clear to Ruby. First, the man before her was British. Second, he had come in search of Marcel, which probably meant he was a pilot in need of help. Third, she needed to get him out of the hall immediately, before the concierge or someone else saw him. As if to underscore her thoughts, the door to the Dachers’ apartment cracked open, and Charlotte peeked out.

“Ruby?” she whispered.

“Go back inside!” Ruby hissed. “I don’t want you involved in this!”

Charlotte looked as if Ruby had slapped her. “But I can help.”

“No. Please. Forget you saw anything.”

Without waiting for a reply, Ruby bent and grabbed the man under his arms, dragging his limp body into her apartment. She locked the door behind her and turned to look at him. He was large and handsome, but in a boyish sort of way. Not like the previous pilot, and not like Marcel. Or was it just that he looked innocent because he was fast asleep? She crouched down beside him, noting his pink cheeks, and placed a hand on his forehead. He was burning up.

He moaned softly, but he didn’t wake, and after a moment, she made a decision. She knew she should hide him in the hall closet as she’d done with Dexter, but he needed her help immediately. She had to get his fever down before she could figure out what to do next.

She wanted to put him on the couch so that he’d be more comfortable, but he was too heavy to lift. So she settled for leaving him where he was and bringing in the pillow and blanket from her own bed. She ran cold water into a basin and spent the next two hours beside him, holding a wet cloth to his forehead and frequently dipping it back in the water to keep it cold. He stirred a few times and murmured unintelligibly, but it wasn’t until nearly midnight that his eyes finally opened.

He focused on her with difficulty, his pupils dilating. Then he gasped and tried to sit up. “Where am I?” he asked in English, his voice weak. His eyelids fluttered and he shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, switching to French. “I meant to ask where I am.”

“You’re in an apartment in Paris,” she replied in English. “You’re safe for the time being. You have a fever, though, and we need to take care of it.”

“You speak English?” He looked at her in awe.

She nodded. “I’m American. And you are British?”

He hesitated, searching her face. His eyes, she noticed, were an almost translucent blue, like nothing she had ever seen. She knew he was trying to figure out whether he could trust her.

“My husband helped people like you,” she said after the silence had dragged on for more than a minute.

“Your husband?”

“Yes.” Ruby wondered if she was imagining the shadow of disappointment that crossed his face.

“He’s here too?”

“Not right now. But I want to help you. You must tell me who you are, though.”

Again he paused, his eyes locked on hers.