“For God’s sake, can you not speak straight? Where were you going?”

“T—t—t—” It was no act; Eve’s tongue had never hitched so badly in her life. “M—m—my niece’s c—c—c—my niece’s c—communion. Tour—tour—”

“Tournai?”

“Yes, H—H—H—yes, Herr R—R—”

“You have family there?”

It took Eve whole minutes to answer. Herr Rotselaer shifted from foot to foot. Lili looked impassive, but Eve could sense the tension humming through her taut as a wire. She stood an agonizing arm’s length away, but her thoughts were clear as glass.

Keep blubbering, little daisy. Just keep blubbering.

Herr Rotselaer tried to ask more questions, but Eve collapsed into hysterical sobs, sinking down on the floor. The boards smelled harsh and antiseptic. She whimpered like a kicked puppy. Her pulse was slow and cold.

“Oh, for God’s sake—” Herr Rotselaer made a disgusted gesture to the young captain. “Write the girl a new safe-conduct pass to Tournai and turn her loose.” He turned back to Lili, eyes gleaming. “You, Mademoiselle l’Espionne, are going to answer some questions. We have other friends of yours—”

Violette, Eve thought, even as the German captain helped her up.

“—and things will go hard with them if you refuse to talk.”

Lili regarded the chief of police. “You lie,” she said finally. “Because you are afraid. That’s good, Herr Rotselaer. I will say nothing more.”

Her eyes passed across Eve’s, and there was a salute in them. Then she looked at the wall and sealed her mouth like a stone.

Herr Rotselaer seized her by the arms and began to shake her then, so hard her head snapped back and forth. “You are a spy, a filthy spy, you are going to talk—”

But Lili said nothing. And then Eve was marched out of the room, sobbing so hard she could not speak. This time, the sobs were very real.

The captain gave her a stern lecture on the dangers of sharing official documentation, then seemed to relent in the face of her ceaseless tears. Partly in exasperation, partly in pity. “This is no place for a young girl,” he said, snapping his fingers at the clerks to issue a new safe-conduct pass. “You were very foolish, mademoiselle, but I’m sorry about all this unpleasantness.”

Eve couldn’t stop weeping. Lili, she thought wretchedly, oh, Lili! She wanted to wrench her arm away, turn and sprint back into that room where she could hear Rotselaer still ranting. She wanted to tear his throat out with her teeth, but she stayed where she was, crying into her hands as the German captain fussed and fluttered.

“Go home,” he said again, pressing the new safe-conduct pass into her palm, clearly wanting her out of his hair as fast as possible. “Go to Tournai, back to your parents. Go home.”

And Eve, clutching her new pass and feeling like Judas, turned her back on her friend and walked out of German captivity.

The meeting house in Tournai was small, dingy, indistinguishable from the houses stretching off on either side. Eve wearily climbed the steps and gave the prearranged knock. Her knuckles had barely dropped when the door was wrenched open. Captain Cameron stared at her in a split second’s shock, then yanked her inside the house and into his arms. “Thank God you had the sense to come,” he muttered. “Even after Violette was arrested, I thought you’d be too stubborn to leave.”

Eve inhaled the scents of tweed, pipe smoke, tea—he smelled so English. She was used to a man’s embrace smelling like Paris cologne, Gauloises cigarettes, absinthe.

Cameron pulled away, remembering himself. He was tieless, his collar unbuttoned, and great shadows of exhaustion showed under his eyes. “You had a safe journey, no trouble passing?”

Eve gulped a shaky breath. “Cameron, it’s Lili—”

“Where is she, delayed trying to get news of Violette? She risks too much—”

Eve almost screamed it. “Lili has been arrested.” Agony kicked her in the gut again. “She’s not coming. The Germans have her.”

“Oh, Christ.” Cameron said it very quietly, like a prayer. In a single breath, his face aged years. Eve began to spill explanations, but he silenced her. “Not here. This will need to be official.”

Of course. Everything had to be official, even utter disaster. Eve followed Cameron numbly into a cramped parlor, its fussy little tables shoved against the wall to make room for utilitarian file cabinets bursting with papers. Two men sat going through files, one a weedy clerk in his shirtsleeves, one an aggressively military sort with a waxed mustache who looked Eve up and down as she entered. Major George Allenton, aka Mustache. He was the one who’d made sure she knew all about Cameron’s prison record.

“This can’t be the famous Louise de B,” he said with heavy gallantry, clearly not remembering Eve from Folkestone. “Too young and pretty—”

“Not now, Major,” Cameron snapped, pulling up a chair for Eve, dismissing the clerk. “The Alice Network has been compromised.” Turning back as the door closed behind the clerk, Cameron sat across the table from Eve, moving like an old man. “Tell me.”

Eve told him, speaking in short flat sentences. By the time she finished, Cameron’s face was gray. But his eyes were full of taut anger, and he looked over at Allenton. “I argued,” he said quietly, “that it was too much of a risk to keep the women in place.”

Allenton shrugged. “Risks have to be taken in wartime.”

Eve nearly leaned across the table and slapped him, but restrained herself as she saw Cameron biting back what were clearly hot words. Allenton picked at his thumbnail, oblivious, and Cameron scrubbed his hands over his lined face. “Lili,” he said, and shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m shocked. She always took too many chances. But she got away with so much . . . I suppose I thought she would keep getting away with it forever.”

“She didn’t get away with it this time.” Eve felt so weary she didn’t know how she would ever rise from this chair. “They have her now, her and Violette. I hope the Fritzes will put them together. They can take anything together.”

Major Allenton shook his head. “Those Boches, letting you walk out—!”

“They th-thought I was a half-wit.” All that histrionic crying. Eve was nothing but a long shriek of grief inside, but she didn’t think she could summon a single tear now. She wanted to curl up in a ball like a dying animal, but she had a job to finish, so she recited the full report about Verdun, watching as Cameron’s eyes went from exhausted to alert. He began jotting notes, visibly pushing aside his grief. Major Allenton kept interrupting Eve with questions, to her irritation. Cameron always let her make her report in one long recitation, then combed back over it to expand on the particulars, but Allenton interrupted every other sentence.

“Verdun, you say?”

“Verdun.” Eve imagined ripping his waxed mustache off. “Confirmed.”