Read Chapter 11: A Second Face

The bell above the shop door had barely stopped trembling before Antoine appeared in the frame, his coat flecked with rain, his hands empty of the usual peace offering. No book. No wine. Just that measured look he wore when he meant to be taken seriously.

Élise did not look up from the ledger she was not reading.

“The shop is closed,” she said.

“It’s eleven in the morning.”

“Then I’m closed for a long lunch.”

He stepped inside anyway and shut the door behind him. The bell gave one last thin protest. She heard him move through the stacks, his footsteps unhurried, familiar now in a way that made her teeth set.

“Marcel told you to leave me alone,” she said.

“Marcel doesn’t know I’m here.”

“That’s worse.”

He stopped across the counter from her. Up close she could see the fatigue in him—a greyness under the eyes that the café lamplight had softened the night before. He was not sleeping either. She did not know why that comforted her, and she did not let it show.

“I heard about your brother,” he said.

Her pen went still.

“From whom?”

“From the same channels that told me about Chassagne. The same channels that told me about Lenoir. I have ears in places you no longer do, Élise. You left the network. You have nothing now but your own nerve, and nerve doesn't forge papers.”

She wanted to argue. The words sat in her throat, hot and ready. But he was right, and the truth of it burned worse than the accusation.

“What do you want, Antoine?”

“To help you find him.”

She laughed, short and hollow. “You’re Abwehr. Your people put him in that camp.”

“My people are evacuating that camp as we speak. They’re marching prisoners west into the snow, and the guards have orders to shoot anyone who falls behind. Your brother has a broken leg.”

The ledger blurred. She blinked hard and set the pen down slowly, carefully, as if it might shatter.

“How do you know about his leg?”

“I told you. I have ears.”

She came around the counter, and for a moment she was close enough to see the small scar at his jaw, the one that disappeared when he smiled. “I have two days to verify your story about Chassagne. But this—” She stopped. Swallowed. “This isn’t Chassagne. This is my brother. And you sit there asking me to trust the man who lied his way into my life.”

Antoine did not flinch. “I didn't lie about everything.”

“What did you tell the truth about, then?”

He was quiet a long moment. The shop's radiators ticked. Dust motes hung in the grey light.

“The locket,” he said.

Her chest tightened. “What about it?”

“The one you found in my desk. The one with your brother’s photograph inside.” He reached into his coat and produced it—small, worn, the gold dulled. He placed it on the counter between them. “It was given to me by a man named Henri Vasseur. He was a liaison between the Resistance and a group of Allied airmen I was helping move through the city. He died in February. In the weeks before he died, he asked me to find you. To make sure you were safe.”

Élise stared at the locket. It was Philippe’s. She’d know the engraving anywhere—their mother’s initials, scratched with a nail file in 1928.

“Why would Henri have my brother’s locket?”

“Philippe gave it to him. Before the arrest. He told Henri to get it to you if anything happened.” Antoine’s voice dropped. “Henri never got the chance. I took it from his body before the Gestapo finished searching it.”

The room tilted. She gripped the edge of the counter.

“You took it off a dead man.”

“I took it so it wouldn’t end up in a Gestapo evidence file with your brother’s name attached to it. Henri knew who you were. If they’d traced the locket to you, you’d have been arrested the same night.”

She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to thank him. Both feelings were true, and both were unbearable.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because you’re about to do something reckless, and I’d rather you did it with my help than alone.” He pushed the locket toward her. “I can make calls. I can find out which train his transport is on, which route they’re taking. I can’t free him. But I can point you at the right door.”

Élise picked up the locket. It was warm from his pocket. She closed her fingers around it.

“What do you want in return?”

“Nothing.”

“Everyone wants something.”

He looked at her then, and for a moment his composure cracked—just at the edges, just enough to see something raw underneath. “I want you to live through this war. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

She did not answer. She slid the locket into her own pocket and went back behind the counter. When she spoke, her voice was steadier than she felt.

“The train. Find the train.”

He nodded and moved toward the door. His hand was on the handle when she said, “Antoine.”

He turned.

“If this is a trap—if you lead me into a cordon and I die in a ditch outside Paris—I will find a way to haunt you. Every hour of every day. And I’m very patient.”

He almost smiled. “I know.”

The bell rang. The door closed. She stood in the empty shop with her brother’s locket burning in her pocket and did not know whether she had just made an ally or sealed her own fate.

---

She was still standing there an hour later when the lock on the back door clicked.

She knew that sound now. Her hand moved to the drawer where she kept the pistol Marcel had given her months ago—but her fingers were still on the wood when Gaspard stepped through the kitchen doorway, wiping rain from his collar.

“You’re getting predictable,” he said.

“You’re getting bold.”

“I’m getting impatient. Four days left, madame. I came to see if you’d made progress on my papers.”

“And I told you I’m working on it.”

“Liar.” He drifted toward the front of the shop, his fingers trailing over the spines of her books. She hated him for that—for touching things she loved with hands that had broken into her home. “I heard about your brother. Moosburg. The evacuation.”

Her blood went cold. “How do you know that?”

“Men talk. I listen.” He picked up a volume of Baudelaire—the one under which the engraver’s sample was still hidden, still undelivered. He turned it over, examining the cover. “I know you’re not working on my papers. I know you’re planning to run off and find your brother, and leave me to rot.”

“I am not—”

“I don’t care what you are.” He set the book down gently—too gently, a threat in its own right. “Here is my new offer. You help me. I help you.”

Élise stared at him. “What can you possibly give me?”

Gaspard smiled, and it was the worst thing she had seen all day. “I know who in the German command is taking bribes. I know which border crossings are being paid to look the other way. And I know a man who drives supply trucks between Paris and Munich. He leaves Thursday.”

Her heart stopped.

“You get me my papers,” Gaspard said, “and I get you to your brother. Simple.”

She thought of Antoine. Of Marcel. Of the engraver’s sample still hidden in the Baudelaire. Of Philippe, cold and limping, marching toward Germany with a broken leg.

“You’ll bring me information,” she said. “Proof. The driver’s name, the route, the crossing point.”

“And you’ll bring me a visa.”

“I don’t have a forger anymore.”

“Then find one.” He walked back toward the kitchen. At the threshold, he paused. “Two days, madame. I find the driver. You find the ink. And then we both get what we want.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

She stood alone in the shop, the Baudelaire volume waiting under her hand, and for the first time in days she knew exactly what she had to do. She pulled the book from the shelf, slipped the engraver’s sample from its pages, and began to write a note to Father Marchand.