Read Chapter 11: The Trap Springs

The fog had lifted by the time I left the barn, leaving the island raw and wet under a bone-white sky. André’s words circled in my skull like gulls over a catch: *Joseph was a German agent before the invasion.* My brother. The brother who taught me to ride a bicycle with no hands, who left letters under my pillow on birthdays, who was coming home.

Except he wasn’t coming home. He was coming back to *them.*

I pedaled hard along the Rue de la Perelle, the salt air stinging my eyes. Jameson would be at the clinic until six. I had maybe an hour to decide how much to tell him.

The clinic smelled of iodine and damp wool. Jameson looked up from a ledger when I burst in, his sleeves rolled, his stethoscope still looped around his neck. He saw my face and closed the door behind me without a word.

“André’s alive,” I said. “I found him. And he told me something that changes everything.”

Jameson’s hand moved to the curtained window, checking the street. “Is he safe?”

“For now.” I pulled the folded letter from my coat—the one with the blue-black dot, the one addressed to the woman in Jersey. “He says Joseph was never in London. He was in France. Working for the Abwehr. Before the invasion even.”

Jameson was very still. In the silence, the clock on his mantel ticked like a heartbeat. “You believe him?”

“I don’t want to.” My voice cracked. “But I found this.” I slid the Jersey letter across his desk. “It has the mark. André recognized it. He says Joseph’s scarf pattern encodes a sliding cipher. A key. He says Joseph was the one who knew the routes.”

Jameson picked up the letter, turning it over. The blue-black dot sat there, patient as an eye. “Then the leak in the post office—”

“Isn’t Falla. Or isn’t only Falla.” I pressed my palms flat against the desk. “The mark predates the occupation, Jameson. André says the network’s been compromised from the start. This isn’t someone recruited by the Germans. This is someone who *built* the system and then turned it over.”

Jameson set the letter down. His face was unreadable. “If that’s true, then the man you’re looking for knows every drop point, every signal, every name in the chain.”

“Which is why we can’t use the old system.” I took a breath. “I have an idea. The post office still delivers to the old network’s safe houses—or what the Germans *think* are safe houses. Falla’s records list them. If I set a bait letter through that channel, addressed to a drop the traitor watches, whoever picks it up will be working for him.”

Jameson’s jaw tightened. “You’re proposing we use ourselves as bait.”

“We’re already bait. Every letter I deliver, they’re watching. But this time we watch back.”

He was silent for a long moment. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out a pencil, snapping it in half. “The drop point. Which address were you thinking?”

“The old van Leer house,” I said. “Empty since they were deported. André says it was used as a staging point before the invasion. If the traitor still checks it, that’s where he’ll go.”

Jameson wrote something on a scrap of paper, then folded it into a small square. “This is a recovery signal. If I’m compromised, show it to the baker on Pollet Street. He’s not in the network, but he knows what it means.” He handed it to me. “If the trap goes wrong, Elise, you get out. No heroics. The network survives on living people, not martyrs.”

I took the paper and tucked it into my boot. “We’ll need a fake letter. Something that looks official but contains nothing real. I can forge Falla’s handwriting well enough.”

“I’ll write it.” Jameson pulled a clean sheet from his drawer. “If the ink matches Falla’s, that’s another piece. If it doesn’t, we know the pen evidence was planted.”

By dusk, the letter was ready. Sealed with wax, addressed to a dead name at the van Leer house, marked *By Hand.* We placed it in my delivery pouch, and I cycled the long road to the southern cliffs.

The van Leer house sat at the end of a gravel lane, its windows boarded, its garden gone to nettles. I dismounted and walked the bicycle up the path, leaving the letter in the rusted letterbox with the flap half-open, visible from the road. Then I hid behind the collapsed stone wall across the lane, where the gorse grew thick enough to cover a man.

Jameson was somewhere down the coast, watching the approach from the other side. The plan was simple: wait. Watch. See who came.

The fog rolled in again, damp and cold. I pulled my coat tighter. Hour one passed. Then two. My legs cramped. A German patrol passed on the main road, their engine low, but they didn’t turn down the lane.

I was beginning to think we’d been wrong when I heard footsteps.

Soft. Careful. Not a soldier’s boot—rubber soles, the kind worn by clerks and shopkeepers. I pressed myself deeper into the gorse and peered through a gap in the stone.

A figure came up the lane, hunched against the cold. In the grey light, I couldn’t make out the face until he stopped at the letterbox, glanced up and down the road, and lifted the flap.

It was the postmaster’s assistant. The quiet young man who sorted bundles in the back room, who never spoke unless spoken to, who I’d dismissed a hundred times as furniture. His name was Le Gallez. He had worked sorting mail for Falla since before the occupation.

He took the letter, checked the seal, and slipped it inside his coat. My chest seized.

Not a German officer. Not a scarred agent from the Abwehr.

Someone who worked beside me every day.

I stayed still, watching him turn and walk back the way he came, his shoulders braced against the night. He moved like a man carrying something heavier than paper.

I waited until he was gone before I climbed out of the gorse. My hands were shaking. I cycled hard back to the clinic, the wind whipping my hair loose from its pins.

Jameson was already there, pacing. He looked up when I came in. “Who was it?”

“Le Gallez.” The name felt wrong in my mouth. “The assistant. He’s been in the sorting room since before the occupation. He marks the letters. But Jameson—” I stopped, breathless. “He’s not the man with the scar. André said the traitor had a scar on his hand. Le Gallez doesn’t.”

Jameson’s face went pale. “Then he’s not the source. He’s just the hand that holds the pen.”

“He knows who is,” I said. “And he’s frightened. I saw the way he walked. Like someone’s watching him.”

Jameson moved to the window, staring out into the dark. “We can’t confront him openly. If the traitor sees us pull him aside, it’s over.”

“Then we wait for him,” I said. “He leaves the post office alone at six every evening. He takes the Rue des Vaux path through the churchyard. I can meet him there, off the street. Alone.”

Jameson turned. “That’s too dangerous.”

“It’s the only way.” I met his eyes. “And if I’m right about him, he’s been waiting for someone to ask.”