Read Chapter 25: Aftermath: Alone

The storm had blown itself out by the time Elise reached the cliff path, leaving the sky a bruised grey and the sea below a churning grey-green. She had left her bicycle tucked behind a gorse thicket at the head of the lane—too conspicuous on the open path, a moving shape against the pale rock—and walked the rest of the way on foot, her coat soaked through, her boots squelching with every third step.

André was not at the first cave. Nor the second. The third was a narrow slit in the cliff face, nearly invisible from the water, accessible only by a shelf of rock that the tide had laid bare for another hour, perhaps less. She found him there, wrapped in a sodden blanket, his face gaunt, his hands raw from salt and scraping. He looked at her and did not smile. He simply nodded, as if he had been waiting for her to arrive, and now that she had, there was nothing left to hope for.

They spoke in low voices, the sea filling the gaps. He had heard about LeFebvre. He had heard about the postmistress's arrest. He had heard about the German raid on the safe house in St. Peter Port, and the name of the man taken. Jameson. He said it like a stone dropped into still water.

Elise sat on the wet rock across from him and pressed her hands between her knees to stop them shaking. "He knew the traitor is inside the harbor records. He was taken before he could tell me what he saw in the Bréhaut file."

André's eyes moved. "Bréhaut? The transport officer?"

"You know him?"

"I know his handwriting. He signs the transfer ledgers. The fragment I sent you—the authorization line. Torn, but I matched the loop of the 'B' in the name. It's his. There's a reason the ledger page was torn." He paused. "You're going to get Jameson out."

It was not a question.

"I have to. He's the only one who knows what Whitcombe told him. And Whitcombe—" She stopped. The name lodged in her throat. "Whitcombe is Brenner. The Oberst is British. He arrested Jameson to flush out the traitor. Or so he claims."

André stared at her for a long moment. Then he laughed, a dry, short sound. "Everyone is someone else on this island."

Elise left him with the last of her bread and a promise that he would hear from her. The tide was coming in. She climbed back to the path with salt water lapping at her heels and made her way toward St. Peter Port with no plan and no allies, only a widow's debt and a dead man's secret.

---

The widow's name was Marie LeFebvre, and she opened her door at dusk with red-rimmed eyes and a face that had gone hard as flint in the three days since her husband's body was pulled from the harbour. Her son stood behind her, a boy of eleven with his father's chin and none of his smile.

Elise stood on the step, dripping onto the worn stone. "You know who I am."

Marie nodded. "You found him. The morning they said he drowned." She said the word drowned like she was spitting it out. "My Tom didn't drown. He could swim in a storm."

"He was killed. And the man who killed him is still walking around this island." Elise paused. "The man who tried to help me find the truth is in the hands of the Germans as we speak. He's being moved tonight. Prison wagon from the commandant's office to the prison at Fort George."

Marie's eyes sharpened. "What do you want from me?"

"A distraction. And a fast horse."

Marie looked at her son. Then she looked back at Elise, and her mouth tightened. "There's a cart lane behind the mill. The Germans use it for moving prisoners when they want to avoid the main road—the lane cuts through the orchards and comes out near the south wall of the fort. They'll use it tonight."

"How do you know that?"

"Tom helped them reroute it. He was their errand boy in other ways too." Her jaw worked. "He thought he was protecting us. He was protecting the wrong people."

Elise didn't argue. She didn't have time. "The horse—"

"There's a mare in the paddock. She's not fast, but she's quiet and she knows the dark." Marie reached into her apron and pulled out a key. "The gate at the far end of the lane is locked. Goes to the fort's old drainage gate. It rusts open in winter. Tom used to say it was the island's own back door."

Elise took the key. The metal was cold and rough in her palm.

"You'll bring him out," Marie said. Not a question.

"Both of us," Elise said. "Or no one."

Marie's face did not change, but her hand found her son's shoulder and gripped it. "Then go."

---

The prison wagon came at midnight, exactly as Marie had promised. Elise watched from the shadow of the orchard wall, the mare tied to a low branch behind her, her bicycle nowhere—she had abandoned it, along with her postwoman's uniform, in a bundle of burlap stuffed under a hedge at the edge of town. She wore the black trousers and dark jumper she kept for nights like this, and she was colder and more exposed than she had been in months.

The wagon was a dark shape on the lane, moving slow, two guards on the bench, one lantern swinging. The horse was thick-shouldered and dull. The wheels groaned.

Elise waited until the wagon reached the tightest point of the lane, where the orchard walls closed in on either side and there was no room to turn around. Then she pulled the key from her pocket and worked it into the rusted lock of the drainage gate. It gave with a screech that cut through the night. The wagon slowed. A guard's voice called out in German—sharp, questioning.

Elise stepped through the gate and disappeared into the dark of the fort's rear court. The drainage channel ran under the wall, wide enough to crawl through, ankle-deep in stagnant water. She moved fast, her hands finding the slime-crusted stone, her heart pounding so loud she thought the guards would hear it.

She came up inside the fort's lower yard. The wagon had stopped just beyond the gate, waiting for the officer to open the main doors. Elise pressed herself into the shadow of the wall and counted. Two guards on the bench. One inside with the prisoner. The driver was climbing down—she heard his boots hit the ground, heard him mutter something about the gate, heard the second guard laugh.

She moved.

She was at the rear of the wagon before they could turn, her hand on the lock—metal, cold, the kind that needed a key. She had no key. She had a widow's rusted drainage key and a dead man's secret and nothing else.

She drove the key into the lock and twisted. The metal gave with a groan that was louder than she wanted. The guard on the bench turned—she saw his shape move, heard him shout—and then she was pulling the wagon door open and Jameson was there, wrists bound, face bloodied, eyes sharp and alive.

"Elise—"

"Move."

He moved. He did not hesitate. He threw himself out of the wagon and hit the ground rolling, and by the time the guard had levelled his rifle, Elise had already grabbed Jameson's arm and dragged him toward the drainage gate.

The shot went wide—a splinter of stone spat off the wall above her head—and then they were in the channel, running crouched through the black water, the sounds of shouting behind them churning into deafness. Elise found the gate, hauled Jameson through, and slammed it shut behind them. She threw the lock. It held.

They came out into the orchard lane gasping. The mare was still there, untied now—she had left her loose out of habit, and the mare was standing in the middle of the lane, head up, ears forward, as if she had been waiting too.

They mounted together—Jameson behind her, his arms around her waist, his breath hot and ragged on her neck—and she drove her heels into the mare's sides. The horse moved. Not fast, but steady, through the dark, between the orchard walls, and behind them the shouting faded into the wind.

---

They did not stop until the fort was a distant smear of light below them, and the mare was blowing hard, and the sky had begun to lighten in the east. Jameson slid off first, then helped her down. They stood in the lee of a stone barn, breathing hard, the smell of sea and mud and blood rising off them.

"You came for me," he said. His voice was hoarse.

"You'd have done the same."

He did not deny it. He looked at her, in her black wet clothes, without her bicycle, without her uniform, without anything that marked her as the postwoman of St. Peter Port. He looked at her for a long time.

"You're not that anymore," he said quietly. "You know that, don't you? The uniform is gone. The route is gone. You can't walk back into the post office tomorrow."

Elise said nothing. She looked down at her hands—raw, scraped, empty. She had nothing left but herself, and the key still in her pocket, and the name Bréhaut burning cold in her chest.

"I know," she said.

Jameson nodded slowly. He looked toward the fort, then back at her. "Then we keep moving."

They did not have to say where.