Page 89 of Across Eternity

I spy another dark head and crawl on hands and knees to get a better view.

Henri.

My heart swells at the sight of him until it feels as if my chest can hardly contain it. He’s sound asleep, almost boyish at rest, despite the beard that’s come in after these weeks in captivity. I can picture, looking at him, the child he was. The son we might have had.

He’s in a group of three, with about four feet between them and the next group of prisoners. Three German soldiers patrol this end of the road and they’ll notice someone climbing free of the ditch. I could risk it, but the days of doing things the proper way are long over. I’d rather kill them anyhow.

I throw my knife into a tree on the other side of the road. The nearest soldier’s head gives a half turn toward the sound but ignores it. Thank God for the rain.

I close my eyes and time travel, aiming for the tree, so certain it will go poorly that I’m a little surprised when my bare feet strike the mud at its base. I grab the knife and spring toward the closest soldier. He gives only the smallest gasp as the blade slides into the back of his neck, and then he falls forward.

I’ve retrieved my knife and am grabbing his gun when another soldier calls out to him. I freeze for a moment, and then begin crawling toward the sound. I’m ten feet away when his flashlight sweeps over me.

There’s no time for finesse or even forethought. There isn’t even time for panic. I throw the knife the way I was trained, so fast it’s more instinct than strategy. It lodges between his eyes, but as he falls backward into the ditch with the prisoners, he makes far more noise than I’d like.

I leap in after him, retrieving my knife and scrambling toward Henri, who is awake now and wide-eyed.

I cut through the ropes that bind him to the others and am about to speak when he pushes me down and lunges over me, tackling a third soldier I hadn’t even heard coming and snapping his neck. I climb from the ditch with him on my heels, snatching up my bag and clothes as we run into the woods.

“My God, little thief,” Henri says behind me. “What have you done?”

I don’t answer, focused on moving as fast as possible without leaving a trail. It’s only when the woods grow dense, blocking the moon and making it hard to see, that I stop to search for the flashlight.

I reach for the bag but instead he pulls me against him and his lips find mine.

He isn’t gentle. He holds onto me like I might vanish at any moment, and his kiss is hard and urgent, telling me more about his anxiety and what the last weeks have been like for him than any words ever could. It’s the way he kisses when he’s inside me and his restraint is at its breaking point, senseless and desperate. I should stop him but I don’t. I’ve missed this. I’ve missed him. Even now, in the panic and chaos, he fills that emptiness inside me in a way no one else ever could.

A twig snaps and we both swivel. The two prisoners he was with are coming our way, making far too much noise and breaking too many branches. They’ve made it easy for the Germans to follow us. And I don’t want them along anyway. They mean more mouths to feed, more noise, more potential for failure. I could give them a bit of bread and tell them to go elsewhere, but they might ignore me. Or I could kill them…that would be the easiest.

Henri steps in front of me. “Put on some clothes, Sarah.”

“It’s pitch black. I hardly think my nudity is our biggest issue.”

He looks at me over his shoulder. “It’s an issue for me. Please.”

I ignore the undergarments and scramble into my pants, sweater and shoes while weighing our options. I don’t have enough food for the interlopers, and they’ll only cause problems. The coldness that hardened me as I killed the Germans comes upon me once more. I step out from behind Henri, reaching for my knife, but there is shouting in the distance and no time for what must be done.

“Come,” I command in English, turning north though I have no idea where I’m going. “And stop breaking every fucking branch.”

For fifteen minutes we run, but Henri’s breathing is labored and he’s moving more slowly than he should. We reach a stream and I stop him.

“Are you hurt?” I ask.

I get a small, tense nod. “Just go,” Henri says, in a hoarse whisper. “Please. Jump out of here.”

“Tell me what’s wrong,” I demand.

His mouth pinches hard and he opens up his shirt. A slash along the side of his rib cage bleeds freely. “I was stabbed a few days ago. It’s broken open again, but it was already infected.” I stare in horror while the crashing of the underbrush grows louder.

I grab the tights I didn’t put on earlier and wrap them around his rib cage as snugly as I can. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can do.

“We should walk through the stream so they lose our trail,” Henri says to the other two prisoners. He turns to me. “And you need to leave. Please. If something happened to you...just please.”

He looks so desperate and panicked as he asks that it would be nearly impossible to deny him. And I nod, though I have no intention of letting him do this on his own.

“Head to your left and walk as far as you can stand it,” I tell him. “I’ll cross into the woods on the other side and leave a trail for them to follow.”

“No,” he says. “You need to go.”