Were it not obvious in that rigid white face that Brigitte’s thoughts were only for Jenison, Rafael would see to it he left enough impression for some thoughts to be for himself. Alas, it was not to be, and though he was certain he had what charm it took to beguile Brigitte from Jenison, he could never do it to his friend. He found himself thinking hopefully of the other girl at Brigitte’s place, the one with the large eyes and generous figure, who listened when he said Tom was in trouble, who acted, like Brigitte. That’s the kind of girl he wanted.

He remembered with surprise that she was a prostitute. He’d have to set her straight on that. He felt a warm flush of virtue at the thought of persuading her to give up her wicked ways.

They walked along a steep and curving side street in one of the old parts of Caen. It would soon empty onto the main street that led to Gestapo headquarters. Brigitte insisted on walking past it.

“When we walk past,” he warned, “keep on walking. Do not stop in front; do not even pause. You will attract attention.” He dreaded seeing the place. Too many people he knew had died there. “Why do you want to see it?”

She did not answer. Her heels made a crisp, feminine sound that echoed back from the walls. The more the afternoon wore on, the less she spoke, and the less she seemed to hear him.

They walked slowly past the former courthouse, claimed and bedecked by the enormous swastika. She reached for his hand when they did. He knew she was straining to hear something, anything, and by the tightness of her grip, she was bracing for it; but they heard nothing.

Rafael had hoped the errand to the ration card bureau would clear his head for a plan, but he had nothing. Surely by now Monsieur Rousseau had come up with something.

Ten minutes later they were back at the office. They were not two steps in the door when Charlotte rose swiftly from her desk.

“Thank God you’re back!” She held out an envelope. “The telephone lines are down. You must deliver this to François Rousseau immediately.”

Rafael took the envelope. “What’s going on?” He looked past her to Rousseau’s office. The door was closed.

Charlotte said, “Go, quickly!”

“But—if the lines are down here, are they down everywhere? Can we not—?”

Charlotte’s husband, Gerard, burst from Rousseau’s office with a sheaf of papers. He stopped short at the sight of Rafael, then continued to Charlotte’s desk. He handed her the papers.

Monsieur Rousseau appeared. He pulled the door closed, glancing at the envelope in Rafael’s hand. “Well? What are you still doing here?”

“What’s going on?”

“Gerard has a plan. It’s a good plan. We are summoning my brother.” Gerard, a bit surprised, glanced at Rousseau. Rousseau said quickly, “We’ll talk when you return with him. I can’t give you the car. Take the train. You can catch the 4:45 if you hurry.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Brigitte asked Rafael. She was as pathetically eager for action as he.

“Sure.” Rafael poised at the front door, hand on the knob. “Does Wilkie know?”

The three looked at him blankly. It lasted only a second. Then Rousseau said, “He is on his way.”

Something wasn’t right. He had known these people too long. But he had no time to speculate. He felt only a gush of relief that action had come at last. Tom had a chance. There was at last a plan, and if it involved François Rousseau, all the better. He could run Flame himself.

He touched his hat, yanked open the door, and left. Brigitte hurried out behind him.

The room was still.

Then Michel observed, “You did not take the receiver off the cradle.”

Charlotte said darkly, “I wanted to kick myself.”

Michel looked at the papers in Charlotte’s hand. “That’s all of them. Every third name—” But the way she held the papers, forgotten at her side, made him raise his eyes to her face.

How desolate. How betrayed.

“No time, dear one,” he said, then gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. He slipped the papers from Charlotte’s hand and showed them to Gerard, who was no happier than she. His thick lips began to tremble, and his face contorted as he tried to bring himself under control.

Michel tapped the sheets to get his attention. “Every third name is one with papers forged by Diefer. Understand? Every third. Get to them immediately. They need to vanish. Tell them to head southwest and meet up with the Maquis in a forest north of La Rochelle. Assure them this group is under orders from London, de Gaulle himself. Once they get to the forest, the Maquis will find them. Have them say, ‘Greenland sent us.’ Their leader is Willet Garnier. If you are caught, destroy these.”

Gerard took the papers. Michel put out his hand, but Gerard took his face, kissed both cheeks, and went out the door.

“Charlotte, you need to get to Wilkie,” Michel said. “Tell him our cover is blown. Tell him he has been reassigned to Madame Vion, at the Château de Bénouville. Tell him—” But the words caught in his throat.

“All I have done to watch over you.”

Michel pressed his lips together, nodded.

“All I have done to keep you safe.” Tears spilled over. She slowly dragged the heel of her hand over the tears. Then, face newly aged and puffy, she looked in bewilderment at her desk. “My purse. It’s around here somewhere . . .”

Michel took her purse from where she always kept it, on the top of the file cabinet. He handed it to her and took the sweater draped over the back of her chair.

He helped her into the sweater. She stood for a moment next to the desk, then came to herself and went to the front door. There she hesitated, as if she would turn around. But she pulled open the door and left.

He paused at his office door to collect himself, then entered.

Braun sat in the chair in front of his desk exactly the way he had left him, still as stone, legs crossed, chin on his fist, face hard and empty, eyes staring out the window. Michel took in the room—the desk and his window on this end, the fireplace, the wingback chairs, the books on his father’s coffee table.

He walked over to Braun. “I am ready. What do we do? Should you rough me up a bit? Black my eye?”

Braun’s hard gray stare slid to Michel. He said witheringly, “We do not need to be as dramatic as that.”

“Shouldn’t you tie me up? Gag me?”

Braun’s eyes returned to the distance outside.

“What about your driver? Did you . . . ?”

Braun reached for his briefcase and rose from the chair. He seemed especially tall next to Michel, and for a moment he seemed to tower over him.

“Have you worked out a plan for Schiffer?” Michel said.

“No, I haven’t,” Braun said coldly. “And I’ve tried. I can’t think how to hand over an innocent man to a man like Schiffer.”

“I am not an innocent man. That should make it easier.” Michel gave a little sniff, then wrinkled his nose. “I can tell you tried.”

“Your French ale is disgusting. All of this, and French ale, too. God hates me.”

“Hauptmann Braun . . .”

Braun tilted his head. “If you try to thank me, I’ll bloody your mouth.” He firmed lips that trembled slightly from anger. “I plan to ‘wing it,’ as you say. I have no other course.”

“‘Wing it’ is not ours. Perhaps it is British.”

“What difference does it make?” he snapped. “I will make it up as I go.” He looked him up and down. “You are an innocent man.”

“The only innocent man is the one Schiffer now tortures.” He hesitated. “Braun—”

Braun swung away and headed for the door.

Michel looked at the transreceiver on the desk. “Don’t you want to bring the proof?”

Braun’s impressive profile filled the doorway, backlit by late-afternoon light. The cut of the German uniform, the hat in his hand, his carriage, tall, broad, proud. He looked at the transreceiver with a scornful curl of his lip, as if to say, Why should I need proof? He took his hat from the coatrack, swept it to his head, and adjusted it. Michel was sharply reminded of the day Braun and Rommel had strode along at the bunker placement. The way Marshal Erwin Rommel seemed to defer to him, the great respect Rommel had for this man and his work.

He felt a strange mix of he didn’t know what—humility, and awe, and shame. He followed Braun from the office, feeling for the tiny reassuring bulge of the cyanide pellet sewn into the cuff of his sleeve.

Braun stared unseeingly out the car window, briefcase in his lap. They were a few blocks from headquarters. He had no idea how he would approach Schiffer for a prisoner exchange. Schiffer would double-cross for sure.

He gave a bitter chuckle. Braun designed underground command bunkers. Concrete, not guile, was his medium. He worked with cement compositions and aggregates, he produced products of varying drying ratios and strengths—he was a civil engineer, no military man, no tactical savant. And though he’d devised a ventilation system that his colleagues might call innovative, a system that could save hundreds of lives, he could not think of a single way to save one. And the one he wanted to save certainly wasn’t the man in Schiffer’s custody, a man he did not know. It was the man seated next to him, so infuriatingly docile, so quietly courageous.

Anger and panic resolved into an insuperable wall. He was out of time. There was no winging it, no—

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

The thought floated free of anxiety and despair, in some blessed neutral ground in his mind. He did not know from whence his subconscious produced it, perhaps from some catechism, from decades of Lutheran liturgy.

Whatever your hand finds to do . . .

He became aware of his hand resting upon his briefcase.

He looked down upon it as if from a great height and found himself saying, his own voice strangely detached, “Reinhart, stop. Pull over.”

“Perhaps after the next intersection. There is a delivery truck—”

“Silence!” Braun thundered.

The solution came not in part, but the whole. Braun had only to study it as if studying a portrait. All of the details were there; he had but to run his eyes over them, take notice of all in front of him. His fingers curled around the edges of his briefcase and he gripped it.

A Trojan tunnel.

He looked at Rousseau. “We need to make a stop before we get to headquarters,” Braun said, and his voice sounded very calm.

“Yes, sir,” the driver said. “Do you still want me to pull over?”

“No. Go to my apartment immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rousseau looked over. They had not spoken since the office.

It was all there, every detail. He had only to execute it. Flawlessly.

“I think you were right,” Braun said. “We should make it look as if you had been apprehended against your will. We will need to bind and gag you.”

Rousseau bowed his head. “Whatever you think best.”

“I know Schiffer. If you are brought in humiliated, he will have instant supremacy over you. Things might go better.” He hesitated. “Forgive me for what I am about to do.”

Rousseau only gave another gentlemanly nod.

Did she love him because he came from freedom, or did she love him because he was free? The puzzle was now familiar to her, as familiar as the ache in her middle.

Brigitte and Rafael were fifteen minutes into the journey to Cabourg to see Monsieur Rousseau’s brother. Rafael would not speak. He only stared out the window, pinching his lower lip in thought.

So Brigitte sought Tom.

She replayed every conversation she could remember, every word he had spoken, in order and out of order. She watched the way he twirled his hat with the self-satisfied grin, the panic on his face as he dove into her bed, the look when he made her laugh, how he seized her wrist when she touched his neck.

And the kiss. She closed her eyes. Right in front of a roomful of people, yet they were never more alone. She didn’t believe for a moment Kees had kissed her. Had it been Kees, it would have been reserved, just enough to “sell it.” He let her know things with that kiss.

She loved him because he was free, and she was free when she was with him.

She heard the sound of tearing paper and opened her eyes.

Rafael was tearing open the envelope.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

He drew out the letter, unfolded it, read the few lines. The paper dropped with his hand to his lap. She snatched it up.

François~

You will do admirably.

Forgive me.

~Michel

“What does this mean?”

Rafael suddenly straightened, staring out the window. “Where are we?”

“We’ve not yet passed Colombelles.”

He bolted from the seat.

Rafael hurried along, Brigitte at his side. She had linked arms with him once when passing a German soldier, then drifted away when the coast was clear. He started up the steps to the Cimenterie office and stopped short. The front door was ajar. His eyes narrowed. He looked up and down the street, back to the office. It was past five. They always locked it at five, even if they were staying later. He walked up the steps and pushed the door open with his fingertips.

“Hello?”

Charlotte’s desk was untidy. She never left a paper clip out of place.

“Charlotte? Monsieur Rousseau?”

He paused, didn’t hear a sound. Apprehension rippled his gut. He went to Rousseau’s office door, pushed it open. The room was dim, but he could clearly recognize what was square in the middle of Rousseau’s desk for God and Hitler to see. He stared at the transreceiver while the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

Who had used it? Why? And why hadn’t it been returned to the safety of the adventure display? Wilkie would never leave it out. No one would.

He went to the desk, opened the case, and felt the box. Stone cold. It took some time for the machine to cool after it powered down. He lifted the box from its crushed-velvet slot, felt underneath—cold.

“What is that?” Brigitte said at his side.

“A transreceiver.” It was a beauty of an instrument, courtesy of MI19 and the OSS. “We always keep it hidden.”

“What’s going on here?” a voice demanded.

They spun. Wilkie stood in the doorway, wearing a white suit, a white fedora with a dark band, and a disheveled rosebud in his lapel. He stared at the transreceiver and demanded again, “What’s going on?”

“You tell me! I found this right on the desk, right in plain sight. The front door was open. No one was here.” Rafael looked down at the box in his hands. “I’m too late.”

“Too late for what?”

When Rafael did not answer, Brigitte said, “He believes Monsieur Rousseau has gone to Gestapo headquarters to turn himself in. An exchange for Tom.”

Wilkie shook his head, dazed. “Wait—the pilot’s been taken? When?”

“Yesterday morning, in Bénouville,” Brigitte said. She added softly, “Though it seems much longer than that.”

“And Rousseau has gone to—?” He pulled off his white hat, his face suddenly matching the color. “Oh, this just gets better and better. You are Brigitte? Well, we have a problem, Brigitte.” He looked at Rafael. “I came to tell Rousseau that Century picked up a transmission from the BBC. A Lysander plane is due to arrive tonight between 1 and 2 a.m. at Le Vey. They are delivering an SOE agent and said they can pick up the pilot. They implied this might be the last pickup for quite a while.”

Rafael could only stare.

Wilkie stretched out both arms, astonished. “Clemmie, and now Rousseau? Is Flame disintegrating? Diefer still missing, the pilot taken, and now Rousseau on some suicide mission to—?” He threw down his hat. “The stupidity! How can he think the Nazis will deal fairly? A prisoner exchange? In Caen? Since when? Has he gone completely mad? And where’s Charlotte in all this?”

“She’s probably—” But Rafael broke off, gazing at Brigitte and Wilkie as a thought struck. “Maybe he is.” He put the box back into the suitcase and began to pace the length of the room.

“Maybe who is what?” Wilkie demanded.

“Braun was here. I saw his hat. Maybe Braun is helping. I wouldn’t have believed it, not before . . .”

“Could Monsieur Rousseau know about the airplane?” Brigitte asked. “And that is why the box was out?”

“Maybe,” Wilkie said. He looked at the transreceiver. “Maybe he tried to cancel the flight, with the pilot’s arrest.” But he frowned. “No, of course not. If he did hear the message, he would have known it was planned as an agent drop. He wouldn’t have tried to cancel that.”

“When did the message come?” Brigitte asked.

“Last night. Century couldn’t track any of us down. They got word to me only half an hour ago. I’m missing my brother’s wedding.”

The room was silent, only the occasional squeak of a floorboard with Rafael’s pacing.

“What do we do?” Brigitte said softly.

Rafael reached the wall, stopped, and turned. “Here’s what I think: Rousseau went to Braun for help. He was desperate, he had no other choice. He wanted Braun to turn him in as Greenland, in trade for Tom. He thought a German officer could pull it off. Maybe put some fair dealing into it.”

Wilkie’s shoulders slumped. “Well, what happens now? With the invasion coming any time, this pickup could be one of the last.”

It was exactly what Rafael was thinking. Tom had to leave tonight.

“Then we have no choice. We have to let them know.” Rafael lifted his head. “I’ll tell them.”

Wilkie stared. “You’ll stroll right into a Nazi stronghold and—” He got under Rafael’s nose. “What’s the matter with you? Use your head! Anyone who goes into that building doesn’t come out. If Braun is helping Rousseau, let him help. You have no idea what’s really going on. You could mess things up.”

“I agree,” Brigitte said fervently.

“Braun doesn’t know about the pickup—that I do know!” Rafael said. “If Rousseau is trying to get Tom out, he’s got to get him out now. So we’ve got to let them know. We’ve got to give Tom a chance to make it to the pickup. It’s his only chance.”

“But we can’t be sure of what Braun and Rousseau are doing!” Wilkie said, fiercely exasperated.

“Exactly. We can only be sure of what we do.”

“Look, you scrawny little—do I have to say it out loud? Don’t you know you are like a brother to me? I won’t stand by and let you prance into that devil building on a chance. I won’t do it!” Wilkie made an effort to calm himself. “Listen to me, Rafael, just—listen. How will you talk your way into seeing Braun? He’s probably in consultation with Schiffer. Those SS are not the same lot they used to be. They’re not going to let you interrupt a meeting to deliver a message. They’ve changed; they suspect everything these days. They’re smarter. Meaner. They’re desperate.”

“So are we.” Rafael adjusted the wilted rosebud on Wilkie’s lapel, then smiled a particularly wicked smile. He felt better. A plan was forming.

Wilkie groaned and turned away. He appealed to Brigitte. “Can you not talk sense to him? Ask him how he will make it past the guards. Ask him how he will make it past the front desk. Ask him what happened when we tried to free Jasmine.”

Rafael went and put his hands on Wilkie’s shoulders. “Do you know which word I am currently in love with?” He pulled himself up to breathe into his ear, “Audacity.” He patted Wilkie’s cheek. “We can do this, my brother. I have a plan. Braun is our best bet. We just have to get the message to him, give him a chance to make something happen. It’s the only thing we can do, and we are going to do it. If it doesn’t work . . .” He shrugged. “Then Rousseau is captured, Tom misses the plane, I get drunk for a week, and we’ll come up with something else. But I won’t spend the rest of my life wondering if a simple little thing like getting a message to Braun could have made him improvise. You’re in or you’re out, my brother.”

By Wilkie’s deflated bearing, Rafael knew he had won. At last, Wilkie said morosely, “Well, if I survive whatever scheme you have, it will be one more thing to tell my children. And if I don’t—” he shrugged—“there won’t be any children to tell.”

“How do you plan to get in there?” Brigitte asked.

Rafael went to Brigitte and walked around her, examining her face, her figure. “Your friend far more looks the part, but you’ll get his attention.”

Brigitte folded her arms. “I’m not sure the old seduce-the-Nazi-guard trick will work.”

“I’m not talking about a guard.” Rafael looked at Wilkie’s clothing, then shook his head, clicking his tongue. “You had to be wearing white. Debonair, but you’ll glow in the dark.”

“My brother’s getting married,” Wilkie said defensively. “What’s the plan, Rafael?”

Rafael went to the transreceiver on the desk. He splayed his hands lightly on it. “You beautiful thing. You gorgeous, beautiful thing,” he said caressingly. “Wilkie, my brother. Say good-bye to your baby.”

Wilkie’s eyes flew wide. Then he groaned. “Oh no . . . not Heloise . . .”

Brigitte, Rafael, and Wilkie stood at the corner of a building whose street connected like a wheel spoke to the wide half circle of Gestapo headquarters. The grounds of the old courthouse used to have a lawn like a park, and people came to eat lunch on the grass and on the benches. Now it felt like a compound. The lawn area was no longer tended or attended, the Great War memorials had been razed, and guards were posted at the top of the stairs near the entrance.

Braun’s vehicle was parked in front, driver inside. Other vehicles lined the curb. Even this late at night, nearly 10 p.m., the place was a beehive of activity. Just a few months ago, it wasn’t that way. Everyone knew the invasion was just a surprise attack away, prompting all manner of business at the swastika-clad building.

Brigitte applied heavy lipstick, but the shade was not as red as Marie-Josette would use. She couldn’t tell Rafael that her seduction skills fell short. He had every right to expect a good performance: she was a—a—a former . . . What was wrong with her that she couldn’t think the p word? . . . A woman who got paid for—she paused with the lipstick, startled; she couldn’t even think the s word? She couldn’t think sex? From prostitute to prude. She shook her head. Then she paused.

It was a return to the days before the Occupation, before her life became . . . occupied.

She knew perfectly well what had happened. Tom happened. Madame Bouvier happened. Father Eppinette happened. Love happened. It made no room for the oldest profession. It made a place for her.

She realized this now, quite possibly at the end of all things?

“Better late than never,” she said brightly, then snapped her compact shut.

Rafael looked her over critically, then, murmuring, “Forgive me,” unbuttoned her top button and pushed her blouse open a little farther. Her cheeks warmed, but she submitted to it with cold dignity. He shrugged. “You need to get his attention, little cabbage. We need that car.”

She glanced down ruefully. She wished she were as well-endowed as Marie-Josette. “So this will work . . .”

His look traveled her over. “Oh, it’ll work. Just do your thing, and get him to the alley.”

“Do my thing . . .”

“We’ll take care of the rest.”

Corporal Alric Reinhart roused from his reverie and caught the book before it slid from his lap. He dog-eared the page to mark his spot, same page as when he started, and tossed the book to the passenger seat. It was a volume of Kant. Half of it went over his head. The other half made him feel wan. Kant was not what he needed right now. He needed a copy of The Art of War.

“Enough,” he whispered, trailing the word, feeling the saturation of it, Kant’s final deathbed word. He let Kant die, then mentally grasped for The Art of War. He soon raised a venomous look to headquarters.

What went on in that building he could not guess, but he had to be ready for anything. Until that last-minute stop at Braun’s apartment, Braun and the little Rousseau had sat in a silence so frosty it reminded Alric of the ice storm last winter that froze over trees and splintered branches. The man was terribly unhappy, and it had a lot to do with the amazing conversation earlier today.

Never before had Alric shared a beer with Braun. He was in crisis, but they didn’t talk about the crisis, not then. They talked about his sons. They talked about Alric’s family. And then: Alric asked about that ethereal dream come to reality, Krista Hegel.

“Krista,” he sighed in exquisite misery.

She had entered the car broken and distraught; she left brave and determined. Both times Alric thought his heart would splinter like the ice branches.

She had sobbed in Braun’s arms all the way to the café near the Château de Caen, and Braun, awkward but well-meaning stiff that he was, allowed her tears to soak his splendid uniform. And then: on the way back to GH, she sat with that beautiful head lifted, face freshened to a pink-and-cream glow, resolute to enter the place that hope had abandoned.

He watched the swastika. Alric’s father, a resolute supporter of the crumbling Wehrmacht arm of the German military, staunchly anti-Nazi, staunchly pro–Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, under whom Father had served in the Reichsmarine, on the battleship Schlesien . . . Father would have had something to say about the miserable job that poor creature endured. Alric had learned appalling things from Braun.

Father would have had something to say about Braun, too, and Alric felt his heart soar with pride. He’d had an inkling of the sort of man he was assigned to, and it came clear after a few rounds of French ale. And Braun later said, appraising Alric with a new eye, that he had no idea what sort of man worked for him. Again, his heart soared. One had to be so very discreet about one’s politics these days, to say nothing of one’s philosophy. It could cost a man his life.

He yelped at a tap on his window.

It was a girl. A pretty girl. He unrolled the window, hoping she hadn’t heard the yelp. He nodded, said, dignified, “Fräulein.”

“Parlez-vous français?” the girl asked.

He shook his head. “Only a little.”

“Anglais?”

He shook his head.

“I speak some German.” She smiled and gave a little shrug. “Not as nicely.”

He looked at his watch. “You are aware of the new curfew, fräulein?”

“Oui.” Her cheeks pinkened, and she gave a shy smile. “But you see, I am here in town from Paris. I am . . . Oh, what is word? . . . Lonely.”

Gravity lassoed his gaze and he could not stop a lightning glance at her cleavage. He swallowed, felt a mist of perspiration, and looked away. A few nights ago, sure; but he was a man reborn, who now lived his life for Krista Hegel. He suddenly wondered if she was related to Georg.

He said formally, “Regrettably, I am a new man, fräulein.”

The girl’s smile disappeared. She buttoned her top button. “So am I.”

He looked at the courthouse. “My reason to exist is in that godforsaken building.”

She straightened from the window, following his gaze. “Le mien aussi,” she said softly.

What a look on that face. Brown eyes large with exquisite anguish, fixed fast on the swastika. She slowly smoothed a windblown lock behind her ear.

“A guard?” he asked sympathetically.

She shook her head, eyes filling with tears.

“A little Frenchman, in there with my boss?”

Tears fell down her cheeks, and his insides went to mush. What was it with crying women? Yet maybe he had what Braun had, and she could leave all fresh and ready for battle, whatever it was.

“A prisoner,” she whispered, as if she did not trust her voice to a full word. Tears rolled onto her lips. Oh, the look upon that face; oh, the wretchedness of these times.

“Exquisite,” he breathed.

He roused himself.

“Fräulein,” he said briskly, taking charge as Braun had: “I cannot leave my post, but you will join me at it. Come—converse with me.” He got out of the car, held out his arm, and escorted her to the passenger side.

“Thank God it runs on petrol,” Wilkie whispered. “But if it runs out on the way to Le Vey, we’ll wish we had a converter box.”

“Get back, you stand out like a full moon.”

“Well, if you had let me stop at my apartment . . .”

“No time.” Rafael’s eyes narrowed. “What’s she doing?”

They watched Brigitte talk to the driver. This was taking far too long. Idle moments made Rafael nervous. He needed constant action to keep his mind from any unpleasant possibility, like not getting to Le Vey at all.

“Two o’clock you said . . .”

“Between one and two. Look—she’s getting in the car!” Wilkie hissed.

Rafael stared. They weren’t going to—not right there, were they? She was supposed to lure him here. He wondered if things were about to get interesting. He wished he could see better. The streetlight cast a direct glow upon the vehicle, making it difficult to see inside.

“She’s a bold little thing . . . ,” Wilkie commented, straining for a better look. “I admire her nerve. She’s not involved with anyone, is she?”

“The pilot.”

Wilkie sighed. “Figures. Well, what do we do now?”

“Give her a little time,” Rafael mused. This was the girl he himself had recruited. He knew all about following instinct. Maybe she had something up her sleeve, and he’d not spoil it.