Page 11 of The Secrets We Left Behind
“Get Jack!” Lilly screamed. “I have space for one more!”
“What? Why aren’t you at the beach?”
“Had to come back for them,” Lilly called back, as another boom shook the chateau and made Cate duck. “You’re not the only one who can save lives, Cate Alexander!”
Cate laughed, despite the horrors, despite the shuddering and squealing of war so close to them that all she wanted to do was curl up in the bathtub upstairs and pretend none of it was real. But itwasreal. Painfully, viscerally, bone-chillingly real.
Hours earlier, she’d watched as the walking wounded had shuffled, limped and hobbled alongside nurses, doctors and orderlies, headed for the beach. Soldiers who should have been bedridden had managed to haul themselves up to their feet, not about to be left behind if there was even a chance of being on a ship headed for home, one using a garden rake as a crutch. And Lilly, who had been part of that procession, had somehow ended up back at the hospital to transport an ambulance full of men who obviously hadn’t been able to walk even as far as the gate. Had she already taken men to the beach and bravely returned for more? She hadn’t thought even Lilly would be so brave. Or stupid.
But if Lilly had space for one more man, then she was going to make sure that Jack was the one who made it. She would do anything to give him a fighting chance.
She cringed as she heard a cry and then yelling, both British and German, and fear raced through her.
“Cate, hurry!” Lilly screamed.
Cate lifted her skirt and raced to Jack’s bed, slipping on the floor as she grabbed hold of the metal railing. He was pushed up on his elbows, the sheet thrown off him. She held out her hand and gripped his arm to help him sit up properly. He hadn’t joined the walking wounded because the doctors had told him he wouldn’t make it, but now she regretted not encouraging him to go.
“What the hell’s going on?” Jack asked.
“The Germans are here already,” she whispered. “We need to go. There’s space on an ambulance for you.”
“Go?” He stood and she grimaced at the way he wobbled, unsteady on his feet after so long lying in bed. “We’re leavingnow?”
Cate dropped low and looked for his things, knowing she’d stored his boots beneath his bed for him. She fumbled with the laces and put them down, tapping on his right leg for him to lift it and struggling to get the boot on, then doing the other. He was only wearing a shirt and some long pants, but as the commotion outside the chateau became louder, she knew there was no time to look for anything else. Cold was better than dead.
“Quickly,” she ordered. “We don’t have long.” She prayed that Lilly was still outside, that she hadn’t already been shot waiting for Jack.
“No, Cate. You go,” he protested, pushing at her, the desperation in his eyes only adding to her terror. “I’ll only slow you down.”
“Move!” she cried, clutching at his shirt, not about to make a run for it on her own. “This is your chance to get out of this hell-hole!”
“Cate—”
“I’m not leaving you, so either get moving or we’re both as good as dead!” Boots echoed down the hall, like booms of thunder during a storm. It was too late. There was no way they were makingit to Lilly. They had seconds before they wouldn’t be able to move an inch without being gunned down.
She didn’t look over her shoulder as Jack gave up arguing and started to hobble. There was no time to look back, and as guilty as she felt at running away from the doctors and those who needed her, and her colleagues, nothing was going to change their fate.
Yells erupted behind them, another gunshot, but still Cate refused to look as she dragged Jack through to the next room, scanning, panic clawing at her throat as she realized she’d mistakenly gone into the wrong room. There wasn’t another door to the outside from here. Her hand was firmly woven around Jack’s arm, hauling him along with her, cringing every time he tripped and almost took her down with him.
“Through here,” she cried, lurching forward and grabbing a footstool that was in her way. She threw it straight through the glass window, shattering it with one insistent swoop, heart in her throat as she half-expected a Nazi to be waiting with a gun on the other side for them, or to find one behind her ready to stop them in their tracks as she pushed herself up and out of the large, low window. Glass snagged on her clothes and cut her skin, digging deep as she leaned in to help Jack, pulling him so hard he hit the ground with a thud before clawing himself upright, his hands bleeding as she took hold of him once again.
But there was no one waiting to execute them. No soldier, no patrols, just the carnage that had been left behind in the wake of the battle and a commotion from around the other side of the chateau.
Lilly!
She watched in horror as the ambulance started to move, hoping on the one hand they could make it to her, but knowing there was no way. Lilly was going, and Jack wasn’t leaving with her.
As she looked to the other side, it was like the British army had just abandoned the fight; they were nowhere to be seen, and shewondered what the beach looked like and how long it would take them to make a run for it. Could they evacuate? Would the ships have left or were the soldiers in danger of being massacred where they waited? She had no idea what to do, where they even were in relation to the beach, what direction she should be propelling them in to find safety.
“Under there!” Jack said, doing a long, stretched-out kind of limp ahead of her. She ran with him, relieved that he’d taken charge, seeing what he was going for—there was an abandoned ambulance with the rear doors left open, just sitting out in the open.
She turned, running backward to see if anyone was following them or was watching, but there was no one. But the noise in the chateau behind her stole away any relief she’d felt at making their escape.
“Cate, get under.”
Jack had already dropped to the ground, and even though he was injured he waited for her to get under first. It wasn’t too bad for her, although being on her stomach and sliding across dirt that was fast turning to mud wasn’t her idea of fun. But if it meant they could stay hidden, she’d have crossed an alligator-infested river to get away.
She almost felt Jack’s pain as her own when he winced, grunting as he forced his way into the space beside her, and she only hoped his stitches would hold with the exertion. The last thing she would be recommending for him was to be walking or running, let alone crawling on his belly to fit beneath a vehicle.
