Page 1 of The Secret Librarian
Prologue
France, 1941
The woman they called Little Rabbit stood shoulder to shoulder with her husband, their backs pressed against the rough bark of the tree. Her breath was ragged, her chest heaving from running, but she forced herself to stay silent. Their lives depended on neither of them making a sound.
Hugo’s hand found hers, his fingers catching against her knuckles, and when she glanced at him, she found his eyes in the almost-dark and held his stare. Someone had betrayed them, and now they were being hunted like animals as they hid in the forest.
Her body began to shake, and she gripped Hugo’s fingers with hers as wind whipped through the trees and made the leaves tremble around them.
We’re going to die.
As much as she was prepared to sacrifice anything for the cause, she’d never imagined it might happen like this, and as shouts began to echo, the sound of voices coming ever closer, she couldn’t stop thinking about the other lives that would now be lost. The family they’d been waiting to evacuate, the documents sewn into her pocket that would now never be used ... She blinked away angrytears. That family would be shoved into a cattle cart, sent on a train to certain death, when freedom had finally been within their grasp. Children ripped from the arms of their parents, lives shattered in an instant with no one left to save them.
Hugo leaned in close then, his lips whispering against her ear, so close she could feel them touch her skin.
‘We have to run.’
She shook her head. ‘If we run, they find us,’ she whispered. ‘They’ll know where we are.’
‘If we stay hidden here, they find us,’ he murmured back. ‘We have to go. This might be our only chance to escape.’
She stared at him, his eyes pleading with her as she slowly,eventually, nodded, knowing that he was right. But it didn’t make the prospect of running any less terrifying.
Hugo silently lifted the edge of his shirt to show her the pistol in his waistband, and she nodded again. It was only one gun against many but it was something, and it might make the difference between them staying alive or not. She also knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to use it. They’d both been trained to fire a gun, and she had every confidence in his ability to shoot to kill.
‘When I say go, you run. Don’t look back and don’t wait for me. You have to go.’
‘I’m not leaving you,’ she whispered.
He shook his head as she gripped his fingers tightly in hers, forcing her to let go when he pulled away.
‘Now!’ he urged.
She sucked in a breath and then pushed off from the tree, moving as fast as she could. She could hear Hugo running just behind her, but she could also hear the ever-louder, urgent shouts of the men looking for them, and nothing could have prepared her for the sound of shots whirring through the forest and knowing that she and Hugo were their target.
‘They’re going to kill us!’ Her words were a soft cry as she stumbled over a branch and then righted herself, as more cracks of gunfire echoed around them, the enemy closing in.They’re actually going to kill us!
It was then she realised that Hugo wasn’t beside her.
Hugo was no longer running with her.
Her feet slipped on leaves as she turned, and a scream caught in her throat when she saw her husband’s body crumpled on the ground, barely a few paces away.
‘Hugo!’ she gasped.
She ran back, dropping to her knees and leaning over him, her hand to his cheek. But Hugo was still. His eyes looked past her, and when she held her fingers to his neck to check his pulse, when she lowered herself to feel his breath against her cheek, she knew. There was nothing.
Hugo was gone. Shot dead in the forest, trying his hardest to protect her and get her to safety.
The shouts were more urgent now, the voices clearer, louder still, and she gasped back her tears and reached for his pistol, scrambling to her feet and forcing herself to leave him as another shot echoed out, this time aimed at her and ricocheting off the tree beside her.
He would have told me to go. There’s nothing I can do for him now.
She could hear him screaming at her in her head, knew what he’d say if given the chance.‘You need to run!’
Her eyes blurred with tears as she fired behind her, once and then again, hoping it would buy her some time, before running as fast as she could. Part of her wanted to die in the forest with Hugo, to surrender to the gunfire behind her and end her life with the man she loved so fiercely, but another part of her was already burning. Another part of her was on fire, ready to find whoever had betrayed them and hold Hugo’s pistol to their head.His life had been extinguished as if it meant nothing, but he meant everything to her.
I just have to reach the safe house.
