“Is Paul Aubrey still coming?”
Lucie stiffened. “Josie is one of my regulars. She’s a delight.”
“She is.” Alice clucked her tongue. “Paul might not be as nefarious as I thought—did I tell you he doesn’t make guns or tanks? Only trucks?”
“You did.” Lucie respected her for admitting she was wrong and for diligently retracting the gossip she’d helped spread.
“Still he let his head be turned by money.”
Everything in Lucie wanted to defend him, to tell Alice he was noble, not nefarious. But she clamped her impulsive tongue between her molars and shook her head. “I’ll never understand people like that.”
“Of course, you won’t, you darling girl.” Alice’s blue eyes glowed. Then she gasped. “You poor thing. You’re on your lunch break, and here I am chattering away. Why don’t we continue this chat over lunch? My treat.”
“Any place as long as it isn’t on the Champs-Élysées. The daily parade starts soon.” Then the beat of drums pressed on her chest. “Too late. There they are.”
“Never mind them.” Alice strode down the street. “Horrid brutes, but they won’t bother us.”
Hobnailed boots pounded toward them, but the French studiously ignored the soldiers in their gray-green uniforms and stony helmets.
Lucie found herself mesmerized by the synchronization of the goosestep, each leg rising to the same height, each boot clomping at the same time.
But the thud of German boots on France’s most elegant boulevard shuddered through her, and she snapped her gaze away.
Half a block ahead of Lucie, three men walked close together. Oddly close. All wore poorly tailored business suits.
The man on the left made a knifing motion and held up one finger, two fingers, three.
Lucie’s heart slowed. Her pace slowed. She grasped Alice’s arm.
The men stopped and stood in a triangle. The man facing the street raised his arm, his hand hidden between the forms of the two others.
Sunlight glinted off steel.
Lucie slammed to a stop.
Three shots rang out. Alice screamed. So many screams.
Two soldiers fell in the street. Red stained gray.
Running, shouting, soldiers leveling guns.
The three résistants ran away from Lucie and scattered into buildings.
Alice hunkered by a tree, covering her ears, screaming.
“Run, Alice!” Lucie half-dragged her back the way they’d come. “Run!”
More shots rang out, but farther behind. Alice ran with Lucie, hatbox abandoned.
Lucie ducked into a boutique that smelled of silk and perfume and fear.
Two shopgirls stood at the plate glass and turned to Lucie, their eyes wide. “What happened?”
“Someone shot at the soldiers,” Lucie said.
One of the girls rapped a slender fist on the glass. “Those résistants! They do not care about us. Now the Germans will kill—how many? How many must die so these cowards can feel brave?”
Alice moaned. “Are they—are they dead?”
