His bedroom. Where Lennox hid.
“No, no, no, no, no.” Hugh flung open the back door, wrenched his torch from his coat pocket, and tore up the stairs and into his bedroom.
Plaster dust filled his lungs, glimmered in the torchlight, and he coughed and swatted away the haze. “Lennox! Lennox!”
Cold air swirled around him in the darkness. A quarter of his room had disappeared. His bureau, his armchair.
His bed teetered on the edge, one leg in the void.
“Lennox!” Hugh dropped to his knees and shined the torch beneath the bed.
Nothing but dust.
“Oh no. No. No.” Hugh crawled to the edge and peered down. In the garden, the crater smoldered like a witch’s cauldron. In the remains of his study lay a jumble of broken furniture and clothing and papers. But no little gray body.
“Please, please, please. Let him be all right.” Hugh dashed downstairs, outside.
Simmons stood by the crater and dumped the contents of a sandbag into the cauldron.
With his heart thumping, filling his chest and his throat, Hugh sifted through the rubble in his study. “Lennox? Lennox?”
He tossed aside clothing, lifted shattered lumber. No Lennox.
Thank goodness.
And yet.
“Lennox?” he called. “Where are you? Here, kitty, kitty.”
In his terror, the cat must have run away.
His terror became Hugh’s, and he climbed out of the crater. “Lennox! Lennox!”
He had to find him. Had to. He aimed his torch under every bush, inside every flowerpot.
How could he find him? Where could he look? What would he do without him?
Hugh’s chest heaved with the pain of it, of losing his friend, yet another friend.
“I won’t give up, Lennox!” he yelled into the night. “I won’t give up until I find you.”
Everything inside him seized.
This terror, this panic, this determination—it was only a fraction of what Aleida had to be feeling.
And he’d told her to give up the search.
Hugh sank to his knees and wrapped his hands over the top of his head. “Forgive me, Aleida. Forgive me.”
35
LONDON
THURSDAY, APRIL17, 1941
Cream and burgundy tiles lined the walls as Aleida climbed the final flight of stairs from Hampstead Station, the deepest station in the London Underground. Her breath came hard, and her legs burned.
An elderly man in a brown overcoat passed her and gave her an odd look, the same odd look she’d received the entire journey. How many women rode the Underground carrying a stuffed elephant?
