She opened her beaded evening bag and retrieved her cigarette case. After withdrawing another tobacco-filled roll, she’d just started to lift it to her lips when the sky exploded.
Charged energy shot through Rose’s body as she prepared to dodge shells and to protect the blessés she transported. Her organs seemed to reverberate with the boom, and she swore she could hear pebbles and dirt pinging against her steel helmet. Her hands clutched the wheel of her Tin Lizzie, but the Lucky Strike crumpled against her palm instead, dragging Rose back to reality. Breathing deeply, she watched as red and blue sparks drifted down from the now-dark sky.
Fireworks. Not German shells. Fireworks.
Trying to calm the nervous energy charging through her body and turning her limbs into jelly, Rose exhaled as a clamor arose behind her. She turned her head slowly like a sleepwalker and distantly watched through a jittery haze as a parade of Betsy Rosses, Abraham Lincolns, Patrick Henrys, Dolley Madisons, shepherdesses, and swashbucklers invaded her formerly quiet sanctuary. Annoyed, she began to swing her attention back to the inky sea. But just then another boom sounded, and one of the Betsy Rosses let out a shrill cry of excitement.
Suddenly Rose was no longer on the veranda of her parents’ sprawling beach house in Daytona, Florida, but on a shell-blasted road in France.
The boom of a shell smashed through the endless growl of traffic, followed by the hideous scream of the injured horse. Rose leaned closer to the windshield of her Model T, trying to find a space to squeeze the ambulance through the dark shadows shifting amorphously before her. Sheneededto find an opening. The French poilu and the British soldier in the back ofher Tin Lizzie would not survive much longer without a surgeon. But the road before her was crowded with supply wagons, troops of all nationalities, and French refugees. Even with the snarl of desperate war traffic, she could not risk turning on the headlamps, not this close to the front lines. It would make her and the two patients targets for the Germans.
Another shell exploded, so close that the concussive force slammed Rose’s faithful Ford to the right. She jerked the wheel left just as more inhuman cries of wounded equines surrounded her. A dark shadow was her only warning before hooves struck the left side of the ambulance. She tried to swerve, but it was too late. The draft horse’s powerful kick slammed the converted vehicle to the side. Helpless to stop the Model T from listing, Rose felt the tires on the left side leave the bumpy excuse for a road.
Fragments of fear serrated her. Both her patients were near death, and she did not know if they could survive a jarring tumble.
The Tin Lizzie smashed into a ditch. Rose’s shoulder took most of the impact. She hissed in pain, praying the machine would stop sliding. With another bump, the ambulance came to a rest, still on its side.
Rose adjusted her metal helmet as she crawled from where she’d been slammed against the passenger door. She heard a low moan coming from the back. Scrambling through the overturned vehicle, she managed to reach her patients. The first man she touched felt cold ... too cold. The poor blessé had probably died shortly after they’d left the poste de secours. Each loss still had the power to twist around her heart like a relentless, ever-present snake.
The weak groan came again, and an alien sense of hope shot through Rose. The Englishman was still alive! Rose quickly moved toward the sound, her heart pumping against the constrictive band surrounding the abused muscle.
In the darkness, a hand grabbed hers. The grip on her fingers was feeble yet unbreakable.
“Spies. You. Must. Stop. Them. Now.”
“Spies?” Rose felt like she’d just plunged beneath the surface of a frozen lake. “Is that what your mission was? To stop a plot against the Allies?”
“Aye.” There was a surprising hint of the Isles in his polished upper-crust accent now. “But. No. Time. To. Explain. All. Written. Down.”
Her patient’s voice had grown even raspier, as if he were pushing out the words by sheer effort alone, and perhaps he was. Even more concerning, his breathing had devolved into a labored wheezing—a sound Rose recognized all too readily. She did not reassure the man, tell him that he would be fine. She had given him enough false promises already. He would not survive the trip to the hospital as she’d sworn to him.
This gentleman and she both knew the truth. He was dying.
“Give. Him. A. Message. He’ll ... help.”
“Who is ‘he’?” Rose asked, hearing this determined fellow’s desperation. Once again, she’d failed to save a patient, and the bloody, pointless war had won.
The man did not seem to hear her. “Talk. Only. To. Him. Spies. Everywhere. Active everywhere.”
The chill inside Rose turned into a ferocious windstorm. She’d heard many ravings of the blessés. Many had thought her their wife, their sweetheart, their mother, or even the enemy. She had held the hand of more than one dying man as she’d comforted him in French.
But this.
This was different.
The British soldier was more lucid.
More urgent.
More impassioned.
He had a mission, a purpose. And he was using his last breath to see that someone completed it, even if he himself could not.
But his death didn’t mean this man’s quest would be snuffed out as well. Rose would see it through. That was a promise she could swear to fulfill.
“Who are these foreign agents? Is this why you are wearing the uniform of a poilu?” She did not want to waste the man’s precious remaining time, but if he was speaking even a bit of truth, she needed more information.
“Read. My. Notes. Find. Him. Go. To. Hamar ...” The patient’s voice trailed off at the end.
