“The superintendent already hired someone to take her away.”
Max stepped toward the broken window, cold air pouring in from the autumn winds.
“Ernst came with a warning,” she said. “If I don’t leave the apartment tonight, the SS will escort me out. Someone else is supposed to occupy these rooms in the morning.”
He swore.
“They can have the apartment, but I—” Her voice faltered as she fell into the chair. “I don’t know where I’ll go.”
“You’ll come with me,” he said. “Right now.”
When she didn’t say anything, he lowered himself beside her, his knees centimeters above the glass. “Please, Luzi.”
“I don’t think I can walk.” Her eyes fell to her light-brown skirt, and that’s when he saw the blood, soaking through her clothes. She flinched when he lifted the hem but didn’t stop him. A gash cut from her ankle up to her knee. She needed stitches, but no hospital in Austria would take her now.
Ernst was unconscious beside them, but Max still heard his breath.
He should take the knife, the gun. Finish what Luzi started.
But no matter how much he hated the man, he couldn’t kill another human being. Instead he tied Ernst’s hands behind him with a cord from the drapes lest he wake and try to hurt Luzi again.
“I’ll return,” he told her.
He hurried down the back steps, into the private entrance of her father’s office. The storm troopers had thrown dozens of the medicine bottles on the floor, a sea of glass, but they hadn’tdestroyed everything. He packed one of Dr. Weiss’s bags with a needle and suture thread, antibacterial medication and painkillers.
If only he’d come straight here after they’d released him from the hotel instead of going home. But his skin and clothing had smelled like the stench in the riding school and basement, and he was hungry, cold. What he’d longed for most beyond a bed and food these past two weeks was a hot shower and clean clothes.
He had stood in the shower until the water ran cold, trying to soothe muscles that ached, wash the memories down the drain. He’d intended to go to Luzi’s immediately, but the weakness of his body overpowered the call of his heart, and he had lain down on the sofa, not waking again for another day.
And now he hated himself for it.
He had no animals to carry with him tonight, but he’d taken the cage from his house and hidden hundreds of Reichsmarks in the compartment underneath and then stuffed his papers and some warm clothing into a rucksack. His father wasn’t at the house—if he had petitioned for Max’s release, no one told Max. He’d put another hundred in his wallet before he took the Mercedes, hoping the money and car would suffice as a ticket out of this town.
Headlights gleamed through the window, and Max ducked back toward the stairwell. The SS were here, but neither he nor Luzi would be going with them tonight.
He ran back up the stairs. “We have to leave,” he told her.
Car doors slammed outside, and seconds later, he heard the stomping of boots on the main staircase, below the smashed front door.
How many men had they sent to arrest one broken woman?
Luzi tried to stand but wobbled on her feet, not able to put any weight on her right leg. “You must go without me,” she insisted.
He’d lost weight in the past two weeks, his strength waning, but adrenaline pumped through his veins like water in a hose, a surge to stop the fire. He scooped Luzi off the chair, carrying her down to her father’s office. She trembled in his arms, and he was thankful for her fear in one sense. It meant that she still had life in her. That she could fight.
A man shouted for him to halt as they ran out into the small park, toward his mother’s prized Mercedes on the other side of the trees. But he wouldn’t halt for anyone.
After lowering Luzi into the passenger’s seat, he drove away, praying no one would stop him until they reached the edge of town. And that Luzi would be safe at the estate until they could find a way out of Austria.
Herr Knopf’s face flitted into his mind, and he pushed it right back out. The man knew about his family’s heritage, but he couldn’t think about that now. Annika, he prayed, would help.
Several cars lined up on Hauptstrasse, guards checking vehicles and papers before the drivers and their passengers left Vienna. Luzi had hesitated when he gave her the pain medicine, but he promised her that the powder would help, not harm her as it had done with her mother. He wanted to relieve some of her pain, but even more, he feared it would make her grimace at the guards when they both needed to smile.
The pain went much deeper than her skin—no medicine could relieve the sorrow underneath—but right now, to save her life, they both needed to pretend.
As they crept forward, Max reached over and took her hand. The last time he’d held it was the night of their dance.
Oh, to be able to go back and watch her play her violin andwaltz with her across the floor, inspired by the hope of the future, not the fear.
