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Too late tonight. Will find her tomorrow.
She wanted to tapTomorrow might be too late!but what else could he do? It was the middle of the night over there. He was right.
She had not yet tapped a reply. He would sense she was afraid. A moment later, he sent another message.
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Will retrieve if it kills me
A cry caught in her throat.No, Gus. Don’t say that. Never say that. Come home.But that was exactly what she needed him to do, wasn’t it?
She tappedReceived, then she took off her headphones, put her head down, and wept.
sixtyDASH— Paris, France —
Dash chewed the last of the remaining sausage, though the dried meat turned to leather in her mouth. She couldn’t taste it, didn’t want to eat it, but she was already so weak. Without it she would have no strength at all. She had gotten worse. Her arm smelled rank with infection, and she could no longer lift it on its own. Her fingers looked like sausages. The night before, she’d hallucinated that she stuck a pin in her arm and all the infection spilled out, easing the pain, but even with her fever raging, she understood that was not an option. She feared the doctors would probably amputate her arm when she was rescued.
Ifshe was rescued. The truth was, she had no idea if anyone was coming. Ruby was dead, and Gordon was gone. Did anyone know she was here? Did it matter anymore?
When she wasn’t drowning in sweat from fever and nightmares, Dash daydreamed. She imagined Dot with her, sharing this dismal space. Dot being there changed everything. Dash no longer lived in a cage, but in an observation post. Dot counted the boards beneath the cot then the nails in the wall. She remarked on the patterns covering the walls and ceiling. Throughout the fantasy, Dot never apologized for what had happened between them with their father, and Dash never felt the need to hear it.She was just relieved to have her there, beside her, where she should have been all along.
Where was Pete? she wondered. Flying overhead? Waiting for her on the beach? Did he know she was lost? Would she ever see him again?
Where was Gus? Safe somewhere, she hoped. Warm and dry. Could he hear the guns? The planes roaring overhead? Did he ever look up and imagine her in one of the cockpits?
Her mother. Aunt Lou and Uncle Bob. How she missed them all. She yearned for home. A quiet night with Dad and Dot doing a puzzle at the table.
She started at the sound of the apartment door creaking open, then the latch closing. She opened her mouth to call out then swallowed her words when she heard German voices. A woman and a man. Dash couldn’t understand a word, and she didn’t recognize either voice. The woman sounded angry. The man sounded apologetic.
Their boots clacked on the floor as they headed deeper into the rooms. Moments later, the pair returned and spoke a few words that sounded like confirmation. They exchanged a sharpHeil Hitler!and the man left. She heard the woman meandering through the apartment, picking things up and setting them back down. Eventually, she receded toward the bedroom.
In the silence that followed, Dash tried to think straight. She couldn’t afford to panic; she was too weak for that. All she knew was that there was no escape from this little box where she lived.This wall does not open from the inside, Ruby had said, but Dash had tried everything she could to get out that first day. She’d pinched her fingertips under the wall to lift or slide it. She’d thrown her body at the wood, again and again. It had not budged. When she was no longer able to stand, she gave up.
Time passed.
Someone knocked on the door to the apartment. A man, evidently expected. The woman purred a welcome, giggling as she led him down the hall, away from Dash’s hearing.
He left. An hour after that, a different man knocked and received thesame warm reception. It happened twice more after that. Dash came to the foggy conclusion that her new roommate was a prostitute. She was also a pretty good cook, filling the air of the apartment with the aroma of fried onions and potatoes in butter, and Dash’s mouth with saliva. Who had butter these days? This woman was being kept in style.
All this came to Dash in a hazy sort of dream that she knew to be true. Hollowed out by hunger and weak with fear, she lay motionless on the cot.
She wasn’t the first to have existed here in this strange, suffocating purgatory. There were old bloodstains on the cot, and someone namedSteven Murphy, Sheffield, Armyhad signed his name on the wall. He had left behind the nub of a pencil, rolled under the cot. Dash pressed the rounded tip against the wall, near his name. Her hand shook so badly it was hard to hold the pencil.
Dash Wilson, she wrote as neatly as she could.Canada, Pilot.
She was so sick that she began to wonder if she could simply close her eyes and just stop breathing. End the agony. But her body was more stubborn than she thought, and the torture continued.
By the third morning in the room, there was nothing left to eat or drink. How long could a person survive without water? Dash had probably read it somewhere long ago, but she couldn’t remember now. She didn’t care.
Another knock at the door. Dash listened idly, long past caring who came or went. A man spoke.
“Guten Nachmittag. Ich bin Polizeiinspektor Braun.” Dash heard: Police inspector.
The woman’s tone was wary, which made Dash think the inspector had not been expected. Despite her lethargy, she was intrigued. Why was he here, and why did her housemate sound upset? With all the strength she had, Dash crawled off the cot and pressed her ear to the wall. The man was still speaking, but he was farther away now. Then she heard another sound, just beyond the wall. A second man was walking slowly throughthe room, tapping a cane on the floor. The floorboards creaked under his weight. She closed her eyes, dreaming of a hammer hitting nails. The canvas wing of a Hurricane taking shape.
A light flickered in the darkness of her mind, and it registered that the tapping sounded like a pattern. Morse code, she mused. With all she had left, she focused her straying thoughts on translating it.
