Dorothy Garlock (10 page)

“You’re covered in sweat,” he observed.

“I don’t even notice it.”

“Come on now,” he chided her. “Don’t be stubborn!”

“I’m not being stubborn,” she shot back, giving him a quick sideways glance. She saw that he was watching her intently, his
lean but muscled forearm resting easily on top of the steering wheel. The sudden thought struck her that he was handsome and
she turned away for fear she would blush.

“If you’re not being stubborn then you’re being silly,” he kept on.

“Maybe I am.”

“Where’s the harm in accepting a ride?”

“This from the man that admits to following me,” she gave back. “You’re a nearly complete stranger I’ve never met before today.
For all I know, you’re the sort of man that likes to follow young women home in order to abduct them and have your way with
them.”

Cole jammed on the brakes and the pickup ground to a sudden halt beside her. The unexpected abruptness of his action startled
her and she couldn’t help but do the same, jumping away from the road, her heart thumping wildly in her chest. When she turned
to him, his smile was gone, replaced by a piercing gaze of seriousness.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Sophie,” he said, his voice determined and firm. “My intentions in coming after you were just
as I said: I only wanted to check if you’d needed a ride. After everything that happened at the diner, I think you have plenty
of reasons to trust me.”

The sincerity in his voice gave Sophie pause. Though she had met Cole Ambrose only an hour earlier, she could feel that there
was a depth to him, a strength in the way he carried himself that put her at ease. While she felt betrayed by Graham’s actions,
confused by the way he had broken her trust, she found herself believing what Cole told her.

“I don’t think you’ll hurt me,” she heard herself answer.

“I’m not like the men at the diner,” he added.

“No, you’re not.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to lose in letting me take you home, do you?”

Sophie could only nod as she glanced at the painted sign on the truck door:
AMBROSE HARDWARE
. Wiping the sweat from her eyes
with a sigh, she pulled open the door to the pickup and climbed inside. Though the inside of the truck was as hot as an oven,
she felt relief to be out of the sun. She gave Cole a quick smile as he put the truck into gear and they began to head down
the road, a cooling breeze rushing through the open windows.

Sophie expected Cole to ask her about what had happened at the diner, about how she had come to be mixed up with such men,
but he surprised her by doing nothing of the sort. Though the drive to the farm was short, he instead inquired about her and
her family, about how long she had worked at the newspaper, and he even spoke more of his trepidation of returning to Victory
from Chicago. She was so intent on what he had to say that she nearly let him drive right past her home, telling him so late
that the truck skidded a bit before stopping.

She blushed. “Sorry.”

“Not a problem.”

Cole pulled the truck into the long drive that fronted the farm and followed the route as it twisted past a pair of apple
trees before bringing the whole of the property into view. The two-story farmhouse sat quiet around the bend, laundry hanging
limply on the line, drying quickly in the summer sun. A quick wave of relief washed over Sophie when she saw there was no
one else around the property; accepting Cole’s offer had been awkward enough without having to introduce him to the rest of
the Hellers. Still, she felt uneasy. Though it had been weeks since the barn had been burned to the ground, seeing its charred
remains sent a shiver racing across Sophie’s skin and her hand involuntarily rose to the spot on her head where her bump had
once been.
It still seems so real!
Cole drove up to the farmhouse, shut off the engine, and whistled as he caught sight of the black skeletal frame of the barn.

“That must have been one heck of a fire.”

“It was.”

“What happened?” Cole prodded. “Was it lightning?”

“My father—” she started, beginning to tell Cole the story that her family had stuck to ever since that fateful night, that
her father had simply tipped over a lantern, but something stopped her. Shame colored Sophie’s cheeks at the thought of so
blatantly lying to the man who had shown her nothing but kindness. “—wants to rebuild,” she said instead, finishing with a
truth that still didn’t answer his question.

“That won’t be an easy task.”

“My father is the sort of man who doesn’t shy away from hard work.”

“I’d imagine not.” He chuckled. “What with raising you, and all.”

This time, Sophie was certain she had blushed.

“Just make sure that he speaks with my father down at the hardware store,” Cole explained. At the reference to his father,
Cole’s smile appeared to falter, but only for a moment. “It’s going to take an awful lot of wood and nails to put that back
together again!”

“I should probably get inside,” Sophie explained, desperately wanting to stop talking about the barn, her head still dizzy
from learning the identities of the men who were responsible. “I don’t want my mother…”

“Let me get the door for you.”

Before she could tell him that it wasn’t necessary, Cole was already getting out of the truck. Oddly, he stood still for a
moment as if he were steadying himself before heading around the front of the pickup. His pace was slow, almost labored. As
he went along, he kept one hand on the hood, his gait unseemly and awkward, his left shoulder dipping lower with every step.

What is going on here?

Finally, when he reached her door and pulled it open, beads of sweat lined across his forehead. As he shut the door behind
her, she couldn’t help but glance down at his feet. She had to stifle a gasp at what she saw; his left leg seemed smaller,
almost shriveled underneath his trousers, and his foot lay at an awkward, unnatural angle. Until that very moment, Sophie
hadn’t realized that he had any infirmity; when she had first met Cole at the diner, and even when he had come to her defense
at the rear of the restaurant, she simply hadn’t noticed. She hoped he hadn’t observed her glance, but when she looked back
up, his eyes held hers and he smiled knowingly.

“I’m… I’m sorry…” she stammered.

“It’s all right,” he assured her, though she thought she could see in his eyes that it wasn’t. “It’s nothing I’m not used
to.”

Sophie didn’t know what to say. She knew that she shouldn’t look upon this kind man any differently for his infirmity, but
she couldn’t help herself. She’d never met someone with Cole’s particular handicap, though she knew that this was hardly an
excuse for gawking. After the way he had risen to her defense at the diner, she knew the last thing she should do was judge
him, but she found it impossible to do otherwise. Shame caused tears to well in the corners of her eyes. She was about to
try to apologize further, to somehow make up for her embarrassment, when he spoke.

“Given the circumstances, it was awfully nice to meet you, Sophie Heller,” he said as he offered her his hand. “And thank
you kindly for trusting me enough to give you a ride home.”

She took his hand as a tear loosened and coursed down her cheek. “I’m the one who should be thanking you,” she managed before
the dam of her emotions collapsed and she found herself rushing away from the truck toward the farmhouse.

She was so upset with herself that she never once looked back, never noticed Cole limping back around the front of the pickup,
and was never aware of the curtain of her grandmother’s upstairs room slowly swinging shut.

W
HERE IN THE HELL’S
Graham?” Riley Mason barked.

“Keep your shirt on.”

Ellis Watts leaned back in his chair and took a long drag on his cigarette before blowing a thick plume of smoke toward the
ceiling of his small shack on the outskirts of Victory. The milky cloud wafted lazily around the lone naked bulb that lit
the room.

“He’s late!”

“He’ll be here,” Ellis insisted.

He reached for the whiskey bottle that sat on his makeshift table and hoisted it to his lips. He took a lengthy slug of the
dark liquor, then dropped the bottle to the table with a clatter and absently wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Goddamn, that whiskey burned all the way to his toes!

“He knows we was countin’ on him showin’ up,” Riley groused as he ran a thin hand through his scraggly blond hair. He paced
like a caged animal before the cracked and dirty window that looked back toward town. “I ain’t likin’ a-waitin’. If he ain’t
here right quick, he’s gonna find himself with a fat lip!”

“What’s got your ass up?”

“It’s on account of that shitty Kraut bitch, that’s what,” the wiry man said with a snarl, his nostrils flaring and his eyes
wide. “Walkin’ on over to us in that damn diner! She knowed we’d not put up with it.”

Ellis hardly needed to close his eyes to see Sophie Heller walking the length of the diner, approaching their booth with a
look on her pretty little face that was equal parts anger and fear. He had to admit that she had surprised him; he hadn’t
figured on her being quite so brave. He was sure that he hadn’t shown his surprise, but it shamed him a bit just the same.
If she wasn’t one of them no-good Krauts bent on destroying his country, he reckoned he might even begrudgingly respect her.

“I shoulda just slapped her,” Riley argued.

“What you should have done was stay planted on your ass and not said even one goddamn word,” Ellis gave right back, rehashing
an argument they’d been having ever since they’d left the diner. “That would have been the smart play but we both know that
ain’t your way. Instead, you had to get all uppity and ended up actin’ the fool. Just like I done told you a dozen times already,
it was your big mouth that got her attention in the first place.”

“I didn’t say nothin’ that you hadn’t said before.”

“And that’s why now she knows who did it,” Ellis growled, utterly exhausted of having to explain himself over and over, especially
to a fool like Riley. “Even after all that, if you could have somehow managed to hold your tongue, she woulda just walked
away without much fuss. Now you might have done screwed it all up.”

“Sorry, Ellis,” the younger man whined. “I just thought I was doin’ what you wanted.”

“Then you should quit thinkin’.”

Ellis’s eyes drifted over Riley Mason. With the scant hair on his face and his patched-up clothing, he resembled a boy more
than a man. Lean and nervous, his hands constantly fidgeting, Ellis had never met someone so eager to please. He was just
like a faithful dog; only this mutt had just as much chance of biting someone’s hand off as it did of actually doing what
it was told. Still, he had to admit that Riley had his uses. So far, he’d managed to hold his own.
I’ve just gotta keep him on a tight leash.

“It’s too late to change it now, anyways,” Ellis offered by way of reconciliation.

“Then where do we go from here?”

“That’s what we’re waitin’ on Graham for.”

The sorry truth of the matter was that Ellis didn’t know what they should do next. When he’d first come up with the idea of
driving the damn Germans away from his town, everything had seemed to come easy: planning when they should strike, what they
should wear, and just how far they were willing to go seemed as simple as falling out of bed. But now, after the confrontation
in the diner, that ease seemed to have changed for the worse. Indecision racked his thoughts, urging him to lash out, to strike
faster and harder than before, but something also nagged at him, warning him to be smart, not to take any unnecessary risks.

“Is Graham gonna be all right?” Riley asked.

“All right with what?”

“With what it is that we’re doin’,” the younger man said with a shrug. “When that bitch done come by the table, he didn’t
seem too right… like he was soft or somethin’. He gonna be able to hold his own if it comes to it?”

“You leave the worryin’ to me.”

“I’m just sayin’…”

“Graham ain’t gonna have much choice in the matter,” Ellis snarled. “Not on account of what we know. If he finds himself gettin’
a little weak in the gut, it ain’t gonna take much to remind him of what he stands to lose. The last thing he is gonna want
anybody to know is that he ain’t as perfect as he looks. Believe me, a warnin’ will be more than enough to get him right back
in step.”

Ellis might have talked a good show in front of Riley, but he knew that what his fellow conspirator said was the plain truth;
that Graham Grier was the weak link in their plan. But he also knew that they needed his help, his money, and most important,
his influence in Victory. Without it, they were doomed to fail. That was why he’d put up with Graham’s shortcomings; he’d
just have to take pains to remind the man of what they knew, and remind him of all he had to lose.

“What’s to keep her from goin’ to the police, then?” Riley asked. “She knows we was the ones that done it.”

“She won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because she ain’t nothin’ but a scared woman, that’s why,” Ellis explained, his voice as edgy as his mood. “Provin’ that
we did it ain’t gonna be easy. She’ll be too worried about what we’d do to her family to take the chance.”

“I hope you’re right,” Riley worried.

“I am.”

“I couldn’t go to jail.”

“You ain’t gonna,” Ellis said. “You’re gonna have to trust me on that.”

“But now that the Kraut bitch knows it was us, we ain’t got no choice but to go ahead and finish the job,” Riley said, giving
voice to Ellis’s own baser instincts. “How hard would it be for us to make our way back out to that farm and catch her unawares?
Hell, it ain’t like we got much choice. Like I said, she already knows it was us!”

“And that’s just why we can’t do nothin’.”

“What do you mean?”

“There were other people in that there diner,” Ellis began to explain, hoping that Riley would be smart enough to follow.
“When you stood up and grabbed her by the wrist, well, people just ain’t gonna forget seein’ that sort of thing. If anything
were to happen to that bitch now, it wouldn’t take much for folks to tie it to what you done to her in that diner. Before
you knew it, the police would be on you like stink on shit.”