“Don’t close the door, let her in!” Kate shouted.
The home guard warden was still pulling hard on the scraping door. “It’s too late. We’re responsible for everyone’s safety—”
In the last inch of daylight coming through the door, Kate watched a trail of bullets raise dust puffs in the yard. Kate choked back a scream as Greer pounded on the door. Any second the gunner would pick her off.
With all her might, Kate shoved the guard aside and threw her body weight against the heavy door.
“Quick, Greer!”
Panting, she yanked her friend inside.
Greer huddled in the shelter, trembling. Kate rubbed her back, steeling herself against the dirty looks of the home guard wardens.
“You put a lot of lives at risk, Yank,” said the one she’d shoved. “I’m going to have to report this.”
There wouldn’t be a report at all if the shelter was bombed to smithereens.
Kate hated feeling so helpless. And now here she was stuck in the shelter trembling in fear like everyone else. She tried to ignore the angry mutterings of her coworkers, but they carried loudly in the stale air of the shelter.
Greer’s chin quivered. “I owe ye, Kate.”
“You would have done the same.”
After ten minutes, a fog horn sounded the all-clear.
“About time,” Greer said. “Gotta find mah gran.” Kate heard false bravado in her voice.
As people exited the shelter, the home guard warden took Kate’s elbow. “You’re a civilian subject to His Majesty’s naval base regulations,” he said, his tone officious. “In this military facility your security clearance depends on your adhering to the rules and regulations. I’m reporting you for disciplinary action. We’re going to the head home guard warden’s office right now.”
“I understand,” Kate said, trying to look apologetic. “But no one got hurt.”
“She saved mah life, ye eejit,” Greer said, dusting off her dress.
“She risked the lives of a hundred people!” said the home guard. “As a foreigner—”
“A foreigner?” said Kate. Would she lose her job? But this was ridiculous. “I am the widow of a Welsh naval officer.”
“As a non–British citizen,” the warden said, spittle flying from his lips, “you’ve been allowed to work here on sufferance because of your husband. You’ve gone too far now. Let’s go.”
Kate paced the linoleum floor in the home guard warden’s empty office. Her blouse collar stuck to her damp neck. Outside the window naval cadets marched in unison; work was resuming on the wharf.
The base Red Cross ambulances had arrived after the all-clear; the nurses were moving among the injured in front of the recreation center. Kate watched as medics lifted the lifeless older woman onto a gurney. She recognized the face as they pulled a sheet over it. Greer’s gran.
Heartbroken, Kate watched Greer, sobbing, follow the medics to the ambulance. Mah feisty gran, Kate could hear her friend saying with a grin, always takin’ the piss out of someone who deserves it. This warm-hearted woman who’d always been so kind. Kate could still taste the black-market sugar she’d scrounged for that sweet milky tea.
An innocent victim of the Luftwaffe. A pointless death.
She sat on the floor, wrapped her arms around her bent knees. No tears left, she rocked back and forth, rocked and rocked until her back was tired and her rear end was sore.
After half an hour, Kate realized she’d been forgotten.
Now what?
Kate couldn’t face returning to work. Or the cottage, filled with memories of what she’d never have again. Dafydd’s warm arms. Lisbeth’s soft cooing.
She had to do something with herself. For eight months she’d been treading water, wallowing in grief, mindlessly testing rifles and completing her factory work. She couldn’t stand it anymore.
She arrived at a decision.
Time to fight back.
She reached for the warden’s phone on his desk, asked for an outside line and repeated from memory the number the man with the cane had written on the card he’d given her at the firing range.
An hour later, Kate was standing downstairs in the factory yard, waiting. She watched the cloud-puffed sky and the harbor shining with a scum of oil slick. The air reeked of oil mixed with a fishy tang. Black and white puffins took wing in the vanilla midafternoon, light spread over the rolling green fields dotted by sheep and the Nissen huts at the naval base. Somewhere a wooden shutter banged.
An olive-green staff car from the Wick air base pulled up at the factory yard. Several of the munitions inspectors and the home guard warden had appeared to meet it. As the passengers disembarked, Kate recognized the man with the cane. He’d gotten her message.
“That’s her. That’s the one.” The home guard warden pointed an accusing finger at her as she approached them. “I told you to wait, you’re to be court martialed.”
“Court martialed? That’s for the military.”
“During wartime court martials extend to civilians,” he said.
“Why bother?” Kate turned to the man with the cane. Fine lines radiated from his eyes, whose irises were a mottled green with brown specks. He wore no uniform, in contrast to the military dress of his scowling assistant. “Thank you for responding to my message, sir. I’m interested in that job. Birmingham, you said.”
A muscle in the home guard warden’s cheek twitched. “What’s this? Some kind of fairy tale? You’re under disciplinary action.”
“Thank you, warden, I’ll handle it from here,” the man said. “Ah yes, the job offer stands.”
Kate looked him in the eye. “I can take the afternoon ferry and get the train to Birmingham tomorrow morning.”
“Well, Miss—”
“Mrs. Rees,” she corrected.
“Mrs. Rees, the job I have for you now is not in Birmingham.” He looked at his watch, then indicated for his assistant to open the staff car door. “We’ll give you a ride.”
After a military flight from Wick to somewhere on the mainland, Kate was bundled into a mud-splattered staff car for a short drive through the countryside. They pulled up to a grilled gate that opened into the driveway of a manor house. Peacocks strutted on the rolling grass in the twilight. It was like a scene out of Rebecca, the movie Greer had taken her to see at the recreation center a few months earlier. Only the emerging stars provided any light.
Once they were inside, Alfred Stepney, as he’d introduced himself, ushered her into a high-ceilinged drawing room with a flagstone fireplace and dark wood-paneled walls. No one had told Kate where they were going. She tried to tamp down her apprehension.