“It ever too much for you?” the same voice asked. “Being so close to the war, I mean?”
“I’ve felt that way plenty of times, but we all just have to keep going, don’t we?”
She shut her eyes and imagined sleep, although her mind was ticking over too intently to even contemplate shut-eye now. But it wasn’t memories of being a little girl trailing around after her camera-toting father that were troubling her, it was the soldier’s question. War had almost broken her, well before she’d made a name for herself as a correspondent, when she was just starting out and she’d fought to save whoever she could, as if she had the power to do it all on her own.
The man stared at her, tears running down his cheeks. She backed away, swallowing her emotions until they erupted within her, choking her and making it near impossible to breathe, let alone speak. Children behind her, families, thanked her and reached for her hand, patting at her, but she couldn’t utter a single word in reply. Because all she could see was the man she’d left behind. And the old woman on her knees wailing beside him, begging Danni to find a place for them, too.
“You promised!” the woman cried. “You promised us you’d take us with you.”
They were words that came to her with such knife-deep sharpness in the night, as if they were being yelled directly into her ear, that she often woke bolt-upright and covered in a thick layer of sweat.
“Danni?”
She quickly wiped her eyes, sniffing and clearing her throat. It was always in the dark, the memories invading her thoughts whenever her mind was idle. Or perhaps it was when she was close to other pain, other tragedy, that it somehow crept back into her consciousness.
Andy shuffled beside her and she felt his big hand reaching for hers. She clasped it, holding on tight as the memories passed in a wave.
“We did everything we could, Danni. You know that as well as I do,” he whispered to her, instinctively knowing what had upset her. They’d been through it together, so it shouldn’t have surprised her, but somehow it always did.
“It doesn’t make it any easier to forget,” she whispered back.
After she’d fallen into a job at the Daily Telegraph, she’d marched straight into the London office and demanded that the editor-in-chief send her to Poland. He’d seemed to appreciate how ballsy she was and decided to test her by sending her there on her first assignment. And that was when she’d first met Andy, when he’d been tasked with ensuring she make it back to London, and she’d instead tasked him with helping her secure visas and run refugees from Prague to Belgium, right under German noses. Needless to say, her editor hadn’t been impressed with how long she’d taken to return, but it had cemented her friendship with Andy.
A shiver ran through Danni and she wound an arm tightly around herself. She’d known from the moment she’d arrived in Poland that photographing war was her calling, only she hadn’t banked on how deeply the human suffering would affect her. There had been so many refugees, and the moment she’d bravely shown Andy what she was doing, and more importantly who she was doing it for, they’d become a team. And they’d never looked back.
“Can I tell them?” he whispered, squeezing her hand. She squeezed it back, before slowly letting go.
“In Poland, Danni enlisted me to help as many refugees as we could,” Andy told the men around them. “These people, these humans, were caught in Hitler’s crosshairs, and when the Czechs conceded to his ultimatum, well, there was only so long before those high-risk refugees were caught and dragged into whatever hell he had planned for them. Only, no one knew that a well-connected, determined American woman was waiting in the wings to save as many lives as possible.”
There was not a snore, not a snuffle, around her now, and Danni had the sudden realization that all the men were listening to Andy speak about her.
“How many were there?” someone asked.
Danni cleared her throat. “That first group I moved—well, I thought I could move all of them. I was told I could move all of them. But the Belgian officials changed their minds, and in the end I only had one hundred and sixty places for one hundred and sixty-two refugees.” She shut her eyes and wished their faces weren’t so vivid in her mind still. “I think about the two people I left behind every day, but from that moment on, I vowed to show the truth through the lens, the human sacrifice of war that exists at every turn. It’s why I’m here, and it’s why I keep fighting for my place to be alongside you all.”
Andy always told her to be proud of what they’d done, and she was, but the fact that they hadn’t been able to save all of them—that pain would never go away, no matter how hard she tried. She steeled herself against the emotions, pulled her camera to her chest, and tried to focus on the familiar weight of it in her hands.
“Danni?” Andy whispered. “You okay?”
She swallowed and pulled her blanket higher up her body, even though the scratchy fabric itched her chin. “I will be.”
“Danni, I’m sorry,” Andy said, and his hand skimmed her shoulder, the touch instantly making tears prick at her eyes. “I shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.”
“Thanks for the bedtime story, but it’s time we all got some shut-eye,” came a husky drawl.
Danni resisted the urge to snap back a remark, knowing exactly who the owner of that voice was. Cameron’s tone was unmistakable, and she wished she knew more about him so that she wasn’t on the back foot all the time. Although she doubted he was ever going to do anything other than regard her presence alongside his men with contempt. He’d made that clear when he’d smugly watched her as Patton had given her her marching orders, and it had taken every ounce of her willpower to remember how highly she’d regarded him in the field earlier.
“Sorry for keeping you awake,” she muttered back.
She knew Andy meant well, but perhaps he shouldn’t have shared what had happened between them. It wasn’t so bad for the men to know her truth, but talking about it had brought the memories back, opening a gateway in her mind that she preferred to keep firmly locked.
Danni thought of the troops marching in the morning, hating that she wouldn’t be with them to document their progress further. But she had photos to get back to her editor when they reached the base, and that was what she had to focus on. And once she’d done that, then she’d figure out how to get where she needed to go.
Patton and Cameron be damned.
CHAPTER FIVE
PARIS, FRANCE, AUGUST 1943
CHLOE
“Surprise!”
“What the hell?” Gabriel almost stumbled into her, grabbing her elbow and roughly pushing her toward the door. “Chloe?”
“Ouch,” she complained. “Gabriel, you’re hurting me!”
“Quickly, get inside.” He fumbled with his key and nudged her forward, far more forcefully than she expected, and she tripped as he quickly closed and locked the door behind them, hauling her cases with him.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly the welcome I was expecting,” she grumbled as he took hold of her elbow again and marched her up the stairs. “Gabriel! Stop it!”
“Chloe, how, why, what the hell are you doing here?” he exclaimed, dumping a stack of newspapers on the table and pushing her down into one of the chairs. He raked his hair off his forehead, sitting across from her, a look on his face that was so far from what she’d anticipated that tears instantly filled her eyes.