“Go home, Edmee. Do not come back to this part of the woods.” 

As the soldier moved away, Edmee could not believe it. They…were letting her go?

Just like that?

Her feet tripped over one another as she moved into the trees. That escape was far easier than it should have been. The soldiers hadn’t asked to search her bags. They hadn’t asked what she was doing in the woods in the dark after curfew. 

They’d only asked her name. 

It made no sense. 

She fled, her hands locked around the handles of the suitcases filled with contraband. 

She didn’t risk taking her usual path back to Maison Boutet. She weaved and wandered for a while through brambles that caught her clothes and mud that sucked at the bottoms of her boots.

It felt like minutes…or maybe hours before she was back at her uncle’s vineyard.

The cases dangled weightily at the ends of her arms. Her knuckles had been white around them for so long, she could no longer feel them. 

The maison was so dark, she failed to distinguish it from the landscape. 

She looked at her muddy shoes, her trousers soaked past the ankles. The suitcases would have to be hidden, half of the contents destroyed…

She rushed into the heart of the rows. Her beacon was now the limestone mound with its rough-hewn back to the sky, the entrance to the hidden network of caves underneath the estate. 

She wedged past the rocky entrance and stumbled down the steps toward the light below. 

At the bottom, the barrel of a pistol greeted her. 

Her heart slammed into her ribs. Her knees threatened to fold. 

She gaped at the man behind the gun. 

Christian’s face was red and sweat-sheened. In the lantern’s low throbbing light, his features looked harsh. Moisture cloaked his bare chest like a second skin. 

She’d searched him – his clothes, his personal effects… How did he get a gun? 

Her lips trembled. She lifted her chin, regardless. The words were rough against her throat. “Are you going to shoot me?”