Chapter 25 #2
He glanced around at the equipment, and knew with a sick certainty what they would do if he left her there. This wasn’t part of the mission. They hadn’t planned to rescue anyone. But Sully couldn’t in good conscience leave an innocent girl to this fate.
She’s just a kid. Anyone would make the same damn choice, and if they wouldn’t, then fuck them too. She’s coming with us. Soon as I get what I came for, I’ll get her out of there.
He set about collecting as many documents as he could from the filing cabinets. Too many to take them all, so he grabbed a few files from each drawer and hoped they yielded helpful information. Once his haversack was full, he stuffed loose papers into the pockets of his pants.
And finally, he knelt down in front of the cage. Was there any way to help her without frightening her worse? Sully yawned and rubbed a hand over his mouth, called up energy reserves to focus. The illusions he had stretched all over the building were leeching everything he had.
Glancing over his shoulder, he checked to make sure the coast was clear and once he confirmed it was, he dropped the visual concealing him and shifted his dwindling ability to muffle any noise talking would make. “Little girl?”
No response. He could see her back rising and falling with steady breaths. Scaring her was the last thing he wanted to do, but he needed her awake.
“Hey, little girl,” Sully said, louder. This time her head shot up, smashing against the wire as she instinctively tried to get away from him.
Her terror smacked Sully in the face and clutched at his chest. He held up his hands in a placating gesture he hoped was universal.
“Shhh, shh, shh. I’m here to help. Don’t be scared. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Her breaths were coming in sharp gasps and she stared at him with huge fearful uncomprehending eyes. Maybe she didn’t speak English. Was she German? French? He didn’t know any German, but he knew a few French words he’d picked up in the trenches, including, “Anglais?”
The girl’s paper white lips parted, like she was going to speak to him, then she gave a quick shake of her head, and clasped the small gray blanket she had tighter around her slight body.
The tiny thing couldn’t have been more than six or seven and she was half-starved.
Fresh rage kindled in Sully’s gut, but he kept his face friendly. “French—France?”
She nodded. Sully wished fervently that Elliot had chosen this room instead. He’d be able to speak to her.
I’m fucking useless here. Shite.
Stop panicking, it’s not helping. Try harder damn it.
“American,” Sully said, pointing at himself. Even if she knows the goddamn word will she know it means I’m not here to hurt her?
The girl’s brows pressed together, and she didn’t relax, not exactly, but Sully felt her fear lessen just a fraction. Maybe she did understand to a degree.
“I’m going to help you, okay? Daide?” He probably butchered that one, but he thought it might mean help. He’d heard injured French soldiers yelling it anyway. Her head titled, confused. Shite.
Sully tried to pronounce it more carefully and a cautious hope blossomed in her.
“Aide?” She followed up with an excited flurry of French Sully couldn’t hope to interpret.
“Aide,” he confirmed, sure now he’d gotten it right. Sully looked for something to break the padlock on the cage.
There, wrenches!
He wedged them into the shackle, using the leverage it created to force the lock open. It took three adjustments, but the shackle finally popped free. He scrambled to get it off, tossed the lock onto the floor and stepped back as he opened the wire door, giving her room to climb out.
The girl crawled onto the cold floor and stood on bare feet.
Her courage surged, relief dizzying him along with her.
Since she had no shoes, he’d have to carry her outside.
That blanket wouldn’t keep her warm enough either.
Maybe he could wrap her in his sweater. He could take the risk of exposure in his long underwear.
It wouldn’t be pleasant, but he’d survive.
“All right,” he said, giving her an encouraging smile. “Now we need to be quiet, can you do that?” Sully mimed be quiet with a finger pressed to his lips.
Nodding, the girl repeated the motion and offered him a shy smile of her own in return.
Cold metal pressed the back of Sully’s head.
Fucking hell.
Of all the boneheaded, downright careless things he could’ve done, he’d dropped his guard. It was suddenly, abundantly clear just how fucking risky that was. Just how massive a mistake that was.
“You move, I shoot,” said a deep, heavily accented voice behind him. The slight color in the girl’s face drained. Her eyes welled with disappointed tears. Sully cussed mentally as he scrambled to come up with a plan.
He was far too drained to sustain a physical illusion and if he threw up a visual one and moved, his friend here would feel it.
Sully’s brains would spatter the wall before he so much as blinked.
He could tell the girl to run, get his head blown off, thereby alert the others to flee, and at least give her a chance at escape, but would she understand him?
What the hell is French for run? Run-é?
Sully almost let out a hysterical laugh at himself. He was so fucked.
Cold determination and burning hot possessive rage edged into his awareness. A sense of relief swept through him, so intense it weakened his knees.
Elliot.
He caught the girl’s eye and winked at her, concealing the sound of Elliot’s approaching footsteps. Sully pressed his lips together to stifle an elated laugh when he heard the German grunt what must’ve been a curse.
“How precisely did you put it?” Elliot asked, voice deceptively casual for the intensity of his emotions.
“Oh, right. You move, I shoot. You shoot him, I shoot you. But I will not make it clean, and I promise you it will hurt for a very long time before you finally expire in agony.” He switched to German, Sully assumed repeating the message, though he wasn’t entirely sure.
It shouldn’t make something flutter in Sully’s chest, hearing Elliot threaten to kill someone for him. There went his heart doing it anyway.
“Good timing.” Sully was surprised his voice was steady and came out normal.
“Always. Now, lower your weapon.” There was a cocky smirk in Elliot’s words.
Sully felt the German’s reluctance and fear as the barrel moved away from Sully’s scalp.
A second wave of relief flooded Sully now that the immediate risk of death by a finger twitching on the trigger was averted.
“Sullivan, relieve him of that Luger, if you would be so kind.”
Turning, Sully complied and slipped it from the German’s unwilling grip. He was livid, churning with rash emotion. Sully had to work hard to keep his gaze focused on the threat he posed instead of flying to Elliot’s face.
Then without saying a word, Elliot’s hand clamped over the soldier’s mouth. In the same second, the German went whiter than a ghost, muscles rigid. His eyes rolled back into his skull, and he collapsed onto the ground in a dead faint. Sully’s brows rose. Face tightening, Elliot looked away.
“The pistol would have made far too much noise, and we haven’t the time.
” Elliot tucked his gun back into his holster, eyes darting over Sully’s form as if searching for any previously unseen injuries.
“I’d ask what the devil you were doing getting yourself captured except we haven’t the time for that eith—” The rest of his sentence fizzled out as Sully stepped slightly to the side, revealing the girl in her worn, ragged dress, and dirty blanket.
Elliot’s mouth went slack, momentarily speechless. “What the—?”
Sully grinned at him, a flash of impertinent triumph.
“What happened to not having time, Captain? Girl, kept in cage, saving. She’s French and I don’t speak it, so if you could relay that we’re going to rescue her, she’d be a lot less terrified that we’re about to do her in too.
Then we can all get the hell out of here before someone comes searching for him. ”
Muttering something under his breath, Elliot knelt in front of the girl.
He spoke in a soothing, lilting voice. Sully tried not to notice how sweet he was with her.
Not to mention how attractive his French accent was.
Didn’t need more reasons to harbor inappropriate and perplexing passions for Elliot Stone.
Her eyes watered, and she looked between them, wavering, before she threw herself into Elliot’s arms, whispering what Sully figured were words of gratitude.
Elliot peeled his jacket off, murmuring as he wrapped it around her shoulders, and scooped the girl up. “We have to hurry. How are you holding up?”
“Peachy,” Sully replied, ignoring how awfully close to not peachy he’d been. How close to the surface his emotions were roiling as a result. “I’ll check the hall and give you the okay.”