Etienne clenched his jaw. “I need to speak with Elaine.”
She nodded, glad for the chance to finally talk to him. “In the kitchen.”
He let her lead the way to the opposite side of the apartment where they would be afforded some privacy. His swift appearance to her request surprised her but left her grateful regardless. Especially after what she’d gleaned from Nicole.
She closed the door behind him. “There has to be something we can do for Joseph. This has gone on too long. I want to be involved.”
Etienne stared hard at her.
“Don’t tell me there isn’t anything I can do.” Irritation elevated her volume. “We have explosives.” She forced herself to quiet her voice as she stated this important information, aware that all walls in France had ears. “We have men and women who are willing to help one another. We have everything at our fingertips, including British support. There has to be something I can do.”
Etienne swallowed.
The fuse of Elaine’s patience ran short, cut off by all the what-ifs crowding into her mind. What if they didn’t get to him in time? What if he died before he could be freed? What if she never saw her husband again?
Her outrage exploded in the slap of her hand on the table with a force that jarred her bones and left her palm tingling. “Say something, and don’t you dare tell me to be patient again. I won’t accept it. Not again.”
“He was removed from prison today.” Etienne scrubbed a hand over his hair, mussing what had been neatly slicked back.
Such a statement should have elicited relief, but the haunted expression in his dark eyes made wariness tighten through Elaine like a warning.
“Where did he go?”
Etienne’s fingers dragged down his face, distorting his features until his hand dropped. “They said he left with baggage,” he murmured.
She shook her head. “With baggage? What does that mean?”
He blinked, as if surprised to see her there. “At Montluc, if you are sent with baggage, it means you are going to a work camp. If you are sent without baggage…”
She lifted her brows for him to finish.
“Death.”
The word hung in the air between them, like something alive and agitated and poisonous.
“He is at a work camp?” she repeated with relief. “That is not so bad. I can still send him food, I can—”
“Not where he is going. Elaine, this is a different kind of camp. One meant for those actively defying Germany, not for captured French soldiers.”
She froze, her body numb. “What are you saying?”
“We can’t help him.”
Tears burned her eyes, and the turban on her head was suddenly too tight. Too heavy. She felt ridiculous in the waxy red lipstick and the fashionably wrapped cloth, a painted clown on the receiving end of the worst news of her life.
She had never even written to Joseph to tell him she was sorry, how much she loved him. Tears blurred her vision. Etienne reached for her, but she backed away from his hand.
“You told me to trust you,” she said in a harsh whisper.
Hair had fallen into Etienne’s face, and he raked it back with a growl of frustration. “I thought we could free him.”
Several sheets of paper lay on the counter, and a single, desperate idea came to Elaine. “You need to get a letter to Joseph.”
“I don’t know that I—”
She spun on Etienne. “You promised you’d get him out. I don’t care how you manage it, but you will get this message to him.” The first drawer she yanked open did not contain a pen. Nor did the second.