The Long Path Home

by Ellen Lindseth

  Several more GIs attempted to stop her on her way up the house. She smiled and accepted their kind words as expeditiously as she could. She didn’t want to be rude, after all. To her surprise, there seemed to be quite a few civilian well-wishers loitering about, too. She would have to remember to tell the troupe about that fact.

  Finally she had worked her way up the aisle, through the curtained foyer, and out onto the street. It was eerily dark on the sidewalk, with the city under strict blackout orders.

  Nervous perspiration dampened her costume as she waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. She didn’t want to lose him, but charging blindly into the dark street wouldn’t do her any good. It might get her killed, since the blackout applied to vehicles as well, requiring their headlights be switched off or painted to reveal only a thin beam of light. With only moonlight illuminating the narrow streets, drivers often didn’t see pedestrians, or other traffic, until it was too late.

  And was there ever a lot of traffic! With the war continuing in the North, military trucks of all sizes prowled the streets, delivering matériel and men even in the depths of the night. There were a fair number of taxis and carts and pedestrians on the streets as well, as the good citizens of Rome had refused to stop living their lives, which only made the nightscape that much more dangerous.

  Tamping down panic as the seconds ticked by, she was soon able to sort out the shadows by size and distance. Her pulse leaped when she saw a soldier about the right height and build waiting at the corner for a mule-drawn cart to pass. Except he wasn’t headed in the right direction. The hotel was the other way.

  She bit her lip. Perhaps she should go back and wait to see if she could corner Danger later. Then the soldier stepped off the curb and strode away. The familiar loose-limbed stride sealed her decision, and she hurried after him.

  “Sergeant Danger, wait!”

  He didn’t pause. If anything, he seemed to lengthen his stride as he disappeared down the dark sidewalk, taking her peace of mind with him.

  Frustrated and desperate for answers, she started after him. If he wasn’t going to tell her what was going on with Luciana directly, so be it. She would just find a different way to get the information she needed, because she was willing to bet her last sawbuck that he’d already known Luciana was in town. The louse hadn’t even batted a damn eyelash when she had mentioned it. And if she were the sergeant, her first stop after leaving the theater would be at wherever Luciana was staying to give the actress a heads-up that she’d been seen. And likely a stern order not to let it happen again.

  If she was right about all that, then the sergeant would lead her directly to Luciana and all the answers Vi needed to keep Marcie safe. Assuming she didn’t lose sight of him. And that she didn’t give herself away.

  Keeping to the shadows, and staying as light on her dancer’s shoes as she could, she followed him through an increasingly tangled path of medieval streets and dark alleyways. She flitted from shadow to shadow in his wake, trying not to let the twisting path alarm her too much. Rome wasn’t laid out in a tidy grid, like the cities back home, she knew. And given all the shops, she guessed they were still close to the city center. But between not being able to read the street names and all the storefronts being buttoned up by heavy shutters, she was perilously short on landmarks. If she lost him now, she would have a heck of a time finding her way back to the hotel before morning.

  The sergeant abruptly slowed, and Vi jumped into the nearest alcove. Making herself as thin as possible, she pressed against the slick, painted wood of a door.

  And that’s when she heard what she had missed before: furtive footsteps not from in front of her, where the sergeant was, but behind her. Light, almost silent treads, as if someone didn’t wish to be heard. A cold sweat broke out between her shoulder blades as the sounds stopped.

  With no idea who this new person was, or how close, or if they represented a threat, Vi hardly dared breathe. Was someone following her, a woman alone on the streets at night, thinking to rob or rape her? Had the sergeant heard the footsteps, too? He hadn’t let on that he knew he was being tailed, and if he hadn’t heard her, he likely hadn’t heard the person now tailing her, either.

  Out on the sidewalk, the sergeant’s boot steps resumed, the sound receding as he continued on his way. Vi waited to see what the fellow behind her would do. Seconds passed with no sound, no whisper of movement. Meanwhile, the sergeant and the safety he represented were getting farther away. Since being lost and alone on the streets of a foreign city was not at the top of her list of good ideas, she threw her lot in with the sergeant and bolted out onto the sidewalk.

  The sergeant was gone. Worse, something scraped on the pavement behind her. Adrenaline streaked through her veins. She whirled around, and screamed as a man in a long coat rushed forward. She raised her hands to fend him off, only to have strong fingers close around her neck, cutting off her breath. Not about to give up, she went for his eyes even as her own vision started to tunnel. He jerked his head out of reach, his hold unbroken. Desperate, she grabbed his wrists. The need for air overpowered all other thought.

  His family jewels, a voice whispered dimly in the back of her head. Knee him! Come on!

  With the last of her strength, she raised her knee up as hard as she could. And missed.

  With a soundless whimper, she clawed at his hands again, her world shrinking to black.

  And then she was on the sidewalk, her knees bruising on impact. Her lungs sucked in sweet air with a painful rasp. Her second gasping breath brought her to full consciousness. Not ten feet away, two men grappled in silence except for the sound of their strained breathing and occasional grunt. It was the sergeant and her pursuer.

  She shoved herself to her feet and then put her hand out to steady herself on the wall as her vision swam. Come on, Vi. Get in there! Two on one is much better odds than one on one.

  Praying that her idea would work, she launched herself forward. Years of dance had taught her a person’s center of gravity was right below the navel. One shove near the hips, and the person can’t help but move. As luck would have it, the two men had rotated so that the assailant was closest to her. The collision drove the air from her lungs again, but the man staggered, his grip on the sergeant broken.

  She landed on the pavement with an excruciating scrape of skin. Trembling from shock and pain, she pushed to her hands and knees, only to be flattened when someone tripped over her. Her head hit the ground. For a few terror-filled seconds, swirling pricks of light filled her vision. Then they slowly faded, and she saw the sergeant standing over her, his hand held out.

  “Come on,” he said urgently. “We’ve got to go.”

  She took his hand and then gasped as he immediately hauled her to her feet. Her body hurt all over. On the other hand, pain was nothing new to a dancer. “I’m ready.”

  “Stay with me and don’t speak.”

  In the next instant, he turned and began to run. His grip on her hand was all that kept her from falling again, but she soon caught her balance. “What’s going on?”

  “Later.” The hard edge in that one word silenced any further questions, but not her whirling thoughts. It didn’t help that her head was pounding, a situation made worse with each jarring footfall. All that she could come up with was that her attacker must not have been a casual footpad—otherwise why not just raise the alarm and have someone call the police?

  To her relief, they didn’t go far. Maybe another two blocks. He slammed to a stop in front of a door between shop fronts and fished out a key. While she caught her breath, she looked around, half to see if anyone was following them and half to see if she could recognize where they were. The answer to both was no.

  “I don’t have time to explain,” the sergeant said in a low voice as he unlocked the door. “I just need you to trust me. All right?”

  “All right.”

  He opened the door and shoved her inside.

  She was in a dimly lit passageway
, with a stairwell to the right of her and what appeared to be a dark courtyard ahead. If it were day, she suspected she might see a small garden, or bicycles parked within the safety of the surrounding buildings. But now, with no illumination, it loomed ominous and threatening.

  The sergeant gestured toward the stairwell. “Let’s go. When we get to the top, I’ll need to blindfold you, so be prepared.”

  A shiver went through her. “Why?”

  He gave her a little push toward the stairs. “Because I’m meeting with partisans—resistance fighters—who wouldn’t think twice about slitting your throat to keep their identities secret. And given the bad news I’m bringing, they’re likely to be even more jumpy than usual.”

  “The man who attacked me,” she said, not even making it a question.

  “Was likely a Nazi agent, which is why I had to bring you with me. Where there’s one, there’s likely more. And given how the last safe house had a hand grenade chucked through the window, there’s no time to lose getting everyone out of here.”

  She eyed all the apartments they were passing. “Shouldn’t we be knocking on everyone’s door?”

  “Not yet.” He stopped her on the landing of the third floor. “This is as far as you go. Turn around.”

  Her pulse leaped as she saw him unsheathing a knife from the belt at his waist. “What are you doing?”

  “Keeping you safe,” he said before she could speak again. “Now sit down. Near the wall.”

  The command to trust him was left unspoken. Her one comfort was that she still believed him to be a good man. But that didn’t mean she was free of misgivings. Her life, after all, would literally be in his hands.

  She sank to the tiled floor while he cut a strip of cloth from his trousers. His knife flashed with rapid, deadly precision. Then he knelt by her and tied the strip loosely around her neck.

  “Sorry about this.” He yanked the loop up, smooshing her chin and nose until it was past them and tight around her eyes. “Don’t move. Don’t speak.”

  She nodded, her mouth dry with fear now that her vision was cut off.

  The soft rustling of clothing and the whisper of leather on tile were her only clue that he had moved away. A soft knock on wood focused her remaining senses.

  A quiet squeak of metal on metal, like hinges on a door.

  There was a heartbeat of silence. “Who is that?” a woman asked in a hushed voice, her English made almost musical by her Italian accent. Vi’s ears perked up. She had heard this woman somewhere before. Like many performers, she had a gift for recognizing voices.

  “Never mind her. We’ve been discovered. I left a body in the street, so we don’t have long.”

  “You will come in?” the woman asked softly. “We must talk, but without her.”

  “Did you not hear what I said?” he asked, frustration clear despite his quiet tone. “I was followed.”

  Even though he didn’t say as much, Vi suspected she was the reason for that. She and her stupid impulsive streak. Utter and complete humiliation made her want to shrink into the floor.

  The door scraped closed, and she was alone. With nothing to look at and nothing to do but wait anxiously for the sergeant’s meeting to be over, she tried to focus her racing thoughts on something more productive than panic. A far better use of her time would be to assess the current situation and try to come up with a plan in case she had to make a quick exit.

  First fact—she was unarmed and outside a partisan lair with bad guys about to storm the place any minute. Second fact—as much as she wanted to remove her blindfold, she had been warned it would get her throat slit. Third and most important fact—Sergeant Danger wasn’t above using violence to secure his mission. The man they had left behind, given the sergeant’s description of the situation, was probably dead.

  The thought gave her the heebie-jeebies. On the other hand, if the sergeant hadn’t intervened, that dead body likely would’ve been her. Her stomach twisted as the reality of that sank in, and she swallowed hard.

  A muffled argument came through the door. She could pick out the sergeant’s signature baritone, as well as the alto of the woman. There was another man as well, and whatever was being discussed wasn’t going well.

  A bead of nervous sweat trickled down her temple from under the blindfold. She swiped it away, her nausea increasing with every passing second. She would give him another minute or two. If he didn’t come out by then, she was going to make a break for it. Better to be lost and on the streets all night than trapped and dead.

  The sudden click of the door latch at the bottom of the stairs being opened froze her in place. Straining her ears, she waited on pins and needles to hear what she hoped would be the normal noises of a resident coming home late. And waited. Only silence filled the stairwell. Her heart raced.

  A faint scuff of what might have been a leather sole on tile registered. Then the whisper of something brushing against plaster walls. Vi tensed. Someone was coming up the stairs. Someone who was making a real effort to be silent.

  Praying the partisans would understand and forgive her, she silently slid the blindfold up just enough to see. A deep gloom shrouded the stairwell. Someone had shut off the one dim light. Rapidly blinking to adjust her vision to the dark, she scoured the shadows for any sign of movement.

  A faint exhale lifted the fine hairs on her neck. The sergeant’s warning about grenades blowing up safe houses echoed in her mind. As she waited for the next sound, a cold sweat gripped her.

  Unarmed as she was, her only advantage would be surprise. No one could possibly expect a USO dancer to be just sitting outside the door of a partisan rendezvous.

  Another swish of fabric against a wall, slightly louder. Whoever was coming was almost there.

  Torn between terror and resolve, she took a deep breath, hoping it wouldn’t be her last.

  The shadows deepened on the stairwell. It was almost time.

  One . . . two . . . three . . .

  Knowing this might be the last thing she ever did, Vi opened her mouth and belted out the loudest shriek of her life. Her voice teacher would’ve been horrified. Her own ears hurt from it. And as hoped, the shadow flinched just as the door next to her flew open, spilling light onto the landing.

  “What the—?” Sergeant Danger said.

  Rapid, deafening cracks of gunfire exploded around her, along with the sparks of bullets ricocheting off walls and railings. Shards hit her from every direction, piercing her exposed skin. Terrified, she cowered into a small ball.

  Abruptly, the shooting stopped. She waited—five seconds, ten—too scared to move, her ears still ringing painfully. Finally, she peeked to see if anyone was left and shrieked at the sight of a strange woman crouched next to her.

  The woman reached out and Vi shrank back, her pulse leaping painfully. The woman’s red hair shone like copper in the light coming from the apartment. The color seemed oddly familiar, as did the face, and that’s when Vi realized she knew her. It was the woman from La Fiorentina. The one who had delivered the note.

  And all the pieces of the puzzle started to fall together.

  Chapter 26

  Sergeant Danger thudded up the stairs at a dead run. “Virginia! Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” Vi said as the redheaded woman stood. Then Vi noticed the blood on his ripped trousers, and her eyes widened. “Are you?”

  “I’m fine.” He knelt and ran his gaze rapidly over her. “I don’t see any major injuries. Think you can run?”

  “Where is Ric?” the woman asked sharply, though in the same musical accent Vi had recognized earlier.

  “Hiding the body.” The sergeant held his hand out to Vi. “He said he’ll meet you outside.”

  The woman grabbed his arm, her face pale in the light. “You will deliver our message.”

  “Yes.” The sergeant pulled Vi to her feet as easily as if she were a child. “We’ll be in contact.”

  “Grazie.”

  Not wasting anot
her second, the sergeant started down the stairs, and Vi was hot on his heels. In any other situation, a man might have asked her to go first, but with unknown assailants popping up like dandelions, she was more than happy to have him clear the way for her. Outside the building, she could hear the faint two-tone wail of a police siren. Pushing aside her panic, she focused on the sergeant’s broad back as they cleared the final landing and raced into the passage between the buildings.

  Instinctively, Vi turned toward the front door. The sergeant seized her arm and pulled her toward the courtyard. She stumbled after him, nearly tripping over a fallen bicycle.

  His grip tightened, catching her. Determined not to make an even bigger mess of things, she took a deep breath and concentrated on her footing. It was hard, though. Too much adrenaline jittered in her veins, and her brain couldn’t let go of the two men who had died tonight within mere feet of her. Or the redheaded woman from the restaurant being a partisan. Or the possibility she might yet die tonight, and it would be all Luciana’s fault. Luciana’s and that dratted note’s.

  Questions burned on her tongue as they cut through another building corridor and then darted across the street. Finally, the tension left the sergeant’s shoulders, and Vi allowed the words to slip free.

  “That woman,” she said quietly after they had ducked into an alley. “I’ve seen her before. She’s the one who gave me the note I think was meant for Luciana.”

  “I know.”

  She flinched at his steely tone, but Marcie’s safety was too important to let the subject drop.

  “Well, there’s more. Marcie and I went to the clock shop by the Tiber, the one mentioned in the note. A little boy there, Enzo, asked if we were the people who were going to help them get to America, and his mother panicked.”

  He cursed under his breath.

  Vi pulled him to a stop when they reached the street again. For this next part, she needed to see his expression, though the light was little better than it had been in the alley. “I overheard you and Mr. Miller and Luciana arguing in Nettuno. I know there’s something going on, something dangerous that involved at least you and Luciana, and the partisans. So I need you to be straight with me. Is Enzo in any kind of danger? Or Marcie, for that matter. Because if they are, even the tiniest bit, I want to know.”