Free Behind Enemy Lines by Jennifer A. Nielsen

– the girl – told me she had been to the future, and that everything gets destroyed. I’m worried, Cleo. What if we’re wrong?”
    Cleo scoffed at that. “Do you trust three kids more than Tilda, one of our own? She said she can stop the Cataclysm and I believe her. And if we help her, she will reward us well once she’s in control. Now let’s find the boy, and then go after the others.”
    “And if the Führer catches us, he will say we are spying against him and have us arrested!” In his nervousness, Anton’s voice was just a touch too loud.
    “Be quiet, or we
will
be caught,” Cleo said. “Let’s check the kitchen. If he’s not there, we can resume the search tomorrow.”
    The kitchen. Where he was. Just his luck. They could’ve chosen any of a dozen rooms to search, but of course they chose the one place he was.
    Dak darted one direction and then the next, hoping a good hiding spot would pop out at him. But it was too late, and the kitchen door was already opening. So he ducked behind a cabinet and folded himself into the smallest ball he could make. And waited to be caught. From a certain angle, he would be all too visible.
    “He won’t be in here,” Anton said. “If he was allowed to spend the night in these headquarters, they’d have given him a bed.”
    “But I think this time traveler will be awake tonight,” Cleo answered. “He’ll be snooping around the place.”
    Awake, yes. But snooping around a bunker loaded with Nazis? No. Dak considered himself brave, but not stupid.
    “Check the back of the room,” Cleo ordered. “I’ll look over here.”
    The back of the room. Dak figured the only thing that could’ve made him more obvious back here was if a large blinking arrow somehow lit up over his head. He could see Cleo’s reflection in a metal cabinet between them. She wasn’t much taller than him but was built like a wrestler. Her dark hair was pulled back into a neat bun and her face was pinched with irritation.
    “Be ready for when we find him,” Cleo said. “When you see him, just do it fast.”
    Dak understood those words. They wouldn’t question him, or give him a warning. There would be no chances for escape and no one would come to rescue him here. They wanted him dead and nothing else.
    But then the door opened and a new voice said, “You two, what are you doing up so late?”
    The tension in the room shot up so quickly, Dak could actually feel the change in the air.
    “Colonel Von Roenne, we were just searching for a — a, uh, lost ring,” Cleo said.
    Von Roenne? Dak had heard the name before, but couldn’t quite place it. He reassured himself that if he were not on the brink of being captured, tortured, and likely killed either by the SQ or by the Nazis, that he could probably remember who Colonel Von Roenne had been.
    “Whose ring?” Von Roenne surveyed the room until his gaze fell directly on Dak, who quickly waved his hands, silently begging the German not to reveal him. He knew that he must’ve looked scared and alone, but Dak didn’t care if he did. He
was
scared and alone.
    Von Roenne turned back to Cleo. “You can find your ring in the morning. Until then, the Führer does not want people wandering the halls at all hours of the night. Now go!”
    “Yes, Colonel,” Anton said, hastily sweeping both himself and Cleo out the door.
    Once they had gone, Von Roenne impatiently said, “Well? Come out, boy.”
    Dak poked his head up over the counter to find Von Roenne staring back at him, arms folded. He was a thin man whose short, neatly combed hair revealed a deep widow’s peak, and he wore round glasses that gave him a strict, studious look. He didn’t seem to be the type of person who smiled often, but then, his voice was also gentler than Dak had expected from a high-ranking Nazi. At least Von Roenne had sent the SQ duo away. Dak figured his odds of surviving the next few minutes were pretty even.
    “I haven’t seen you before,” Von Roenne said to