Free Behind Enemy Lines by Jennifer A. Nielsen Page A

Dak.
    Dak said nothing. Mostly because he was sure if he tried speaking, it would come out in some high-pitched squeal of terror that’d wake the entire house.
    “Can you tell me why those two were looking for you?” Von Roenne asked. “What might two Nazis want with a young boy working in the kitchen?”
    Okay, maybe he wouldn’t scream, but he was also pretty sure his mouth had forgotten how to form actual words. So Dak only shrugged his shoulders and hoped the end would come quickly and painlessly.
    “I think you must have played a joke on them and gotten caught,” Von Roenne said. “Yes?”
    Well, yes.
If
the joke was getting himself inside the most dangerous place in Germany.
    Then Von Roenne smiled, just a little. “I suppose I played a joke or two myself when I was younger. But these are not the kind of people you want to tease.”
    “No, sir,” Dak mumbled. Frankly, he was already pretty clear on that fact.
    “And remember that you now owe me a favor in return. Do not forget.”
    Dak nodded. If there was one thing he would never forget, it was what Von Roenne had just done for him.
    “Now, let’s have no more trouble,” Von Roenne said. “Something has been found in Spain, something that might give us a great advantage over the Allies, and there is tension in the bunker. You’ll be smart to stay out of everyone’s way.”
    “Yes, sir,” Dak mumbled.
    Von Roenne nodded at him, then left the kitchen. Once he’d gone, Dak slumped back down to the ground, exhausted, and never so scared in his life.

S ERA HAD intended to call Riq that first evening. She felt desperate to know how he was, and whether Dak had made it to Germany safely. But she had the chilling feeling somebody was watching her, most likely that creepy Clauss. It wasn’t worth the risk to make a phone call.
    She did, however, discover a surprising fact that made her want to call Riq even more. One of their first adventures had been on board Christopher Columbus’s ship as it sailed for the new world. This Spanish city, Huelva, had looked familiar to her from the start, but it was only after she began wandering the busy port town that she realized why. Four hundred and fifty years had changed a lot of things, but not the basic landscape. She was now less than ten miles from where she, Dak, and Riq had boarded Columbus’s ship. For such a small coastal lagoon in the big world, it had seen its share of history. Dak would completely geek out about that. But not tonight, not until she was sure it was safe to call.
    In the meantime, she had to live the life of a spy. And that meant lying, something that Sera wasn’t altogether comfortable with. It was one thing to lie to Clauss, but the doctor seemed like a good man, and Sera took no pleasure in deceiving him. She’d managed to convince him that she’d come to town from an impoverished village in order to pursue her love of science, something her family didn’t understand. He allowed her to stay the night in a small room above his garage — but warned her that he would be putting her on the next bus out of town. “A girl’s place is with her family,” he had said.
    Sera hadn’t had to fake the lump in her throat at hearing that. Until then, she had managed to avoid thinking about how her parents had been SQ. But now she felt torn. Her mind struggled to understand how they could have aligned themselves with such evil people. And her heart longed for an explanation that would make everything okay. Despite everything, she still wanted to see them again.
    Sera spent the following day hoping to bump into Clauss, but he was nowhere to be found. The day after that was a funeral for Major Martin attended by the same British officer who had been at the postmortem, some disinterested Spanish officers, and a few curious people from the town. Even if she hadn’t been there on spy duty, Sera wanted to attend the ceremony. She might’ve been the only person there who knew Major Martin was