Cruel Summer

Chapter 3

A/N: We've got a double update today! Which is an absolute win! But that being said, again, be aware of the content in this chapter and there are direct references to assault, and more. Thank you!

Alex's squadmates, or comrades in arms, Meg learned, were Warren Guthrie, Jimmy Bowman, and Charlie Gardner. The other members of their plane had either already bailed out or were killed upon fighting back against the Nazi officers that swarmed them when they had landed. It was honestly a miracle Alex had even thought to land close to her home—something she had immediately asked him as she got to work.

The men just watched Meg at work. She had given them each guns, told them to raid the kitchen for food for their journey, and now she was gathering up all of the important papers that could possibly be of use to her father.

"How did you know to land here?" Meg questioned, sparing her brother a glance.

Alex had kept his gaze trained on his younger sister the entire time. He had just watched her poison and kill six men—and he wasn't about to put any trust in her right now. There was no sign of their Nazi-loving mother and no way for him to know what purpose Meg had in helping them, but surely it was self-serving.

He grumbled for a moment, not wanting to share any information with her. "Dad," he finally answered.

Meg stopped her work for a moment, ceasing to place the papers and documents in the bag. "He told you to land here if something went wrong?"

"Yes."

"And you knew the codename Odile, so that has to mean something—"

"Is this your form of an interrogation?"

Meg straightened, stiffening at the thought. "If I wanted information from you, I would have much more simple means of getting it."

"What do you want?"

"To get out of this hellhole," Meg admitted, finally tying up the bag. "It'll be a two-day journey to where I have a private plane we can use—"

"We?" Alex choked out the word as though he had just inhaled arsenic too.

For a moment, Meg just stared at him—trying to decide what she could share with him. What she could tell him. "Well I'm planning on blowing this house sky-high to hide the fact that I just killed my husband."

"Holy shit—" Alex exclaimed. "It wasn't bad enough to be a Nazi whore, but you had to go and marry one? What the hell was ma' thinkin'?" He demanded.

"You don't know."

"Know what?" Alex grit out the words, taking a step closer to his sister. It was a good thing that there was a desk in between them, because at the moment, he wanted to just shake her shoulders and tell her how stupid he thought she really was.

"Mama's dead."

A sobering expression crossed Alex's face. "No—that's not—"

"She died three years ago, Alex," Meg's voice tinged with a slight gentleness. "I had to take over her operations after that. And I couldn't just keep saying no to a Nazi Officer. There's consequences for that kind of shit."

"So this entire time—" Alex felt like his lungs were going to burst. It would have been better to crash on the coast and drown in the ocean than to be speaking with his sister right now. It would have been better to never surface from his plane than to be hearing her words.

"We were spying, yes."

"And you killed—"

"It's not my first time killing men and I doubt it will be my last," Meg sneered. "Now are you going to listen to me or are you going to just leave me here to die?"