Jean-Luc roared as the pain ripped across his thigh, causing him to keel forward to clutch the bleeding wound. Lazare, seizing on his target’s momentary shock, let go of the poker and ran forward. He pulled a knife out of his coat. Brandishing this weapon, he approached Sophie. “Stand up! Stand up now, you slut, or I’ll slit your throat!”
Sophie struggled, faltering for a moment as she tripped on the folds of her torn dress, but she obeyed. Pressing the knife to her belly, applying enough pressure to make its presence known, Lazare snarled. “With me. Now!”
The old man dragged Sophie away with a quickness that surprised Jean-Luc. He craned his neck to follow their movement, but they hurried along the confiscated furnishings, disappearing from his sight. Jean-Luc was still bent over, pressing his palm to the mangled flesh of his leg. Pushing back against his agony, he seized what looked to be the coat of a small child and tore off a small strip of fabric, tying it around the top of his thigh. He had no training in medicine but knew enough to try to slow the bleeding in his leg.
He looked back up, listening for any sign of Sophie, but they were gone. He could not even hear their receding footsteps. Clutching the discarded fire poker in his hand, Jean-Luc rose, limping in the same direction that Lazare had run off. Each step was fresh agony—like a new gash to his leg—but he forced himself onward.
Now he heard Sophie. Her voice, high-pitched with pain or terror, or both, was shrieking, but she was slipping farther and farther away. Jean-Luc forced himself to quicken his pace as he hurried up the stairs from the cellar.
He stumbled into the front hall of the building, its shuttered windows admitting only a pallid, muddled light from the outside. There, across the hall on the second floor, were the two figures Jean-Luc sought. Glancing over his shoulder and spotting his pursuer, Lazare cursed and sped up his pace, half-dragging Sophie toward a corridor that was lined with empty administrative offices.
Jean-Luc, growling in response to the burning in his leg and his anger at the sight of that old man, forced himself into a run. Lazare tried to quicken his pace, but Sophie was stumbling, tripping over her ripped dress as he practically dragged her by her bound arms.
Sophie was slowing him down, deliberately so, but Lazare refused to release her. He flashed the dagger, holding it before her face as a menacing threat. Jean-Luc, still lumbering forward, had closed the gap now and extended the poker, hooking its curved end around the old man’s legs. Lazare tripped and fell to the ground, his grip releasing both the knife and Sophie as his face cracked against the hard marble floor. His body lay prone, lifeless.
“Sophie.” Jean-Luc knelt down beside her, pulling the rag loose from her gagged mouth.
“Is he…is he?” Sophie, eyes wide, stared at the motionless frame of her captor.
“Not dead. Unconscious.” Jean-Luc stood over the man, eyeing the pale face. Holding the poker aloft, his entire body trembling with the pain of his wound, with the rage he felt for this sadistic tormenter, Jean-Luc groaned. This was his chance. He could kill Lazare now and be done with it all. As Sophie looked on, Jean-Luc lifted the poker, preparing to bring it down with a fatal blow. But in that moment of hesitation, Marie’s face flashed before his mind—then Mathieu’s. André’s. Kellermann’s. Even the image of his unborn child, swaddled in his wife’s arms. The better angels of this mad nation. What was he fighting for, if not for justice over lawlessness? Reason over rage? He lowered the poker.
“Come, we must run.” Jean-Luc took a firm grip of her hand and helped her up. “Are you terribly hurt?” But even as he asked, he saw the multiple places her skin had been torn and her blood had been shed.
“I can run,” Sophie said, her tone resolute. “Where?”
“To the prefect of the National Guard. Let this madman face a trial and die in La Place de la Révolution, like so many others he’s sent there. Come.” They took off at a sprint across the hall, Jean-Luc guiding Sophie toward the front entrance. But when he pulled on the door, the same door through which he had tried to enter, it didn’t budge. He remembered: it had been locked. And he had no idea where the guard’s key would be kept. Behind him, the figure of Guillaume Lazare began to stir, a snake uncoiling from its slumber. They couldn’t get out this way, nor could they stay where they were.
“Come with me,” Jean-Luc whispered, still gripping Sophie’s arm. He had an idea, and he guided her back through the hall and toward the central staircase. He didn’t know if Lazare had seen them run past, but he could hear the old man stirring, his shoes clicking on the marble floor of the hallway. Jean-Luc quickened the pace.