Mustering up all of her willpower, Eleanor resisted the urge to examine the single sheet of stationary she'd found tucked between the onion skin pages of Lieutenant Travell's Bible. A quick peek told her it was an inventory of sorts, written in tight, neat script smaller than the print in a dime store novel. She refolded it, slipped it in her pocket, and left the wounded soldier to rest.

The same old scenery she saw every day passed before her eyes as she made her way back to the apartment she shared with another nurse, but none of it made an impression. In her mind, she traveled the corridors of the hospital. It was all too easy to picture one room after another, each housing thrice the number of patients it had been designed to hold.

How in the world would she identify the man she was looking for?

She let herself into the apartment and dropped her bag on the table in the front hallway. "Anybody home?"

Her roommate Amelia called out from the sitting room. "In here."

Eleanor found the girl slumped in a chair with her feet in a tub of steaming water.

"Come on in, the water's fine."

The discomfort of her feet flew to the forefront of her awareness. Had anything ever looked as enticing as that water? "Sacred Holy Mother, give this saint your blessing." She kicked her shoes off, leaving them where they fell near the sofa, and pulled a chair up to the tub. The water was so hot she struggled to put her feet in, but once they were submerged, a groan of pleasure escaped her.

Amelia chuckled. "Thank for the blessing."

"You deserve that and more. One more hour on my feet and I'd have been crippled for life."

"Must have been a rough day. I thought you'd be here an hour ago."

Eleanor sat up straighter. "Not rough, but interesting." She reached in her pocket, found the paper, and held it up for Amelia to see. "I was asked to solve a mystery." By the time she finished explaining, the water had begun to cool.

"Well let's see it then." Amelia leaned forward and took the paper. She squinted her pretty blue eyes at the tiny print. "Well, I'd say he's done a fair amount of the legwork himself."

"What do you mean?"

Amelia handed the paper back. "He told you, right there at the bottom, where the loot is hidden."

Not having properly read it yet, Eleanor allowed herself a moment to study the paper. On the left was a list of twenty or so female names. To the right of each was what she presumed to be that lady's location, then a date, and finally an item; bracelet, ring, book, ring, hair clip, button, brooch, bracelet, and so on. Beneath those lists, was a single line of directions.

Take the east stairwell to the basement, three turns to the left, boiler room, bottom shelf, far left side.

The water sloshed around Eleanor's feet as Amelia withdrew and began drying herself on an old towel. "I don't get it. On a transport, he met some guy who was all broken up with guilt, right? And the guy told him where he intended to hide the stuff? How would the guy even know where he was going to hide it if he hadn't been to the hospital already? And then your Lieutenant wants you to go get these things from the hospital basement, find the guy with zero information, and figure out how to return everything to these women when all you have is their first names and home towns? He's delusional."

In Eleanor's mind, the puzzle pieces snapped together. "Maybe he's not delusional. Maybe he's facing reality with total awareness." She thought of the way his twinkling brown eyes drifted shut before she left. "I need to go, right now."

"Are you kidding? You're going now? You've been working all day."

Eleanor stuffed her aching feet back into her shoes. "There's no time to waste. It could be too late if I wait until morning." She flew through the city blocks, back to the hospital, down the stairs in the east wing. She took three turns to the left at the places where the hallways branched off and found herself outside the metal door of the hospital boiler room. Her hand trembled as she reached for the knob and turned it. Long rows of shelves covered one wall, and on the far-left side of the bottom shelf was a shoebox.

Careless of keeping clean, she sat cross-legged on the dusty concrete floor and removed the lid of the box to find several items of jewelry, a small leather-bound book, a pair of kid gloves, and some tattered papers covered front and back with neat, impossibly tiny handwriting.

Her eyes skimmed across the lists of names and addresses. She had everything she needed to return the items to their original owners. There was only one thing remaining.

Moving slower now, she climbed up the stairs and made her way to the ward in which she'd worked earlier. The pace of the hospital was slower this late in the evening, but still doctors and nurses passed carrying medical equipment and charts, pushing carts, speaking to one another in hushed tones.

Inside the ward, the first bed to the left was empty. An orderly worked to strip away the sheets.

"Where is Lieutenant Travell?"

The orderly glanced at her from beneath his heavy brows. "Don't know who that is."

"The man who was in this bed just a few hours ago."

The dirty sheets were bundled together and tossed in a basket. "Couldn't tell you. There's a train coming in. A bunch of these soldiers were packed up to be taken closer to their homes. A few of them died today."

Eleanor's hand fluttered against her throat. No sapphire butterfly lay against her sternum. Her necklace was gone.

"Ain't that the same as every day around this place?" The orderly shook the clean linens out with a snap. "Why are you looking for him?"

What could she say? I'm here to offer redemption? To declare victory? To accuse him of thievery? She brushed the tips of her fingers across the bare skin of her neck and remembered the man's hand sliding up her arm to touch her face.

"You his family?" the orderly asked.

Eleanor blinked at him, looked down at the box held in her left arm. "I've never failed. I always catch my man."

"You all right? He your husband or something?"

"No. He's not my husband. He's just..." What is he?

The box seemed heavier than before, more precious—a trust that had been placed in her. She thought of the book full of carefully recorded addresses. This war can't last forever. When I can, I'll go back to Europe. I'll find those girls and make this right.

The orderly raised his brow in question.

Eleanor knew she would never see Lieutenant Travell again. Whichever home he'd been taken to—the one in this life or the that in the next—he was beyond her reach, but he'd entrusted everything he had to her, and she would do right by him, and by the girls he left behind. She smiled politely at the orderly. "I suppose he's the one that got away."