Arthur stood in the phone box, speaking gruffly and shifting agitatedly, and Tommy stood outside, hand in one pocket, smoking. The rain was slipping down his collar, and he pulled his hat down lower, over his eyes.
"Alright. Alright, Johnny. You did good. Farmhouse southeast, quarter mile. Yeah, we got them, they're all here. Get your boys out of here, your job's done. Will do." He hung up the phone and clambered out. Tommy waited for him to speak, prompting through silence. "The Lee scouts followed them outside Oxford. Got us the address." His rough voice slipped over the syllables. He glimpsed behind Tommy, at the boxvan filled with hidden Peaky Blinders in the back, all clutching rifles and pistols. The phone rang again. "Fucking hell," Arthur muttered, wrenching the door open again and grabbing the receiver. "What?"
His face changed. Tommy saw it, the way it did in the war when the whistles blew to send them over the top. "What? Polly, slow down-," his voice floated out of the still-open door. Tommy's body felt clenched, coiled. The rain pattered on the box's roof, on the ground. "Who did?" The brother's eyes met through the raindrop splattered glass of the telephone box door. "It's okay, Pol. It's okay. We'll find her."
He stepped out, his shiny black shoe sloshing into a puddle of runny brown mud. His eyes were wide and frantic, but he spoke slowly. "They took her, Tommy. They took our Ada."
Ada Shelby had a black eye blooming and a split in her lip. Her hands were tied like Tessa's, but behind the chair she was sitting in, and she was missing a shoe. Her expensive gold dress was ripped, but it didn't look like the rip was because of men. Odd that that was the detail Tessa's mind should focus on. Small miracles.
"Ada? What are you doing here?" Tessa's voice was completely muffled from the gag, and she was becoming frantic. Where was her father? Where was Tommy?
"Oh, you two know each other, do you?" The German said, suspiciously.
"Went to school together," Ada lied easily. Her ankles were tied as well, Tessa could see the burn from the rope where Ada had tried to kick herself free. The German spit on the floor, pushed past Tessa to cross the room, making her stumble, and slapped Ada across the face. She yelped.
"Beck, get a chair. Tie her to it," he said, pointing at the undercover Jew, then at Tessa. "You," he said, yanking the gag out of her mouth, "go ahead and scream, now. Nobody will hear you."
She didn't, but she sucked in large gasps of oxygen, grateful to no longer have the damp, suffocating rag in her mouth. The German man looked disappointed at her lack of hysteria. He got closer to her, leaned into her face, his brows furrowed low. "You should be screaming," he said. "You would be, if you had any idea what we're going to do with you." Tessa's bound hands were clenched into shaking fists. She did not scream. She did not speak. She spat in his face.
"Tessa," Ada said softly, but Tessa wasn't sure what she was trying to convey. The man leaned back, wiped his face with his hand, and chuckled gently, leaned back out of her space. He had a thin pencil mustache and violence in his eyes. Tessa wished he had hit her instead of laughing. It would have scared her less. The Jewish man, Beck, returned with the chair, and sat Tessa down in it without looking her in the eyes. She had no way to communicate with him while the other German was in the room. He tied her to it with ropes, tightly, tighter than she felt he should, given that they were meant to be allies. Her ankles were bound as well, in the same manner as Ada's. When he was done, the German came back over to inspect his work.
"Tighter, you fucking idiot. You want them to escape, huh?" He spat, and Beck meekly complied, until the ropes were so tight it was cutting off Tessa's circulation in her hands and feet. The German checked his watch. "Arnholt will be returning soon," he said, addressing Beck. "Guard the door. Do not let them out. Do not let anyone else in. Is that clear?" Beck nodded, and Tessa realized she had yet to hear him speak. The German gave her one last, chilling look, and then strode to the door and disappeared into the hallway. Beck followed, and moved to a guard position outside of the room, shutting the door behind him. Tessa waited until she was certain the German's footsteps had faded out of earshot, and then spoke frantically.
"Ada, how the fuck did they get you? Why are you here? Where is my father?!" The terror in her voice made it rise.
"Shh!" Ada snapped, then gentled, seeing the wideness of Tessa's eyes, the jerky rise and fall of her chest. They were tied facing each other, with two or three feet of space between them. "They grabbed me right outside of London. Tommy had me spending a couple of days there, for business. Probably to try to keep me away from all this," she sighed. "They must have followed me out of Birmingham, because they were on me the moment I got to the city."
Tessa nodded, not really processing any of her words. "So where is he now? Where is Tommy?"
Ada bit her lip, and then winced because of the split down the middle. "I don't know."
Tessa's breathing stopped. "He doesn't know you're here." The truth was rushing in, a broken dam, broken hope. "If he finds out you're missing, he'll try to find you. But he doesn't know they brought you here."
Ada realized Tessa's meaning before she said it. "He'll come, Tess. He'll still come for you, and he'll find us. And even if he doesn't, he has help, he has friends-," Tessa trusted the faceless Solomons and his silent inside man about as far as she could throw them.
"There's a scalpel in my pocket. Cut me free," Tessa said, meeting Ada's eyes so that she could see that Tessa was serious, would not sit and wait for a rescue that was, at this point and in her opinion, about as likely as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
"Wait, Tessa-," Ada said, and Tessa cut her off.
"If Tommy is made to choose between saving you and saving me, who do you think he's going to go looking for?" She asked, what little patience she had completely run out. Adrenaline was flowing through her veins.
"Tommy isn't stupid. He'll still come, he'll figure it out. And I was going to say," Ada continued in a sharp tone that reminded Tessa of what family she was from. "that I thought you might want to know, your father is here."