But this wasn’t a photo of the Pacific Northwest. She didn’t even need the cursive writing in the corner to tell her what the photo was.

The Black Forest. Germany.

She stared and flipped the note over.

Just two words. Nothing else.

Hilda Mueller.

She held the postcard as if it were glued to her fingers. At the same time, her vision darkened, narrowing, as if she were speeding up a tunnel. She trembled and shook, gasping.

Desperately, she closed her eyes, but the words echoed in her mind. “Or I’ll do it to you!”

Now the pigeon was in her hands.

She could feel the eyes of her siblings around the room. All of them older. She’d been the youngest.

Their dirty features stared out from beneath greasy, unwashed hair. They barely moved, and they certainly didn’t make a sound. None of them wanted to attract their father’s attention.

“Hilda,” he’d bellowed, “do it! Do it. Do it, like this!”

Large hands grabbed her small fingers. Large hands pressed hers against the bird’s neck. Large hands squeezed until Hilda yelped from the pain of her own knuckles cracking.

Ilse snapped back again, gasping as if she’d just gone through a bout with her jujitsu instructor. She paused, bent over now, hands on her knees. Faintly, from the direction of the kitchen, she could smell the odor of cinnamon from the homemade granola.

Even more faintly, from somewhere up the road, she thought she heard some of the neighbors laughing. Was that the smell of a barbecue?

Her heart hammered now, and she glanced along the trail.

Hilda Mueller. Who would’ve known that? Not even Donovan Mitchell knew her real name.

She stumbled back in the house, shutting the door, double- and triple-checking the locks. Then she hurried over to the dinosaur computer. Her phone wouldn’t help. So she had to wait almost ten minutes, waiting for the behemoth to wake up. The connection to the Internet was spotty at best, but there she sat in the chair, rigid, dutiful, waiting. And at last, the computer booted.

With trembling fingers, one hand still clutching the postcard, she used her other to type in the return address.

Who would know her name?

Was someone trying to contact her? One of her other siblings? Someone begging for help?

Could it be her father?

She shivered. Was he still alive? Most likely. Bogeymen never died.

Her fingers were still shaking as she typed in the return address.

Nothing. No results. A fake. An address for a local grocery store. Not an address from Germany. One from nearby. Only a town over, just outside Three Lakes.

Someone was taunting her with her past. And they were nearby.

Ilse cursed and got to her feet, checking the door’s locks again, closing the patio door that led to her home office. The windows, she knew, were already secured.

She stood quiet, listening, waiting. As a child, listening had saved her life more than once. Inhale, exhale, slow. Try to suppress the fear. Try to move past it.