She hadn’t been allowed to wash her hands. She’d been forced to take her pet to bed with her. To place it in her sleeping bag with her. Still sobbing, still crying.

“Don’t cry, Hilda. Don’t cry or you’ll do it again tomorrow!”

She remembered the shadow over her. The screaming voice. The mismatched eyes, blue and brown, staring wild and furious down at her. Could remember the dusty basement, the eyes of her siblings, all of them pretending to be asleep, all of them pretending they couldn’t hear.

She remembered trying to sleep. Unable to. Remembered the soft, pressing lump of the dead bird against her sleeping bag. Remembered the way it tickled her chin, the feathers splayed and stained as they were. Remembered her hands, unwashed, in pain. One of her own fingers sprained from the pressure of her father’s grip.

Ilse blinked again, gasping, chest heaving, and she swallowed, clearing her throat where she stood on her porch.

For one moment, beneath the branches, staring off, she felt an urge to cry.

“Damn it,” she murmured softly. “Damn it!” she insisted through gritted teeth. She stared across the old forest lanes weaving through the trees. Could hear the soft rustle of branches as the little squirrel above fled the nest. Running, running, running.

Victim or threat?

Ilse wasn’t sure about herself. Wasn’t sure what could have been… might have been.

She closed her eyes, focused once more, murmuring, “Lopez. Underage murders. Three hundred and fifty victims. Sexual sadist. Whereabouts unknown.”

Focus… she thought to herself. Focus. Maybe Agent Sawyer had been right. Maybe she wasn’t going to be much help with Samantha going missing. She shivered at the thought. Sometimes the squirrels escaped.

Other times, they didn’t make it far.

Samantha had made it twenty years. Twenty whole years.

And then her tormentor had found her. Was it the same man? Was it the monster from her past?

Ilse rubbed at her hair, brushing it angrily past her ear. She paused next to the mailbox, freezing all of a sudden on the stoop of her doorstep.

A postcard in the box.

She knew what it was the moment her eyes landed. No junk mail this time. Just a single postcard. She swallowed once, staring, exhaling slowly. She didn’t speak, couldn’t think of anything to say.

For one wild moment she considered simply leaving it there, resting in the mailbox, untouched.

But her curiosity drew her fingers up and in. Her knuckles brushed against the rough, black-painted metal container. He fingers trembled, brushed the rough card stock. And then she pulled the postcard out, staring at it.

She looked at the message first.

Hilda Mueller.

Nothing else. Just the name. But this time, instead of a picture of the Black Forest, it was another picture. An image of a small, quaint little village in Germany. Freiburg. A village she remembered as a child. Barely, though. A faint, distant memory, somewhere in the basement of her collection of thoughts. Hidden, buried, forgotten. A memory of the small town where she’d once been allowed to visit. One of the only times she remembered being allowed outside the basement.