Estelle wasn’t sure how long she lay there—it could have been seconds or hours as she tried to catch her breath and regain her bearings. She managed to get to her hands and knees, and then to her feet. She lurched out into the deserted landing. An eerie silence had settled over the building, and only the muffled sounds of engines floated up to where she stood.

Estelle stumbled down the stairs, an intense dizziness making her want to retch. In the stairway near the ground floor, the elderly concierge was sitting on a step, his head in his hands, staring wretchedly at the floor.

He looked up at Estelle as she went by. “I didn’t know they were coming,” he said, his voice breaking. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

Estelle banged through the front door and out into the street, enveloped instantly by a cloud of noxious exhaust. But Rachel and her family were already gone. The street was deserted save for an assortment of boxes and bundles that had been lost and left behind.

Two policemen were picking through them like scavenging crows, tossing larger items to the side and pocketing smaller ones. Near Estelle’s feet, a doll lay forlorn and abandoned. Overhead, shutters rattled as someone drew them closed, as if that would ever block out what had just happened. What was still happening.

Thieving bastards, she wanted to scream. Collaborating cowards, she wanted to rail at the men in the street. But she did none of those things. Instead, Estelle slipped back into her building, trying to control the sob that she could feel gathering somewhere deep in her chest.

There was nothing to be done right now, she told herself as she staggered back up the stairs, leaning on the railing, her head throbbing. She would find out where Rachel and Serge and Hannah had been taken once she had controlled her emotions. She would make inquiries in a practical, intelligent manner that would not bring unwanted attention to herself. Because Aviva and the airman in her apartment could not afford that sort of attention.

Estelle reached her landing, pausing in front of Rachel’s open door. Without meaning to, she wandered into the empty apartment, stepping around the books and clothes that had been scattered in haste. She stopped in the little kitchen, a perfectly browned cake sitting in the center of the table. A stub of a candle had been pressed into the center of the cake, waiting to be lit.