August ran up the stairs to her house, asking himself for the tenth time what it was exactly that he was doing there. He never stopped to think long enough about it, though.

He methodically rang the three doorbells which he could see, but the door didn't budge. They must have seen me coming, he thought, shaking his head to himself. The French never opened their doors.

He pulled a small, zig-zaggy screw out of the pitch-black pocket of his uniform and gently stuck it through the keyhole of the entrance door. It was a simple lock. He was almost surprised that doors in this neighborhood had them. He smiled coldly as he pushed the door open after a satisfying click and made his way up the stairs to the first floor.

"Where are you?" he whispered to himself as he reached the first landing, gazing around at the only two doors on the floor.

His leather boots pierced the silence of the house with his every step. Something on the floor caught his eye and he knelt to swipe a black-gloved finger across a strange residue on the floor. He brought it back covered in fine light powder.

August's eyes narrowed at the floor around him. His vulture-like eyes came to rest on a small piece of glass lying in the layer of powder. He picked it up gently, inspecting it before letting it fall back down. His eyes found the door, and he knew it was her door as he approached. There, on the little piece of metal sticking out of the lock was a small, beige thread. The same color as the coat she was wearing yesterday.

"She had left in a hurry..." he whispered to himself, looking about him for anything else which could suggest as to where she had left.

He was about to decide to come back later when a small piece of paper which had slipped his gaze before stopped his search. He bent down to pick it up.

A ticket down the Seine. Paris — Mantes-la-Jolie.

Not for the first time, August wondered. Why she had looked at him so peculiarly when they first met, why she had run away so fast. Why she had looked back.

And now, why she had fled.

He began to worry that she had managed to recognize him, after a fleeting moment, a mistake on his part, years ago.

His eyes snapped up as he heard a low, muffled rustle on the other side of the second door. Someone stood there listening. August carefully pocketed the ticket receipt, and in two long strides reached the door. His fist came down on it hard enough to make whoever stood listening on the other side let out a muffled yelp.

"Macht die Tür auf!" Open the door! he snapped in rough German, not caring if he would be understood or not. His ears picked up gentle, almost undetectable whispers. There were at least two people in the apartment.

When the door slowly, too carefully pried open, an old woman greeted August with a frightened look on her face. He looked past her but saw no sign of the second person.

"Monsieur?" the woman asked in French as she swallowed, eyes bulging at the sight of his black and red SS uniform.

"Do you know the woman living in this apartment?" he demanded in a whip-lash voice which made the woman wince.

"I only know that she left this morning, sir," August strained to understand as she spoke in rapid French.

"What is her name?" he barked. It was then that his eyes landed on the small flap in the carpet behind the woman. It was a stuffed living room with a two settes, and a lush green carpet with a fold on the corner closest to the curtain.

August knew it when and, almost always, why people hid. He had raided multiple Jewish homes or the homes of people trying to hide them. More often than not, people hid in the most obvious places. His eyes, which he knew turned more stormy whenever his eyebrows drew in on them, fixed a cold stare onto the almost shaking woman before him.

He knew she wasn't going to talk anymore. He would be lucky if she didn't lose it completely from fright. But he needed that name. Her name. The name she was using. Or there was only a slim chance of him ever finding her again. Somehow, he felt a little empty at that thought.

"Tell me her name," August breathed out a menacing breath, fighting everything he stood for as he ripped his gaze off the outline of the small, male figure he began to make out behind the curtain. "And I will let your husband live."

A pity that the innocent could never catch a lie.

The woman covered her mouth with her hand as her eyes fluttered closed for a second, tears gluing her rare eyelashes together.

"Please," she begged, and August did not know for what.

"Her. Name." he snapped, the heel of his boot moving dangerously against the floor. The old woman gave out a loud sob as she lowered her hand from her face.

"She went by Margarete Hellebrandt," he pieced together through the shaky syllables distorted by the falling of the woman's tears.

August did not bother to look back as he turned and rushed down the stairs to the SS headquarters. He could not resist writing off the address he had just left before heading for his apartment above the flower shop, across the street from where he had met the mysterious runaway he now knew was called Margarete.

By the time August reached the docks on the Seine, the apartment on the first floor of that fateful house had been cleared by a group of men dressed in black and red.

★