Picking up her phone, she breeched the Dakota Ban. Thanks for the article. I only brooded for half a day.
Brooke texted back in seconds. I hoped you wouldn’t stay mad for long.
She tapped her phone several times before replying. Do you happen to have a phone number for Mrs. Kiehl?
A wide-eyed emoticon fired off Brooke’s response. Which one?
Very funny . . . Ember started chewing again on the metal ribbing around her pencil. Definitely not Dakota’s wife.
Ember took a sip of LaCroix, looking out over the treetops and the glimmer of the Potomac below as she waited for Brooke to text back.
I didn’t even know Mrs. Kiehl was still alive until Mom sent me that article.
Me either.
You should call Dakota.
No!!! Just his grandmother.
Sorry, Em. You’ll probably have to go through him.
Ember fell back against the seat. It was a reasonable statement but not a reasonable situation. She would not call Dakota.
Her phone in hand, she slipped down the stairs and out the door of this historical home that had been turned into condos, locking it behind her. She needed to move.
If she texted Dakota, he might gloat for the rest of his pitiful life, in the lie that she was still pining for him.
Wait. She started another text to Brooke on her walk down the hill. You have Dakota’s number?
No, but I have one for Alecia.
Dakota’s ex-girlfriend. The second-to-last person Ember wanted to contact.
I won’t ask how you acquired that . . .
People change, Em. Punctuated with a goblin and haloed smile.
Some people, but not all, Ember thought. Some people never changed.
She swept down the old Georgetown street, her mind reeling back to her senior year when she’d thought the captain of the school’s football team had cared for her as well. It was ridiculous, thinking about it now. She’d been an awkward, bumbling eighteen-year-old who’d been wounded deeply. And only her books, those very best of friends, would have declared her popular.
She didn’t understand this disparity when Dakota turned his eyes toward her, but their history no longer mattered. She’d grown up in the past twenty years and surely he had as well. All she wanted to do was find out about Hanna.
Her phone vibrated, and she looked down to see another text from Brooke with Dakota’s contact information. Tell me what he says.
Will you text him for me?
A long pause before Brooke wrote: Nope . . .
Ember drummed out the next words. I. Can’t. Do. This.
Yes, you can. You’re no longer THAT girl.
The reminder bolstered her. Brooke was right. If she could stand on the sidewalk this afternoon, face off with those white supremacists, she could communicate with Dakota Kiehl by text. It wasn’t like she had to talk to him.
Dakota’s area code placed him in Denver, and it was only five o’clock, Mountain Time. She’d simply ask him for his grandmother’s phone number and be done with it. In the morning, she’d call Mrs. Kiehl.
She revised her request to him three times before hitting Send.
This is Ember Ellis, and I’m hoping to connect with your grandmother. Could I please get her phone number from you?
Dakota would know which grandmother. His mother’s mom had died while they were in high school. He’d started crying in geometry their junior year, a burly, rugged football player broken from grief. When Mrs. Kiehl had escorted him from their classroom, Ember’s heart had broken as well.
It wasn’t until the next year that Ember realized a person’s tears didn’t equal kindness. One could cry and still be cruel.
Brick steps led her down past a row of shops where locals and tourists alike could buy some of the best coffee and cupcakes in the whole metro area. Then across a steel bridge that overlooked the grassy towpath along an old canal.
To her right was a paved prayer labyrinth, a quiet space along the water for her to reflect, but she turned left, rushing south along the riverfront as if someone were chasing her. All she’d done was ask the man for a phone number, but it felt like she’d exposed her heart once again.
Her phone in hand, she refused to look down as she waited for a response that might not come for hours. Might not come at all. It was entirely possible that Alecia had an old number for her ex.
Her mind ached from the second-guessing. She’d worked her entire life to maintain sanity, and if she didn’t stop this, she was going to drive herself crazy.
Twenty minutes passed and then thirty. Still her phone didn’t chime, and the emotions of her seventeen-year-old self reared. Desperation. Fear. A teenager whose life had turned upside down.
Ringer off, she stuffed her phone into her back pocket. The fragrance of cherry blossoms swept up the Potomac, and a crowd of tourists pressed against her as Ember neared the Lincoln Memorial, this monument a testament to freedom for all in their country.
A half mile later, she came to the ring of cherry trees that circled the Tidal Basin. A gift, those flowering trees had been, from Japan to the United States. A symbol of friendship in 1912, an offering of peace that the Americans had displayed for people around the world to see. Crazy how friendships, how family, could deteriorate in just a few years. Blossoms of affection decaying, blistering into hate.
Less than thirty years later, their former friends had dropped bombs on a harbor known for its pearls. More than two million people died in the subsequent years of a friendship gone terribly wrong.
The relationship had once again been restored, but the wounds were still there.
Ember sat down on a bench and saw a missed call on her screen, from the Denver number. And a text.
She glanced up at the pink blossoms dangling over the bench, her hands trembling. She didn’t want to remember the bad in her past. Only the good.
And yet the bad kept circling back.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the text, determined not to read between any lines.
Good to hear from you, Em. It’s been too long. Gram rarely answers her phone, but you can call her housekeeper.
He listed out the woman’s name—Kayla Mann—and a phone number. Thankfully, there were no lines to read between.
She ignored the pleasantries—it hadn’t been nearly long enough in her mind—and typed her response quickly, ready to be done. Thanks. I’ll contact Kayla.
The phone chimed when she put it back in her pocket, and she dug it out again.
I’m glad to ask Gram for whatever you need.
Not in a million years did she want to work through Dakota.
I’ll just give Kayla a call.
And so she did, before Dakota tried to convince her to speak with him.
8
HANNA
Below Hanna’s window, a black Mercedes-Benz waited in her drive, a newer sedan built for the Nazi elite. She’d already resigned her job without a fight, relocated back home where they’d sent her. What could Himmler want from her now?
When the doorbell rang again, she tied the belt of her dressing gown around her waist. No time to find a pair of slippers, Hanna pinned back her hair as she rushed toward the steps. Perhaps a messenger was ringing the bell, under orders of the Reichsführer, to return her directly to the cavern at Montségur. Perhaps they needed her in the field after all.
As the visitor pounded on the brass knocker, she checked for loose pieces of hair one last time. Oversleeping was not a respectable practice in the eyes of her superiors, no matter what kind of monster plagued one’s dreams.
A stocky middle-aged man stood on her stoop, wearing a plain black suit in lieu of a uniform, his lips chiseled into the grim mold of Himmler’s secret police.
His arm planked forward, nicking her sleeve. “Heil Hitler.”
“Heil Hitler,” she muttered, her outstretched arm wobbling like gelatin.
A messenger, she’d welcome or a fellow member of the Ahnenerbe. But not the
Gestapo. Under Himmler, these men had risen above German law to create their own rules, no courts necessary to enforce their judgment. And no steps to appeal.
She waited for the agent to speak, knowing her every word, every emotion, would be weighed for dissension. He could judge her as he liked, right here on her doorstep.
The man drew out a pocket notebook, reviewing a page as if remembering the basics of this mission was beneath his rank. Then his head rose, his gaze as stalwart as a soldier stepping into battle. “Are you Luisa Gruenewald?”
She flinched at his question, then regretted it. What could the Gestapo want with her cousin?
“I am not,” she replied, staring at him, refusing to blink. As an opponent, she must match the coolness of his glare.
He blinked first. “Do you know where she is?”
“No, but I would like to find out.”
He drew a pen from his pocket. “Why are you searching for Frau Gruenewald?”
If only she could ask this same question of him. What had Luisa done to warrant the attention of the Gestapo? And why hadn’t this agent asked about Paul?
“Luisa is my tenant, and she seems to have disappeared. I am concerned about her well-being.”
He made a note in the book. “What is your name?”
She stood taller. “Hanna Tillich, the owner of this house.”
“Frau Tillich?”
“Fräulein.”
Something shifted in his eyes. A spark of curiosity that she needed to douse.
He flipped his palm. “Your identification card.”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s inside.”
He eyed the space above her head. “You won’t mind if I look around while you retrieve it.”
“Does it matter what I mind?”
“Not particularly.”
With no recourse, she opened the door, assuming he would begin his search on the ground floor, but the man trailed her up to the first story, right to the doorway that opened into her room.
Perhaps he feared she was going to warn Luisa.
The ID card was under the house key in her nightstand, beside the apron. She retrieved her identification but left the drawer open. When she turned back, the agent was standing behind her, a wicked smile fired on his lips. Then his gaze fell to the crumpled duvet on her bed.
She equaled the man in height, but she’d never be able to overpower him without a weapon. Nor would he care that she’d worked as an esteemed archaeologist for Himmler or was employed now as a curator for Germany’s National Museum. All he saw was an opportunity to wield his authority, and the Gestapo gorged themselves on morsels of power.
Her hand dipped behind her, fingers creeping under the gingham material of Luisa’s apron. If she killed a member of the Gestapo, the organization would retaliate in kind, no matter what this man did to her. Not even Kolman would be able to save her from a swift penalty.
But if Kolman killed this man, to defend her honor, no one would question an SS officer.
“Do you know my fiancé?” she asked, feeling for the kitchen knife in the folds of gingham.
The bloated smile grew, as if she’d offered him a challenge.
“He’s a regiment leader,” she said. “With the Schutzstaffel.”
His smile froze.
“You must know him.” She checked her watch, diverting his attention as she wrapped her other hand around the knife’s handle. “Standartenführer Strauss.”
She would not let him rape her and perhaps leave her for dead. If he didn’t relent, she’d have to take justice out of the Gestapo’s hands. His car, she could transfer, if necessary, to the opposite side of Nuremberg.
“I’ve yet to have the honor,” he replied.
“Well, you will meet him soon.” She glanced out the window. “I’m expecting him at any moment.”
His smile faded, leather soles screeching against hardwood as he swiveled toward the door.
Relieved, she dropped the ID card back into the drawer but not the knife. She slipped it into the pocket of her housecoat, still wrapped in the apron.
The agent searched the four rooms along the corridor, and in the last one, her father’s bedroom, he opened the closet and found the separate, smaller door to the attic. Her grandfather’s workshop.
Kneeling down, he jostled the locked handle. “Open this for me.”
She steadied her voice. “I’m afraid I don’t have the key.”
“You’re the owner of this house!”
“I have just recently returned home,” she said. “Sadly my father is deceased, and I don’t know where he kept this key.”
He stood, brushing off his trousers. “What’s behind the door?”
“Dollhouses,” she said. “My grandfather was a toymaker.”
“I will return with a locksmith.”
Her entire body trembled as she watched him drive away from the kitchen window. Just last night, she’d promised herself that no man would stop her from pursuing the goals she’d had since childhood. This weakness, she hated herself for it. One man’s display of power shaking up all that was inside her.
How long would it take the Gestapo to procure a locksmith to open her attic door? She searched Vater’s desk for the attic key, but all she found in the drawers were unpaid bills. Would he or Luisa have hidden it away like she’d done with the extra house key?
Almost two hundred stones lined the former prayer walk, all of them set deeply into the soil. It would take days for her to search under each one, and she was supposed to report to the director of the museum by noon. The attic would have to wait. Before she started her new position, she had to find Luisa and warn her cousin, if possible, that the Gestapo was looking for her.
She scooped coffee grounds from a tin and dumped them into the percolator basket. Not until she pressed the button did she remember that the electricity had been shut off.
Jarred pears, that’s what Hanna ate for breakfast. Then she dressed quickly in a pine-colored cardigan to accompany the tweed trousers that she refused to give up after wearing them every day in the field. With her hair pinned neatly back, she retrieved her bicycle from the shed and pumped air into the tires.
While much had changed since she left Germany, the road into town had not. She knew every rock embedded along the path, every hole that led past the new zoo, down to the city streets. A bicycle rack stretched along the sidewalk beside the tram stop, and she snapped her steel lock on the rear wheel before stepping onto the waiting tramcar.
Ten minutes later, the tram delivered her to a stop outside the medieval wall that encircled Nuremberg’s Old Town. The sandstone wall had been built centuries ago to keep Hussites out of this imperial city, and on the other side of the entrance, perched high on a cliff, the Imperial Castle crowned the twisting passages and waterways, the Gothic churches and houses chiseled from stone. Hanna knew every bridge and half-timbered building, the cobbled paths that people had walked for more than five hundred years.
Frau Weber’s apartment was on the third floor of a half-timbered house once owned by a patrician family. Geraniums bloomed under her window, the colors cascading over its box, blossoms sprinkling onto the shops below.
Within moments the older woman opened her door, latching on to Hanna’s arm, yanking her into a cramped formal room. Two antique chairs and a couch huddled together in front of the windows and a jungle of houseplants lined the far wall, framing both sides of a closed door.
“Heil Hitler,” Hanna said.
The woman’s blue eyes narrowed. “A good morning to you as well.”
Her chestnut hair coiled into a chignon, Frau Weber held her shoulders with the confidence and beauty of a patrician’s daughter, as if she’d lived in this house since the Middle Ages.
Frau Weber had been friends with Hanna’s mother since grade school. After Ruth Tillich died, she’d adopted both Luisa and Hanna as her own, visiting often when Hanna was a girl, bringing scraps of fabric for them to stitch together, leftovers
from her work as a seamstress. She’d written multiple letters while Hanna was at the university, but she’d stopped when Hanna began traveling with the Ahnenerbe.
Frau Weber offered her a seat on the worn sofa. “I’m glad you’ve come.”
Hanna remained standing. “What happened to Luisa?”
The woman clasped her hands together as she paced toward the window, her voice silent.
“Please,” Hanna begged. “I had a visitor this morning. He was . . .”
“Concerned?” Frau Weber asked, her thin eyebrows arched.
“Very much.”
She looked down at the burgundy-stained timbers on the cobbler’s shop, then scanned the street as if she were its queen. As if no one could pry the information about Luisa from her lips until she was ready. “People are disappearing from Nuremberg, Hanna, but no one knows exactly where they are going.”
Hanna’s heart skipped, her mind slipping back to the faces of Parisians she’d seen lined up in France, the soldiers with their guns trying to manage the queue. Rebels, the driver explained. Those who’d resisted the occupation of the Germans were being taken away.
But Luisa wasn’t a rebel. She was a carefree woman who loved to garden and hike up to an abbey no one visited anymore.
“Why are the Gestapo looking for Luisa?”
“You’ve been gone too long.” Thin fingers slid down a lacy curtain edge before she turned back, her voice somber. “Hitler’s determined to get revenge on anyone who is Jewish.”
Hitler was quite outspoken about this prejudice, one of many who blamed the Jewish population for anything that went wrong. Even Albert Einstein, with his Jewish ancestry, had left Berlin when the Nazis came into power.
But hateful words weren’t the same as vengeance.
“Luisa isn’t Jewish,” Hanna said.
“No, but her husband is.”
Hanna’s mouth dropped open. Paul and Luisa’s wedding had been an outdoor event, a Christian ceremony in the shadow of the abandoned abbey with chairs lined up along the meadow. Paul had been working as a vice president at the Tillich Toy Factory when he’d met Luisa. Jewish men weren’t allowed to even date an Aryan; they certainly weren’t allowed to marry one. That law had been passed here in 1935, during the annual rally of the Nazi Party in Nuremberg. Just months before their wedding.
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