by Mari Carr
“Maybe you should stop hiding like a little bitch,” Walt pointed out.
Annalise and Jakob both sucked in shocked breaths. One simply didn’t speak to the fleet admiral that way.
“You’re a little bitch,” Eric countered.
“I have three siblings. You’re going to need to up your insult game.”
Eric and Walt’s relationship would have been fascinating if she hadn’t had a computer full of murder files to look through. Annalise jotted down a few more notes and flipped to a blank page. She looked around the room. “I will need time to go over these.”
“How long?” Eric asked.
“A day. Maybe even a few days, if you want me to first identify murders potentially committed by the same unsub, then have Dr. Hayden verify the skills and incorporate all of that into a profile.”
“Days.” Eric folded his arms, looking like he wanted to argue with her, but then nodded. “Okay. I have a document in there with my notes. The things I’ve been using to try to trace possible victims.”
Annalise found the file and opened it.
Victims:
Humans, age 18 – 45.
Found in pieces 1 – 90 days after disappearance.
Last seen walking somewhere.
Other people also walking. Some with groceries and/or dogs.
That was it. That was all it said. Annalise forced herself to smile. “Good, uh…job, Fleet Admiral. Will you be staying here or in Frankfurt, so I can consult with you and Dr. Hayden?”
“A little place between here and Frankfurt. When I leave Germany, it will be to go kill someone.”
With that, the fleet admiral opened the door to her office and walked out. A second later he returned, grabbed Walt by the shirt, and hauled him out too.
When the door closed, Annalise looked up at Jakob. Her quiet, terse guardian sighed and said something that rather nicely summed up what had happened.
“Fuck.”
Chapter Four
Annalise tucked her legs beneath her on the couch, her laptop resting on her knees as she read through one of the countless files on the thumb drive she’d received from the fleet admiral two days earlier. Outside her windows, a group of drunk students went by singing loudly enough for her to hear them. Classes would begin again in a week or so, and students were making the most of their Christmas break.
Jakob sat across from her, mindlessly clicking through the TV channels without stopping to watch anything. Given the fact he’d muted the sound, she suspected he wasn’t interested in watching television at all. She’d felt his gaze slide to her several times over the past few minutes, but he hadn’t spoken, even though she was certain there was something on his mind.
Jakob was a reserved man, a consummate professional, the type of person capable of compartmentalizing his emotions in order to focus on his job. It was an admirable quality in a Ritter. However, it was frustrating as hell for her, a woman who had once made a living from reading other people’s words and emotions to analyze their actions and predict their reactions.
Of course, if Annalise was being honest with herself, it wasn’t the psychologist in her who was frustrated by her inability to figure out what Jakob was thinking or feeling. It was the woman.
What had begun as a spark of attraction had grown, despite her best efforts, until now she was consumed by a longing she’d never experienced. She wanted her bodyguard, and the absurdity of that cliché was not lost on her.
She pretended not to notice Jakob’s occasional glances, forcing herself to concentrate on the file she was reading. It was difficult. More and more she found herself thinking about Jakob. Not in a professional way but rather a naked, sweaty way.
She constantly reminded herself that her feelings for him were a byproduct of circumstance and situational intimacy. Perhaps a form of transference, since he was an authority figure with whom she had a close relationship, and who had “rescued” her from the bugs, then continued to protect her.
There wasn’t a term for this particular situation, and she’d considered having one of her advanced classes do research on it. There was, perhaps, an interesting journal article that could be written about it. They could call it damsel-in-distress syndrome, though she disliked the gendered nature of it.
Unfortunately, knowing the psychology behind her feelings didn’t dim them or make them easier to dismiss.
And to make matters worse, Jakob was locked up tighter than a drum, his own feelings toward her a complete mystery.
Annalise sighed and tried once more to push all thoughts of Jakob out of her head. She’d promised the fleet admiral she’d study the files and attempt to come up with a profile. Picking up a pen, she jotted down a note and for a few minutes, she was actually able to concentrate on the file she was reading.
That concentration was broken when Jakob turned off the television and shifted to face her.
She set down her pen and tipped down her laptop screen, not closing it all the way. “There’s clearly something on your mind, Jakob. Say it.”
“Are you certain you want to work on this case?”
“Do you think I should have said no?”
Jakob quickly shook his head. “No. I’m not saying that at all. I’m just concerned that…”
He didn’t finish his statement, didn’t have to. He’d been with her enough in the past few years to understand how hard her confidence had been shaken by her stalker, by Adele’s attack, and her failure to find the man and bring him to justice. She’d morphed from an intelligent, assertive profiler to one who questioned everything she’d thought she knew about herself and her abilities.
Annalise gave him a sad smile. “I want to do this,” she said, with a strength she didn’t really feel.
Jakob frowned—of course her forthright response hadn’t fooled him—but he didn’t immediately speak. She was used to his long pauses, accustomed to his habit of thinking before he spoke. She appreciated that about him, preferring it to people who expressed inane or stupid sentiments without thought or care.
At last, he said, “I think it will be good for you. To profile again.”
Sometimes she struggled to recall her time with the Kripo, her life as a profiler. It almost felt as if she’d been someone else back then, an entirely different person. Someone who, more and more, she wanted to be again.
“Perhaps it will.”
Jakob nodded toward the pad of paper where she’d scrawled several of her thoughts. “What have you found?”
“The fleet admiral’s search basis is too large, and as such, the victim pool is muddy. Plus the fact that Josephine O’Connor’s body was not found—only her head—also complicates it. What I need to do is narrow the parameters without relying solely on Josephine’s file. There simply isn’t enough there.”
“How?”
“I’ve done a cursory read-through of all the files, starting with victims who were dismembered.” She held up two fingers. “There are two distinct classifications within the files.”
“Classifications.” Jakob looked at her with a calm, focused expectation.
“Most of the dismemberment files were attributed to organized crime or another potential source of societal violence, such as drug cartels or gangs, by the investigators. The victims often had either fingers, toes, ears, or noses removed before they died—as noted in their autopsies.”
“Torture.”
“And scare tactics, precisely. I’d say ninety-five percent of these files were correctly attributed, with the perimortem dismemberment a form of punishment or torture as you just pointed out. But, the cause of death is not the torture.” She checked her notes. “Most often it was a gunshot wound, often to the head, or carotid artery severed with a knife.”
“The kill was quick. Professional.”
“Exactly, and for the files in this classification, my reading of it is that the postmortem dismemberment was a function of either necessity for disposal or extended punishment for those victims who come from
cultures where funerary practices rely on an intact body.”
“They were denied a proper burial.”
“Yes.”
“The other five percent?”
“Those, plus the dismembered, non-mob-attributed files, are in the second category, which for simplicity we’ll call non-organized-crime dismemberment. From there, I’ve split them into several subcategories. First…” She took a breath. “Women who suffered antemortem or perimortem torture and rape.”
The word stuck a little in her throat, but she was focused on doing her job, and she blocked out everything else.
Jakob stared at her, his attention and focus complete and unwavering. “They could still be organized-crime kills.”
She liked it when he talked. Liked it even more because he so rarely spoke that his relative chattiness when they were alone made her feel special.
“That’s very true, but for one thing. I think that for these victims, the death was accidental. The focus for the unsub was the torture.”
He was still for a moment, processing. “I hate it when I torture someone and they accidentally die.”
Annalise blinked, then burst into laughter. Jakob rarely joked, but when he did, it was usually deadpan and delivered in such a way that people who didn’t know him as intimately as she did wouldn’t actually know if it was a joke.
When her giggles subsided, she looked up to see him smiling at her. Her heart skipped a beat. He had a gorgeous smile. His lower lip was full and luscious. More than once, she’d imagined biting his lip, maybe tugging on it to show him how much she wanted him. Then he’d growl and grab her butt, lift her up. She’d wrap her legs around him and then…
Annalise shoved the lid of her laptop up and stared at the autopsy photo of a severed hand.
Perfect libido killer.
“Of the two lists I’ve created, we’ve gone over antemortem rape and torture.” She took a breath and straightened her shoulders. “Next are victims whose primary pre-death injuries were due to rape. Some also show signs of physical attack, but nothing that would be defined as torture.”
“Annalise…”
She glanced up, holding herself tight. If he asked if she was okay, she might not be.
Jakob stared at her for a moment, and there was something in his eyes she couldn’t decipher. But he didn’t say anything, only nodded for her to go on.
“The commonality between the two subcategories is the rape and the postmortem dismemberment.”
“Torture is odd man out in this group.”
“Yes.”
“How did they die?”
“This is where it becomes problematic—the causes of death are different.” She flipped through her notes. “A fair number of those from blood loss. Though with those who died of internal bleeding, it was most likely not intentional, as it was with those who had arteries severed.”
“Severed during amputation?” Jakob asked.
“Amputation means they survive the removal.”
Jakob grunted. “Learned something new.”
Annalise’s lips twitched. “If we want to be very precise, I could have titled these categories defensive dismemberment—which is what we have with our organized-crime-related kills, in which the dismemberment was functional to aid in disposal and/or eliminating evidence. But the ones we’re discussing, that this investigation should focus on, are offensive dismemberment.” Whatever amusement they briefly shared melted away as she refocused. “In offensive dismemberment, the focus of the dismemberer is the act of separating and sectioning the body.”
That was going to be a major part of the profile, but for now she put it aside.
“Back to the causes of death. Given the state of many of the bodies, some CODs are listed as unknown or pending. Others have only a probable COD, not definitive.”
“Offensive dismemberment, if done while still alive…” Jakob grimaced. It was a small twitch of an expression, but she saw it.
“Death most likely would be from blood loss, or from the trauma of the action causing cardiac arrest.” She tapped her fingers on her notes. “Cardiac and respiratory arrest are the most common CODs in those files where one is listed.”
Jakob stiffened, glancing at his hands before looking up at her. “If you break a man’s neck correctly, sever the spinal column, the diaphragm is paralyzed.”
Annalise held her breath, shocked by his words…but not surprised. She knew he was formidable, but he was also so chivalrous that she’d forgotten, or maybe never realized, that to become a Ritter, he was probably a dangerous man.
“Respiratory arrest is the technical cause of death,” he finished.
Annalise gave herself a moment to see if fear would grip her. It didn’t. This was Jakob.
Her Jakob.
No. Thinking like that was just as bad as imagining his hands on her.
Maybe worse.
Nothing about what the fleet admiral had asked her to do was easy or straightforward. If it had been, crime filters on ECRIS—European Criminal Records Information System—would have already flagged files with enough similarities to indicate a serial killer.
Annalise took a breath, flipping through her messy pages of notes. So many victims, so many ways to look at and assess the figurative reams of information.
“I’m sorry, I know this is a little confusing.”
“Don’t apologize.” Jakob nodded for her to continue. “I understand.”
She smiled softly. “Thank you, Jakob.” She had so many things she needed to thank him for. “How about I skip to the actionable intelligence?”
Jakob stiffened, sitting forward, as if he were going to jump up and go get the bad guys as soon as she pointed him in the right direction.
“I narrowed it down further by gender—only women, though they were the majority of the victims anyway. Eliminated any who were dismembered but not decapitated, since we know Josephine’s head was removed. I also filtered for some important similarities in relation to how the dismemberment was achieved. Then I made some judgment calls based on the other circumstances around the cases.” It was those decisions made on interpretation of details that she was most worried about because she wasn’t good at this anymore.
Except, right now…she felt sure of her choices. Confident in her analysis.
Brilliant.
“After all that, I have two names,” she concluded.
“You took the list from hundreds to two.”
Annalise looked down, self-doubt rearing its familiar head. Had she made the right calls? Focused on the right things? There were so many unknowns.
“Good job,” Jakob said quietly.
“There are probably more, maybe I should check again, and without the rest of Josephine’s body—”
“Trust yourself. I do.”
Dammit. Annalise’s emotions were already too close to the surface, and his words had just set her heart racing. She swallowed deeply. “Thank you,” she said, her voice sounding thick even to her own ears.
“Where are the victims from?” Jakob asked, his question helping her switch her focus from how badly she wanted to kiss him to the case once more.
“Besides Josephine, one was killed in Brussels, the other in Krakow.”
“Belgium, Poland, Ireland. But all large cities,” Jakob said.
“Yes, and it means he is most likely a fluent English speaker.”
Jakob folded his arms. “Convince me.”
Annalise raised a brow. “Convince you?”
“Convince me this is actionable.”
Annalise felt her brows climb higher up her forehead.
Jakob shrugged. “That’s what we said at the BND.”
“The BND?” Bundesnachrichtendienst was German foreign intelligence.
“I was a BND agent. Right after university. The Masters’ Admiralty recruited me from there.”
“I didn’t know that about you,” she said softly, though she didn’t know why she should be surprised to learn he’d worked
in intelligence. He’d proven himself highly intelligent, so much more than a bodyguard or hired gun, or even many of the police she’d worked with. And now his comment about neck breaking…
“It was years ago. Before I became a Ritter,” Jakob replied.
“Very well then, I’ll convince you.” She set aside her notebook and laptop and adopted the tone she used when she was teaching. “The last known location of each of these people was walking down a city sidewalk. It’s one of the things Eric noted. It might not seem that important, but it is. Why?”
Jakob’s brows drew together, his arms still folded.
She waited a moment to see if he would say anything. When he didn’t, she continued. “They lived in the cities where they were taken. These people were going through their daily routines.”
“They were complacent.”
“There might be an element of that, but for the most part, people are more secure when they are somewhere familiar. Habits and routine are a kind of protection…at least when it comes to this sort of situation. When you’ve seen something a thousand times, your brain will take note when there is change. People may be less consciously aware, but they are also more prone to pay attention to oddities. You notice things like when a business you’ve walked by many times changes their window display. Or they repaint the pedestrian crossing.”
Window-shopping and walking around the city were things she’d had to abandon because of the stalker.
As if he’d realized what she was thinking, Jakob stood. She waited for a moment, holding her breath. Wondering if this time he’d come to her. If he’d hold her tight. He’d done it before, the night she’d opened the box of flying roaches, and then in the hospital hallway outside her sister’s room after the rape.
Jakob went to the living room wall, standing sentry where he could see the front door and window.
It was the place he stood to keep watch, the place he stood when she had bad nights, nights she couldn’t bear to even sleep. On those nights, she would sit up on the couch, essentially taking over his bed, and he would stand guard.
“They were on familiar ground,” he said softly.
