by Mari Carr
Walt shoved his hands in his pockets before turning around. Jakob glanced down at his crotch, then at Annalise, before leading them out of the hotel onto the sidewalk.
“That was mean,” Walt murmured as they emerged into the cool, crisp light. There was snow on the ground, but the sidewalk was clear. What little snow remained was mounds of dirty brown-gray sludge in the gutters and in shadowed corners where the sun couldn’t hit it.
There were people all around them, milling about. Some seemed to be heading off down the sidewalk. Maybe looking for cafes where they could sit and kill time.
Shit, had any of them brought their wallets? He’d emptied his pockets of everything but his phone back up in the room and was pretty sure Jakob had too.
The crowd parted and Walt caught sight of a woman sitting in a lobby chair that had been pulled out onto the sidewalk. One of the members of the hotel staff hovered near her. She was grimacing and holding one leg out stiffly.
“I’m going to see if I can help,” Walt said, his focus immediately shifting from sexy times to rendering aid. Before he could move, someone knocked into Jakob so hard that he stumbled into Annalise, who in turn fell into Walt. Walt staggered and managed to keep them all from going over like dominos. Jakob rubbed his shoulder, looking back, apparently for the person who’d hit him.
“Too many people,” Jakob muttered. Then he grimaced, still rubbing the shoulder.
“You two want to go somewhere, meet me back here later?” Walt asked. He was antsy to get over to the woman and check her ankle, which looked a little swollen. It would have been easy to stumble on those stairs, packed as they’d been.
“We stay together,” Jakob countered.
“Okay then, come with me.”
Jakob growled and wrapped his arm around Annalise, clearly ready to double down on his bodyguard duties, as Walt pushed through the crowd, dropping to his knee. He looked from the staff member to the woman. “I’m a doctor. Do either of you speak English?”
“I do,” the staff member answered. “We have called an ambulance.”
“Can you translate for me, uh,” Walt glanced at the woman’s name tag, “Agnieszka. Sorry, I know I pronounced that wrong. I might be able to help until paramedics get here.”
She smiled at Walt, clearly amused at his fumbling attempt at her name. “Yes.”
“Tell her that I’m a doctor, and I’d like permission to touch her ankle.”
Agnieszka repeated his words, and the woman’s attention shifted to Walt. He carefully kept his focus on her as he asked what had happened, and then began a quick exam. Gentle as he was, she winced a few times but was able to flex her foot. Sadly, that could be a bad sign with ankles—cracked bones didn’t affect the ability of muscles and tendons to shift and pull, and as long as it wasn’t a major break, it might not even hurt. Then again, soft tissue injuries could be just as hard to heal, though patients enjoyed not having a cast, which meant showering was far easier.
Walt told the woman some of this, and then asked Agnieszka to get a stool so they could elevate the ankle. Just as he maneuvered the woman’s leg onto the stool, there was a shout from farther down the sidewalk.
The crowd shifted, surging either to or away from the noise, depending on if curiosity or avoidance was their primary reaction. A voice called out, and Agnieszka, his translator, touched Walt’s shoulder. “Someone has collapsed. Can you…”
“Of course.”
With a nod to the injured woman, he and Agnieszka rose. They sidled through the crowd, emerging into the center of a ring of people who were looking at the figure of a prone man. They were near the corner of the hotel, where a small lane, not large enough to be a proper street, separated the hotel from the building next door. The ring of gawkers was just far back enough that none of them felt any responsibility to do something. Of course, they were also close enough that they had a good view. People like this annoyed the hell out of Walt.
The figure they were staring at was lying awkwardly against the wall as if they’d slid down it before tipping to the side.
Jakob.
Walt leapt forward, dropping to Jakob’s side and hitting his knees hard enough on the pavement that he was going to regret it later.
“Help me,” Walt said, to no one and everyone. “We need to get him flat on his back.”
Agnieszka crouched beside him, hesitantly moving Jakob’s legs as Walt shifted his upper body and arm before rolling him onto his back. Walt wasn’t gentle. He was fast. Most people associated medicine with being careful and precise. Gentle, attentive contact. In battlefields, and emergency medicine, that wasn’t the case. The priority was to assess for critical injuries, and that meant grabbing and yanking when needed.
Jakob grimaced as he was being moved. He wasn’t fully unconscious, though his eyes were closed.
Walt checked Jakob’s pulse and breathing—fast and slow, respectively—and as he touched him, Jakob groaned, face contorted.
“Jakob.” Walt pinched his trapezius muscle, right where his shoulder met his neck. It was a safe spot to pinch that hurt enough to either wake people up or shock them into focusing enough to answer questions.
“Hurts,” Jakob said, barely moving his lips.
“You fell when you passed out. You might have hit something—”
“Didn’t pass out. Pain. Shoulder. Chest.”
Walt had seen men bigger and tougher than Jakob cry like babies while getting stitches, and tiny little women who could shrug off the pain of broken bones. Still, Walt didn’t think Jakob would say something hurt unless it really hurt.
“Shot,” Jakob said.
He’d been shot? Walt didn’t panic. He simply processed that information and adjusted his next steps.
Walt glanced at the staff member, then at the circle of people. “Does anyone have scissors or a knife?”
A second later, a pocketknife hit his hand. He sliced up the center of Jakob’s shirt. The fact that there was no blood on, and no visible hole in, the fabric didn’t matter. Clothes could hide injuries, and one of the most important elements of triage was to assess for yourself. Even when patients were awake and talking, there could be injuries they didn’t feel and therefore didn’t mention, especially if they were in shock.
A moment later, Walt had Jakob’s upper body exposed.
The only visible issue was a small area on his shoulder that was slightly swollen and flushed darker than the rest of his skin. There was no blood. No visible wound.
He hadn’t been shot. A bad feeling curdled in Walt’s stomach.
Walt bent closer, examining the swollen flesh. There was a small puncture mark. That plus the swelling…it looked like an insect sting.
Jakob’s forehead was damp with sweat, and as Walt watched, the muscles of Jakob’s arm and shoulder contracted. Jakob made a faint noise of pain so low, it was almost inaudible.
This kind of pain, the relatively small mark…
In medicine, when you heard hoofbeats you assumed horse, not zebra. In Krakow, Poland, an insect sting meant a bee or maybe a wasp. Saying that Jakob had been stung by a bullet ant, an insect that injected poneratoxin into the body, was like predicting a zebra was coming when you heard hoofbeats.
And yet…
The paramedics who’d been called for the woman with the broken ankle rushed over, pushing him out of the way. Walt had just a moment to decide. To decide if he should trust what his instincts were telling him. Instincts that insisted this was a bullet ant sting, despite their location in Europe and not an equatorial jungle.
“Tell them he’s been stung,” he said to Agnieszka. “He needs to be treated for neurotoxin poisoning, and, given the location, they need to check his heart. His blood pressure. It might cause cardiac arrhythmia.”
One of the paramedics glanced over. “What stung him?”
Walt was pathetically grateful to hear the man speaking English because that meant he’d understood what Walt had just said. “Bullet ant.”
&nbs
p; The paramedic frowned. Either he didn’t know what that was, or he knew and now thought Walt was losing it, because how the hell would Jakob have gotten stung by a bullet ant?
Jakob let out a short scream when they got him to his feet. Sweat poured down his face. The sting of the bullet ant was the most painful sting of any insect. People who’d experienced it said it felt like being shot. Jakob started retching, and the paramedic whipped out a bag, holding it to his chin in case he vomited.
Right now, Jakob’s nerves were all firing, unable to stop sending his brain the pain signals, while his skeletal muscles contracted and tensed beyond his control. Walt winced and followed as the paramedics guided him over to sit on the back bumper of the ambulance. While they strapped on a blood pressure cuff, Walt crouched in front of Jakob.
“I think you were stung by a bullet ant. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I’ve seen a sting before, when I was in Nicaragua. It hurts, and it’s going to keep hurting, but it isn’t deadly.”
“Ant?” Jakob wheezed.
“Yeah.”
“Shot.” Jakob looked at his shoulder, or at least tried but gave up with a grimace. The muscles of his shoulder and neck were visibly twitching.
“Nope. Ant sting.”
“Hurts.”
Walt could tell that admission cost Jakob something. Could tell it wasn’t something he would have said if it wasn’t someone he trusted.
Someone he trusted…
Walt sucked in air and shoved himself to his feet, frantically scanning the thinning crowd on the sidewalk. It looked like the hotel was letting people back in.
Jakob reached out, catching Walt’s hand. Walt looked over, his stomach sinking even as his heart was in his throat. Jakob’s eyes were wide, and a little glassy with pain, but he was functional enough to have figured out what—who—Walt was looking for.
“Annalise,” Jakob wheezed.
Walt ran through the crowd, back into the hotel lobby, thinking maybe she’d gone inside.
But he knew. Deep down, he knew that there was no way she would have left Jakob, the man she just confessed to loving, all alone when he was vulnerable and in pain.
Walt checked the alleyway near the corner where Jakob had collapsed and their rooms. He asked the staff if anyone had seen her and enlisted their help in searching.
An hour later, Walt, and a shivering, pain-wracked Jakob, who had refused to go to the hospital, sat side by side on a bench in the lobby. Walt had felt helpless before, though as a doctor, he could usually do something to make him feel like he was being useful.
Chest compressions even when he knew the likelihood of success was small.
Clamping arteries and ordering someone to hang blood even when the person had hit the point of fatal exsanguination.
This helplessness was different.
Because Annalise was gone, and he knew she hadn’t gone willingly.
Chapter Eleven
Jakob lay face up on the hotel bed, but only because Walt made him. He was twitching, his muscles spasming like crazy, and Walt was concerned he’d fall down. Every fucking part of his body hurt.
Walt had told him he could expect these waves of agony to continue anywhere from twelve- to twenty-four hours.
Jakob was certain that was information he could have lived without.
“Phone.” Jakob tried to point toward the nightstand, but even that slight movement sent shock waves of pain through his body.
Walt crossed the room and picked up the cell.
“Need to call vice admiral.” Jakob tried to lift his hand and take the phone, but Walt shook his head.
“Here.” Walt grasped Jakob’s fingers, pressing his thumb against the lock screen. “Is the number in your contacts?”
It spoke to exactly how much pain Jakob was in that he offered no resistance to Walt opening his phone and digging through the contacts list. “Yes. Klein.”
Walt found the number, dialing it before putting it on speaker, shaking his head when Jakob attempted to reach for the phone.
“Klein,” Pia, the vice admiral, said upon answering. “Jakob? Are you still in Krakow with Dr. Fischer?”
“Dr. Fischer missing. Abducted.” With every word he spoke, Jakob felt crushed under the weight of his failure. “We can’t find her.”
“We?” Pia said.
Jakob’s gaze locked with Walt’s, but before he could summon the strength to shake his head in warning, Walt spoke.
“Dr. Walt Hayden here, uh, Vice Admiral. I’ve been working on the Alicja case with Annalise and Jakob.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and Jakob resigned himself to the tongue lashing he was going to receive when he returned to Germany.
“Dr. Hayden,” Pia said at last. “You’re American?”
“Yes, ma’am. Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina.”
“I see.”
“And while I’m not a member of the Masters’ Admiralty, my sister, Sylvia, belongs to the England territory.”
“Your sister,” Pia said slowly, though there was no question she was displeased with and confused by Walt’s presence.
Jakob sighed. He was fucked. The Masters’ Admiralty was a secret society—secret being the operative term. The fact that Walt was here, chatting to the vice admiral, was the equivalent of letting a Muggle into Hogwarts. If he could tell the vice admiral that Walt was with them on the fleet admiral’s orders, it would clear everything up. But Eric had forbidden him from doing so.
“Dr. Fischer is missing,” Jakob repeated. He’d take whatever punishment Pia saw fit to dole out to him after they found Annalise. For now, finding her, saving her, was the only thing that mattered.
“Was she targeted? A political action against a German national? Someone moving against the Masters’ Admiralty?” Pia asked.
Jakob and Walt exchanged a glance. They had no answer. Only more potential complications. Jakob tried to answer, but a fresh wave of pain swamped him. He rolled onto his side, pounding a fist into the mattress.
“Jakob was attacked too,” Walt was saying. “Someone got him with bullet ant venom.”
“With what?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve seen it before. He’s in pretty incredible pain, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.”
“Are you in danger?” Pia asked sharply.
Jakob was able to push himself into a sitting position, though he was nauseous and sweating. “Unknown,” he answered.
Walt looked at him, eyes wide, then glanced at the locked suite door, as if expecting someone to come barreling in.
There was a moment of silence, and when Pia spoke again it was with calm command. “I’m going to speak to the admiral. We will call in protection from Hungary.”
Walt looked at the phone. “We’re in Poland. Not Hungary.”
The vice admiral wasn’t talking about the country Hungary but the territory. Jakob didn’t have the energy to explain that, not when agony was rippling through him.
“You will tell the harco everything,” Pia commanded, clearly speaking to Jakob. “Do not involve the authorities.”
“No,” Jakob agreed.
“Uh, pretty sure we should call the police,” Walt added.
“Keep me apprised.” Then the phone line went dead as the vice admiral hung up.
“Why aren’t we calling the police?” Walt asked.
Jakob swung his legs off the side of the bed. “Help me to the bathroom.”
Walt slid an arm around his waist. They made it to the bathroom in time for Jakob to vomit into the toilet rather than on the bed. Walt sat on the edge of the tub next to him, silently passing him a wet washcloth when he stopped heaving.
Jakob sat back, leaning against the cool wall. He glanced down at his shoulder. A tiny pinprick incision point and a little bit of swelling. Given how much it hurt, it should have been a massive gaping wound, a broken bone, something.
“No police,” Jakob said, address
ing Walt’s comment from several moments ago. “Because they will only get in our way.”
“Okay. So we just wait?”
Walt’s voice expressed exactly how horrified he was by that idea. Sitting here doing nothing while Annalise was…
Jakob couldn’t think about it too hard. Couldn’t let himself imagine what she was going through wherever she was.
“We’ll get her back,” Walt murmured. “We’ll find her.”
Walt was a good doctor. He knew what to say and how to say it. There was no denying his reassuring words and tone were on point.
Regardless, Jakob did not feel comforted.
“Call the desk. Get security footage,” Jakob gasped. “I think I know…”
“You know who injected you?” Walt was already on his feet, pulling Jakob up too, to take him back to the bed.
When Jakob walked down the street, people usually cleared a path around him—he was big, intimidating. In the chaos on the sidewalk, someone had walked right into him, colliding with him hard enough for it to hurt, and to knock him sideways into Annalise. That had never happened to him before, but given the crowd, he attributed it to the throng of people and disorder.
There’d been a sharp pain when the man barreled into him. He’d assumed he’d caught him with hardware from a bag strap, a jacket buckle, or something like that. He’d looked back to see exactly who, or what, had hit him. He had a good mental picture of a medium-height blond-haired man striding away from him through the crowd.
Then Walt had gone to help the woman, and he and Annalise had followed…at least until he started to feel sick. Annalise helped him get away from the crowd, where he’d told her about the pain in his shoulder and arm. She’d been worried he was having a heart attack and then…and then there’d been a wave of pain so intense, it had dropped him, wiped out everything else. He’d slid to the ground, unable to think beyond the pain, his whole body tensed and cramped.
He told Walt this in fits and starts while the other man was on hold with the hotel manager.
The venom from the ant—an ant—had rendered him worse than useless. Annalise was gone, and he knew she wouldn’t have left of her own accord. Walt had alerted the hotel, had been the one to search for her. Jakob hadn’t been able to do more than stagger first into the lobby, then up here into their room.
