by Blake Pierce
Adele bit her lip, cutting off the cuss that burbled to the tip of her tongue. Her father’s influence stretched beyond the borders of his four neatly maintained walls. Still, she growled as she said, “We’re on the clock here, John—maybe a bit of professionalism—”
“Sorry, coffee just arrived. They take Euros in this country, don’t they?”
Adele stood on the sidewalk, feet at shoulder width, eyes narrowed now. Any sense of appreciation for John had faded to be replaced, once again, by annoyance at his lackluster approach to the job.
Before she could reply with a scathing remark, however, the radio buzzed again and Agent Marshall’s voice blared out, far too loudly, “It isn’t Mr. Ozturk,” Marshall said. “He lives in an apartment and his landlord and three separate neighbors all claim they’ve seen him in the last week. Plus, well…” Here Marshall trailed off for a moment as if she were gathering her thoughts then, in a tactful tone, she continued, “I’m not sure he’s in the physical capacity to subdue or harm anyone.”
John snickered and said, “Is he a fatty? Are you talking normal chub or American fat?”
Adele pressed the button again. “John, please, could you just hurry up?”
A pause. Static, then, “What about you, American Princess; we’re down to two, it sounds like. Is your man a red-haired devil?”
“Don’t know yet,” said Adele, glancing back up toward the old, well-maintained home. It was a busy street with cars zipping by every few moments, but otherwise, the house was normal looking enough. The grass was cut, the leaves raked, two trash cans were set out on the curb for collection.
“Should I come meet one of you?” said Agent Marshall’s voice.
Adele began to reply, but John beat her to it. “I’m closer. Come meet me. Afterwards, you can show me the best place to get drinks.”
Adele resisted the urge to gag. “Could you stop flirting, finish your coffee, and go check your man?”
John snickered. “Don’t forget the donut. It’s almost ready.”
Adele shook her head in defeat, but lowered her hand from the radio to her holster as she stalked toward the house. Her other hand went to her identification, preparing to lift it in introduction as she’d done many times before.
The investigative part was always easier. Adele had never been comfortable with a firearm, and even now she could feel old nerves coming back, threatening to derail her.
She inhaled deeply, then exhaled for a second longer, focusing on her breathing as she took the steps to the porch and raised a hand to knock on the door.
No answer.
She reached out and pushed the bell. A brief spurt of guilt caused her to cringe as she did. Her father’s influence had extended to bell-pushing. Christ, she thought to herself. How pathetic.
She pushed the bell a second time with more confidence, holding it longer this time.
But again, there was no answer.
Adele slowly unbuttoned her holster and sidestepped to the nearest window. She frowned, pressing her forehead against the cool glass.
Through the window, she spotted a tidy room with an old grandfather chair facing a fireplace and a long kitchen table with a laptop.
Her eyes narrowed, staring at the laptop, trying to register what she was seeing.
A face on the laptop stared back at her.
A face she knew.
“Shit,” she said, uttering the word in tandem with a huffing breath.
The laptop had a picture of her father’s face displayed on the LED screen. Adele’s gun ripped from its holster and she kicked at the door. Once, twice, leading with her heavy boot, but the door held firm. With an urgent huff of air, she sprinted around the side of the house and hopped a low, ridged wooden fence. Ignoring a bed of roses, she tore through the flowers and circled the backyard. A home gym was stationed beneath a tree, complete with a workout bench, weights and an old rowing machine beneath a tarp.
She ignored the strange set-up and surged toward the back door. This one was brittle, old—a wooden affair with chipped, flecked paint and a small glass semicircle which reminded her of the sections of an orange.
She kicked this door again, and again, desperately wishing she’d had John for backup.
Finally, with the third kick, on what felt like a sprained ankle, there was a splintering sound.
Adele felt a surge of exhilaration, coupled with dawning horror as she slammed her shoulder into the door and, with one final protesting crack, it gave way and swung inward.
She rushed into the room, sprinting over three neat sets of male shoes. She reached the kitchen table, her gun still raised, trained on the kitchen, then switching to the living room.
No one in sight.
She didn’t announce herself, but spun around the rectangular kitchen table and, breathing heavy, her shoulder and ankle pulsing with aches, she stared at the computer screen.
It was open to the Berlin PD website. Her father’s name and face filled the screen and her eyes flicked to the tabs of the browser: Google Maps was open. With a trembling hand, she lowered her gun, placing it on the table, and clicked the tab for the map.
A small red dot, like the laser on a sniper’s scope pulsed over a house in the suburbs.
She stared, scanning the map and her eyes flicking to the search bar.
It was her father’s address.
“Dear God,” she murmured, backing away from the table. Her hand fumbled in her pocket, but she finally managed to rip her phone from her pants and dial her father’s number. The cold blue screen blinked back a single word: Dad.
Once upon a time, she’d stored his name only as Joseph. But things had improved since then. At least, so she hoped.
Five rings. Six. Seven.
No answer.
She dialed again. Sometimes her dad ignored the phone, fearing telemarketers.
Another five. Six. Seven. Dial tone.
No answer.
A third try—still no answer.
Adele rammed her phone back into her pocket and she darted forward, one arm extended as she grabbed her gun; rapidly, she gave the house a cursory scan, one last time, then broke into a sprint, back out the rear door, hopping the splintered frame and racing back through the rose garden.
“John!” she shouted into her radio, “John—it’s Porter! Porter Schmidt is the killer. He’s going after the Sergea—my dad! John!”
She reached her car, swung open the door, and spilled into the seat, tossing her gun onto the passenger side. It took her three tries with trembling fingers to jam the key into the ignition and another couple of tries, with the engine groaning, for her to realize she still had the vehicle in neutral.
Cursing, Adele put the car in gear and tried to focus on breathing, to calm herself.
But the trick didn’t work this time.
Adrenaline met terror and did a number on her mind, sending her into a vortex of worry and fear. A physical clot of anxiety pulsed in her chest. Her dad. The killer was going after her dad.
She thought of her norther. Ribbons of red extending from the once beautiful woman, staining the clover leaves and blades of grass, spilling into the sodden ground in the park. A tapestry of swirling scars up and down her body.
“Fuck!” Adele shouted as she ripped from the curb and nearly hit a park bench. “Dammit!” She tore up the street, ignoring a vehicle half-pulled out of the driveway. The driver leaned on his horn in protest, but Adele ignored that too and floored the gas pedal, tearing through a stop sign and roaring up the street.
She’d just been at her father’s place. Had she missed him? Would she be too late?
No. No, she couldn’t think like that. She couldn’t be too late. Not this time. Please, God, not this time…
“John!” she repeated, slapping at the radio. “Where are you?”
A buzz, some static. Then, “Sharp? What is it?” Some of the joviality had faded from John’s voice. “Adele, are you okay?”
Tears were now streaming do
wn her face. For a moment, Adele felt twenty again. Little more than a child, weeping at the news of her mother.
No. Not this time. Not her father too.
Still, she sobbed, trying to maintain professionalism, trying to suppress the emotions like she always did and always could. Emotions caused weakness. Emotions were distractions for an investigator.
But she couldn’t push back the kaleidoscope of horrible images now playing themselves across her brain, suggesting all the coulds and what-ifs of the immediate future. Each thought brought a new wave of emotion and a new surge of speed as Adele ripped through traffic, receiving more than one blare from a horn. At last, she remembered to flip on her lights and siren—the BKA had been kind enough to at least supply that.
Siren wailing now, blue and red flashing across the glinting windshield and hood of her car, she zipped beneath a red light, surging back onto the highway, heading in the direction of her father’s house.
“No,” she said. “John—John he’s going after my dad. It’s Porter. He’s going after my father!”
A pause. Then, a serious voice. “You’re sure?”
Her voice cracked. “ Yes, John, please—”
“Where does your father live?” he rattled off, his voice becoming colder, more calculated. The voice of a military man in the middle of a high-stakes operation.
Adele recited her father’s address from memory, her eyes glued to the road as she wove in and out of traffic.
There was a staticky buzz, then John, sounding out of breath now as if he were running, said, “I’m on my way. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“John, it’s my dad.”
“Damn it, Adele, I know.” The distant slamming sound of a car door interrupted through the static. “Just wait for me. Okay? Promise me you’ll wait.”
Adele didn’t reply. She gripped the steering wheel, no longer attempting to suppress her emotions, but stewing in them as she sped through the city, racing toward her father’s house and into the waiting arms of a killer.
CHAPTER THIRTY
She tore into the driveway, heralded by the yipping sound of the neighbor’s dogs. She flung open the car door, not bothering to close it, only pausing for a second as she remembered to grab her gun from the passenger’s seat.
She sprinted up the steps and reached the house, pausing only to glance through the windows, searching the interior of the house. But most the windows were shuttered.
Her dad was the type to shoot first and ask questions later, but Adele wasn’t worried about being on the wrong end of a hair-trigger. Had she beat the killer here? She needed to enter the house.
Porter Schmidt. Such a German name. Nothing in that name suggested he’d killed six people, and yet, though she still had yet to meet him, Adele could practically smell the murderer, like a bloodhound with a sixth sense. She knew he was the killer as surely as she knew her father’s life was in danger.
Her gun tapped gently against the window as she peered through a slat in one of the shutters—an old trick she’d adopted as a child when she’d returned home from school to make sure her parents weren’t shouting at each other before entering the house.
Many afternoons had been spent sitting on the front porch for hours, reading schoolbooks or sketching in a journal, waiting for the shouting to stop.
Now, curling up her spine with tooth and claw, came a desperate, cloying, frigid sensation that set her teeth on edge more than the yelling ever had. Briefly, she thought fondly of the shouting, wishing that some noise would echo from the quiet, darkened house.
But no sound arose.
Adele abandoned her position by the slat in the window—all she’d managed to spot was darkness. She hurried to the door, reached out, and gripped the handle.
It twisted. The door remained locked.
For the faintest moment, she thought she heard a muffled groaning sound from within the house. Was someone in pain? She eyed the door up and down, her head movements frantic. She couldn’t kick this door down, no matter how hard she tried. Her father had reinforced the front and the back door following a slew of robberies the town over.
With a snarl, Adele cast about, and her eyes settled on the porch furniture. Holstering her weapon, she hurried over, grabbed one of the hefty wooden chairs, and slammed it into the nearest slatted window. Glass shattered and spilled like fragments of starlight, twinkling as the pieces of glass scattered the porch and tumbled into the living room. She slammed the chair a second time, breaking the wooden shutters.
She would apologize later. Now, all she needed was to enter the house.
She used the chair to clear the worst of the jutting pieces of glass left in the sill. The silent alarm would have been tripped now—a call was already reaching the police station from the security system. Her father was nothing if not safety conscious. But they wouldn’t reach her in time.
It was up to her. A foreign agent in a foreign country. At stake: the only family she had left.
She scraped the last of the glass away and shouted into the house, “Dad, it’s me! Are you okay?”
This time, she was certain she heard a muffled groaning sound. She’d heard torture victims on a recording once that sounded like that.
She flung the chair aside and pushed through the window, ignoring the glass scraping at her side and against her forearm as she delicately tried to maneuver through the awkward opening.
With less grace than she would have liked, Adele tumbled into her father’s living room, avoiding most the glass and splinters of wood. Still, she could feel a trickle of warmth down her arm and a sharp, pulsing throb in her right side along her ribs.
Injuries would have to wait.
Gun met sweaty palm; iron sights surveyed darkness.
Adele, foot over foot, in a shooter’s crouch, stepped through the living room. Her feet made small crunching sounds against a few pieces of glass that had made it further along the carpet. For a moment, all she could think was where her father kept the vacuum. She needed to clean up before he saw it, or he’d let her have it for a week.
She gritted her teeth, staving off the thoughts brought on by the influence of the Sergeant’s house. The crunching sound of her footsteps gave way to quiet padding as boots met carpet. The sharp pain in her ribs still pulsed, but ignoring it, Adele stepped from the living room, swinging her gun into the kitchen.
Nothing.
Except.
The water was running.
Adele frowned at the faucet. She reached out with a trembling hand, turning the knob, shutting off the stream of hot water, which had now gone cold.
Her father would never have left a faucet running.
She struggled, desperately wondering if she should call out again. For all her father knew, someone had just broken into his house, and he was now crouched with a shotgun upstairs waiting to blow her head off the moment she popped into view.
Or, someone else was in the house.
Someone else waiting for her to make a noise, lying in wait, preparing to jab her with a needle.
If she called out in the first case, it might save her life, and save her father the trauma of blasting his only daughter in two. In the second case, though, any noise might alert the predator to her presence.
Adele maintained her quiet, moving along the cupboards, her body turned, presenting as small a target as possible toward the doorway, just as they’d been trained to do. This was her least favorite part of an investigation, but she’d drilled with weapons the same as everyone else.
She checked the safety, then slid through the door, crouched low, hoping to throw off the aim of anyone expecting someone of normal height. She kept her gun close to her chest, careful not to lead with her weapon too far in front, lest she give away her position before she had eyes on.
Again, she wished John had come with her. Some of her anxiety around weapons, around making an arrest, had been eased while with him. Back in the hotel in France, she hadn’t felt the usual anxiety. Here in
Germany, with the chemist, he’d known what to do.
Coffee and a donut. She shook her head in disbelief at the radio call, trying desperately to contain her emotions in the moment, to regain her composure.
She turned up the stairs.
No one.
The steps creaked as she stepped up the stairwell. Instead of facing forward, though, she backed up slowly, one at a time, gun raised toward the banisters above, keeping track toward the top of the stairs where someone might have been watching.
Again, nothing.
The carpeted hall was dark. Pictures framed the wall on either side in neat rows. Pictures of Adele and her mother. Pictures of a life long since lost. Yet pictures kept in positions of high esteem. The air smelled of detergent and lavender.
Adele stepped past her old room and glanced in.
Her father had lied.
He hadn’t converted it into an office. Rather, her bed was exactly as she remembered it. Pink covers with pillows pressed against the headboards. Her stuffed animals were there; he’d also kept the old desk covered in the trophies she’d won at track meets. She frowned, distracted for the faintest of seconds.
There were other pictures too—pictures of the competitions in France. A shrine to his daughter’s success. But also her stuffed animals.
Adele shook her head; her father was a hard man to read.
She heard a louder, muffled groan. Her attention shifted sharply back to the moment and she pointed her gun toward the large, closed chestnut door at the opposite end of the staircase. Her feet slipped along the thick, perfectly white carpet. It took a confident man to install white carpet. Yet, there had never been a stain in the near decade Adele had lived here.
Licking her dry lips, Adele shifted past the railing, moving past a bathroom and another guest room her mother had stayed in during the last couple years of their marriage.
She paused for a moment, standing in darkness in front of her parents’ old room. Joseph’s room. She’d never been allowed in the Sergeant’s room; he’d hated the idea of a child messing around in his private space.
She felt an inexplicable surge of guilt as she reached down, slowly twisting the doorknob.
