Wrath's Storm: A Masters' Admiralty Novel by Mari Carr (desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕

“I screamed and cried and hid from the bugs,” she murmured.

Jakob had a vivid memory of that night. Of the frantic call he’d been forwarded by the vice admiral Pia Klein. The call, a message Annalise had left on one of the numbers members called when they were in trouble, had been nearly incoherent, but she’d said her name clearly enough that they’d figured out who she was, and as the knight based in Frankfurt, he’d been the one sent out to help her.

If she’d never been in trouble, needed help and protection, he might never have met her.

“I didn’t want my colleagues at the Kripo to see me like that, so I called the Masters’ Admiralty. They sent Jakob. He cleared out the bugs, got me up off the floor, helped me stop crying. Later I explained about the stalker. Jakob and the other knights started working on the case too. Everyone wanted me to move, but I wouldn’t move because I didn’t want the stalker to know he had that kind of power over me. So Jakob came up with another solution. The house next door—in English, I believe the term is a row house, yes? Houses that share walls.”

“I understand what you mean, though a lot of places in the States call them townhouses.”

“It was for sale, so Jakob had the vice admiral buy it. He installed a hidden steel door between them. I went into what had always been my house but then passed through the door, into the safety of the place he’d made for me.”

Annalise smiled at him, and Jakob could feel Walt’s attention turn to him.

“As far as anyone other than Jakob and, I’m assuming, the vice admiral knew, I was still living in the same house.”

“Vice Admiral…” Walt frowned, then grinned. “Y’all have fun titles.”

Jakob narrowed his eyes ever so slightly at Annalise, who smiled sheepishly, the moment chasing some of the darkness away from her eyes.

“I forgot you weren’t a member,” Annalise said to Walt.

“If it makes you feel better, I’m going to be a member of the Trinity Masters, the American version of your secret society. My brothers are both members but fairly new to it, so I’m not familiar with many of their fancy titles.”

Jakob filed that information away to pass on to his vice admiral and admiral. It was interesting—and by interesting, he meant fucking alarming—that the fleet admiral was running around hunting a serial killer with a man who already had ties to the Trinity Masters.

Then he remembered that he couldn’t say anything about the fleet admiral.

Damned Viking.

“Years passed, and we never…I never could figure out who he was. Jakob kept guarding me, when he could, and I was safe in my secret house, but…”

“That must have been really hard. Living in fear,” Walt murmured.

Annalise nodded before continuing. “My sister knew the code to my house, had a key, but she didn’t know about the stalker. Didn’t know I would be safe behind the secret steel door between my house and the place next door. She came by to surprise me, opened the door, and walked inside. She didn’t pull it all the way closed. He, my stalker, must have been watching, seen that the door was still partially open, because he followed her in.”

“Shit,” Walt breathed.

“He attacked my sister. Raped her. And when he realized it wasn’t me, he cut all her hair off so he wouldn’t be ‘tricked’ again. All that happened while I slept safely on the other side of the wall.”

“I know you know this, but hearing it again probably isn’t a bad thing.” Walt slid off his chair, kneeling in front of Annalise so his head was lower than hers, so he was less threatening than he’d been even when sitting. “What happened, both to you and to your sister, is not your fault.”

“Agreed,” Jakob said aloud. If he hadn’t controlled himself, he might have told her how it broke his heart to see the pain in her eyes. Told her that no matter what she said, he knew her. Knew she felt responsible, aided in part by her sister, who had raged at her for not mentioning the stalker and who had now cut Annalise out of her life completely.

Jakob wanted to tell her that he was the one who should be blamed. He was the one who’d failed to catch the stalker in the nearly two years between when he’d been brought into the situation—the night of the bugs—and the night of her sister’s attack.

Annalise didn’t reply—it was clear she didn’t agree—and the room fell silent for a few moments. Walt rose and walked over to the fireplace, staring at the flames in quiet contemplation. Jakob and Annalise shared a look before their gazes drifted over to the doctor, who had turned to face them once more.

“I have one more question,” Walt began, “if you would indulge me.”

“Of course,” Annalise said.

Walt glanced from Annalise to Jakob, then gave them that dimpled grin that seemed to be an almost permanent fixture on his face. “How long have you two been in love?”

Chapter Seven

Walt tried to stifle a grin as Annalise and Jakob sputtered and stuttered their way through their rushed denials and assurances that they were nothing more than friends.

“I protect her,” Jakob said—too fast and too hard.

Annalise said, “Oh no, no. That’s not it at all. I’m the reason Jakob doesn’t have any free time.” She laughed, but it was forced. “I’m the reason he sleeps on a couch in Heidelberg instead of in this lovely home.”

Walt nodded slowly. He’d thought maybe they just weren’t talking about their relationship either because of professionalism, or because they’d been in front of Eric, or that whole trinity marriage thing. He’d heard from Sylvia about how the arranged ménage marriage could lead to dramatic, doomed love affair situations.

In literature, there was a device called the unreliable narrator. It was when the narrator of the story knew less about