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

wasn’t one of them, though the term was amusing, given what she did. What Annalise was, was determined, hardworking, and, in many ways, insightful. But something about her made him identify her as “cerebral”—an odd and specific choice of words.

Or maybe after he’d focused on her, selected her as his victim, he’d decided that the object of his affections had to be extraordinary, according to his own definition and terminology. “You’re cerebral too, of course. Tell me about work.” She hoped she’d phrased that generically enough.

He set down the corkscrew, running his fingers up and down the bottle of wine. “I don’t want to talk about me.”

“Well, I think we should. I’d like to talk about you.” Her tone was a little too clinical, too much like a therapist, and she knew it the moment the words were out of her mouth. She saw his shoulders tense, and his hand tightened around the bottle. “Where did you buy the camper?” she rushed to ask. “Here, or in Frankfurt?”

For a minute, she thought she’d managed to distract him, but the tension was still in the lines of his body. “I knew you might do this,” he murmured. “But I’m not like them.”

“Of course not,” she soothed. Them could be anyone from the people she’d helped the police hunt to other men in general. Who exactly they were didn’t matter as much as assuring him she agreed with his distinction between himself and those who were “other”.

“You’re in danger, and I’m protecting you.” He said the words steadily and calmly. They had the tone and cadence of words often repeated, almost a mantra.

Had there been a slight stress on the word “I’m”?

“And I need protecting,” she said, neither question nor statement but an ambiguous place in between.

“You do. You might not see it, but I do. The people you try to find, they’re too dangerous. One of them will want to find you. Hurt you.”

One like him?

Anger welled in her, and though she knew better, though her control should be better, Annalise raised her chin, her soothing tone becoming accusatory. “Yes, I am in danger. Some coward broke into my house one night and attacked my sister.”

“Coward?” He whirled, wine bottle in hand, eyes narrowing. “She was in your house, pretending to be you.”

“She was welcome in my home,” Annalise snapped, ignoring the way his body language had changed from tentative and unsure to aggressive. “She was invited. She has a place in my life.”

She saw the words hurt him, knew she had wounded him by highlighting a reality—in which he was unknown and unwelcome—that was so different from his delusion.

And now she would pay for attacking his fantasy.

He raised the bottle.

Annalise threw up an arm and leaned to the side. She saved herself from a concussion, the bottle striking her upper arm instead of her head. Pain lanced through her humerus and shoulder, stopping the breath in her lungs for a moment. Then she screamed, a high, thin sound that wasn’t deliberate, but reactionary.

He raised the bottle again.

Annalise scrambled off the bench, running for the door. She’d forgotten about the cuff, the chain. She managed to put a hand on the door latch before she was pulled up short, the chain suddenly taut, the cuff digging into her wrist.

Then his body slammed into her, forcing her against the closed door, the cuffed arm stretched back painfully. She didn’t turn her head in time, and her nose impacted the door, hard enough that her eyes instantly watered. Her stalker shoved his hips hard against her ass, and his lips brushed her cheek. With a small cry of horror, she twisted her face to the other side, only to have him grip her hair, pulling so tight she felt little pops as the hairs were ripped from her scalp. He brushed his lips against her other cheek, his breath washing over her face. He smelled like mint.

“Don’t worry, Anna,” he murmured, his lips roving over her cheek. “I’ve got you. You’re with me now. I’ll protect you.”

Annalise hated the whimpers that escaped her. Hated that she couldn’t think, could barely breathe through the thick fear. This man had terrorized her, brutalized her sister. He was the unseen towering monster that had destroyed her life…

But he wasn’t unseen, unknown. Not anymore.

He was just a man. Delusional, yes. Mentally ill, without a doubt. Able to physically hurt her, yes, as her throbbing shins, arm, wrist, and nose could all attest.

But he was just a man, and Jakob and Walt were coming for her.

Vadisk whipped the car off the motorway. The last video they had of the kidnapper’s was from a camera about five kilometers behind them. Another traffic camera seven miles ahead showed no image of the vehicle, which meant it had exited somewhere in this twelve-mile stretch. They were well outside of Krakow now, surrounded by forested areas, the only sign of human habitation the four lanes of road snaking through the trees.

There were four possible exits between the two points. Two exits connected to slightly smaller, but well-traveled roads. Dimitri, the security minister of Hungary, was getting access to cameras along those roads now, since they weren’t looped in to the same traffic monitoring system as the major motorway. The third exit was the private driveway to a small luxury hotel nestled in among the trees. They’d stopped there first, though Jakob’s instincts were screaming at him that Axel wouldn’t have dared take Annalise someplace so public. Still, they’d stopped, flashed both Annalise’s and Axel’s pictures—Vadisk spoke conversational Polish and was able to ask questions—and when no one recognized Annalise or Axel, they’d jumped back into the car.

With Dimitri working on footage from the two larger roads, Vadisk had driven them to the fourth exit. A road just wide enough for two cars, but with flat shoulders where the trees had been cut back. This road was clearly less traveled, especially in winter.

According to Dimitri, it led to a popular campground deep in