Her confidence in her abilities had taken a hit as well because she’d been unable to paint a picture of him. Jakob told her time and again—in his quiet, taciturn way—that she shouldn’t lose faith in herself, insisting the problem was that she was too close to the case.
After the bug box, she’d been surrounded by guards, both the police and the Ritter, but they couldn’t keep that up around the clock. There weren’t enough resources to guard her, and a box full of bugs was hardly dangerous. Disturbing, yes, but not dangerous. Months passed, and when no more boxes arrived, only the odd letter, the task force was disbanded.
Except Jakob. Jakob stayed.
He was dark-skinned with close-cropped hair that was as no-nonsense as the man himself. He had thick eyelashes, an unexpectedly soft, almost feminine feature that she was slightly obsessed with.
Jakob had helped her move in secret into the vacant house adjacent to her own, installing a heavy door in the shared wall so she could walk in her front door, then immediately retreat to her hidden sanctuary, safe behind a steel door.
She’d lived that way for nearly a year, hiding within her own home. Once or twice a week, Jakob came and opened her mail. There were always new letters from her stalker—two to four per week. Jakob would check them, open them safely within a special box with built-in heavy gloves, then pass them to her once they were cleared. She read each one.
They’d grown steadily more explicit and hate-filled.
There were a lot of details in those letters that told her the man was still watching her, and he’d identified most of her security measures. The outdoor cameras on her home were routinely destroyed, each time capturing only glimpses of someone wielding a paintball gun. Even the hidden cameras failed to uncover anything because—beneath the hood—he always wore a balaclava, even in the summer. There had also been threats to drivers with the security service she started using for transportation, the restaurant down the street who sometimes delivered food, and her grocery store.
Little by little, he had whittled down her world until she never went anywhere, and only felt safe at work inside the police station or in her secret second home with its steel doors and barred windows. And the secret of where she actually slept was one thing he’d never figured out.
Then, two years ago, and after years of dealing with the stalker, the bottom had fallen out of her world when the man pursuing her had attacked her twin sister.
Annalise had always been the serious one, quiet and studious, while her sister, Adele, had been the easygoing one, happy, fun.
Adele lived and worked in Tokyo, living an interesting, glamorous life there. She rarely came home to Germany, though they spoke at least every other week. Annalise hadn’t wanted to worry Adele. Hadn’t wanted to mar the happiness she saw in her sister’s face. Once it was over, she’d planned to tell Adele, but not until the man was caught.
Adele also loved surprises, which was why Annalise hadn’t known Adele had tacked a few days onto a business trip and decided to come visit. Though they lived continents apart, Adele had a key to Annalise’s house.
Adele arrived late one night and let herself into Annalise’s house, ready to surprise her twin.
She hadn’t locked the door behind her.
And Annalise, safely asleep next door, hadn’t heard her sister’s alarm when the stalker followed her in. Hadn’t heard her scream as she was raped.
Once the stalker realized he had the wrong sister, in a fit of fury, he cut off all of Adele’s hair, telling her that it was so he could distinguish between them in the future. Adele had crawled to a phone and called the authorities when it was over.
Annalise hadn’t known anything was wrong until Jakob, who’d been alerted when an ambulance was dispatched to her address, had called her.
Her sister’s light had been extinguished after the brutal attack.
Since then, the sister Annalise had adored and wished she could be like was gone, replaced by a silent, angry stranger who stared at her with accusatory eyes. Before the rape, they’d been more than sisters, closer than the closest of best friends, but now Adele refused to speak to her, to see her. She had completely shut her out, claiming she couldn’t look at Annalise without remembering the rape, without remembering what had happened to her.
And Adele, rightly, blamed Annalise for not telling her or their parents what was going on. If Adele had known, she wouldn’t have made a surprise visit. If she’d known, she would have been more careful.
If, if, if.
After the attack, the German admiral, Dolph Eburhardt, insisted Annalise once more have full-time protection. The reinvigorated task forces had been sure they would be able to catch him, using evidence from Adele’s attack.
Jakob had been assigned as her bodyguard, a role he’d already been playing. A job he had taken very seriously since then.
Even after the trail ran cold.
Even after every lead had been followed, every possibility explored.
Even after she’d given up her job at the Kripo, no longer able to effectively perform her duties, her confidence and independence both ground to dust. She’d lost her objectivity and the ability to compartmentalize, which was necessary in her line of work.
Annalise was perfectly aware her one-sided longing for Jakob was most likely driven by the fact the two of them had been in close contact for an extended period of time and her interactions with other men had whittled down to practically nil. The only other men she conversed with were colleagues from the university and her male students.
Clinically, she knew the “why” behind her feelings, and it was more than just proximity and a lack of other people who could serve as suitable prospective romantic partners. It was quite natural for people to develop feelings for either their caregivers or rescuers, and he was both. He’d served as her Prince Charming and white knight and was the only person who really knew her anymore.
Jakob, a strong, silent presence, had stayed by her side as her life changed. And now, because she was meeting with someone she didn’t know, he was here.
“I know you have other duties to attend to, Jakob.”
He put his arms behind his back in parade rest. His standard pose and one she was very familiar with. He didn’t say anything, but the body language spoke for him.
I’m not going to let you meet a strange man on your own.
She sighed, wishing she had the courage to insist Jakob leave. In truth, she hadn’t slept well last night, anxious about this afternoon’s meeting. She’d been surprised when an American medical doctor, Walt Hayden, had contacted her. The email said he wanted to talk to her about the profile of a serial killer he was tracking.
Why was a doctor tracking a serial killer?
She’d forwarded the message to Jakob, and the Ritter had run background checks. Dr. Hayden ran a clinic in Africa, so maybe the local police force was overwhelmed and he’d stepped in.
Still, why would he come to her?
There were plenty of Americans he could have gone to. Maybe the suspect was a German national or someone she’d profiled before.
She’d tried to tell him she didn’t do that sort of work anymore, even going so far as to give him the names of other profilers in the Kripo who could assist him, but Dr. Hayden had insisted that it be her.
After retiring from the Kripo shortly after her sister’s attack, she’d accepted a position at Heidelberg University, about an hour south of Frankfurt. Her life had fallen into a comfortable, if boring, routine that consisted of her ping-ponging between her new Fort Knox-like home on the university grounds—and therefore monitored by university security and protected by the very fact that the university was never really quiet, with students constantly coming and going even late into the night—and her office. Her office was in the psychology building, which was next door to the lecture hall she used, both a seven-minute walk from her faculty housing.