by Mari Carr
People replied in murmurs and nods.
“If you’re tired, take a break. Sleep. Eat.” She smiled. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
Instead of looking at her with derision, or maybe contempt, her people smiled back at her, some nodding. Having the respect of not only her peers, but the people under her command and care, was still novel.
Prior to her position as an admiral for the Masters’ Admiralty, she’d been a politician. She’d been thought of as a ball buster, making waves in the National Assembly by taking a strong stance in the opposition party. Nikolett had spent too many years being called a bitch—either behind her back or to her face—during her time in politics, for doing the same things her male peers did that got them labeled intrepid or innovative.
She stopped in the second conference room to deliver the same message—thanking everyone and reminding them to stop and rest, eat when necessary. In here, a printer had been set up, and stills from the various surveillance videos the team was scanning were posted on the walls—one wall for Krakow, one for Dublin. A third was covered in Post-it notes all related to victimology. Because the killer most likely hadn’t picked Josephine so much as had her name suggested by Petro, Annalise had told them that any study of victimology might be futile at best, and misleading at worst. Still, one of the harcos who’d come in to help had insisted on starting a victimology study.
All these images were also being run through facial recognition, where possible. As it was explained to her earlier, even the most advanced facial recognition needed a decent photograph of the person in order to analyze as many of the nodal points on the face as possible to create the facial signature. Then the facial signature was converted into a mathematical formula that was compared to others.
They were sourcing security camera feeds from both public and private sources—traffic cameras, security feeds from banks and restaurants. None of those were mounted at eye level, many had low pixel numbers, and those factors combined with the angles meant there were relatively few faces they’d actually be able to run. The only reason Dimitri had been able to use facial recognition to help find Dr. Fischer’s stalker was because the Ritter had told them to check with passport control for any German nationals. That had meant a small pool of potentials, and allowed the less-than-ideal still image to render a match that it wouldn’t otherwise have selected.
So far there were no matches between the two sets of pedestrians—aka, potential serial killers.
They’d find something. They would.
Nikolett went to her office, closing the door behind her. Her office was the same size as Nyx’s, but instead of a conference table, she had a couch and two armchairs, perfect for less formal meetings.
That had been deliberate. Nikolett knew she could come across as too aggressive, too outspoken and demanding. Again, if she’d been a man, and older, those words would have been “commanding” and “decisive.”
So when she had a meeting in her office, they sat in the deliberately informal space.
It had the added benefit of giving her someplace to sleep if she worked too long.
Her vice admiral and security minister might work long hours, but Nyx and Dimitri had people to go home to. People who made sure they ate and slept. People who brought balance to their lives.
Nikolett took off her earrings, grabbed a makeup wipe out of her drawer, and removed her long-wear lipstick. Her mascara was waterproof and she didn’t want to deal with it, so she would just have to hope it survived.
Then she went to one of the wide wooden filing cabinets and pulled out a fluffy blanket. It was pink and soft and matched nothing else in her office or her life. She loved it.
Nikolett wrapped the blanket around herself and collapsed on the couch, head pillowed on her arm. She closed her eyes, relaxed her shoulders, and…
Was no longer tired.
With an aggravated sigh, she rolled onto her back and fished under the blanket, digging her phone out of her pocket. She’d been ignoring it, but as she looked at the dozens of waiting messages, she grinned.
Each of the other eight admirals had texted, with messages ranging from, “Thank you for the information” to “What new information do you have? What’s going on?”
Nikolett cackled quietly.
She could have kept the information Dr. Fischer had brought her quiet, but she’d had a much better idea. After checking in with Sophia, who was the acting Fleet Admiral, and Arthur, to make sure he agreed with her reasoning for her keeping the case, Nikolett had reached out to the other seven admirals and let them know that she and her territory were actively investigating who had murdered Josephine O’Connor and that they could confirm it was a serial killer.
That hadn’t just been about sharing information—something she was pushing for the territories to do more openly, rather than each acting in isolation and in perceived competition with each other.
No, letting the admirals know, and then asking them to pass on any information they might have that could help—including names of any women who’d been murdered or gone missing in their territories—had served a second purpose.
She wanted word to spread. She wanted the fleet admiral to resurface and come to her.
The fleet admiral had decided to shirk his duties and disappear. Yes, it had been in a quest for justice for Josephine, whom popular gossip suggested had been his lover. As noble and romantic as that was, it was also stupid.
He’d left Sophia in charge, but his instructions had been so brief that her authority was undefined and amorphous. Their society was on unstable ground. The revelation that one of the admirals had been their greatest enemy, and that his death hadn’t eliminated threats such as the Bellator Dei, had only served to deepen that unease.
Though she knew the Spartan Guard had been looking for the fleet admiral, he’d evaded them, and possibly would continue to evade them. The fleet admiral needed to come back and either resign his position or actually do his job.
She intended to be the one to tell him because, though he outranked her, she had no qualms about questioning his decisions and actions. Her oath of obedience no longer came with a side of silence and caution.
The time to act was now.
Before more people died.
No one else seemed to be willing to call the Viking on his bullshit.
She responded to each of the messages with a brief update, plus a slightly longer one for both Arthur and Hande, whom she considered her closest allies. The Spartan Guard would hear through a less formal, but just as effective mode of communication—Dimitri’s husband, Mateo would call his former compatriots and fill them in.
When she was done, she stuck her phone back into her pocket and settled in to try to get some sleep. The fleet admiral had been hiding for long enough. Whether it took days or weeks, he’d hear about what she was doing, and he was going to come to her.
“I can see I’m going to have to learn German or forever be in the dark in the bedroom with you two,” Walt joked as he rolled to his side to look at his lovers. A small voice in the back of his head reminded him that there wasn’t a forever with them. There wouldn’t even be a next week.
He pushed the dark thoughts aside.
Annalise had curled up facing him, Jakob spooning her from behind. The only word to describe their faces was exhausted bliss. And yet, despite the whirlwind of the past few days, none of them seemed anxious to go to sleep.
Perhaps because they knew their time together was fleeting.
Annalise gave a breathy laugh. “Let’s see. I told you to hurry up and Jakob was calling someone a son of a bitch.” She sighed contentedly. “I can’t believe I’m still awake. I should be exhausted after that amazing sex combined with the past few days,” Annalise admitted, her thoughts mirroring his own.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Walt concurred. “It’s just…I don’t want to waste a second of this, you know?”
Jakob pushed up so that he could give Annalise, then
Walt, quick kisses. “Maybe there’s a way…”
When his words drifted off, Walt knew there wasn’t an answer to this. There was no happy ending here. Not for the three of them.
Jakob and Annalise were members of the Masters’ Admiralty. That meant their spouses weren’t theirs to choose. And even if, by some stroke of amazing luck, the admiral of Germany put them together in a trinity, Walt wouldn’t be there with them.
“Why did Eric come to you in Libya?” Jakob asked Walt.
“As I said, our paths crossed when he was following a lead about Josephine’s killer. He walked into my clinic, covered in someone else’s blood. But that wasn’t the first time we’d met. We’d met once before. In America. He pissed off the Grand Master of the Trinity Masters by offering me and my siblings membership to the Masters’ Admiralty.”
Annalise shifted to her back, then sat up.
“The Grand Master?” Annalise asked. “That’s the leader of the American society, right?”
Walt winced. “Damn. Yeah. I’m sort of shit when it comes to keeping all this secret society stuff secret. That’s not something y’all knew?”
“Our knowledge of the American society is fairly limited. I suspect the admirals know a great deal more,” Annalise explained. “The Trinity Masters sort of falls in the same category as your American IRS. We know they exist, but because they don’t impact our lives, we don’t bother to learn much about them.”
“My brothers, Langston and Oscar, both recently joined the Trinity Masters, and I’ve made a promise to the leader—they call her the Grand Master, which is not as cool as fleet admiral if you ask me—that once Eric and I catch Josephine’s killer, I will return to join as well.” Walt hadn’t really considered that promise a hardship at the time. His brothers had joined and he’d intended to follow suit. Now, however… Now there was nothing he wanted to do less.
“You mentioned that before…so you’re really promised to join the Trinity Masters?” Annalise asked.
Walt sighed, swallowing heavily. He’d always made it his goal to live a good life, one where he could crawl into bed each night, close his eyes, and not have any regrets. And for the most part, he’d managed to do just that.
Until now.
He should never have made that promise to Juliette because returning to America and pledging his life to the Trinity Masters was something he would truly regret.
“I am,” he said at last.
“All of us knew, going into this,” Annalise said, her voice quiet and sad, “that it couldn’t last.” She looked at Jakob. “You and I…”
“The stalker is gone,” Jakob said.
“Which means your reason for being with me is gone.”
Jakob frowned and shook his head. “Annalise, I haven’t been assigned to protect you for a very long time. I wasn’t with you just because of Axel. I was with you because that was where I wanted to be. I love you.”
She smiled. “I love you too, but we can’t steer our destinies any more than Walt can. The admiral will put us in trinities that he chooses.”
Jakob didn’t respond to that, not at first. Walt didn’t believe it was the silent stoic returning as much as Jakob was weighing what he said next.
“Perhaps. But what if we talk to the admiral together? Plead our case.”
Annalise glanced at Walt. “We could, but…”
“But Walt wouldn’t be with us.” Jakob scrubbed his hand over his close-cropped hair in frustration. “He’s a part of us now. Mist! I can’t stand this. Can’t stand the thought of losing both of you. I’ve spent years dreaming of this moment with you, Annalise, never imagining we’d be together. And now that we’ve found Walt…I never knew love could feel like this. So intense. So right. So perfect.”
Though the sheer agony in Jakob’s tone cut deep, Walt was thrilled that Jakob no longer held back with them. “I feel the same way,” Walt admitted. “I’ve spent the last six months watching my brothers fall head over ass in love, wondering if something was missing inside me, some vital piece, because I’d never experienced anything even close to what they described feeling for their partners. Now? Well, now, I get it.”
Annalise turned to her back, taking their hands in hers. “Let’s not talk about the end tonight, please. I’ve spent the last four years fearing what may happen in the future. For right now, I want to live in the present. I’m happy here. It’s been so long, so damn long…”
“You’re right,” Walt said, squeezing her hand. “Now isn’t the time to worry about what’s to come. Let’s steal as much joy as we can during the time we have left together. Let’s make it all count.”
Jakob placed a soft kiss on the side of Annalise’s head. “Let’s make it count,” he repeated.
With that decision made, sleep came much easier and quickly.
Walt pushed away every other concern, focusing only on his happiness, a happiness so big, he was surprised he could hold it all.
When he closed his eyes, he drifted away with a smile on his face, his dreams the sweetest he’d ever had.
Nikolett rolled off the couch, unable to untangle herself from the blanket in time to make it graceful. She landed in a heap, struggled inelegantly, and finally unwrapped herself. Bouncing to her feet, she threw off the blanket. Panting, she looked around to make sure her office was empty and no one had seen her looking ridiculous. No one. Good.
Nikolett cleared her throat, tugged down her shirt, and smoothed back her hair.
She wobbled for a moment—damn it, naps always made her feel odd—then folded and stowed the blanket before going to her desk.
Needing a minute, Nikolett jiggled her desktop computer awake and opened major news sites in Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, and the Ukraine. She was fluent in Hungarian—her native language—English, and Romanian. She had basic conversational language skills in Ukrainian and Bulgarian and was working toward both verbal and written fluency.
Pulling a small toiletries bag out of her desk, she scanned the headlines as she applied some moisturizer and brushed the sleep tangles out of her hair. She’d take a few more minutes to herself, and then she’d go back into the conference room and—
Nikolett’s eyes narrowed, then widened as she clicked on “more” to keep reading an article. It wasn’t one of the top news articles—the story had been toward the bottom of the homepage on the Ekspres, a major Ukrainian newspaper, which she’d had the computer translate since she wasn’t up for trying to muddle through it.
Twenty-seven-year-old Zasha Romanov, an international trade lawyer and native of Odessa, had been missing for four days, last seen leaving her office in a city-center building.
Nikolett clicked over to read the original article from the local Odessan newspaper, but it was in Russian. Sadly, her Russian was terrible, and though predominantly ethnically Ukrainian, Russian was the main language in Odessa, as it was along much of the coast of the Black Sea.
Nikolett shook her head, telling herself to calm down. Odessa was a large city, but not on the scale of Krakow or Dublin, and it didn’t have a large English-speaking population. She glanced at the picture of Zasha—brown hair, light gray or blue eyes. Brown hair was the only similarity between her and the other victims. In fact, brown hair and a white-collar job were some of the only commonalities they’d been able to put together for victimology.
And Zasha fit both of those.
Nikolett couldn’t ignore this tense, tight feeling. Maybe it was a product of lack of sleep. Maybe she was hoping for there to be similarities because she wanted to find and stop this killer. Hesitating for only a moment, she quickly tapped the keys to translate the article, then searched for other articles, in languages she did know, on the Zasha Romanov disappearance.
Her printer whirred to life and Nikolett snatched up the papers as she stood.
Zasha had seemingly vanished, and it appeared the authorities were ready to say she’d fled the country for unspecified reasons. One article included a quote from her brot
her, a former Ukrainian Navy officer, now CEO of a major stevedoring company based out of the port of Odessa, vehemently denying that his sister was connected with any criminal activities and insisting that she had no reason to flee.
Nikolett marched into the conference room, sweeping her gaze around. Grigoris and Nyx were gone, Dimitri was slumped in a chair in the corner, apparently asleep, but Vadisk was there, his massive body looking ridiculous hunched over a tiny laptop. Nikolett thrust the papers at him.
Vadisk had apparently been concentrating so hard he hadn’t heard her approach. Startled, he reached out and grabbed her wrist, starting to jerk her forward before he realized what he was doing. Nikolett didn’t show any outward reaction, though internally she yelped in surprise and a little fear.
“Admiral. Sorry.” Vadisk grimaced and released her.
She waited, still holding out the papers. After a moment, he took them and started to read. His brows drew together, and after what felt like far too long he looked up. “It could be, but they don’t speak English in Odessa.”
Nikolett let out a long breath. “My exact thoughts, but the similarities were enough that for a second—”
“They do.” Maxim Kovalenko, seated at the other end of the table, was looking at them. Nikolett turned her full attention to the harco, who’d just recently accepted a position as a knight. The Ukrainian man was tall and lean, at least in comparison to Vadisk. A former Spetsnaz operative for the SSU’s Alpha Group, Maxim was quietly dangerous, fiercely loyal, and deaf and blind on his right side, though no one would know it based on his behavior. The disability had forced him out of the Alpha Group, and he’d been consulting for corporate security firms before she’d asked him to step up as a harco.
“They do?” she asked.
“Many, maybe most, people in Odessa speak some English, because of the tourism, and TV, internet.”
“Who would know that?” Vadisk asked.
Maxim was quiet for a moment, seeming to consider his answer. “Anyone who has been to Odessa. I believe the guidebooks, websites, they say you can get by speaking only English there.”