Wrath's Storm: A Masters' Admiralty Novel

by Mari Carr

  Nikolett took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Vadisk, put together a team. I want to go to Odessa.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Annalise managed not to groan as Walt kneaded her good shoulder. Letting him know exactly how good that felt would hardly be appropriate with Admiral Varda, Vadisk, and a knight from Hungary, Maxim Kovalenko, seated around the table with her, Jakob, and Walt.

  They were at yet another hotel, this time in Odessa. Last night had been both physically and emotionally exhausting. As she’d said to Jakob and Walt, she was determined to focus on the here and now, rather than worry about the future, but that was easier said than done. Her heart was already beginning to crack and she was still with them. What would happen when the three of them had to say goodbye for good?

  They’d been woken up after too little sleep when Admiral Varda had called to inform her that she was taking a small team to Odessa, and Annalise was coming with her. Jakob had demanded to accompany her, as had Walt.

  She didn’t need Jakob’s protection anymore, but that fact didn’t make it any easier for her to accept that she could walk down a street without him. That freedom was still too new and she feared she would continue to see shadows everywhere. Maybe those shadows would never go away.

  It would take time for her to feel comfortable being alone. Old habits died hard, but the truth was she didn’t want to break the Jakob habit. Even though she didn’t need him as her bodyguard, she still wanted him—and Walt—with her, desperately.

  Vadisk flew them to Odessa in his six-seater helicopter, and they’d arrived by mid-morning. The flight hadn’t been the sort where she could sip wine while reviewing files, so it wasn’t until they’d reached the hotel, and the two-bedroom penthouse suite complete with the large dining room, that she’d gotten to look at the information about Zasha Romanov.

  Annalise had specifically told Admiral Varda that victimology was not a good basis for continued investigation because of the patronage partnership between the unsub and Petro. The unsub hadn’t chosen Josephine, and because they hadn’t had a chance to gather more information about the potential victim in Belgium, the only victim they could work for a victimology study was Alicja.

  Reminding Admiral Varda of these issues would be pointless, since they were here now. And since they were, maybe she, they, could do something to help find Zasha, assuming her disappearance wasn’t tied to the bratva, or voluntary, as the reports implied.

  Maxim rose from the table, phone in hand. He spoke briefly with the admiral in what she assumed was either Romanian or Ukrainian—though for the most part they’d been speaking English for Walt’s benefit. A moment later, Maxim walked out the door.

  “They’ve finished going through the footage from Krakow,” Vadisk announced, looking up from his computer. The poor man looked uncomfortable, hunched over the computer, his massive arms pulled in tight so he could type.

  “Facial recognition?” Nikolett asked.

  “Still running. With every database…” Vadisk shook his head.

  Walt took his hand from her good shoulder, raising it like he was in class. “Question.”

  Nikolett’s lips twitched. “Yes?”

  “You have to check every female resident in all of Europe?”

  “And parts of North Africa,” Vadisk said.

  Annalise cleared her throat. “Even if this has nothing to do with Josephine’s and Alicja’s murders, we may be able to help this investigation, and we can continue to work on the serial killer case.” Annalise gestured to Vadisk, who, unlike Maxim, had been focused on what was happening back at the Hungary headquarters rather than what was going on in Odessa.

  “Like I said, we’re here to take on all the bad guys,” Walt said cheerfully.

  Nikolett folded her arms, turning to stare out the window. From their luxury hotel near the seaside, they had a view of Odessa’s famous Duke de Richelieu Monument. The admiral of the Ottoman territory—they’d crossed the border into the other territory once they came within fifty kilometers of the Black Sea—had helped arrange for the hotel, and had janissaries on their way to meet them and assist, but it would take several hours as none were currently stationed in the part of Ukraine that belonged to Ottoman.

  “Budapest is sending over pictures.” Vadisk’s voice rumbled through the room. “But the Dublin team is still working.”

  Annalise put aside the police report she was reading on Zasha’s disappearance—she had to use a translation software, and that meant the information probably wasn’t perfect anyway.

  A moment later, a file appeared on her borrowed laptop. She opened it to find nearly a hundred still images and video clips, sorted and organized by the dozens of women they’d identified. There were different angles and variations in video and still image quality, and in far too many of them the women were wearing hoods and scarves. It had been cold the day Alicja disappeared.

  Annalise clicked on the first video, watching the forty-second clip that appeared to be from the exterior of a cafe, the main focus the small, deserted sidewalk seating area. Pedestrians were visible on the right-hand side of the frame.

  The door opened, and Jakob, seated beside her, rose, angling his body just slightly to put himself between her and the door. Annalise sucked in a breath, remembered terror clawing at her. But she wasn’t in danger. Axel was dead. Still, Jakob’s mannerism was setting off alarm bells.

  A second later, she saw why. Maxim had returned, bringing with him two strangers. The first was a tall man, though not quite as tall as Maxim, wearing an expensive silver suit, sans tie, shirt open at the neck. His face was hard, cold, but the way the skin was pinched at the corners of his eyes spoke of pain. Behind him was a man who might as well have had “bodyguard” tattooed on his forehead—black pants, T-shirt, and leather jacket, with a small clear earpiece easily visible thanks to his shaved head.

  Maxim led the newcomers to Nikolett, and the guy in the suit and she exchanged greetings, briefly shaking hands. Nikolett’s voice was softer than Annalise had ever heard it. Compassionate.

  She glanced at the newcomer, assessing for a moment, before whispering, just loud enough for Jakob and Walt to hear her. “Leonid Romanov, Zasha’s brother.”

  “How do you know?” Walt asked.

  “Nikolett is consoling him. He’s angry and afraid, for his sister. See it in his body language?”

  Walt nodded. “Damn. Now that you say it, yeah.”

  Vadisk must have overheard some of their conversation because he glanced at her, brows raised and clearly impressed.

  After Nikolett and Leonid exchanged a few more words, Maxim standing off to the side, the trio turned to the table.

  “Mr. Romanov, are you comfortable if we continue in English? Two of my team are German, the other American. It is the common language among us.”

  Leonid nodded. “I’m comfortable with English.”

  Nikolett caught Annalise’s eye, and there was a warning in her gaze. “Maxim and I have spoken with Mr. Romanov about our task force. And that, though we aren’t sure of a connection, we came to Odessa to look into his sister’s disappearance.”

  Ah, so that was the cover story.

  Annalise looked at Leonid, at the pain, fear, and rage he was barely hiding. They couldn’t give this man false hope, it would be too cruel.

  “Mr. Romanov, I want to caution you that our investigation may not link to your sister’s, and therefore, we won’t have any additional insight. There is no guarantee we can provide any assistance with finding your sister.”

  “I understand,” Leonid’s voice rumbled, low and pleasant despite the tension underlying the tone. “But any help you can give, I will take. The politsiya have given up on her because of me.”

  “Because of you?” Annalise asked, when no one else spoke.

  “I have enemies. I have done hard things in my life.”

  “That is why they think the bratva took her?” Vadisk asked.

  Leonid’s hands c
lenched into fists. Annalise watched with interest as he forced himself to relax, uncurling his fingers one by one. “Yes.”

  “You said you had copies of the police files,” Nikolett interjected.

  He nodded. “And my company did its own investigation. But missing persons is far different than the security we maintain at the port.”

  Vadisk, Maxim, Jakob, and the unnamed bodyguard all nodded as if they understood exactly what that meant.

  Leonid reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thumb drive, passing it to Nikolett.

  To Annalise’s surprise, Nikolett gave it to her. “He gathered surveillance footage from places along Krasnova Street, which is how his sister walks home from her office.”

  Annalise resisted the urge to once again remind Admiral Varda that this may have nothing to do with their case, and plugged in the thumb drive, copying the files before passing it over to Jakob, who did the same.

  Conversation turned to Zasha’s disappearance—the details of what they knew, what they didn’t know, and what the authorities had and hadn’t done. Annalise listened, ready to give her perspective, but it seemed that Maxim had some investigative experience, because he knew how an investigation should have been handled and was able to point out weak spots and mistakes.

  Seeing she wasn’t needed, Annalise yielded her seat at the table, going to sit on the designer couch with her laptop. Everything in the suite was elegant, designed in the classic French style.

  Out of curiosity more than anything, she watched the surveillance footage of Zasha, following her path home from camera to camera, until suddenly, she wasn’t there.

  Annalise’s eyes narrowed. Disappearing between one block and another, in a spot that just happened to be blind of any security cameras…well, that was a far more compelling similarity between the cases than pointing out that they were all white-collar missing brunettes.

  Annalise watched the videos a second time, this time studying the pedestrians. Leonid had clipped the footage to show the street at the exact time his sister had appeared on camera, but they needed to look at the footage for at least several hours beforehand. That was part of what was taking so long with the footage from Krakow and Dublin.

  The unsub was highly organized and patient, which meant she may have been waiting in the blind-spot area for hours, just waiting for her target to pass by.

  She checked the files Leonid had provided, finding the larger video files with the entire day’s footage. Raising her head, she looked at Jakob. After a moment, as if he could feel her watching him, he—and Walt—came over to her.

  “I need you to pull out clips from the videos for two hours before Zasha walks by,” she murmured.

  Jakob nodded and without a word went back to the table and his laptop.

  “You think they might be related after all?” Walt asked.

  “No one here is unbiased,” Annalise said. “I am trying not to let my desire for these to be connected, for us to have recent and actionable information on the unsub, cloud my objectivity.”

  “But maybe?” Walt raised his brows.

  “Maybe,” she agreed after a moment.

  Walt swallowed. “But if our killer has Zasha, she’s already dead.”

  Josephine had been taken and killed within twenty-four hours. There’d been no way to determine the date of death for Alicja due to the state of her remains, so there was no way of knowing how long she’d been held.

  Annalise started to say yes, that no matter what had actually happened to Zasha, she was most likely dead, but instead, she closed her mouth, thinking.

  “Admiral Varda’s instincts told her these cases were related. Now…now I think there’s a possibility she’s right.”

  “And you didn’t before?”

  “No.” Annalise paused as her computer dinged, the first edited video file starting to download as Jakob sent it over. “But now, it’s possible by a slim margin.” She opened the video file, setting it to play at triple speed. “And my instinct is telling me that Zasha might still be alive.”

  It was like being in an action movie. Actually, ever since Eric showed up covered in blood, Walt’s life had gone from boring if exhausting to action-packed and terrifying. But also romantic and sexy, so that part was cool…if temporary.

  Argh.

  Sadly, there wasn’t much he could do to distract himself from thoughts about the future—Annalise said she needed to review the video herself—so instead, he got her some aspirin, checked on Jakob, and ordered room service coffee. At least he was pretty sure he’d ordered coffee. The menu was, unsurprisingly, in Ukrainian or maybe Russian. Either way, it was in a Slavic language, with an alphabet Walt didn’t know, but the nice woman who answered the phone had seemed to understand his plea for coffee, sugar, and food. He was hopeful for a basket of rolls or something to snack on.

  When there was a knock at the door, the paranoid security-type people—so, basically everyone in the room but himself, Annalise, and the admiral—whipped their heads around.

  “I ordered room service,” Walt said.

  The bald guy who’d come in with Leonid was the one who actually opened the door, conversing with whomever was outside in terse tones. He stepped back to let two servers roll in carts bearing heavy trays, but stopped them just inside the door, checking under the tablecloths and domed lids of the plate covers. He even opened the coffee urn.

  Walt looked at Leonid, wondering exactly what this guy did that he needed a bodyguard who was even more paranoid and security conscious than Jakob. During their discussion, someone had mentioned he owned a company that handled unloading and loading cargo at the port of Odessa, which was one of the largest and busiest ports on the Black Sea.

  An Eastern European longshoreman boss. Right.

  The hotel staff set up an elegant silver coffee service as well as some light refreshments, including Black Sea mussels, goat cheese, seasonal grapes, and some thinly sliced, fresh baked bread.

  Walt made Annalise and Jakob each a cup of coffee and delivered them before going back to make them plates of snacks. He clasped Vadisk on the shoulder and asked him if he wanted anything, and then, since he sure as shit wasn’t being helpful with the investigation, he took everyone else’s orders.

  That done, Walt took his own cup of coffee and went to look out the window. He wondered if, somewhere out there right now, Zasha was suffering. Hurting.

  People became doctors because they wanted to ease suffering. He’d learned, long before his fellow doctors whose careers kept them in the relative safety of hospitals and medical offices, that no matter how hard he worked, no matter how dedicated he was, people would suffer and die. He could, would, help some of them, but he wouldn’t be able to help everyone he wanted to.

  If they found Zasha alive, he would be there. He wasn’t useful for much right now, in fact he was only there because he hadn’t wanted to be separated from Jakob and Annalise. Not when their time together was nearly over.

  A sharp inhale from Annalise brought his attention away from the view. Walt went over to the couch, sinking down beside her.

  The screen of her laptop was a mess of video windows, three or four of which were currently playing.

  “Whoa, what am I looking at?” Walt asked.

  “Wait, I don’t want to influence you.” Annalise clicked, then enlarged one of the videos.

  Walt watched the video feed of a random city street. Three people walked by—two men and a woman. He focused on the woman, leaning forward.

  She walked more slowly than the men, her hands in her pockets. Tall, with short blonde hair and a fluffy wool scarf wrapped around her neck and tucked into her jacket.

  “Now watch this one.”

  Annalise started another video. This clip was longer, with half a dozen people, two of which were women.

  And neither of whom was the tall blonde.

  Walt glanced at Annalise out of the corner of his eye. Maybe lack of sleep was getting to her. “What am I lookin
g at?” he asked again.

  “The woman.”

  “Uh, which woman? There were three different women.”

  “Were there?” Annalise arched a brow, the professor back in the saddle again.

  Walt leaned forward. Damn it, he was a good student. He’d pass this test. “Play them again.”

  The blonde from the first video looked wealthy—something about the way her coat fit, the perfect golden tan, and her haircut. She walked with her shoulders back, a slow sort of saunter. Walt motioned for Annalise to bring up the other video.

  The first woman in this one was a short brunette with her hair in a bun, wispy pieces framing her face. She wore a winter jacket and boots.

  The second was another brunette, her hair loose under a beanie-style winter hat. She wore a scarf wrapped around her neck, nearly covering the entire bottom half of her face.

  “The scarf,” Walt said. “The blonde woman was wearing a scarf, and so is this one. But they’re not the same height. I mean the hair could be a wig, but the height.”

  “You’re right that hair color can be changed with a wig. And height with the right kind of shoes. Don’t focus on what they look like. Watch how she moves. How she walks.” There was a tight excitement in Annalise’s voice. Jakob, who’d been leaning on the table to look at something Vadisk was doing, pushed up, coming to stand behind the couch and watch as Annalise played the videos again.

  This time Walt saw it. The first woman in the longer video wasn’t walking as fast as everyone else. There was an almost arrogant slowness to the way she moved that was at odds with her rather drab appearance. It was the tall blonde’s walk, and it had fit her appearance—wealthy, powerful, self-assured—when she was a blonde far more than when she was dressed as the brunette.

  “She also has one hand in her pocket,” Annalise said. “She’s wearing a glove on the other hand, so she clearly has gloves. My guess is she has something in that pocket she needs to hold onto. Either because she’s worried about losing or dropping it or because she needs it for reassurance.”