by Mari Carr
Jakob glanced at Ava, who was statue-still. In person she didn’t look like either of the women they’d seen on video. She was pale-skinned with large blue eyes and thin lips, pretty, but not so much that anyone would ever look twice at her.
Leonid had managed to use the crowbar to pop open the door of the cage. He dropped to his knees and hauled his sister out, wrapping her in his arms. She hugged him back, still holding the knife she’d somehow gotten ahold of. Even when her brother gave her the bottle of water, she didn’t let go of the weapon, instead taking the water with her free hand and desperately chugging it down, only to start retching a moment later.
Looking away to give her some privacy, however illusory it might be, Jakob caught sight of what Vadisk had been looking at in the corner.
Ten square feet of the room had been carefully tarped in plastic. Scalpels, butcher’s blades, and a small saw were laid out on a stainless steel tray. Heavy, black webbed straps and cuffs hung down from the ceiling.
Jakob looked back to where Zasha now clung to her brother, shaking, and he was grateful they’d made it in time. Saved Zasha from the same gruesome fate that had taken Josephine and Alicja.
If only they could have been there to save those women as well.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Annalise smiled and leaned forward, lowering her voice and using a you-can-tell-me-a-secret tone. “What’s your favorite food?”
Ava blinked, but returned the smile. It was the first time Annalise had managed to get her to react with anything other than frustrated tears or icy silence.
“Scones,” Ava said softly. “A fresh, warm scone with nice jam, maybe a bit of cream.”
“You’re making me hungry,” Annalise laughed softly. “A fresh scone sounds delicious. Mine is a really nice spinach salad. I know it’s boring, but I love a salad with walnuts and cranberries, maybe some cheese, onions. Well, a nice salad and Kartoffelpuffer—German potato pancakes.” Annalise leaned back in her chair, sighing a little. “My grandmother made the best kartoffelpuffer.”
Everything Annalise said was true. It was dangerous to lie to someone with a complex psychosis because often they were far better at spotting lies than a normal person would be. It was also dangerous to share personal information with them, but that was a risk she was willing to take.
“One of my family’s empregadas would make xima.”
The word sounded like “chi-mah”. Annalise nodded as if she understood, trusting the small concealed mic she wore would pick up the word.
“Comfort food,” Ava said softly. Then she raised her chin, and her whole demeanor changed. She went from soft and sad to bold and ruthless with nothing more than the way she held her shoulders and the angle of her chin.
The hairs on the back of Annalise’s neck rose, a primitive and instinctive response to being in the presence of an unpredictable predator. Outwardly, she made sure her expression didn’t change. Inwardly, she reminded herself that Jakob and Walt were in a room not far away, watching everything that was happening on a video feed and listening through the hidden mic she wore.
“I wasn’t raised to think things like chips and fried fish were comfort food. My parents were better than that.”
Now they were getting somewhere.
Annalise faked a grimace. “In Germany, there is too much fried food also. It is good that your parents protected you.” The choice of the word protect was a calculated risk. One that paid off.
Ava jerked and seemed to fold in on herself once more. “My parents did protect me.” She’d lowered her voice, ostensibly so that no one else would hear her.
Annalise had been very deliberate in how she’d set up the small room. A camcorder sat on the long built-in counter desk along one side of the as-yet-unfinished safe room. A small folding table and two chairs had been brought in, the tools and materials the construction crew was using hauled out.
They’d started out handcuffing Ava to the table, but Annalise had stopped them, demanding that she instead be cuffed to the chair with a chain that was long enough for plenty of slack. It wouldn’t do much to slow Ava down if she decided to attack, but seeing Ava shackled to the table had made Annalise have a flashback to the caravan, to being at Axel’s mercy.
Everyone had objected to that—what if Ava picked up the chair and started beating her with it—but there was a guard stationed just outside the door, and having someone in the room would destroy the trust she needed to build.
It was midafternoon now, nearly twenty-four hours after she’d spotted the similarities on the videos. They were back in Budapest. Getting everyone here, including Ava and a wounded Jakob, had taken some logistical planning, and a large, expensive helicopter.
Annalise suspected that Nikolett had also had to do some fast-talking or serious negotiations in order to get Leonid to agree to let them take custody of Ava. From what she’d seen of him, Leonid wasn’t the kind of man who let his enemies go. And based on what Walt had said about Zasha’s substantial injuries, it was even more surprising that Leonid had let them take Ava and helped arrange it so they could leave Odessa via the helipad at his company’s facility on the port.
Between Leonid and assistance from the Ottoman territory janissaries, who had arrived a few hours after everyone was hauled back to the hotel, they’d managed to leave Odessa in the early hours of the morning, before the sun rose.
Rather than going to downtown Budapest, Vadisk had flown them to Nikolett’s private residence in the Zugliget neighborhood to the east of Budapest.
The modern-style villa was lovely, but much of the inside was still under construction—though the exterior was done and the security systems were all up and running.
The safe room, which wasn’t yet fully functional, was now both prison cell and interrogation room. Jakob, Walt, Nikolett, and a few others who’d been working the case at the Hungary territory headquarters were in Nikolett’s large home office, which had secure phone and internet connections, and a live feed of everything going on in this room.
“That’s a parent’s job. To protect their children.”
“It’s not a parent’s fault if something bad happened,” Ava shot back, the predator back in her voice and posture.
The way she was vacillating between victim and predator was dazzling in how completely abnormal it was.
“Sometimes,” Annalise agreed. “Bad things happen that no one can stop. Accidents. Sickness. Other times the parents could have done more to protect—”
“My father wasn’t wrong! They needed him. Too many of them called themselves Christians, but they were bound for hell. My father was saving them.”
“How did he save them?”
“He taught them. Showed them the right way to be good. There were Zionists, Catholics.” She spit the words as if they were foul.
Her earpiece beeped quietly before beginning transmission.
“Empregada is the Portuguese word for servant,” Nikolett’s voice was tiny but clear. “We think the other word she said earlier is xima. It’s a porridge they serve in Mozambique, where upper classes speak Portuguese. No progress on her records.”
At least one of the forms Petro’s presumed patronage must have taken was to wipe away any trace of Ava’s past. They’d found her birth record in England, but then there was nearly no trace of her—only the odd record of her entering and exiting countries in South America and the Far East. Her immigration records within the EU had all been deleted.
Annalise stayed quiet, waited until some of the rage had seeped from Ava’s posture.
It was time to take another calculated risk, based on the information she had. “There aren’t many Anglican missionaries in Mozambique.”
Ava jerked as if struck. She turned away, shoulders hunched. The posture of someone who knew to protect their chest and stomach from incoming blows.
It was all but certain that Ava had suffered some kind of steady, sustained abuse in her childhood. It was rare for people with severe abnorma
l behavior, the kind that resulted in the psychopathy of a serial killer, to have a trauma-free past.
“How old were you when your father took you to Mozambique?” Annalise asked softly.
“He was called when I was four. We went with him. To support him. That was our duty.”
“Duty? But you were just a child.”
“I was more. God had a purpose for me.” Little by little, Ava started to unfold, morphing once again.
“Is your purpose something you can talk about?”
Ava looked down her nose at Annalise. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh? Why not? I’m a pretty smart person.”
“This isn’t about intelligence. It’s about moral fortitude.”
Annalise took a breath and reminded herself that this was police interrogation, not a diagnostic interview. No matter how fascinating Ava would be to diagnose. That job would be left to others, mostly like a psychology team with whatever government or prison system Ava ended up in.
But before they could turn her over to those authorities, there was information the Masters’ Admiralty wanted.
Annalise had rarely been the one to conduct interrogations when she worked at the Kripo. Usually she was where Jakob and Walt were now, on the outside of the interrogation room, watching, listening, and assisting with ongoing interview strategies.
Of the people currently in Nikolett’s house, she was the most qualified.
“How do you know if someone has moral fortitude?” Annalise asked.
A genuine, peaceful smile graced Ava’s lips. “I can see it.”
“What does it look like?”
“It’s a halo around them. I first saw it on my mother.”
“Your mother has a halo.”
“Not has. Had. My mother had a halo.”
“My condolences on the loss of your mother.”
“No need. She sits at the feet of my father, who sits at the right hand of God.”
“Did she die when you were young?” It was time to start pushing Ava, and asking more specific questions would give the other woman fewer opportunities to spout rote religious statements.
“I was ten.”
“And how did she die?”
“They killed her.”
“How did they kill her?”
Ava jerked, as if she hadn’t expected that question. She’d probably expected “who killed her?” which was why Annalise hadn’t asked that.
Ava’s eyes seemed to glitter with an emotion Annalise wasn’t ready to name.
“They tortured my mother. Raped her. Cut off one hand, then the other. Then they cut off her head.”
Annalise nodded, keeping her expression sympathetic. It wasn’t hard.
“I watched. With my father. They made us watch, and I begged him to do what they wanted so they’d stop hurting my mother. He wouldn’t. He was a righteous man.”
“Your mother’s halo, was that because of how she died?”
“No, the halo appeared before. When they started to hurt her. When she died, it was so bright it blinded me.”
“Did the woman in Odessa, Zasha, have a halo?”
Ava nodded. “Yes. Faintly, but it was there.”
“Is that why you chose her?”
“Why ask when you know the answer?” Ava snapped.
“Because I don’t know. I’m listening to you and trying to understand. Can you explain, help me understand?” Annalise reached out, put her hand on Ava’s forearm, squeezing gently.
“The halo is faint and will fade if I don’t help them.”
“What you’re doing is helping people to be like your mother. To have moral fortitude, like she did.”
“Yes. If I didn’t, their halo might vanish. They have the right to ascend with the grace of angels.”
“Everyone you helped…they all had halos?”
“Yes.”
“Even Josephine O’Connor?” Annalise reached into her pocket, pulled out a small photo of Josephine and held it up. “She lived in Dublin.”
Ava glanced at the photo, and then reached for it. Annalise put it back in her pocket.
“She did,” Ava assured her.
“But you didn’t pick her, did you?” Annalise asked. “Someone else gave you her name.”
Ava’s shoulders straightened and she raised a brow. “Oh?”
“There’s no need to protect him. He’s dead.”
“No,” Ava said slowly. But before Annalise could reply, she said, “I knew that. I knew he’d ascended.”
Annalise reached into her other pocket, taking out the picture of Petro. “Who was he to you? A friend?”
“Melech understood me.” She reached for the picture, and this time Annalise let her have it.
“Melech,” Annalise repeated.
Ava studied the picture of Petro. There was no longing in the way she looked at it. Whatever had been between them hadn’t been romantic.
“He could see the halos too.” Ava passed the picture back. “He saw it on Josephine. It took me time, but I also saw.”
“But he told you what to do with her body, didn’t he? So he did more than just see the halos. He told you how to…help them.”
“If he saw them first, then I had to listen.” Ava stared at the wall, seemingly lost in thought.
“Melech is a Hebrew name, but also translates to ‘king’,” Nikolett said in her ear. “Subtle.”
“You had to do what he said, because he identified Josephine first. But you would have done it differently, wouldn’t you? If you’d seen her first.”
Ava looked back to Annalise, frowning. “It wasn’t proper, what happened to her.” Ava touched her cheek.
“It wasn’t dignified,” Annalise agreed, noting that when it came to Josephine, Ava was speaking about it as if someone else had done the action.
“Dignity is not… A body isn’t important.” It sounded like Ava was trying to convince herself. “My mother’s body had to be left so it could return to the earth.” Ava swallowed. “Even so, I treat them with care.”
“Yes, I saw how you cared for Alicja. The box you used was lovely,” Annalise murmured. “But with Josephine, he didn’t think there should be anything, did he? You chose to do more than he’d told you to. To care for her.”
“Melech didn’t fully understand. He wasn’t there to see my mother.”
“Of course not. It makes sense he wouldn’t know as much as you. What did he suggest you do with the other pieces of Josephine?”
“I didn’t have time to do what I needed with her.” Ava shook her head. “So I gave her body to the fire, so it could baptize her.”
Annalise’s heart hurt for Eric, and Josephine’s brother, that there would never be any additional remains they could bury. None of what she was feeling showed on her face as she kept her expression calm and slightly sympathetic. “That must have been hard, to build a fire big enough to burn a body without anyone seeing.”
Ava’s attention snapped to Annalise. “Please don’t be obtuse. I didn’t build a…a pyre.” Another sneer. “Like a pagan. I put her pieces in the hospital’s incinerator.”
“Hospital?” Annalise’s heart was pounding, and through the earpiece she thought she heard muttering, quickly shushed.
“St. James’s Hospital. In Dublin. That’s where I was stationed.”
“Stationed?”
Ava looked down her nose at Annalise. “You’re pretending to know things, but really you don’t know anything important.”
“Then why don’t you tell me? Tell me what you were doing at St. James’s Hospital.”
“Locum work.” Ava smiled. “I’m an orthopedic surgeon.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was late when Walt returned to the hotel suite in Budapest with Jakob and Annalise. They’d cut the interrogation of Ava short after she’d dropped the bomb about being an orthopedic surgeon. They needed time to gather more intel from Leonid and Zasha before they continued with the questioning.
&nb
sp; It had been a hell of a week. He, Jakob, and Annalise had spent the previous night in Odessa together, but they’d done nothing more than climb into bed, sleeping restlessly. Jakob had been in a great deal of pain from the laceration to his arm—the subcutaneous cut had only required external stitches—and Annalise had never had time to properly heal—physically and mentally—from her time with Axel.
Walt was beginning to think it was a good thing he was around. The two of them seemed to need a full-time physician on hand.
He’d spent more than a few anxious moments in the car on the way to the house outside Odessa after learning Jakob had been wounded. While the knife had been lodged deeply in Jakob’s upper arm, after careful bandaging, Walt had been able to remove it safely.
When he’d seen the knife wound through the grainy feed of Vadisk’s body cam, he’d been concerned about vascular damage, so he had been relieved to discover the knife hadn’t struck an artery. An injury like that could have effectively ended Jakob’s career as a Ritter of the territory.
Leonid’s bodyguard had been frighteningly prepared when they arrived at the house where Zasha had been held. He’d helped Walt set up a makeshift field hospital in one of the upstairs bedrooms, supplying everything he needed from a first-aid perspective—gauze, nylon sutures, needle, antibiotics.
They’d been awakened this morning in Odessa an hour or so before dawn by Vadisk, banging on their hotel room door, telling them they were all flying back to Hungary to question the serial killer.
It wasn’t until they’d returned to Budapest that Walt had been able to take an X-ray of Jakob’s arm. Dimitri had delivered the portable machine from the conference room in headquarters to Nikolett’s home at Walt’s request. It had been the second time in as many days that Walt had made use of the portable X-ray machine. As he’d hoped, the bone in Jakob’s arm—like Annalise’s—was fine, no fractures or breaks.
Walt felt like he was running on fumes, waiting for the next catastrophe to strike. And given the way Annalise walked over to the couch like a zombie, dropping down heavily, he’d say she felt the same way.