“When? How?” Walt was both baffled and terrified—the feeling reminded him a bit of being in med school.
“Jakob, get them out of here,” Eric called back. He was almost to the street. “And keep them safe.”
Then the fleet admiral disappeared around the corner.
Jakob dropped the broom and, without a word, went to the other side of Annalise, taking her hand while Walt still had an arm around her shoulder. She was pale and breathing too fast.
They heard a commotion in the kitchen.
Jakob looked at them. “Run.”
Chapter Six
It was a testament to exactly how worried he was about Annalise that Jakob didn’t object to how Walt’s hand had rested on her shoulder during the car ride. He slid out of the armored, chauffeured car he’d called to pick them up after they’d taken basic evasive maneuvers, walking in a corkscrewing circle around Frankfurt. There’d been no sign of the people from the restaurant following them, but he’d opted to have a security service pick them up just in case and take them to his home, which he considered to be one of the most secure residences in Frankfurt.
A home he’d bought and remodeled for Annalise.
Because he was a stupid fucking fucker who was in love with a woman too good for him. Over his ears in love.
Years in intelligence work and then as a Masters’ Admiralty Ritter hadn’t beaten the stupid out of him.
His grandmother, if she were still alive, would have smacked him on the back of the head and called him an Arsch mit Ohren. Oma had never minced words, never hesitated to tell him when he was acting like a complete idiot. And God knew an arsch mit ohren was what he felt like. He was a butt with ears.
Walt guided Annalise up the steps to the front door. Jakob keyed in the code on the lock with one hand and subtly pressed his palm to the hidden scanner in the doorframe. It clicked open and he swept in, quickly checking and then disarming the security system before turning and motioning for Walt to guide Annalise inside.
She looked pale, even paler than her typical light complexion, with a gray undertone to her skin, set off by the darkness of her hair. It was pulled back today, the way she wore it when she was in her office at the university or teaching. But he’d seen her with her hair down, watched her scrub her fingers through it after releasing it from a tight bun. For a moment, she’d have glorious just-fucked hair, and then she’d smooth it down, tuck it behind her ears.
More than once, after she’d fallen asleep on the couch while he kept watch, he would crouch down and brush back any pieces that fell over her face.
Verdammt! He was no better than her stalker.
He was completely aware of exactly how ridiculously stupid he was, how creepy as fuck it was that he loved to watch her sleep, but that didn’t stop him. He knew she felt safer when he was there.
And Annalise’s feelings had become the single-most important thing in his life.
It was why his very precious free time was almost all spent with her or trying to ensure her safety in some way. Any moment he had where the vice admiral, who was in charge of the Ritter, didn’t need him to be doing something else, Jakob was playing bodyguard for Annalise.
Sometimes, when he sat near her, either working on his own computer or watching TV while she graded papers, he could pretend they were a couple, relaxing together. And when they were done, they’d go to bed together. Their bed.
The bed in this house, in the bedroom he’d remodeled with her in mind.
He’d bought and redone an entire fucking house for a woman who would never live in it.
Verdammter Mist!
Arrrrgh.
“Okay, what do we do now?” Walt was looking around the foyer. Jakob had sanded down the exposed beams and varnished them himself, nearly breaking his fool neck when he leaned too far back and fell off the damn ladder.
“Come inside.” Jakob motioned them through the door on the right.
The house was old but large, though by modern standards, the rooms were small. It sat in the middle of a large plot of land with trees that hid it from view on all sides.
Most of the trees had cameras, infrared sensors, and motion detection tech mounted to the trunks and disguised to look like bark. He’d toyed with the idea of adding automatic ground-level flamethrowers that would ignite when the motion or infrared sensors were tripped, but his beta test had resulted in several flaming bunnies that still haunted his nightmares.
The room he led them into was a small living space with two narrow windows on either side of a stone fireplace. There were three leather and wood armchairs, each with matching footstools, in a semicircle facing the fire.
In his deranged fantasy life, when he and Annalise were married and living here, there was always a shadowy third person—their third—so he’d made sure there were three chairs in this cozy little room. A cozy room with bulletproof glass windows and access to one of the seven safe rooms.
A second closed door led to the dining room, and beyond that, the kitchen, which he’d enlarged considerably, since he knew she liked to sometimes work at the kitchen counter for a change of scenery. The inset marble block in one section of the counter was for baking, since she’d told him marble worked best for pastry making because it stayed cold.
The urge to say all these things, to give her—well, them, since Walt was here—a tour was so strong, he had to bite the inside of his cheek. He wanted to tell them that the chairs were custom made by a local furniture company. That he’d repaired the chimney for this fireplace himself and re-mortared the stone. Tell her, them, about the security system and his Oma’s homemade quilt that covered the trinity-sized bed in the master suite.
Instead, he pointed at the chairs. “Sit.”
Yeah, that was better.
Walt raised one eyebrow but guided Annalise over to the center chair. Then he crouched beside her. “Hi there, Annalise. Can you talk to me for a second?”
Oh, wait. Walt was a doctor.
And Annalise was either in shock or had done a mental retreat. Dissociated. He’d spent enough time with her that he had picked up his fair share of terms. He was pretty sure he’d attended more of her lectures than some of the actual students.
Either way, if it had been just him and Annalise, he would have been preparing to call someone to come out and check her physical health.
Her mental health?
Well, he had a pretty good idea of what was going on in that beautiful brain of hers, and he would have to find a way to break her out of her downward spiral.
“Annalise, is it okay if I touch you? I want to touch your wrist with two fingers.” Walt held up two fingers on his left hand.
She didn’t respond. No comment.
Walt turned to Jakob. “Can you repeat what I just said, in German?”
Jakob shifted so he could see Annalise’s face and both doors, then quietly repeated exactly what Walt had said.
Annalise blinked and her eyes focused. She looked at Jakob and spoke in German. “You want to touch me?”
There was panicked, excited screaming in Jakob’s head because he thought, hoped—verdammter Mist—there was longing in her voice. He held very still, replying in the same language. “I was repeating what Dr. Hayden said.”
Annalise hugged her bag tighter against her chest, turning her face away from him.