Jakob looked at them. The fact that Walt was sitting in the chair where he’d always pictured their shadowy, mysterious third was making him feel odd. Not bad, not good. It was a feeling he didn’t fully understand, and so he couldn’t name it.
It was winter, and though the heat in the house was on, Jakob turned to the fireplace, taking a few minutes to stack wood and then using a starter log to get it going quickly. Walt had his head back, his eyes closed. Jakob took a breath, and then went to the kitchen to make coffee. He didn’t exactly like leaving Annalise alone with the other man now that they were out of the crisis situation, but after watching the American doctor take care of her and put her at ease, he found he could accept it.
Several minutes later, he returned with a tray including a French press waiting to be pressed, cups with saucers, delicate cut-glass sugar and creamer set, though the creamer had some non-dairy shelf-safe stuff in it, which was all he had in the house at the moment. He really needed to make time for a trip to the store.
“Cooffffeeee,” Walt moaned, sounding rather like a zombie from a horror movie.
Jakob retreated to the wall, ignoring his desire to kneel and pour out the coffee, to take care of her, and of Walt, by providing for them. It was Walt who depressed the plunger on the French press and poured coffee into each of the cups.
Jakob drank his black, Annalise added a little of the cream, and when she was done, Walt dumped half the sugar into his own cup.
Annalise and Jakob both stared at Walt, her in amusement, him in horror. Annalise hid a smile behind her cup, shook her head gently, and finally sipped.
The fire was starting to warm the room, and the hot cup felt good in his hands. But Annalise’s next words made him cold. She cleared her throat, faced Walt, and said, “I have a stalker, and someday he’s going to kill me.”
“Annalise,” Jakob said, hating her words, but hating himself more for failing to catch the man, so that she didn’t have to live her life with a guillotine blade dangling over her neck.
The sad smile she gave him told him she hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings and she felt guilty for speaking her belief aloud. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
He didn’t reply. He couldn’t. His throat was clogged, his chest heavy with regret.
Walt, however, had no problem finding his voice. “Who is this stalker?”
Annalise shook her head. “I have no idea.” The breathy, self-deprecating scoff that followed those words made it perfectly clear how much she hated failing. “I’m a profiler, a psychologist. And yet I’m completely incapable of creating a profile of my own stalker.”
“I don’t find that surprising at all. You’re too close to the case, too emotionally involved. There’s a reason surgeons can’t operate on someone they know. There has to be distance. And just because you understand the psychology behind an emotion doesn’t mean you don’t feel it,” Walt said, his voice quiet and kind, soothing.
“I know that’s true, but it doesn’t make it easier to deal with. Someone…someone I was close to was badly hurt by this man.”
Walt tilted his head. “Okay. Annalise, you don’t have to tell me anything more if you’d rather not.”
“You’re…you’re involved now. In a way. Maybe not, if you’re sure it…” She glanced up at Jakob, her eyes wide and vulnerable.
“Wasn’t him.”
Walt leaned forward, elbows on knees, looking back and forth between them. “Who did this man hurt?”
The doctor was forthright, the type to ask questions he needed answers to. Jakob respected that. The question was, seemingly, directed at either of them, but Jakob sure as fuck wasn’t going to answer.
“My twin sister.”
Walt’s brows rose. “You’re a twin?”
Annalise nodded.
“I’m a triplet. Identical, so technically a quad since the number needs to be a multiple of two, but there’s just three of us.”
She and Walt shared a look that Jakob assumed only those who’d spent time in a womb with another would understand.
He was an only child.
Thank God. His father hadn’t been cut out to rear children. A military man, he’d raised Jakob as if he was just another soldier under his command. And while he’d been terribly lonely as a child, he wouldn’t have wished his upbringing on another simply to have someone to play with.
“My sister, Adele, lives in Tokyo. I didn’t tell her that I’d acquired the attention of a dangerous man because I didn’t want to worry her. And…” Annalise paused. “And because I had just enough pride that it bothered me to admit to her that I couldn’t put together any sort of cohesive picture of the man tormenting me.”
Walt reached over and placed his hand on top of Annalise’s on the armrest of her chair when her voice started to wobble. Jakob stared at their touching hands, strangely compelled to rise and add his to theirs.
There was also an underlying desire to shove Walt away from her, because damn it, Annalise was his.
But he trusted Walt, or maybe she trusted Walt and that made him trust the doctor.
No, he decided, he trusted Walt.
Goddamn stupid feelings.
“She came to Frankfurt on business and decided to surprise me.” Annalise swallowed heavily.
“If this is too hard…” Walt said, offering Annalise another out, a chance to end the conversation here.
She shook her head, refusing to take it. “I need to go back. To when Jakob started taking care of me.”
Jakob’s heart beat a little bit faster when she said he took care of her. That was what he wanted. To protect her, make her happy. Keep her safe.
“I have a near phobia of flying bugs. Clinically my reaction isn’t quite extreme enough to be a true phobia, but I strongly dislike them, and I’m scared of them.”
“You might not want to pay a visit to me at home in South Carolina then,” Walt said. “I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t like to run into a wheel bug.”
Jakob made a mental note to look that bug up later. Actually, he felt compelled to research South Carolina as well, curious about where Walt came from.
“I’ll consider myself warned.”
“Why did you mention the bugs?” Walt asked.
“I’d begun getting threatening phone calls and letters. At the time, I worked for the Kripo, that’s the German police.”
Walt nodded, his calm, kind attention focused on her. His face showed empathy, compassion. Maybe Walt could teach him how to do that. His years of intelligence and knight work may not have beat the stupid out of him, but it had taught him to mask any and all emotions.
“It was disheartening that I couldn’t identify this man. That I couldn’t even give my colleagues a profile beyond the generic profile of a stalker. But I wasn’t truly afraid until…well…one night when I went home, there was a package waiting. A package from a company I knew and used. Even more, I was expecting to receive that particular box. So I took it inside and opened it.”
“Oh God, it was full of bugs, wasn’t it?” Walt’s complexion turned green. Not really—his skin was only a few shades lighter than Jakob’s own and didn’t pale the way he knew Annalise’s did—but the horrified, slightly sick look was still readily apparent.