“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 clenched 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.