Wrath's Storm: A Masters' Admiralty Novel Mari Carr (great books of all time .txt) 📖

beyond his control. Walt winced and followed as the paramedics guided him over to sit on the back bumper of the ambulance. While they strapped on a blood pressure cuff, Walt crouched in front of Jakob.

“I think you were stung by a bullet ant. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I’ve seen a sting before, when I was in Nicaragua. It hurts, and it’s going to keep hurting, but it isn’t deadly.”

“Ant?” Jakob wheezed.

“Yeah.”

“Shot.” Jakob looked at his shoulder, or at least tried but gave up with a grimace. The muscles of his shoulder and neck were visibly twitching.

“Nope. Ant sting.”

“Hurts.”

Walt could tell that admission cost Jakob something. Could tell it wasn’t something he would have said if it wasn’t someone he trusted.

Someone he trusted…

Walt sucked in air and shoved himself to his feet, frantically scanning the thinning crowd on the sidewalk. It looked like the hotel was letting people back in.

Jakob reached out, catching Walt’s hand. Walt looked over, his stomach sinking even as his heart was in his throat. Jakob’s eyes were wide, and a little glassy with pain, but he was functional enough to have figured out what—who—Walt was looking for.

“Annalise,” Jakob wheezed.

Walt ran through the crowd, back into the hotel lobby, thinking maybe she’d gone inside.

But he knew. Deep down, he knew that there was no way she would have left Jakob, the man she just confessed to loving, all alone when he was vulnerable and in pain.

Walt checked the alleyway near the corner where Jakob had collapsed and their rooms. He asked the staff if anyone had seen her and enlisted their help in searching.

An hour later, Walt, and a shivering, pain-wracked Jakob, who had refused to go to the hospital, sat side by side on a bench in the lobby. Walt had felt helpless before, though as a doctor, he could usually do something to make him feel like he was being useful.

Chest compressions even when he knew the likelihood of success was small.

Clamping arteries and ordering someone to hang blood even when the person had hit the point of fatal exsanguination.

This helplessness was different.

Because Annalise was gone, and he knew she hadn’t gone willingly.

Chapter Eleven

Jakob lay face up on the hotel bed, but only because Walt made him. He was twitching, his muscles spasming like crazy, and Walt was concerned he’d fall down. Every fucking part of his body hurt.

Walt had told him he could expect these waves of agony to continue anywhere from twelve- to twenty-four hours.

Jakob was certain that was information he could have lived without.

“Phone.” Jakob tried to point toward the nightstand, but even that slight movement sent shock waves of pain through his body.

Walt crossed the room and picked up the cell.

“Need to call vice admiral.” Jakob tried to lift his hand and take the phone, but Walt shook his head.

“Here.” Walt grasped Jakob’s fingers, pressing his thumb against the lock screen. “Is the number in your contacts?”

It spoke to exactly how much pain Jakob was in that he offered no resistance to Walt opening his phone and digging through the contacts list. “Yes. Klein.”

Walt found the number, dialing it before putting it on speaker, shaking his head when Jakob attempted to reach for the phone.

“Klein,” Pia, the vice admiral, said upon answering. “Jakob? Are you still in Krakow with Dr. Fischer?”

“Dr. Fischer missing. Abducted.” With every word he spoke, Jakob felt crushed under the weight of his failure. “We can’t find her.”

“We?” Pia said.

Jakob’s gaze locked with Walt’s, but before he could summon the strength to shake his head in warning, Walt spoke.

“Dr. Walt Hayden here, uh, Vice Admiral. I’ve been working on the Alicja case with Annalise and Jakob.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and Jakob resigned himself to the tongue lashing he was going to receive when he returned to Germany.

“Dr. Hayden,” Pia said at last. “You’re American?”

“Yes, ma’am. Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina.”

“I see.”

“And while I’m not a member of the Masters’ Admiralty, my sister, Sylvia, belongs to the England territory.”

“Your sister,” Pia said slowly, though there was no question she was displeased with and confused by Walt’s presence.

Jakob sighed. He was fucked. The Masters’ Admiralty was a secret society—secret being the operative term. The fact that Walt was here, chatting to the vice admiral, was the equivalent of letting a Muggle into Hogwarts. If he could tell the vice admiral that Walt was with them on the fleet admiral’s orders, it would clear everything up. But Eric had forbidden him from doing so.

“Dr. Fischer is missing,” Jakob repeated. He’d take whatever punishment Pia saw fit to dole out to him after they found Annalise. For now, finding her, saving her, was the only thing that mattered.

“Was she targeted? A political action against a German national? Someone moving against the Masters’ Admiralty?” Pia asked.

Jakob and Walt exchanged a glance. They had no answer. Only more potential complications. Jakob tried to answer, but a fresh wave of pain swamped him. He rolled onto his side, pounding a fist into the mattress.

“Jakob was attacked too,” Walt was saying. “Someone got him with bullet ant venom.”

“With what?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve seen it before. He’s in pretty incredible pain, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.”

“Are you in danger?” Pia asked sharply.

Jakob was able to push himself into a sitting position, though he was nauseous and sweating. “Unknown,” he answered.

Walt looked at him, eyes wide, then glanced at the locked suite door, as if expecting someone to come barreling in.

There was a moment of silence, and when Pia spoke again it was with calm command. “I’m going to speak to the admiral. We will call in protection from Hungary.”

Walt looked at the phone. “We’re in Poland. Not Hungary.”

The vice admiral wasn’t talking about the country Hungary but the territory. Jakob didn’t have the energy to explain that, not when agony was rippling through him.

“You will tell the harco everything,” Pia commanded, clearly speaking