When a box had arrived in the mail, bearing the logo of the cosmetics brand she preferred, she hadn’t hesitated to bring it inside. When she opened it, hundreds of winged cockroaches flew out. She’d screamed and dropped the box. Only later did they find the folded note at the bottom. A note warning her not to ignore him.
That was the night she’d met Jakob. He’d been the one to coax her out of the bathroom, where she’d fled from the bugs.
That was the night she’d started to take the stalker seriously. He knew far more about her than just her address. He knew her favorite cosmetics brand, had known she’d take a box with their logo inside. And knew something very few others did—she had a near phobia of flying bugs.
The Kripo had created a task force, as had the Ritter. She’d been sure they would figure it out, would find this person who was stalking her and stop him.
They hadn’t.
Her independence and bravery had been slowly chiseled away over the past four years, eroding with the passage of time, as her stalker continued to elude capture. Every lead—from some security camera footage that captured a hooded figure walking down her street after the fourth letter had been left, to tracking the bug package—had gone nowhere.
Her confidence in her abilities had taken a hit as well because she’d been unable to paint a picture of him. Jakob told her time and again—in his quiet, taciturn way—that she shouldn’t lose faith in herself, insisting the problem was that she was too close to the case.
After the bug box, she’d been surrounded by guards, both the police and the Ritter, but they couldn’t keep that up around the clock. There weren’t enough resources to guard her, and a box full of bugs was hardly dangerous. Disturbing, yes, but not dangerous. Months passed, and when no more boxes arrived, only the odd letter, the task force was disbanded.
Except Jakob. Jakob stayed.
He was dark-skinned with close-cropped hair that was as no-nonsense as the man himself. He had thick eyelashes, an unexpectedly soft, almost feminine feature that she was slightly obsessed with.
Jakob had helped her move in secret into the vacant house adjacent to her own, installing a heavy door in the shared wall so she could walk in her front door, then immediately retreat to her hidden sanctuary, safe behind a steel door.
She’d lived that way for nearly a year, hiding within her own home. Once or twice a week, Jakob came and opened her mail. There were always new letters from her stalker—two to four per week. Jakob would check them, open them safely within a special box with built-in heavy gloves, then pass them to her once they were cleared. She read each one.
They’d grown steadily more explicit and hate-filled.
There were a lot of details in those letters that told her the man was still watching her, and he’d identified most of her security measures. The outdoor cameras on her home were routinely destroyed, each time capturing only glimpses of someone wielding a paintball gun. Even the hidden cameras failed to uncover anything because—beneath the hood—he always wore a balaclava, even in the summer. There had also been threats to drivers with the security service she started using for transportation, the restaurant down the street who sometimes delivered food, and her grocery store.
Little by little, he had whittled down her world until she never went anywhere, and only felt safe at work inside the police station or in her secret second home with its steel doors and barred windows. And the secret of where she actually slept was one thing he’d never figured out.
Then, two years ago, and after years of dealing with the stalker, the bottom had fallen out of her world when the man pursuing her had attacked her twin sister.
Annalise had always been the serious one, quiet and studious, while her sister, Adele, had been the easygoing one, happy, fun.
Adele lived and worked in Tokyo, living an interesting, glamorous life there. She rarely came home to Germany, though they spoke at least every other week. Annalise hadn’t wanted to worry Adele. Hadn’t wanted to mar the happiness she saw in her sister’s face. Once it was over, she’d planned to tell Adele, but not until the man was caught.
Adele also loved surprises, which was why Annalise hadn’t known Adele had tacked a few days onto a business trip and decided to come visit. Though they lived continents apart, Adele had a key to Annalise’s house.
Adele arrived late one night and let herself into Annalise’s house, ready to surprise her twin.
She hadn’t locked the door behind her.
And Annalise, safely asleep next door, hadn’t heard her sister’s alarm when the stalker followed her in. Hadn’t heard her scream as she was raped.
Once the stalker realized he had the wrong sister, in a fit of fury, he cut off all of Adele’s hair, telling her that it was so he could distinguish between them in the future. Adele had crawled to a phone and called the authorities when it was over.
Annalise hadn’t known anything was wrong until Jakob, who’d been alerted when an ambulance was dispatched to her address, had called her.
Her sister’s light had been extinguished after the brutal attack.
Since then, the sister Annalise had adored and wished she could be like was gone, replaced by a silent, angry stranger who stared at her with accusatory eyes. Before the rape, they’d been more than sisters, closer than the closest of best friends, but now Adele refused to speak to her, to see her. She had completely shut her out, claiming she couldn’t look at Annalise without remembering the rape, without remembering what had happened to her.
And Adele, rightly, blamed Annalise for not telling her or their parents what was going on. If Adele had known, she wouldn’t have made a surprise visit. If she’d known, she would have been more careful.
If, if, if.
After the attack, the German admiral, Dolph
