Not Like This (An Ilse Beck FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 4)

By Ava Strong

When FBI Special Agent Ilse Beck’s patients turn up dead in string of suicides, she suspects something more nefarious. Has a serial killer from her past—the one she fears the most—returned?

In this bestselling mystery series, FBI Special Agent Ilse Beck, victim of a traumatic childhood in Germany, moved to the U.S. to become a renowned psychologist specializing in PTSD, and the world’s leading expert in the unique trauma of serial-killer survivors. By studying the psychology of their survivors, Ilse has a unique and unparalleled expertise in the true psychology of serial killers. Ilse never expected, though, to become an FBI agent herself.

But even FBI agents are not invulnerable, especially when targeted by serial killers. And it just may be, that Ilse herself is next on this killer’s list.

A dark and suspenseful crime thriller, the bestselling ILSE BECK series is a breathtaking page-turner, an unputdownable mystery and suspense novel. A compelling and perplexing psychological thriller, rife with twists and jaw-dropping secrets, it will make you fall in love with a brilliant new female protagonist, while it keeps you shocked late into the night.

NOT LIKE THIS (An Ilse Beck FBI Suspense Thriller) is book #4 in a new series by bestselling mystery and suspense author Ava Strong. Books #5-#7 in the series—NOT LIKE SHE THOUGHT, NOT LIKE BEFORE, and NOT LIKE NORMAL—are also available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ava Strong
• Release date: Jan 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781094374000

Book preview

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n o t   l i k e   t h i s

(an ilse beck fbi suspense thriller—book 4)

a v a   s t r o n g

Ava Strong

Debut author Ava Strong is author of the REMI LAURENT mystery series, comprising three books (and counting); of the ILSE BECK mystery series, comprising six books (and counting); and of the STELLA FALL psychological suspense thriller series, comprising four books (and counting).

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Ava loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.avastrongauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2021 by Ava Strong. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright zef art, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

BOOKS BY AVA STRONG

REMI LAURENT FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

THE DEATH CODE (Book #1)

THE MURDER CODE (Book #2)

THE MALICE CODE (Book #3)

ILSE BECK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

NOT LIKE US (Book #1)

NOT LIKE HE SEEMED (Book #2)

NOT LIKE YESTERDAY (Book #3)

NOT LIKE THIS (Book #4)

NOT LIKE BEFORE (Book #5)

NOT LIKE NORMAL (Book #6)

STELLA FALL PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE THRILLER

HIS OTHER WIFE (Book #1)

HIS OTHER LIE (Book #2)

HIS OTHER SECRET (Book #3)

HIS OTHER MISTRESS (Book #4)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Ilse stepped into the small gray building, leaving the dark skies and green trees behind her. The structure itself seemed a blemish on the otherwise bucolic landscape. She entered from the cool morning air into a stuffy, poorly air-conditioned entrance. The door behind her buzzed as it shut, and the two police officers standing by the row of metal detectors gestured for her to place her belongings in a gray Tupperware.

Gray skies. Gray building. Gray Tupperware. As if everything were conspiring to sap the color out of life itself. Ilse's fingers trembled as she removed her wallet and the keys for the rental she'd taken from the airport.

One of the guards said something she barely registered, and she stammered a quick startled reply in German. She could understand her childhood language perfectly well. Once upon a time, she'd been little Hilda Mueller, after all. But for the last decade and a half she'd lived Stateside, in Seattle, so her German was rusty.

Ilse shivered, her stomach twisting with fear, her one hand tapping against her opposite wrist, a constant reminder of the words tattooed like a wristband around her flesh.

Take captive every thought.

But now as she stepped through the metal detector and emerged on the other side to retrieve her wallet, she wasn't sure this was possible. Her mind was going haywire, her heart hammering a million miles a minute. Her newly issued FBI credential, as an official consultant and rookie agent had gotten her this far. But now it would take willpower and guts to move even an inch further.

She shivered, still tapping against her wrist with the tattoo. A sallow-faced man behind a bulletproof glass enclosure gestured for her to approach from the metal detectors. Rows of doors situated the hallway behind his cubicle.

Agent Beck? The officer said, peering up from a request sheet on his counter.

Ilse's throat felt like sandpaper as she approached, and she nodded hurriedly. Yes, that's me.

Punctual, the guard said, glancing towards the clock over a coffee maker on his side of the glass partition. Exactly 8:15. Not a minute too early or too late. Ilse prided herself on promptness. Now, she tugged at the sleeves to her sweater. She preferred flip-flops and sweatpants to suits or sneakers but had compromised for some tennis shoes and black pants that were somewhere between casual and business. A normal suit would only have left her feeling vulnerable. Especially in here.

Who are you here to see?

Ilse hesitated. It had been so long since she'd spoken his name out loud to another person. As a child, she'd only ever thought of him as father. Torturer. The monster upstairs. So many of her memories were broken or ruined or held at bay by the fog of time. Now, though, she drew from within herself. She had come here for this reason. To see him. To confront him. To find out why he was sending those postcards. She was tired of the taunting, tired of hiding. Someone else had been upstairs. Someone she barely remembered.

Most of all, Ilse was here for answers.

Her voice rasped, but in one try she managed to blurt out the horrible name. Gerald Mueller, she said with finality.

At this, the guard looked sharply up, staring at her through the glass.

She stared back, feeling a chill prickle along her spine.

Mueller? said the guard. I'm afraid he's not taking visitors. Maximum-security.

In response, Ilse pulled out her newly issued badge and slid it under the small slot in the glass.

The guard barely glanced at her identification. He waved towards it dismissively. That's not the point, he said. No one visits Mueller. He's been here more than a decade. Doesn't get visitors.

Ilse didn't shrug, didn't move. She just felt cold and sad and sorry. As it is, I need to speak with him.

The guard at last glanced towards her ID, sighed, and shrugged.

If you say so, he said. BKA already approve this..., he gave a little fluttering wave towards her and her badge as if indicating everything in her vicinity. But like I said, maximum-security. He doesn't have access to the visitor's room. You're going to have to see him in his cell.

Ilse felt a bolt of anxiety, but she covered with a nod and said, Whatever I have to do. Where do I go?

In answer, the guard buzzed the door on the side of his cubicle, and a small metal gate began to open. He gestured towards another guard standing halfway down the hall. The man approached hurriedly, frowning.

In German, speaking rapidly so it was more difficult to keep track, the guard rattled off, Visitor for Mueller. BKA called ahead. Preapproved.

Both guards shared curious but significant looks through the glass, with no small amount of raised eyebrows and sidelong, askance glances. But then, one at a time, they shrugged, and Ilse followed this second man back into the hall, through the sliding metal gate. Their footsteps clapped against the polished floor, each sound an eerie, echoing one in the neat, well-scrubbed halls, with blank, bare concrete walls painted in splashes of white. They passed down the hall, towards another, also blocked by a metal door. Another click, a longer buzz. And the door slid open. The guard ahead of her didn't glance back, still marching forward in his neat, pressed uniform. Ilse followed along in her tennis shoes, slacks and sweater, still feeling chilly in the heart of the old prison in Germany.

It had been years. More than twenty years since she'd seen the man. They had moved him around a couple of prisons, before finally settling here.

As she moved, she could feel her heart pound. There was something about a prison, though, that didn't scare her as it often did others. She liked solitude. Liked the silence. Four walls and a bed. There was something about the order, the regimented life, even the protection of prison that made her... wistful. Beneath her breath as she marched, she repeated her memory trick, trying to soothe herself. She had something of an encyclopedic knowledge of serial killers, victims, and their mental ailments. She'd been forced to study it for her dissertation. Now, as she marched along the seemingly endless corridor, she continued to repeat, Schizotypal personality disorder. Borderline personality disorder. Psychotic disorder. Dahmer. Blonde hair. Ninety-four. Seventeen victims. May twenty-first. 

No visitors allowed. She wondered if this was a gift or punishment. Ilse liked her clients; she liked helping them. But if she had her way, she would prefer to retire in a cabin, away from civilization, hidden from sight. She had never dated, not once. Why would she ever want to invite someone into the chaos that was her life?

The guard stopped suddenly, a few paces ahead of her. There was another long beeping sound and then a click. It took Ilse a moment to realize she was flanked on either side by thick, metal doors. These weren't doors with bars, however. Rather, it was as if someone had soldered metal trays to a concrete wall. The prisoners couldn't see out, but neither could she see in.

Five minutes, the guard said, glancing at Ilse, and then he pulled on a metal handle. A slot opened in the door at eye height. Below the slot, a metal tray, where food could slide through. With the slot open, now, it also gave a glimpse into the small cell beyond, likely for the guards making rounds.

Now, the guard left the slot open and then stepped away. Ilse's heart thundered. She swallowed once and glanced at the nameplate by the door, with a thin piece of paper taped over the sliding piece of steel. Her father had been here so long, he even had a cell named for him. Gerald Mueller. She remembered him from her youth. Choir boy pretty with a wide face, blonde hair, and an easy smile hiding the maliciousness beneath. At the time, the neighbors hadn't suspected a thing. A good man, a churchgoing man, according to most of them. None of the neighbors had suspected the real Gerald Mueller and what happened in his house at the end of the dirt road. For a moment, her hands trembling against her side, Ilse almost turned and sprinted down the hall. Did she really want to be here? After all of this. Perhaps she was kicking over a hornet's nest that was best left unmolested...

 But no. She'd come this far.

"Hey, Mueller, snapped the guard, rapping his hand against the metal door. Dr. Beck here to see you." For a moment, there was no motion, no sound at all. And then she spotted movement. The slot in the door gave her a view of the back wall, the metal sink, a metal toilet bolted to the concrete, and a cot. A simple, pitiful bedroom. A man suddenly emerged, slipping off the bed. He wore a gray bathrobe.

Gray. Gray. Gray.

The man inside the cell also wore glasses. The frames looked like they were made of rubber. He blinked behind his glasses, and as Ilse stared, she could feel a lump form in her throat. Their eyes met.

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but it wasn't this.

CHAPTER TWO

No recognition. The man inside the cell scratched at his chin, peculiarly. He folded his hands in front of him. His blonde hair was now white. His wide face sunken. He no longer stood straight and proud, but hunched, moving with a bit of a limp. She wondered if this new limp was a gift he'd received in prison or simply from age.

He was thinner, shorter, smaller than she remembered. A pitiful man. A broken old man. And clearly, by the blank look in his twitching eyes, he didn't recognize her. Hello, he said, in a shaky voice. I was busy.

She just stared, her throat suddenly dry. For a moment it felt like she'd fallen into a dark hole and couldn't see anything but a face staring down at her. She remembered the time her father had tried to bury her alive. Remembered the time he'd cut her ear. She flinched, and he just watched her, head tilted now.

I'm sorry for bothering you, she said, robotically, her voice entirely devoid of emotion.

The man inside the cell just shrugged, his hands still folded primly in front of him. He adjusted his bathrobe. Can I help you? 

Now it was her turn to go quiet and stare. Could he help her? How she wished he'd offered that twenty-five years ago. Help. But no one had helped. No one had known. Not the neighbors. Not anyone. At least that's what they'd said. But Ilse remembered what her sister had told her. Heidi, one of the other children trapped in that basement, had found Ilse in Seattle. Had even tried to kill her. And before she'd died, taunting, Heidi had hinted at another person in the house. Not just their father. A second person upstairs.

Ilse pictured the postcards. The small porcelain dolls. The taunting letters. She knew it had to be her father. This man, this small, disheveled, shriveled man. Even as she thought it, she felt a bolt of sympathy. What an odd emotion. Did he deserve sympathy? Surely not.

Yes, she said, softly. I could use your help.

Very well, he replied. What is this about?

He spoke matter-of-factly, his voice gentle, and not unkind. It was as if he were used to visits from strange doctors he didn't recognize. That bothered her most. He couldn't seem to place who she was. The way he spoke didn't compute with the man she remembered. He had the same wide face, though shrunken, the same parted hair, though white-gray like his bathrobe. Even the same light speech pattern. But she remembered far more often when he grew enraged. She remembered his anger.

Which was strange. Because now, facing him, all she really felt was pity. For a moment, she looked away from the man's pale face; it offered nothing new. It hadn't conjured the horrible memories she'd expected. It hadn't brought back hatred or rage. He just looked old, small. Helpless. He had no possessions she could see. Save a single shelf which had a book on it. She couldn't make out the title from here. And on the book, she hesitated, staring. A small wooden doll. For a moment, she stared at the doll. It had button eyes and too much glue keeping red yarn for hair.

She remembered the doll.

Remembered stopping at a shop. Remembered her father getting out of the car, happy. Almost childlike. Eager to get another toy for his collection. And then she remembered the third voice. The one in the front seat next to her father. For a moment Ilse shivered, staring into her own memories. Hilda Mueller had sat in the backseat pleading to be allowed out of the car for a change. Her father, eager to go shopping paused, looking ready to relent.

And then... the third voice. You can get a bigger doll if you leave the brat in the backseat.

Such a strange memory. And in that moment, Ilse felt a bolt of sheer terror. But this fear, and this memory, hadn't come from her father. It had come from that third voice. A grayish face, just like all the other gray. Ilse couldn't see it, encased in shadows in the front seat. The figure was holding some sort of brochure, fanning her face with it. Ilse remembered the way her hand had been tied to the seatbelt. And the fear, the wild, unrelenting fear shooting through her system didn't originate from her father. No. It was because of this other voice.

Gerald, the brat is staring at me. You want a big doll or not?

Her father glanced in the mirror. He frowned. And for a moment, it almost looked like he had an expression of guilt. But then he nodded, his neat, blonde hair swishing.

Her hand, the voice murmured. Look at her fingers. The way she's clutching at that seatbelt. It's inappropriate, Gerald. Do something about her fingers.

Ilse's heart had leapt in her chest. More fear at this voice. And then, his eyes still laden with guilt, her father had reached back towards her, reaching to grab one of her fingers.

The memory ended in a flash of pain, a sudden scream.

Ilse was back standing in the hall, staring into the cell with the man.

A second person.

She barely remembered them. The memory itself had blocked out the face, hiding it. An extremely common repression tact—the subconscious choosing to forget the more traumatic aspects of a recollected scene... Stunningly, in this memory, it wasn't her father.

Ilse's mouth felt so dry now as she stared into the cell. She reached up, absentmindedly, brushing her hair in front of her maimed ear. She had dark hair, cut short, shoulder length at best, and now she brushed her hair, but instead of pushing it behind her ear, she smoothed it forward, hiding the injury on the side of her face.

As she did, the man inside the cell suddenly flinched. He stared at the way her fingers twitched, the way they flicked her dark locks. His eyes suddenly widened. And then, in an instant, with a scream, he bolted forward, his hand shooting forward, jutting out the cell door through the metal slot. Skeletal fingers groped at her face. Ilse yelped, stumbling back. The guards shouted incoherently. Her father was screaming, desperately, a shrill, high-pitched screech of madness.