Page 12 of Velvet Vaughn

She passed every test on Vic’s list so cleanly it was almost insulting to the other names he’d considered.

Leo took a long swallow of coffee and let the heat of it sit on the back of his tongue.

He remembered the last time he’d seen her face. She’d been asleep on her stomach when he eased out of bed at six in the morning to drive his parents to the airport in Indianapolis before heading home to St. Louis. The blanket had been pushed down to the small of her back, and her pale hair had been loose across the pillow. He’d stood beside the bed for thirty seconds, telling himself not to wake her, because that would have meant a conversation he wasn’t equipped to have that early after a night that had been very clearly labeled as a one-time event.

Leo had left a note on the kitchen counter with his number. She already had it, but he’d written it anyway.

She’d never used it.

He recalled her saying, “I don’t do anything I’m not sure about,” and the absolute certainty behind it. How that one sentence had told him more about Anja than five months of silence afterward had managed to take back.

Leo had respected the closed door for every one of those long-ass months. He was about to put his hand on the handle and pull, and the only honest thing he could say about it was that he wasn’t doing it for the reason he wanted. It was because a dead man had told him to find the person in his life who could not be bought, and Anja Johansen was the only name on the list.

Some part of him was relieved to have a reason. Another was having none of it. A dead man had handed him the excuse, and there was nothing to celebrate about that.

Leo set the coffee mug down, picked up his phone, and scrolled to her name in his contacts. He had saved her under Johansen, A., like a coward who didn’t trust himself with the alternative.

His thumb hovered over the call button.

He remembered Vic Shaw’s trembling hand, Chloe’s crossed eyes over a dirt-brown protein shake, Kayne’s long-suffering expression in the background, and Anja telling him to get some sleep with her head against his shoulder, trying a little too hard to sound easy. The memories had no business belonging together, yet somehow they did.

He pressed call.