Page 14 of Velvet Vaughn

Anja had spent years training her expression to give away nothing, and whatever was on it right now must have betrayed her, because Kayla looked entirely too interested.

“Nobody.” She thumbed the call open and lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Anja.”

Her name from his voice set off an involuntary shiver. She inhaled slowly and locked the reaction back down.

“Leo.”

“I’m sorry to call you this late on a Friday.”

“It’s fine. What’s up?”

His voice was clipped and professional. Wrong. She clocked it quickly, because she’d spent a decade of her life listening to civilians try to sound unafraid on the phone and knew the exact sound of it. Leo’s voice usually had an easy warmth to it that he used to talk pro athletes down off ledges for a living. This wasn’t that. He was holding something very still so it wouldn’t shake.

“I need you,” he admitted. “Not COBRA Securities. Not yet. Just you. Can you come to St. Louis?”

Anja stiffened, her detective instincts snapping online. She’d worked enough crisis calls in her Pittsburgh years to learn that his answers to the following two questions would tell her everything she needed to know about the next two hours.

“Leo, are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you in danger?”

The pause on his end seemed to last forever. When he answered, his voice had dropped half a register.

“I think so. I think I have been for a while, and I didn’t know it.”

Everything in Anja’s chest that had been restless for five months clicked into place in the space of one heartbeat. The restlessness wasn’t nameless anymore.

“I’m on my way. What can you tell me on a secure line?”

“Not much.”

“Are you home?”

“Yes. Anja?”

“What?”

“Please don’t tell Kayne. He’d tell Chloe, and I don’t want her to worry.”

If something dangerous was happening and she didn’t give Kayne a heads-up, he’d most likely gut her. Slowly. The former Navy SEAL probably knew three hundred ways to kill someone using nothing but his bare hands and whatever happened to be within arm’s reach. He was an expert in close-quarters combat, Krav Maga, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and Muay Thai. Give the man a pistol, rifle, shotgun, knife, tomahawk, or pretty much anything capable of inflicting bodily harm, and he could use it with terrifying efficiency. She’d seen him turn an ordinary pen into something that looked alarmingly lethal. Lying to him by omission ranked somewhere between poking a grizzly with a stick and juggling chainsaws on the list of spectacularly bad ideas.

But this was for Leo, so she’d cross that bridge later. “Fine. And Leo? Don’t touch anything until I get there.”

He let out a surprised breath that was almost a laugh. “How did you know there was a thing?”

“Because I know you, De Luca.”

Anja hung up before he could answer. She’d already revealed more than she’d intended and didn’t want to hear his reaction. Some things were better left in the air where you could pretend they hadn’t been spoken.

For a reason she couldn’t explain, she’d stuck to iced tea instead of the local craft beer she usually drank at the cookouts, so she was fine to drive.

Kayla was watching her with obvious interest. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” Kayla offered, which was funny because she could’ve easily moved away at any point during the conversation. “That was Chloe’s brother. Er, cousin.” She waved a hand. “Leo.”

Anja answered carefully. “Yes.”