Page 84 of Velvet Vaughn

“You looked into my finances?” Her voice cracked on the word finances, and it wasn’t outrage, not entirely. It was closer to betrayal. “Leo? You dug through my bank accounts? Why?”

“I had to.” Leo’s jaw tightened, and Anja could see how much the sentence cost him. “People are dying, Marcy. Somebody at Pinnacle knows things they shouldn’t, and I have to rule out everyone close to me, including you.”

“Including me.” She sank onto the arm of the recliner as if her legs had stopped fully cooperating. “You think I’d sell you out? That I could do something so heinous?”

“I didn’t want to think it.”

“But you did.”

Nobody responded because there wasn’t an answer that didn’t sound worse out loud.

“Leo, what’s going on?”

Anja told her, “It’s better that you don’t know the details right now.”

Headlights swept across the front window, and then a car door shut outside. Marcy’s head came up, some of the fight draining out of her posture. “That’s my sister. She stops by most evenings after her shift.”

The front door opened, and a woman close to Marcy’s age stepped inside, pausing when she registered the room full of strangers. “Oh, I didn’t realize you had company.” She retreated toward the door. “I’ll come back later, Marce.”

“Denise, wait.” Marcy pushed up from the recliner and caught her sister’s arm. “It’s fine. Come in. I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, Leo. Hi.” Denise walked over to him. “It’s so good to see you.”

Leo stood and hugged her, favoring his injured side. “Hey, Denise. It’s good to see you too.”

“Be careful of his arm,” Marcy warned.

Denise jumped back, her eyes shooting around the room, uncertainty tightening every line of her face. “What’s going on?”

“They found the account.” Marcy spoke gently. “The one in the Caymans.”

All the color that had drained from Marcy’s face rushed into her sister’s, before draining out at twice the speed. “They found it? What? How? Who else knows?” Denise’s gaze snapped from Leo to Remi standing near the doorway. “Marcy, who are these other people?”

“They’re helping Leo with something dangerous.” Marcy kept her voice gentle, as if she were talking a spooked animal back from a ledge. “My finances got swept up in it by accident. That’s all. Nobody here cares about your money, Denise. I promise you that.”

Denise teetered on the edge of hysteria. “You can’t promise that if you don’t know these people.”

“You know Leo.” Marcy’s hand tightened on her sister’s arm. “I trust him with things I wouldn’t trust most people with. If he needs to know why I’ve been holding your money, then we’ll tell him, and it stops there. Nobody outside this room hears about you or Roy or any of it.”

Denise’s eyes filled, and she looked at the floor instead of meeting any of their gazes. “I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“I know.” Marcy pulled her sister into the space beside her on the recliner’s arm, an old, practiced gesture of sisterly affection. “But it’s out now, and the only thing left to do is tell the story and trust that these are good people.”

#

The forty-minute drive back to Wildwood was mostly silent. Leo spent the entire trip replaying the look on Marcy’s face when she had realized what he’d done.

He hated it. Hated that he’d had to sit on her couch and watch a woman he cared about come apart because he’d investigated her bank accounts behind her back. He loathed that her sister’s marriage had gotten dragged into a conversation about murder and blackmail because a Pinnacle client had been threatened. Mostly, he hated that none of it had been unfair to do. They had needed the answer, and now they had it. Unfortunately, the having of it didn’t make the getting of it hurt any less.

They’d stayed another twenty minutes after Denise calmed down enough to explain the fourteen months of cash she’d hidden away so she could leave her controlling, verbally abusive husband. Marcy had set up an account with a name she’d found in a legal thriller because she liked how official it sounded.

Marcy had finally stopped scowling at Leo as if he were a monster, but something in the room hadn’t fully repaired itself yet.

Before they left, he’d pulled her aside in the kitchen, out of earshot of the others.

“You could’ve told me about Denise. About all of it.”

“I could’ve.” Marcy folded a dish towel with more precision than the task required, not meeting his eyes. “It wasn’t my secret to hand out, Leo. It was hers. I’ve kept plenty of things off my desk over the years that weren’t mine to file.”