Page 85 of Velvet Vaughn

“If I’d known, I could’ve helped.”

“I know you would have.” She looked up, and a closer version of herself that ran his calendar and remembered his clients’ birthdays returned to her face. “That’s rather the problem with you, isn’t it? You’d have tried to fix it, and some things aren’t yours to fix. My sister needed someone she could trust. She didn’t need another man deciding how to handle her marriage.”

The words weren’t delivered harshly, but they landed like a physical slap nonetheless. He didn’t have a response for that, so he let it sit.

“You need to work from home until I tell you it’s safe to come back into the office. I don’t know yet who’s watching Pinnacle, and I’m not putting you anywhere near it while that’s true.”

“You’re serious.”

“Completely.”

“And you won’t tell me what’s going on?”

He shook his head.

Marcy huffed out a laugh. “I suppose that means your young shadow isn’t really angling to break into sports management after all.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“I had my suspicions. Nobody that competent needs mentoring.” She set the folded towel down and reached for his good hand, squeezing it once, with some of the old warmth back in her eyes. “Go home, Leo. Take care of that arm.” A pause, and the ghost of a smile. “And I truly hope that girl is really your girlfriend. Because if you let her get away, I will never forgive you.”

#

The safe house was dark except for a lamp Remi had left burning in the front window. Leo let Anja go ahead of him and followed at a pace his dignity preferred to call unhurried. His knee, which had started objecting around the second flight of stairs at Marcy’s porch, had since become downright hostile. He locked the door behind them, even though Remi was still outside checking the perimeter. He had the code to get back in.

“Sit.” Anja shrugged out of her jacket. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”

“I’m fine.”

“You keep saying that. I keep not believing you.” She hung the jacket on the hook by the door and headed straight for the office. Leo followed because sitting alone in the kitchen held no appeal whatsoever.

The corkboard stood against the far wall, half rebuilt, with photographs and index cards pinned in a tight grid. She crossed to it, turning on just the desk lamp, and pulled a black marker from the cup beside the laptop.

Leo lowered himself into the chair across from her, favoring his arm. “What are you doing?”

“Something I’ve been wanting to do since we left her house.” She uncapped the marker and drew a single line through Marcy’s photo, corner to corner, then wrote a word beneath it and underlined it twice. Cleared. “Fourteen months of deposits, and every dollar went to her sister. It’s not nothing, but it’s not this.”

Leo studied the crossed-out photo of the ordinary, kind face he’d looked at across a desk for six years. “I hate that we did that to her.”

“I know.” Anja capped the marker and set it down. “But we needed to know, and now we do. That’s one name off the board we don’t have to carry any longer.” She dropped into the chair beside him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his good arm.

Remi came in from the hallway, a dish towel slung over one shoulder. “Tea’s on if either of you want it.”

“Tea sounds like heaven,” Anja admitted. “I might actually cry.”

“Don’t. I don’t have a plan for that.” Remi plopped into the third chair and propped his boots on the edge of the desk, then caught Anja’s look and lowered them again. “So, Marcy’s clear. Danica’s dead. Curtis is in a hospital bed with a heart monitor. We’re no closer to a name than we were forty-eight hours ago.”

“We’re closer.” Anja’s eyes stayed on the board. “We just don’t like where it’s pointing yet.”

Leo opened his mouth to ask what she meant by that when a sound cut through the room. It was a muffled electronic chime coming from near the bookshelf.

All three of them went still.

“That’s not my phone.” Anja reached for her own, checking the dark screen out of instinct.

“Not mine either.” Remi was on his feet.

Leo crossed to the shelf where the padded mailer sat, the one Remi had risked his life for while the house erupted in flames around him, and withdrew the phone. Its screen lit up, the tinny chime sounding again.