Chapter Three #3
She’d been running surveillance-detection routes in her head since Vandalia, a habit from her Pittsburgh homicide years that had never really left her, and had been watching traffic for the last forty miles.
Nothing had stood out, but that didn’t mean nothing was there.
Not that she actually believed anyone was following her, but it paid to keep the skills sharp.
She took the Poplar Street Bridge across the Mississippi, the river a dark ribbon beneath her.
Downtown St. Louis opened on the far bank in a glow of lit-up buildings.
The streets were alive with pedestrians in evening clothes.
A cluster of Cardinals fans in red jerseys ambled down Market Street away from Busch Stadium, laughing about something she couldn’t hear through her cracked window.
The air wafting in smelled of the river and barbecue.
When she was three blocks out from Leo’s building, she instructed her phone to dial his number.
“Pulling up.”
“I’ll meet you in the garage.”
“Negative. Stay in your unit. I’ll come to you.”
“Anja—”
“Leo. Stay inside.”
The pause on his end lasted half a second, and then she heard him exhale. He’d been about to argue, then thought better of it.
“Copy.”
She appreciated that he didn’t fight her. Civilians under pressure argued about everything, and the ones who didn’t were usually either veterans or quick studies. Leo had no military background, putting him squarely in the second category.
“I’ll be there in ten. Put a fresh pot of coffee on. I want to read your face while you tell me what happened today.”
“You want to read my face?”
“Tells are cheaper in person.”
Another surprised half-laugh. “Coffee’s already on.”
“Good. Ten minutes.”
Anja ended the call and took the turn into the underground garage. She parked in the visitors’ section, killed the engine, and sat for a slow sixty seconds with her hands on the wheel, observing the garage around her in the mirrors and through the windshield.
She typed a quick text to let Leo know she was on the way up, got out, shouldered the go-bag, and walked toward the elevator with her jacket open and her right hand loose at her side where the Sig sat high on her hip under the hem.
There were five cars on this level. Three of them looked as if they’d been parked for hours, with dust on the rear windows and no heat signatures visible through the glass.
The other two were fresh: a gray Audi in the near corner, its engine ticking as it cooled, and a white pickup by the elevator bank with a set of golf clubs in the bed.
Nobody was in either cab, and she didn’t hear any footsteps echoing on the concrete.
Clean enough for the first pass.
She took the mirrored elevator and thumbed the button for the top floor.
The car rose with the drone of a well-maintained cable system, and Anja caught her reflection in the back wall because there was no avoiding it.
Blonde strands had escaped the braid she’d put in four hours earlier in Bloomington.
A faint flush warmed her cheekbones that had nothing to do with the heated air inside the car.
Her chin was set at the familiar angle it always took before she walked into a room she didn’t trust. She looked ready to work.
She also looked like someone stepping into a chapter she hadn’t named yet.
Both versions were here, and neither was about to take control of the other. She’d sort out the balance later.
The elevator opened on the top floor to a hallway with two doors that was hushed and tastefully lit.
A runner stretched down the center and light jazz drifted out from behind the other door.
Anja stopped in front of the one with Leo’s unit number on the brass plate.
She adjusted her bag in her grip, squared her shoulders, inhaled deeply, and knocked twice firmly.
The door whipped open, and Anja tried to calm her racing heart.
Leo stood in front of her in a rumpled white long-sleeved polo with some logo embroidered over the left chest, his dark hair doing the thing it did when he’d been running his fingers through it for an hour.
His feet were bare on the oak floor of his entryway.
He had a mug of coffee in one hand and an expression Anja recognized from across the bed five months ago.
His composure had just left the building.
She cataloged the rest of him in the half-second before he spoke, because that was what she did.
Six-three, give or take, with the leftover frame of an athlete who’d never quite let the gym go.
Olive skin and a faint shadow along a jaw that hadn’t seen a razor since morning.
Brown eyes the color of espresso, with something gold in them when the entryway light caught them just right.
A small, pale scar through the outer edge of his right eyebrow.
Sleeves shoved to the elbows, revealing his forearms. They were a problem.
He was dangerously handsome. More so than she remembered.
He gazed at her mutely for a full ten seconds.
She let him have that because she wasn’t sure she trusted her own voice to come out right on the first try. Then she heard herself deliver, “Try to pace yourself, De Luca.”
It was the first thing she’d said to him when they met.
Leo exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath since he’d called her hours earlier. The corners of his mouth pulled up, sending an involuntary shiver racing through her. What was that?
He stepped aside. “Come in.”
Anja crossed the threshold of Leo De Luca’s condo with her go-bag on her shoulder, and the drawer she’d been sitting on for five months unlocked inside her.
Behind her, the door clicked shut and the deadbolt turned.
Outside the east-facing windows, the St. Louis skyline glittered against a dark sky.
Anja set her duffel on the hardwood. More than anything, she wanted to walk into Leo’s arms and lose herself as she had months ago. Instead, she turned to face him, the agent firmly back in control.
“Let’s get to work.”