Chapter Six
The eggs hit the buttered pan with a hiss. Anja propped a hip against the counter and watched Leo cook.
It was not, strictly speaking, part of the job.
Though she could argue that it was. A woman in her line of work learned a client by watching them do the ordinary things.
Those were where the tells lived. How a man held a knife told her about his temper.
His stance at the stove showed whether he could keep his hands steady when someone walked in behind him.
How he moved in his own kitchen told her what he looked like when the floor had dropped out from under him, and he was pretending, for her benefit, that it hadn’t.
Leo was doing okay. Not great, but he was holding it together.
He’d pushed up his sleeves again and added a crack of pepper from a mill he kept within arm’s reach.
Four pieces of wheat bread dropped into a toaster that looked expensive enough to have its own opinions.
His breathing had slowed down to something normal about ninety seconds after he’d pulled the skillet out of the cabinet.
Keeping busy was the ground wire. Leo needed somewhere to put his hands.
She understood that. It was one of about a dozen things she had in common with him, and she was choosing to notice only the useful ones tonight.
“Cheese?” he asked without turning around.
“If you have it.”
“I have it.”
“Then yes.”
He opened the fridge, pulled out a block of sharp white cheddar, and grated a heap directly into the eggs.
She wondered if he’d taken a cooking class.
That was professional-level skill. She studied his shoulders for the half-second it took him to close the fridge and turn back to the stove.
That was where the tension lived first and left last. Leo’s had come down about an inch since he’d jumped up from the barstool.
Good.
Part of her mission tonight was on the flash drive. Most of it was keeping the man next to it on his feet.
Her phone buzzed with Kayla’s ringtone. Anja read the text.
Report when you can. Don’t need details. Just want to know you’re not dead.
She typed back one line.
Alive. Working. Will call in the morning.
The response came before she’d set the phone down.
Copy. Tell him hi from us.
Anja smirked at the screen. As if she would admit to Leo that she’d been talking about him to her coworkers.
She put the phone down again and lifted her gaze.
Leo was looking at her over his shoulder.
The eggs were moving in the pan, the spoon in his hand carving a slow figure-eight, but his attention was entirely on her face. Whatever he’d read there had etched a line between his eyebrows.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“No. Coworker making sure I made it safely.”
Leo turned back to the stove before either of them had to look at the other any longer than was reasonable.
He slid the eggs off the heat and onto two plates.
The toast popped. He buttered the slices and laid them beside the eggs.
A sprinkle of chives appeared out of nowhere.
He carried the plates around the island and set one down in front of the stool she’d claimed, his shoulder brushing hers as he passed.
She felt it through a layer of cotton. A professional wouldn’t log it, but an honest woman would.
He pulled his stool around and sat down. The exhale he let out when his weight came off his feet was involuntary, revealing how hard the evening had been on him.
For one second, she considered reaching over and putting her hand on his forearm.
She didn’t.
She picked up her fork instead.
The first bite was shockingly good. The cheddar had gone sharp and melty, and the butter on the toast likely cost extra at a grocery store but was worth it. Anja closed her eyes for the length of one chew. She’d been running since early this morning, and her body had just remembered that detail.
Leo chuckled. “That’s a sound.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m taking notes.”
“Eat your eggs, De Luca.”
He was smiling. Not broadly, but it was the first time she’d seen it since the hallway two hours ago, and her heart had, inconveniently, recorded it. He was smiling at a woman making an appreciative noise over eggs he’d cooked in the middle of a really terrible day.
Anja was three bites in when Leo set his fork down and swore under his breath.
She kept chewing. “That bad?”
“I just remembered something.”
“What’s that?”
He tipped his head back and aimed a slow exhale at the ceiling. The exhaustion she’d been tracking in his shoulders for the last hour climbed a few inches up his neck.
“Curtis’s fundraiser is tomorrow.” He glanced at his watch. “Tonight.”
She waited.
“It’s a benefit for pediatric cancer. He throws it every year to coincide with the golf tournament.
Black tie, the whole nine yards. Pinnacle has four tables near the front.
” He brought his head back down and met her gaze.
“I can’t skip it. It’s a huge deal. Plus, a few of my clients are flying in for it. ”
“Is Devonte one of them?”
“Yes, and his wife. They’re presenting a check on behalf of his foundation.”
She set her fork down beside her plate and lined it up parallel to the knife. “What time?”
“Cocktails at six. Dinner at eight.”
“Venue?”
“The Chase Park Plaza. Khorassan Ballroom.”
“How many at your table?”
“Each seats ten.”
“And Devonte’s flying in today?”
“He’s already here. They landed last night.”
Anja drummed two fingers on the island and regarded how the fluorescent pulse from the underside of his range hood reflected on the dark stovetop.
A black-tie ballroom would be packed with Pinnacle’s employee roster.
Devonte Cross would be in the same room, eating prime rib, with no idea his son’s daycare pickup window was sitting on a thumb drive in his agent’s kitchen.
She didn’t love it. She didn’t hate it either.
“You’re going, and I’m going with you, and between the salad and the entrée, you’ll need to find time to question Devonte.”
Leo took that in without moving. His hand clutched the water bottle she’d put in front of him forty minutes ago, but his eyes had cleared. Whatever fatigue had been climbing his neck was receding.
He let a slow breath out through his nose. “I haven’t introduced you to a single person at my firm.”
“I’m aware.”
“You realize the first one who sees you on my arm is going to send out a group text within ninety seconds.”
“Then we’ll give them something useful to talk about.” She tilted her head. “Are you comfortable being a couple for an evening, De Luca, or do you want a different cover?”
His lips did the crooked tug she’d been trying not to notice. “I say we couple it.”
“Good. The cover holds for the room and the cameras. Inside our own heads we are a principal and his protection, and one of us is wearing a sidearm under her dress.”
“Sounds romantic.”
“You should see what the holster does to a chiffon line.”
The sound that escaped him was tired and a little stunned, but it was a laugh, and she was choosing to keep counting them tonight.
He turned his fork over and went back to his eggs. “What should I ask Devonte?”
“The short version is: Has anything strange happened in the last six months? Is there anyone new in the family’s orbit? Have there been phone calls, packages, letters, conversations, or coincidences that didn’t feel right? He’s going to want to give you a clean answer. Don’t let him.”
“Devonte won’t lie to me.”
“He loves you. People lie to people they love all the time, especially when they’re scared, or when somebody’s told them not to.”
He absorbed that and then nodded once.
“Read his face. You know him. I don’t.”
“Copy that.”
She picked her fork back up and took another bite. The toast was cooling, but the eggs were warm, and the part of her brain that ran threat scenarios was laying out the floor plan of a hotel ballroom she’d never been inside.
Halfway through the next bite, a problem caught up with her.
She lowered the fork.
“De Luca?”
“Yeah.”
“I drove four hours in yoga pants and a field jacket.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve got a Sig in my go-bag and spare tees. I do not have a black-tie gown in the trunk of my Escalade.”
He grinned, broader this time. “I was wondering when you were going to get there.”
“Don’t enjoy this.”
“I am a little.”
“Well, enjoy it quietly.” She picked up her phone. “What’s the dress code on a Curtis Lennox guest list?”
“Expensive. Pinnacle wives go big.”
“Of course they do.”
She thumbed her phone open, tapped through to her contacts, then changed her mind and pulled up the secure messaging app instead.
Anja was going to owe BeBe Hale at least one bottle of something good for the restraint.
BeBe was the office manager, but everyone knew she practically ran the entire agency.
Sorry to send this so early. I need a favor off-paper.
Black-tie gown in St. Louis, by six o’clock tonight.
Cover is a plus-one for a sports-agent boyfriend at a charity gala.
Read my line of work out of it entirely.
Shoes I can run in but not look like I can.
Need a stylist who will not ask questions or remember my face on Monday.
The dots appeared within two seconds.
You’re going to a black-tie gala.
Yes.
With Leonardo De Luca.
Okay, the woman was scarily competent, but how did she know about Leo? Did everyone? Was Anja kidding herself, thinking her bosses didn’t know? She shook her head. No, because if Kayne knew, he’d have called her immediately, or, more likely, shown up at Leo’s place with guns blazing.
Yes, Anja replied.
On his arm?
She sighed and replied, BeBe . . .
Just confirming I have the picture in focus. I’m calling Larisa at the boutique we used for a senator’s wife last fall. She owes me a favor. You’ll be in and out in ninety minutes. I’m texting you the address now. Don’t argue with her about the shoes.
Understood.
Anja?
Yes?
I want a picture.
Anja shook her head at the request and typed, No.
One. From the elevator. You don’t have to be in it.
Goodbye, BeBe.