Chapter Seven
Then he heard movement in the kitchen.
He bolted upright, dragged a hand through his hair, and sat on the edge of the bed long enough to confirm that his knee would cooperate this morning.
It did. Marginally. He grabbed a clean shirt from the closet, swapped out the joggers for jeans, and made it down the hall to find Anja at the kitchen island with her coffee and her laptop.
She’d apparently slept a couple of hours and made a battle plan before dawn.
He must’ve made a sound because she glanced up, her gaze traveling over him from head to foot. Somehow, it managed to be both an assessment and a greeting.
“You actually slept.”
“I did.” He rounded the island toward the coffee. “Surprised?”
“Mildly. I figured you’d be staring at the ceiling until three.”
“I made it to 2:15.” He poured a mug and leaned against the counter. “How long have you been up?”
“A while.”
Which meant she’d been at it for hours and wasn’t going to tell him that.
He let it go. Outside the east windows, the city had the flat pewter light of early morning, clouds moving in low over the skyline.
The Chase Park Plaza was eleven blocks south.
In roughly thirteen hours, they’d be walking through the doors of the Khorassan Ballroom, and Leo would shake hands with people he worked with while Anja cataloged their tells.
He drank his coffee and thought about it. “Question.”
She didn’t look up from the screen. “Go ahead.”
“Are you always this alert before eight, or is this a professional courtesy?”
“Both.”
“Terrifying.”
“You’ve mentioned.”
He topped off her mug without asking. She accepted it without comment. He counted it as a win as he pulled out the stool across from her and sat down. “What are we looking at?”
Anja turned the laptop around. On the screen was a seating chart for the Pinnacle Foundation gala, a public document she’d apparently located before the sun came up. It was annotated in neat shorthand across three clusters of tables, and she’d mapped who would sit near whom.
He studied it. Then he pointed to the tables in the center, second ring from the dais. “Those are ours. Curtis usually does the same grouping. Senior partners, top-performing agents, and whatever clients he wants to showcase.”
She pulled the laptop back and added a notation. “Walk me through who else will be there.”
“Brad Hatton. Senior agent, twelve years with the firm. He’ll be with his wife, Renee, who was a homecoming queen in 1993 and has not entirely moved on from this.
To their left, probably Jasmine Ortega, our general counsel.
Sharp, ethical to the bone, would give you the shirt off her back and then invoice you for it.
” He paused. “Curtis at the head. His wife, Lydia, who collects Impressionist art and volunteers at the Missouri Botanical Garden, is genuinely the nicest person in any room she enters.” He named several other staff members.
Anja absorbed all of this in one slow blink. “And the agents who aren’t senior partners. Where do they land?”
“Outer tables. Good seats, good view, just not the circle.” He traced a finger toward the left cluster. “That’s probably where my assistant, Marcy, winds up. She comes every year. She calls it her annual reminder that she’s underpaid.”
A flicker crossed Anja’s expression, the faint version of amusement she allowed herself before correcting it. “I like her already.”
“Everyone does. She’s terrifying.” He sat back. “What do we tell people about us?”
Anja straightened slightly. “We met a few months ago and have been seeing each other since, but I travel a lot.” She kept her tone even.
“That gives me a reason to be unfamiliar with your colleagues without it seeming suspicious. They’ll try to get a read on me, so I’ll let them.
People tell you a great deal when they think they’re the ones doing the evaluating. ”
“And what do I tell Curtis when he asks how we met?”
“He’ll ask?”
“He absolutely will. The man has never in his life missed a chance to connect people. He’ll want to know your name, your background, and your favorite sports team, in that order.”
She considered that. “Then tell him we met through Chloe.”
It was the cleanest possible answer, true enough to hold up, and for a second he just looked at her. She’d had that ready. Of course she’d had that ready.
Everyone at his office knew what had happened to Chloe a few months ago since it was all over the news, but they didn’t know about Anja.
“Got it.”
She closed the laptop. “The stylist expects me at two to pick out a dress. Ninety minutes tops, then back here to brief you on the questions before we leave.”
He drummed his fingers once on the counter. “Three questions for Devonte.”
“Write them down. I’ll refine them on the drive.”
“You want me to write the questions?”
“You know him. I don’t.” She pushed off the stool and carried her mug to the sink. “Write them how you’d actually talk to him, not how an operative would. He needs to think it’s a conversation, not an intake form.”
Leo pulled his notepad with the Pinnacle logo from the junk drawer and uncapped a pen.
Questions for Devonte, a twenty-six-year-old Pro Bowl wide receiver.
The kid who’d called Leo at midnight from the hospital when his son was born three weeks early because he hadn’t known who else to call that late.
He wrote: Anything strange happen in the last few months? Anyone new around the family? Anything that felt off and you wrote off as nothing?
He set the pen down and studied what he’d written.
“Anja.”
She glanced over from the sink.
“He’s going to give me the clean version first.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m going to have to push past it.”
“Yes.”
He tapped the notepad once. The Pinnacle logo stared back at him. He flipped it over. “Okay. Let’s go get you a dress.”
#
The boutique didn’t have a sign.
That was the first thing Anja noticed when Leo pulled the Range Rover into the narrow alley off Maryland Avenue.
A lacquered black door set flush into the brick and a security camera angled above the frame.
There was nothing else, not a flashy window display, a placard with hours posted, or even any evidence that the building was anything other than a very expensive wall.
“This is it,” Leo announced.
“BeBe does nothing halfway.”
“I’ve noticed.”
He came around and held the door, because apparently that was something Leo De Luca did without thinking about it. Manners were underappreciated. Anja walked past him to knock on the door. It opened with a click into a space that smelled like patchouli and dry-cleaned silk and money.
The private fitting suite was located behind a second door, accessed through a narrow hallway lined with covered racks.
A woman came out to greet them. It was hard to determine her age.
She was anywhere from forty to seventy, Russian-boned, with silver hair pulled into a chignon and reading glasses pushed up on her forehead like a crown.
She wore a crimson blazer and the expression of having dressed diplomats’ wives and movie stars.
“Larisa Morozova.” She extended her hand to Anja for a brief, professional shake. Then she turned her attention to Leo. “You are the boyfriend.”
“That’s the working theory,” Leo said pleasantly.
Larisa studied him for two full seconds. Then she pointed at a pair of chairs set against the far wall with a table between them holding a bottle of sparkling water and two glasses. “Sit.”
“I feel like there should’ve been a please somewhere in there.”
“Sit and don’t talk unless I ask.”
Leo sat.
Anja grinned. Watching Leonardo De Luca get put in a time-out might be worth the trip all by itself.
He narrowed his eyes at her and mouthed, “You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely.” She planned to remember this technique for future use.
Larisa turned back to Anja, and she quickly blanked her expression.
Larisa took her hands and scrutinized her with the critical eye of a sculptor assessing a lump of clay.
She walked in a slow circle. Anja stood motionless and let herself be evaluated, which was not something she did for most people.
“You move like an athlete,” Larisa announced. She stepped in and lifted Anja’s braid off her shoulder, considering something. “The hair stays up or down tonight?”
“Up.”
“Good choice.” She set the braid back down. “What do you want the room to see?”
Anja kept her voice even. “Someone who belongs there.”
“And what do you not want them to see?”
“Everything else.”
Approval flashed across the older woman’s expression. She turned toward the covered rack at the far end of the room and began removing gowns without hesitation, returning a few and selecting others. She had six options arranged on the rail in under four minutes.
“Start with the black,” Larisa instructed, and disappeared to give Anja the space to change.
The black was architectural and beautiful, making Anja look like someone attending a different event entirely, possibly one with a red carpet and photographers. She came out, stood under the track lighting, and watched Larisa’s face.
Larisa shook her head once before Anja could ask.
“Too much volume. You’re there to listen, not to be listened to.” She circled a finger. “Next.”
The champagne satin was elegant and entirely wrong. It was too silky and yielding. It turned her into someone she wasn’t, and she could feel it.
“No,” Larisa declared before she’d even fully emerged from the dressing room.
Anja did an about-face. “Agreed.”
The red column with the slit was close enough that she paused under the light and actually considered it. Larisa tilted her head back and forth, undecided, which was more consideration than anything else had gotten.
“It’s not wrong,” Larisa allowed, “but it is not right either.” She disappeared back to the rack.
Behind her, Leo refilled his water glass and offered no opinion, which she appreciated.
Larisa returned with something draped over her arm in deep, liquid midnight blue.
“Try this. Put the hair up first.”