Chapter Nine
Leo stared out the window for ten minutes before he gave up and called her.
Chloe answered on the first ring.
“Leo?” She sounded wide awake, but there was an edge to it, meaning she’d been expecting bad news. “It’s after midnight. What’s wrong? Does this have something to do with the call Kayne got earlier?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” The lie tasted exactly as bad as he’d known it would. “Well, something is, but I’m fine. I wanted you to hear it from me instead of anyone else.”
He gave her the short version, then told her about the photographs of her, taken in Bloomington that afternoon while she’d been doing something as ordinary as buying groceries.
He left out the part where someone had circled a twenty-two-year-old girl in red ink, because Chloe didn’t need that image living in her head tonight, and frankly, neither did he.
“They photographed me?” Her voice climbed half an octave. “Today? While I was walking around?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re calling to tell me you’re fine.”
“I am.”
“Leo.” Two drawn-out syllables, delivered with enough of their mother in them to make him feel twelve again. “Someone is targeting your clients and watching me, which means they’re watching you too, and you’re calling at midnight to tell me not to worry.”
“That’s the gist of it, yeah.”
“I’m coming to St. Louis.”
“No.”
“Leo—”
“Chloe, listen to me.” He sat up against the headboard, forcing calm into the words, because she’d hear it in a second if he didn’t.
“You know what it’s like being the one in danger.
I watched Kayne lose ten years off his life every time you walked out of his sightline.
I am not doing that to him, and I am not doing it to you, and I sure as hell am not doing it to myself by having one more person to worry about in this city. ”
“That’s not fair. You were there for me.”
“And now I need you to be there for yourself. Stay put inside the gates. Kayne will hover. Let him.”
He could picture her on the other end, sitting up in the dark with one hand pressed flat against her stomach, a familiar tell that she was working hard not to cry.
“I hate this,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I can’t stand that you’re the one who has to be vigilant and I’m the one who gets to be safe behind a fence with armed guards and a husband who’d burn the city down for me. You’re just . . . in your condo. Alone.”
“I’m not alone.” The words came out before he’d decided to say them. Might as well go all in. “Anja’s here. Luke and Logan are sending more people in the morning.”
When Chloe spoke again, it was a different tone that, even at midnight and scared half to death for him, still managed to sound like his sister noticing a thing she found most interesting.
“Anja Johansen is at your condo.”
“That’s not the headline, Chloe.”
“It’s a little bit the headline, Leo.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I love you. Be careful. Tell Anja hi from me, and also that I have several questions for her.”
“Goodnight, Chloe.”
He hung up smiling despite everything, which felt like cheating somehow. It took another hour after that before sleep came.
He woke a few minutes past seven to dawn light streaming through the east windows. For one fleeting moment, lying there, none of it had happened. Then it arrived in a rush. His knee gave its usual complaint when he swung his legs out of bed, reminding him it had opinions about mornings too.
He showered, dressed in jeans and a crimson pullover, and packed.
Not much. He hadn’t done this kind of packing in years, not since road trips during his playing days, but the muscle memory was still there.
The suit he’d worn to the fundraiser was hastily draped over the valet stand where he’d left it last night.
He selected clothes for work and for after hours.
Next, he tossed in his shaving kit and phone charger.
When he was finished, he zipped the suitcase and rolled it down the hall.
Anja was dressed, her bag sitting by the door. She had two mugs out and was pouring from the carafe when he walked in.
“Morning.” She slid one toward him. “You look like you didn’t sleep.”
“I called Chloe.”
“I figured.” She studied him over the rim of her mug. “How’d she take it?”
“About how you’d expect. She wanted to drive over.”
“And you told her no.”
“I told her hell no.” He took a long drink of coffee, grateful for it. “Chloe wasn’t even worried about herself. She was upset that I was the one in danger and she wasn’t here to help.”
Anja’s expression softened. “That tracks. You did the same thing for her.”
“I told her I was in excellent hands.” He glanced at her. “Which, for the record, was not a line. It’s just true.”
“Smart man.” A corner of her mouth tipped up, and she nodded toward his luggage. “That’s it?”
“I’m a light packer.”
“Your closet looks like a hotel gift shop display.” She set her mug down and checked her phone. “Remi should be here in a couple of hours. He left the compound around five.”
“Remind me who Remi is again.”
“Remington Methany. You probably haven’t met him.
He’s one of CObrA Securities’ newest field operatives.
He’s a former Army Ranger, transferred over from a private contracting outfit.
Logan vouches for him, which is the only reference that matters.
” She paused, considering. “He’s good. Great sense of humor. You’ll like him.”
“You say that like you’re managing my expectations.”
“I’m managing nothing. I’m telling you he’s good at his job and he’s bringing gear, and that should make you feel better, not worse.”
Actually, it did, though he wasn’t going to admit that out loud at seven in the morning.
They ate toast, bacon, and the last of the eggs Leo had in the fridge, while Anja ran through the morning’s plan.
They were moving to a CObrA Securities-owned safe house just around the corner, fully wired and swept.
Devonte’s family was being moved separately, with a different team handling that end, so Leo didn’t need to worry about logistics there.
Leo had called Devonte to let him know, and Devonte had thanked him profusely.
“And Pinnacle?” he asked.
“That’s for tomorrow. Today we’ll set up, get organized, and let Tyler walk us through what he’s found on the thumb drive.
” She rinsed her plate and set it in the dishwasher with a precision that made him think she’d probably alphabetize a junk drawer if left alone with one long enough.
“Today’s the simple day, Leo. Enjoy it. You won’t get many more. ”
Anja’s phone buzzed two hours later. “That’s Remi.”
A sharp rap sounded.
The man on the other side of Leo’s door took up most of the entryway.
He had to be six-five, with a physique that came from years of carrying a pack and a rifle up mountains rather than time in a gym, though it was clear he spent time there too.
His blond hair was cut close on the sides and sticking up on the top, and his blue eyes did the same fast read of the apartment Anja had done when she arrived.
“Leo De Luca.” He stuck out a hand, and Remi’s grip was as firm as Leo expected.
“Remi Methany. Heard a lot about you.”
“All bad, I hope.”
“Mostly good, actually. According to Anja, you’re a pain in the ass, but one she finds tolerable.” Remi’s mouth twitched. “High praise, from her.”
“I never said that.” Anja started gathering her things.
“All right, maybe you didn’t. I did, however, get a pretty stern lecture from Kayne and a serious threat from Chloe that if you came back damaged, Kayne won’t be the person I need to worry about. She smiled when she said it. I found that unsettling.”
Leo laughed.
“Anja, Tank packed everything on your list plus a couple of extras, including the portable signal detector and a backup laptop loaded with Tyler’s secure client. I’ve also got a few things I figured we might want, given the circumstances.”
Leo gave him a dubious look. “Dare I ask what a few things are?”
“Better you don’t.” Remi delivered it without any weight, and somehow that was more reassuring than if he’d made a joke of it. “We should move. Sunday traffic isn’t bad, but I’d rather get settled before the neighborhood wakes up and starts walking dogs down the street.”
Leo grabbed his suitcase and his laptop case. He took one last look around his condo before he locked it, an instinct he didn’t examine too closely, and followed the other two down to the garage.
They left Leo’s Range Rover and took the two bulletproof CObrA Securities Escalades instead. And wasn’t that a fun reminder of what was happening in his life right now? Not to mention the fact that Anja made him wear a Kevlar vest under his sweatshirt.
Leo rode with Anja while Remi followed several minutes behind so they wouldn’t draw unwanted attention with two black vehicles with darkened windows arriving together.
The trip took less than ten minutes as they traveled north and west into a part of the Central West End Leo rarely had reason to drive through, even though it sat practically in his backyard.
The condo towers and trendy restaurants gave way to older blocks of massive brick mansions built a century ago by families who’d made fortunes in beer, railroads, and shoes and had wanted the entire city to know it.
Deep lawns. Mature oaks. Houses set back far enough from the street that they had their own weather.
Anja slowed in front of one of them, a two-story Georgian Revival in dark-red brick, and Leo took in the ten-foot wrought-iron fence running the length of the property, mounted on squared limestone pillars that matched the house’s trim down to the color.
A motorized gate sat between two of the columns.
Anja rolled down the window and typed a code into the reader bolted to the brick before the gate rolled smoothly back on its track.
“CObrA Securities owns this?” Leo asked, twisting to look at the place as they pulled up the cobblestone drive.
“They own a lot of things,” Anja said, as if that explained everything, which, honestly, it kind of did.