Chapter Thirteen
After a quick shower that was disappointingly solo, Leo found Anja in the kitchen working through something on her laptop.
She’d changed into jeans and a blue sweater that accentuated her eyes, her hair caught back in a low knot.
Objectively, no one would guess she’d spent the previous night laughing so hard she’d buried her face in his neck to keep from waking Remi.
He helped himself to some coffee.
“Tim Hargrove’s wake is tomorrow.” Not that she needed reminding. The woman had the memory of an elephant. “I need a suit. The firm expects me in something that isn’t jeans and a fleece.”
Anja looked up. “Do we need to go shopping?”
“No, I’ve got several at my apartment.” He set his mug down. “Remi and I can stop before work.”
She closed the laptop. “I’ll go with you.”
“You don’t have to come along for a wardrobe run.”
“No,” she agreed as she headed down the hall, “but I’m going to.”
He didn’t object. When the subject was security, arguing with her was a reliable way to lose time and gain nothing.
Remi appeared in the doorway two minutes later. He took in the situation with a single glance. “Your place?”
“Quick errand,” Leo confirmed.
Remi picked up his coffee and drained it, then twirled his finger in the air. “Let’s roll.”
They took Remi’s Escalade and headed east. The neighborhood shifted through the window as the limestone mansions gave way to broader avenues and the high-rise corridor where his building sat. His unit was thirty-five stories above street level.
The doorman, Oscar, had been there for eleven years. He was behind the desk when they pushed through the lobby doors. Oscar brightened and lifted a hand. “Mr. De Luca. Good to see you. Rough weekend?”
Geez, did he look that bad? “Working one. Oscar, these are colleagues of mine.”
Oscar gave Anja and Remi a polite, professional nod. He’d been managing the private comings and goings of wealthy tenants for long enough to know not to ask. “Of course. Have a good morning, Mr. De Luca.”
“You too.”
They took the elevator to Leo’s floor. The hallway smelled faintly of cedar from the cleaning service, and the low hum of the HVAC meant it was working properly. He pulled up the mobile app to unlock the smart door, and the deadbolt clicked.
He knew within three steps.
His jacket was on the floor near the couch. Not folded or hung, but discarded. The bookshelves along the east wall had been cleared in long, sweeping pulls, his belongings strewn across the hardwood in a trail that led through the open archway toward the hall.
“Stop.” Anja’s voice was flat and immediate.
He stopped.
She was already past him, one hand raised as she moved through the space in a low, fluid crouch that bore no resemblance to how he’d ever seen a person move through a room. Remi peeled left without a word, covering the blind corner by the kitchen.
Leo stood in the doorway as they cleared the apartment in a concentrated silence that left no room for commentary.
It took ninety seconds.
Remi reappeared from the bedroom hallway. “Clear.”
Anja straightened. “Don’t touch anything yet.”
He hadn’t moved.
Leo scanned his condo, taking in the overturned side table and the open drawers in the credenza, their contents rummaged through and dumped onto the floor. The kitchen was visible through the archway, its cabinet doors hanging open at odd angles. They’d ripped them off the hinges.
“They had time,” she murmured. “And went through everything.”
“What about the building’s security system?” Remi asked.
“It’s extensive. Multiple cameras monitor the halls, entrance, and elevator.”
He didn’t tell them that while security had been important when he’d chosen the place, he hadn’t paid close attention to what those measures involved. After Chloe’s ordeal, he’d learned to locate cameras, identify exits, and scan corners.
Remi took out his phone and moved toward the window. “I’ll call building security. Find out if there’s footage.”
#
While Remi made the call, Anja reconnoitered the apartment a second time.
Anja didn’t touch the open cabinetry or the shelves as she walked the perimeter of each room with the same methodical focus she’d once brought to homicide scenes.
She was looking for the thing that didn’t fit the pattern.
The one detail that would tell her something about who’d done this and how long they’d stayed.
Whether they’d found what they came for.
Leo’s bedroom was the worst of it. Suits had been yanked from their hangers and dropped, shirts lifted and let fall.
The dresser was half-empty, socks and neatly folded clothes dragged out and left on the carpet.
His laptop bag, the second one he kept at home, was open on the floor with the laptop still in it.
That was interesting.
They’d possibly looked through it but hadn’t taken it, so robbery wasn’t the motive. Which meant they either found what they wanted in something else, they’d been interrupted, or the laptop wasn’t what they wanted.
She went back down the hall. Leo was in the living room, standing with his hands in his pockets, taking stock of his own apartment as if he didn’t recognize it anymore.
“Laptop’s still there.” She nodded toward the bedroom.
“Do you think they got what they came for?”
“I think they got something. I don’t know what yet.
” She took out her phone and started photographing the room in segments, including the pattern of the drawers and the arrangement of everything they’d left on the floor.
“Did you keep anything here related to the thumb drive? Notes, printouts, backup files?”
“No. Everything like that’s at the safe house or with Tyler.”
She logged that away for later. “What about client files? Personal financials? Anything with names on it?”
He thought about it. “I have a contact list in the top credenza drawer. Business cards, some personal ones. Old contracts I brought home to review. I keep playoff tickets in there.”
“Anything with ApexPlay? Anything tied to Vic Shaw?”
His lips firmed. “Vic’s last voicemail. I printed the transcription.” He moved toward the credenza without touching it, stopped short, and peered into the open drawer. “Second slot from the top.”
She followed his gaze. The space was empty. Not ransacked-empty like the kitchen. Clean-empty. The intruder had taken that one specific thing and left everything around it intact.
Remi came around the corner from the hallway with his phone at his side. “There was a power outage mid-morning yesterday. It hit this building and one adjacent property.”
Anja had expected it, but knowing it was coming hadn’t softened the blow. Two outages, both targeted and timed to a breach. A failing grid wasn’t to blame. Somebody on the other side of this knew how surveillance systems worked and had the resources to selectively knock them out.
“Did security notice anyone in the building during the outage?” Leo asked.
“The lobby camera was down.” Remi folded his arms. “Elevator camera backup was on battery power. It might have something. They’re pulling the footage.”
“Tell them I want a copy of everything from Sunday afternoon, specifically Leo’s floor.”
“Already done.”
She turned back to Leo. “We need to go.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“I’ll notify them so they can open a file, but since nothing was taken except for the transcript that we’re definitely not telling them about, their response won’t get us anywhere. We’re dealing with a professional.”
He looked toward the hallway. “The suit.”
She’d forgotten that was why they’d come. “You’ll probably have to have it dry-cleaned or at least steamed.”
He came back two minutes later with a garment bag over his shoulder. Anja ran her hands over the outside, checked the pockets and zipper seam, then nodded. Nothing obvious.
Leo surveyed his living room one more time. “Someone broke into my apartment.”
“Yes.”
“And went through my belongings.”
“Yes.”
The easy social warmth she associated with him was entirely absent. What remained underneath was controlled and considerably less comfortable to be on the wrong side of. “They’ve been in my office and now my apartment. They’re not just watching anymore.”
“No, they’re not.”
Anja put Leo between them as they walked to the elevator and boarded. She watched the numbers drop on the panel above the doors. Remi stood with his hands loose at his sides, alert without showing it. Leo held his garment bag and said nothing.
“Thank you, Oscar,” Leo called out as they crossed toward the exit, because he thanked people regardless of what was happening, and even now it was automatic.
Outside, the morning was overcast. Anja scanned the block out of reflex: cars at the curb, a pedestrian half a block east, a delivery van idling near the corner. Nothing tapped at her instincts.
She recalled Vic’s voicemail. He said he’d put something together and was sorry it had gotten this far. That there was more than what was on the drive and he’d handled it wrong from the beginning. That he’d needed Leo to know.
Terrified and apologizing, Vic had called Leo before he’d driven to Kansas City and died. And someone had found that transcript, which meant they knew Leo was knee-deep in this now.
She got into the Escalade and kept the last thought to herself.
#
Anja shed her jacket onto the hook by the door and headed for the office. She dropped into a chair and called Tyler, and soon his face filled half the computer screen from his lair in Bloomington.
“Tell me you’ve got something.”
“I’ve got lots.” Tyler’s voice carried that brightness he got when data gave him a foothold.
“Power company confirms the outage at Leo’s building was localized to two transformers feeding that block.
Somebody requested a service interruption through the utility’s own system using credentials traced back to a contractor account that hasn’t done legitimate work in that grid sector in fourteen months. ”
“I’m guessing a hijacked account.”