Chapter Thirteen #2
“You’d be right. Same signature as the outage at Pinnacle. Whoever’s running this has had utility-level access sitting in their back pocket for months, just waiting for a reason to use it.”
Leo came in behind her and angled himself so he could see the screen too. “That’s not cheap.”
“Nor is it amateur,” Tyler replied. “It’s planning, money, and patience. Three things I’d rather our problem not have.”
“Building footage?” she asked Tyler.
“Partial. The elevator camera backup picked up two figures before it died, but the angle’s bad, and they knew where the blind spot was.
” He pulled up a frame showing two grainy shapes with their faces angled deliberately away from the lens.
“I’m running enhancements, but don’t get your hopes up.
These people don’t make rookie mistakes. ”
“No.” Anja studied the image. “They don’t.”
Leo rubbed a hand across his jaw. “So we’re no closer to knowing who?”
“We’re closer to knowing what they’re capable of,” Tyler corrected. “Which, honestly, might matter more right now.”
It did. Anja had spent the drive back turning the apartment breach over in her mind, hunting for the detail that didn’t fit, and what kept surfacing wasn’t a face or a name.
It was the patience and the precision. Whoever orchestrated this had resources that didn’t belong to a jealous rival agent or a disgruntled client.
This was institutional. Someone had spent enough time inside the right rooms to know which ones mattered.
“Anything on the three agencies?” she asked.
“Nothing yet. I’m working it on the down low.”
She thanked Tyler and cut the feed.
Leo draped the garment bag over the back of a chair and withdrew his phone.
“I should call Marcy before she sends a search party.” He waited through two rings.
“Hey, it’s me. I’m taking the rest of the week off.
Clear my calendar, move anything you can to next week, and anything that absolutely can’t wait can come through you.
” There was a pause. Then, “Yes, I said off.” Another pause.
“Completely off.” He sighed. “Marcy, could you enjoy this historic occasion instead of interrogating me?” Whatever she said made him rub the back of his neck.
“No, nothing’s wrong. I’ve got some things to deal with, and I want to keep my head down before Tim’s wake.
” Another pause. “I knew you’d understand.
” He hung up and set the phone face-down on the table.
Anja lifted a brow. “She didn’t understand?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Marcy was sharp. She’d notice when something didn’t quite add up, and Leo’s tone had skated right past convincing into rehearsed. Still, it bought him time away from Pinnacle’s radar, and that mattered more right now than whether Marcy believed the excuse.
Tomorrow, Leo would stand in an open courtyard, potentially surrounded by someone who might have a reason to want him compromised, distracted, or worse.
Anja didn’t love the geometry of it, but Tim Hargrove’s death demanded Leo’s presence as only grief could, and there was no version of this where she talked him out of going.
Which meant she was going too.
She turned to Leo. “What’s the dress code for tomorrow?”
He blinked, caught off guard by the shift. “Standard funeral wear. Bremen’s does these things properly.” His smile was faint and tired. “Why? Were you planning on going in tactical gear?”
“No, smart ass. I need something that doesn’t print a sidearm against the fabric, which means I need an actual dress.” She checked her watch. 11:40. “I’m going to run out for a couple of hours.”
Concern crossed his face before he masked it. “Alone?”
“BeBe’s pulling addresses for me right now.” Her phone buzzed on cue. “Three boutiques on Euclid, all within walking distance of each other.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No. You stay here. No one will be looking for me. I’ll take Remi if it makes you feel better.”
“It does.”
“Then it’s settled.” She didn’t wait for further negotiation.
Remi drove, parked half a block from the first boutique with a clean sightline to the entrance, and told her she had forty-five minutes before he started getting twitchy.
The first shop was full of pastels and spring florals, useless for a funeral. The second had one black dress in her size, sleeveless and cut low enough that she’d spend the whole wake adjusting it instead of watching the crowd. She left both empty-handed.
The third shop, tucked between a wine bar and an antique store, had a better selection. A saleswoman with silver-streaked hair took one look at her and disappeared into the back without asking questions, returning with three options draped over her arm.
“Something tells me you’re not here for a cocktail party,” the woman remarked.
“You would be right.”
“Thirty years in this business gives you a feel for it.” She hung the dresses in the fitting room. “Funeral, memorial, something formal and somber?”
“Wake. Open courtyard, so it needs to handle weather too.”
“Smart thinking.” The woman handed her the first option, a long-sleeved sheath in charcoal wool. “This one breathes and has layers. The hem moves if you need to move.”
That last detail caught Anja’s attention more than the woman probably intended.
Anja pulled it on, turning to check the line in the mirror.
The fabric sat close through the shoulders without restricting her movement and fell to just below the knee, dark enough to disappear into a crowd, structured enough to look intentional.
She lifted one arm, testing the range of motion. Full extension, no pull across the back.
It would work.
Anja stepped out and caught her own reflection in the three-way mirror by the register.
For one brief second she wasn’t worried about sightlines or extraction routes.
She was thinking about Leo’s face when she’d walked toward him at Chloe’s wedding, the dress she’d worn that night, how he’d zeroed in on her from across a crowd of two hundred people.
This wasn’t a wedding. It was a wake for a man Leo had respected, and somewhere in that crowd, very possibly, stood the person responsible for putting Leo’s life in danger.
She bought the dress.
Remi was leaning against the Escalade when she came out, sunglasses on despite the overcast sky, attention sweeping the street in slow, unhurried passes. He straightened when he saw the garment bag over her arm.
“That took longer than forty-five minutes.”
“Quality control.” She climbed into the passenger seat and set the bag across her lap. “Anything?”
“Same brown sedan’s been parked across the street for twenty minutes.” He pulled away from the curb, checking his mirrors. “Probably nothing. Could be somebody’s lunch meeting running long.”
“Could be.”
Anja watched the sedan shrink in the side mirror, memorizing the plate out of habit and adding it to the growing collection of details that probably meant nothing and possibly meant everything.
Tomorrow was coming whether she was ready or not. At least now she had the right dress for it.