Chapter Twenty #2
Remi exhaled slowly, wincing at what it cost his ribs. “And Leo’s boss doesn’t know any of it yet.”
“No.” Anja glanced toward the curtain. “He doesn’t.”
It took another four hours before Davis and Weaver finished with all of them, their questions patient and exact.
They circled back twice to confirm the timeline of the confession in the Escalade before they seemed satisfied enough to close their notepads.
By the time Weaver walked off to consult with someone on the phone and Davis turned to Leo with a final round of thanks, Remi had traded his hospital gown for blue scrubs, determined to prove nothing hurt as badly as it looked.
“We’ll be in touch.” Davis handed Leo a card. “Don’t leave the state without letting us know.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Leo replied.
As soon as the agents cleared out, a restless energy took over Leo that had nothing to do with statements or federal case numbers.
“I need to go to Curtis’s room,” he insisted, “before he hears what happened from a news alert, or God forbid, from Lydia getting a call from some reporter fishing for a comment. He trusted Brad. He should hear about it from someone who cares about him, not a headline.”
“I know.” Anja glanced at Remi, who was fighting the last strip of tape on his arm with single-minded focus. “Go. I’ll stay with Remi until he’s fully checked out, and then we’ll meet you.”
Remi frowned. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“You need someone to carry your bag and drive you home, since I doubt they’re letting you walk out on your own two feet after refusing an overnight stay for a stab wound.” Anja arched a brow at him, and he had the decency to look faintly sheepish. Could’ve been the drugs, though.
“Take him to see Curtis first,” Remi urged. “I can survive fifteen more minutes propped up in this bed while you two go tell an old man his best friend murdered three people.”
Leo hesitated, torn, but the pull toward the cardiac floor won out over everything else, and Anja recognized it for what it was: the same instinct that had gotten his arm split open trying to protect the people he cared about.
“Fifteen minutes,” she told Remi. “Don’t sign anything until I’m back to read it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The cardiac floor two levels up carried none of the trauma unit’s controlled turmoil.
It was hushed and dim at this hour, monitors beeping softly behind half-closed doors.
Anja navigated the corridor from memory, past the nurses’ station where a single attendant sat typing under a desk lamp, to the room where Curtis had lain two nights ago, tethered to machines while Lydia hovered at his side.
The door stood open. The bed inside was made, sheets tucked hospital-tight, the monitor beside it dark and unplugged. There was no sign that anyone had occupied the room for hours.
Leo rotated in a slow circle. “He’s not here.” He frowned as though the empty room itself had personally wronged him.
Anja turned toward the nurses’ station. “Excuse me. Curtis Lennox, room 512. Do you know where he’s been transferred?”
The woman glanced up. She was young and tired around the eyes, probably from a brutal double shift. She consulted her computer. “Mr. Lennox was discharged this afternoon.”
“Discharged?” Leo repeated the word, his tone incredulous. “He was in serious condition, and they just let him go?”
“His cardiologist cleared him for home monitoring. I can’t tell you why due to HIPAA, but his labs would’ve had to come back clean before he could be released.
” The nurse offered an apologetic shrug, as if delivering news she had no control over.
“It happens all the time once the numbers stabilize. I can note that you stopped by, if you’d like, in case his care team follows up. ”
“That won’t be necessary.” Anja thanked her and steered Leo back to the elevators before he could ask anything else the woman couldn’t answer.
The doors closed around them, and Leo dragged a hand down his face. “He’s home. Which means Lydia’s had him for hours with nothing to occupy either of them but silence and whatever’s on the news.”
“We don’t know that anything’s been reported yet.”
“We don’t know that it hasn’t.”
Anja could tell the decision had formed. “I need to go there. Now. Not after we drop Remi off and circle back.”
“Leo.” Anja caught his arm as the elevator doors opened onto the ground floor. “I need the Escalade to get Remi home. That leaves you without a vehicle.”
“I’ll grab a rideshare.” His thumb was already moving over the screen of his phone. “There’s always a car three minutes out from the hospital at this hour. I’ll be at his door before you’ve even buckled Remi in.”
“At least wait until I can come with you.”
“Anja.” He stopped walking and turned to face her fully.
His expression asked her to let this be simple, even though nothing about tonight had been.
“Remi needs someone who isn’t running on fumes to get him home in one piece, and Curtis needs someone who loves him to tell him what happened before a stranger or a headline does it first. I can’t be in two places.
You can’t either. This is the version where we split up and it still works out fine. ”
She wanted to argue it, to list every reason he shouldn’t go alone. But she also recognized the decision had hardened past the point of talking him out of it, and she’d learned this week how much good it did to push him.
Instead, she told him, “Text me the second you’re in the car. And again when you’re inside the house.”
“I will.”
“And Leo.” She caught the front of his jacket, holding him there. “Be safe. Please. I’ve had enough of watching people I care about walk into things I can’t follow them into tonight.”
He bent down to kiss her slowly. “I will,” he murmured against her mouth. “I love you. I’ll text you the second I’m there.”
The words came easily, with no sign they’d cost him anything. Apparently, they had been sitting there all along and waiting for an opening. He’d made it three steps toward the exit before Anja’s brain processed them.
She stood frozen in the middle of the hallway, phone forgotten in her hand, staring after him with her lips parted around a response that hadn’t made it out in time.
He hadn’t spoken those words before. Neither of them had.
Through five months of whatever this was and a case that had thrown them into the same bed, gunfire, and the impossible stretch of not sleeping, the words had never once surfaced between them.
Not in the dark, not in the stillness after, not even close.
And he’d just tossed them out as casually as a goodbye.
“Leo.” The automatic doors slicked shut behind him. He either didn’t hear her or chose the parking lot over turning back around.
She stood there for another few seconds, feeling warmth spread and an entirely unfamiliar crack open inside her, equal parts terror and something she didn’t have a name for yet.
Then she remembered Remi upstairs with a gaping hole in his side and made herself move.
Throughout the elevator ride, she couldn’t stop replaying his words, so easy and certain, as though he’d made up his mind about her a long time ago and only now gotten around to mentioning it.