Epilogue
The week following Curtis Lennox’s death had become a relentless dismantling, piece after piece of what he’d built exposed for the world to examine.
Dozens of athletes had come forward once the first story broke, some tearful, some furious, all of them describing the same insidious pattern: a grandfather’s debt paid off overnight or a sibling’s problem resolved with one phone call, and then, months later, a request disguised as a favor to miss a free throw, pull a phantom hamstring, or leak a trade demand at the wrong time.
The scope kept widening every time Anja thought she’d reached the bottom of it.
Fifty athletes had become sixty-three. Four professional leagues had opened internal investigations.
Nobody yet knew how many games had actually been manipulated, how many playoff runs and championship odds had been rigged by a man everyone in St. Louis had once trusted with their charity boards.
The not-knowing had been beneath everything Anja did that week, impossible to silence no matter how hard she tried.
Leo had healed enough to be mobile, and Anja had hated leaving him in St. Louis, even for a handful of days.
He’d had clients to reassure, a funeral to attend for Brad Hatton that nobody quite knew how to grieve honestly, and statements to give to investigators who kept circling back with new questions as Lydia’s cooperation opened fresh leads.
Plus, he had needed to put his condo up for sale.
Anja had her own obligations drawing her back to the compound.
She’d debriefed with Luke, Logan, and the authorities, which had run hours longer than scheduled.
And there had been a mountain of paperwork that apparently came with the takedown of a two-decade-long criminal enterprise, even when the man responsible for it would never make it to trial.
But today, Leo was coming home. Not to St. Louis. Here.
Anja stood in the middle of her living room for the third time that morning, surveying the results of a cleaning spree that had started at six a.m. and showed no sign of having been strictly necessary.
The hardwood gleamed. The quartz kitchen counters held not a single crumb.
She’d gone so far as to scrub the baseboards, a task she genuinely could not remember ever performing in any apartment she’d ever lived in.
The place now smelled faintly of lemon polish and the anxious energy of a woman who’d apparently decided cleanliness could substitute for whatever nerves currently buzzed under her skin.
She’d asked Luke about it first, cautiously, half expecting some bureaucratic hurdle about clearance or housing policy.
“Of course he can move in.” He’d looked at her as if she’d asked whether the sun would rise tomorrow. “The man saved half this team’s collective sanity by finally getting you to admit you had feelings.” Okay. Harsh. “The least we can do is give him a bedroom.”
“An apartment,” Anja had corrected. “Mine. He’d be living with me.”
“Even better.” Logan had grinned at that, wide and entirely too pleased with himself, without glancing up from the report he’d been reading.
Chloe’s reaction to the news had been considerably less restrained than either of her bosses’. It’d taken a week, but Anja’s hearing was finally back to normal. That woman had a set of pipes on her.
Chloe had shown up at Anja’s door within an hour of Leo leaving St. Louis this morning, practically vibrating, and had proceeded to knock again roughly every twenty minutes since.
Each visit had been accompanied by some fresh, urgent piece of information Anja absolutely did not need in order to survive the day.
“He’ll be here around two,” Chloe announced, appearing in the doorway for what had to be the fifth time. At least she’d changed out of her pajamas. “Kayne’s tracking him on the Find My app. It’s very sweet and also slightly unhinged.”
“I’m aware he’ll be here at two.” Anja was following his trip too. “You told me an hour ago.”
“I wanted to make sure it stuck.” Chloe wandered in and dropped onto the couch, drumming her fingers against her knee. “Are you nervous? You look nervous. You’ve got your serious detective face on.”
“I don’t have a serious detective face.”
“You absolutely do. You get this little crease right here.” Chloe pointed at the space between her own eyebrows with unsettling accuracy. “It’s how I always know when you’re actually panicking versus just being your regular level of unreadable.”
“I’m not panicking.” Anja set a stack of towels she’d been folding and refolding down with enough force to make her point. “I’m mildly anxious about whether he’s going to be happy staying in a city he’s never lived in before, in an apartment with furniture he had no say in choosing.”
“He’s going to love it.” Chloe’s confident tone gave Anja a glimmer of hope.
“He’s been talking about moving here since the wedding, you know.
Long before everything with the case happened.
I caught him looking up real estate listings in Bloomington back in November and pretended I didn’t see it, because I figured he wasn’t ready to admit it out loud yet. ”
A warmth rushed over Anja. “He never mentioned that.”
“Leo wouldn’t. He’s stubborn like that.” Chloe sighed dramatically.
“I’m so happy, Anja. I don’t think you understand how much.
Gosh, I’ve missed him so much these last few months.
I know we weren’t super far away, and there were always phone calls and texts, but I missed dropping in to see him whenever I wanted. Thanks to you, I can do that again.”
A sharp knock sounded at the door, and Kayne appeared in the frame. “There you are.” He crossed his arms, surveying his wife with fond exasperation. “You’ve knocked on this door five times today. I counted.”
She smiled sweetly. “It’s a momentous day, Kayne.”
“More than half the compound’s gathering at the pavilion for the cookout, and if you’re not there to help set up before your brother arrives, you’ll spend the next month complaining that the deviled eggs weren’t arranged correctly.
” He held out a hand, and Chloe took it, rising from the couch with a dramatic sigh that fooled absolutely no one.
“Fine. But Anja’s coming with us.”
“I have things to finish here.” Anja gestured vaguely at an apartment that had, in fact, nothing left to finish.
“This place is spotless.” Chloe crossed the room and took her by the wrist. “The floors are so clean I could eat off them, Anja. You’ve dusted the ceiling fan.
There is nothing left in this apartment that requires your attention except waiting, and you’ll do that better surrounded by people who love you instead of alone in here, working yourself into a frenzy. ”
Anja opened her mouth to argue, found she didn’t have one, and let herself be towed toward the door instead.
The path down to Duquesne Park wound through the compound’s afternoon bustle, agents crossing between buildings, the rhythm of ordinary life going on around them despite everything that had happened this past week.
Anja felt some of the tension in her shoulders ease with every step closer to the pavilion, drawn along by Chloe’s endless chatter and the smell of something cooking on the grill.
The park itself had been transformed by early afternoon into a full-scale CObrA Securities cookout.
The speaker system was playing something upbeat and entirely too loud.
Layla and Jade Bradley were deep in conversation near the drinks table, while Remi, still favoring his damaged side, had somehow gotten into an argument with Dorian Demarchis over the proper technique for flipping burgers.
“Stop touching them,” Remi ordered.
“I’m cooking them.”
“You’re harassing them.”
Dorian slowly turned his head. “Did you just accuse me of harassing a hamburger?”
“I’m advocating for the meat.”
Dorian pointed the spatula. “Go advocate from over there.”
Remi took one step back. “The burgers know I’m here for them.”
Chloe steered Anja toward a space near the edge of the pavilion. It was the same spot, Anja realized with a jolt, where she’d stood five months ago watching Leo walk toward her at his sister’s wedding, nervous in a way she hadn’t been prepared for even then.
“There.” Chloe stood beside her, practically buzzing with anticipation. She checked her phone for the fourth time in as many minutes. “Kayne says the car’s twenty minutes out. Are you ready?”
Anja looked out toward the empty drive, her stomach twisting with nerves she’d never expected to welcome.
“I’ve been ready for a while,” she admitted.
She’d once been fairly proud of that drawer, the one she’d built to keep Leo De Luca filed under closed case.
Turned out she’d made a terrible carpenter.
The thing had rattled, then cracked, then come off its hinges completely, and she’d spent months pretending she hadn’t noticed the wreckage.
Some security specialist she was. She couldn’t run a decent surveillance op on her own heart.
#
A layer of anxiety stripped away around the Illinois border.
Physically, Leo was healing slower than he wanted, but he was making progress.
The ache in his ribs had faded enough that he noticed it only when he laughed too hard or twisted the wrong way reaching for a seatbelt.
The arm that had taken a bullet remained a work in progress. His mind had been slower to catch up.
The last week had unfolded in a slow-motion demolition, one piece of his old life crumbling after another until there wasn’t much left standing.
Pinnacle was finished. Not officially dissolved yet, the lawyers were arguing over that technicality, but functionally dead the instant federal agents had carried out the last box of files.
The clients had scattered to other agencies within days.
The reputation Curtis had spent twenty years building was reduced to a cautionary headline in every sports section in the country.