Page 60 of Velvet Vaughn

Remi could practically hear her sorting through possibilities. “Anything taken?”

“That’s the weird part. Nothing. But the client files in his locked bottom drawer have been refiled out of order. They didn’t steal a thing, Anja. They read it. Or shot pictures of it. Came in, learned everything in Leo’s drawers, and walked out clean.”

“Inside job.”

“That’s where my head went too.” Remi watched Leo close the drawer and straighten up, putting on a respectable show of not acting like the rug had been yanked out from under him. Again. “Whoever it was didn’t pick a lock at two in the morning. They walked in like they belonged, because they do.”

“Don’t file a report with building security, don’t mention it to a single soul on that floor, and get him through the rest of his day looking normal.” A pause, and her voice softened, which wasn’t an adjective he thought he’d use on her. “How’s he doing? Truly?”

Remi glanced at Leo, who caught the look and lifted an eyebrow. Remi turned a few degrees away.

“He’s stable,” Remi told her, and meant it. “Rattled, but he’s holding the line. He’s better at this than he should be.” He paused. “You picked a good one.”

“I didn’t pick him.”

“Sure you didn’t.” Remi let the smile back into his voice, because he had a feeling needling her would rapidly become one of his favorite pastimes. “Walls are thin in that house, Anja. Sleep well last night?”

The line went dead.

Remi chuckled as he pocketed the phone.

#

Leo had barely regained his equilibrium when a knock came at the door, and then it opened to the one face in the building that could loosen the knot in his chest.

“Hey there, Leo.” Curtis Lennox appeared in the doorway with the warmth he filled every room with. He was silver-headed with reading glasses pushed up into his hair. He held coffee in each hand and extended one to Leo. “Brought you the genuine stuff, not that break-room sludge. Got a few minutes before your day eats you alive?”

“Always.” Leo took the cup. Of all the thoughts crowding his head right now, the one he most needed to keep off his face was that somebody had stood in this office over the weekend and gone through his clients’ files. He set his coffee down so Curtis wouldn’t see his trembling hand. “Curtis, this is Remi. He’s shadowing me for a couple of weeks.”

“The veteran. Marcy told me.” The older man shook Remi’s hand with both of his, the full Lennox treatment. “Son, thank you for your service, and welcome. I’m sorry I didn’t bring you a coffee.”

“No apology necessary,” Remi insisted.

Curtis nodded. “Anything you need while you’re here, my door’s open. Leo will tell you it actually is.”

“It is,” Leo confirmed.

“Nice to meet you, sir.” Remi excused himself, ostensibly to get oriented with the front desk, giving Leo and Curtis the office and putting Remi working the floor while Leo kept the senior partner occupied. The older man dropped into the chair across the desk, just as he had on a thousand prior mornings.

“So,” Curtis sipped his coffee, “your Anja. I’ve been thinking about her since Saturday.”

Hearing her name gave Leo an unexpected thrill. “Have you?”

“I have. I run a thousand people through that ballroom every year, Leo, and I shake every hand. Ninety-nine percent of them blur together by the end of the evening.” He pointed his cup at Leo. “She didn’t. There’s a stillness about that woman. She watched the entire room without appearing to. Where on earth did you find someone like that?”

“Through Chloe,” Leo answered, which was the cover and also the truth. “It’s been a few months. I wasn’t ready to trot her out until I was sure.”

“And now you’re sure.” Curtis lifted his cup in a toast. “About time. You work too hard and you don’t let people in. I’ve been saying it for years.”

“You have. Repeatedly. In writing, once.”

Curtis laughed. “And I was right, also repeatedly.” His smile turned reflective, and he spun his coffee slowly on the desk. The kindness in him was real. That was the quality Leo loved in the man who had hired him and served as his mentor. Curtis asked because he wanted to know, not to gain an advantage or keep score. And that, more than anything, was what made the morning sit so badly in Leo’s chest. He was running the nicest man he knew through a filter built for suspects, and he hated himself a little for it, even if he couldn’t stop. “She’s good for you. I could see it on you Saturday before I’d shaken her hand. Lydia mentioned the same thing in the car on the way home, and she’s never wrong about these things, which she reminds me of often.”

“Tell Lydia she has excellent judgment.”

“She knows. It’s unbearable.” Curtis chuckled, then let it fade. “It’s been a strange stretch, though, hasn’t it? The whole industry’s off-balance. I keep coming back to Vic, if I’m honest. I’ve been carrying it around all weekend.” Curtis exhaled, and genuine sorrow moved across his face. “Vic was relentless and funny as hell at a closing dinner.” He paused. “But he’d been in a dark place a long while. The drinking and gambling, not to mention that ugly divorce. Some men carry the weight and some get crushed by it, and Vic just kept piling more on. I’m not surprised by how it ended. I’m only sorry.”

“Me too,” Leo agreed, and hated that he was studying Curtis’s face for cracks. There were none.