Page 76 of Velvet Vaughn

Chapter Fifteen

Bremen’s kept them until well past midnight. A detective took Anja’s statement twice, circling back the second time to ask why a private security consultant had zip-tied two men who then vanished during a gas explosion nobody could yet explain. Vic had specifically said not to trust the police, so she gave him the same clean, useless answers both times. He didn’t believe her. He also had nothing to hold her on, so eventually, he let her go with a card and a warning not to leave town.

Please.

Her bosses would eat the detective alive and spit out his bones.

Typical of most hospitals, this one smelled of antiseptic layered over industrial cleaning products. Barnes-Jewish had Curtis on the cardiac floor for observation. Lydia stood when they entered his room. Her mascara was gone, and her hands were wrapped around a paper cup of coffee she wasn’t drinking.

“They don’t know yet.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “They’re running tests. His heart rhythm went strange, and nobody will give me a straight answer.”

Right on cue, Anja’s phone buzzed once, then again, the deliberate double pulse Tyler used when something couldn’t wait. Remi had called Luke and Logan to have them notify the St. Louis Police Department and the hospital to run tests on Curtis’s bloodwork.

Anja angled the screen and thumbed it open.

Tox screen back. Digoxin. Way above therapeutic range.

Somebody had put a heart medication into a man who, as far as she knew, didn’t take one, and they’d been careless enough, or arrogant enough, to give him nearly enough to finish the job outright.

“He’s where he needs to be, and he’s getting excellent care.” Leo wrapped an arm around Lydia to comfort her. “That’s what matters right now.”

They stayed for twenty minutes. Curtis was asleep, tethered to a monitor that beeped in a rhythm Anja didn’t love. His face was drawn against the pillow, every one of his sixty-eight years suddenly visible. Leo remained silent as they left, and Anja didn’t push him.

She waited until Remi had pulled out of the parking garage before she spoke.

“Digoxin. Way above what a therapeutic dose would be. Whoever did this wasn’t trying to be subtle. They were trying to be fast.”

“And they nearly succeeded,” Leo muttered.

Remi’s gaze moved constantly between the mirrors, checking them even more than the road, doubling back twice through the Central West End’s streets before he was satisfied nobody had picked them up. The house sat dark when they turned into the driveway. Remi killed the engine.

“I’ll make sure everything’s locked up tight for the night. Go sleep.”

Anja didn’t argue. She followed Leo inside and up the stairs. Out of habit, she paused in the hall, listening to the house settle around them. The furnace ticked below, and the wind pushed at a nearby window.

At some point, her hands had started shaking. She hadn’t noticed until now.

“Hey.” Leo took her hands in his. “Are you okay?”

“They got away with the syringes.” The words came out clipped, angrier than she had meant them to sound. “We have no prints. No way to know what they were going to put in you, though I suspect it was the same digoxin they injected into Curtis. I had him cuffed, Leo. I had him on the ground, and then the explosion happened. By the time I could see straight again, both of them were gone.”

He cupped her face. “Yeah, I was there. But you couldn’t have predicted a bomb.”

“I should have expected an exit strategy. Professionals like that don’t walk into a job without one.” She inhaled deeply, trying to force the tremor from her fingers, but it didn’t help. “I had him. I had the one piece of physical evidence that could’ve told us what we’re dealing with, and I lost it.”

“Anja.” He ran a finger down her cheek, likely feeling the tremor she’d been trying to hide. His expression shifted, the argument draining out of it. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are not. You’re vibrating like a tuning fork. What happened back there when you found me?”

Anja didn’t want to answer that, but she did anyway because something about his face made it impossible not to. “I heard you call my name in the courtyard, and then you were just gone. Swallowed by the crowd. I spent maybe ninety seconds not knowing where you were, and it was the longest ninety seconds of my life.” Her voice sounded unfamiliar. “I’ve done extraction under fire. I’ve had guns pointed at me and not blinked. And I have never in my career been as scared as I was in those ninety seconds, because it wasn’t a mission. It was you.”

Leo gathered her in his arms. She let herself stand there with her face against his shirt, breathing in the smell of smoke and antiseptic and him underneath it, proof he was still solid and warm and alive.

“I’m here,” he murmured against her hair. “Right here.”

“I know.” Her voice cracked on it, just slightly, and she hated that it did. “I need to feel it.”