Page 5 of Under Her Protection

"It is not an opinion that the sequel is better than the first one, Leo. There is a word for people who believe that."

"Siblings?"

"People who are wrong."

They were sitting in Leo's apartment off the rue Oberkampf, which was small, which was clean, and which had almost nothing in it that was not functional. One couch. One chair. A TV she had bought three years ago and had probably watched eleven times. A kitchen table where Avery was currently working her way through a bag of olives that she had brought because she said Leo did not know how to stock a fridge. Avery was not wrong about that.

Leo was wearing a henley and sweatpants and her hair was down for the first time that day, drying in a rough dark rope at her collarbone. She had come off a forty-eight-hour protective detail that morning, slept from eight a.m. to three p.m., and was now doing what she did on every rare free evening: sitting on her own couch with her sister, arguing about nothing, while her phone charged silently on the arm of the chair.

The phone buzzed.

Leo did not look at it.

The phone buzzed again.

"Mm," Avery said, around an olive. "That one is not going away."

Leo reached.

The name on the screen was DM. The two letters pulled her upright.

"Who?" Avery said.

"Dominique."

Avery set the olives down.

Leo put the beer on the table and stood up, and her whole posture corrected itself, shoulders back, weight forward. Whatever she had been doing with an hour on the sofa was gone. She thumbed the call open.

"Cole."

"Leandra. I need you here in forty minutes."

"Copy. HQ?"

"HQ. Avery with you?"

"She is."

"Bring her."

Dominique did not say goodbye, because Dominique did not say goodbye. Leo lowered the phone and looked at her sister, and Avery was already on her feet and reaching for her jacket. They had always been like that. One of them moved, the other was already moving.

"What is it?" Avery said.

"No idea. But she wants you too."

"That is interesting."

"Is it?"

"It is interesting when she wants me for something that is not mine. It means she wants a second opinion on whatever she is about to ask you."

Leo pulled her hair back with an elastic off her wrist, in two practiced motions, and went to change. When she came out of the bedroom in jeans and a dark Henley and boots she was laced up to the ankle, Avery was already at the door, keys in hand.

"Driving?” Avery said.

"Fine."