Protective Measures. Maggie K. Black
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“We should go,” she said. Her eyes searched the rock for handholds. “I have to find Alex and I imagine a lot of people will be looking for you.”
“Hang on.” He reached for her hand. “Just one second. We need to talk.”
Here and now? In a river?
“Okay,” she said. “But let’s get out of the water first and talk on the dry land. It’s so deep, I can’t even stand here.”
But instead, he pulled her closer until she was standing on her tiptoes on top of his boots.
“You’re right, people will be looking for us,” Leo said. His hand slid around her back, holding her firm, even as she could feel the current beating against their bodies. “But we need to talk alone, without an audience, and the moment I get to shore I’ll be swamped by people again. So please, quickly, tell me everything you know about The Anemoi.”
The intensity in his voice rattled something inside her. There was an urgency there that she hadn’t heard before. Had he been The Anemoi’s target? Did he know something about The Anemoi or the fire that he wasn’t telling her? She could feel his hand on the small of her back and the strength of his arms under her fingers. This man had saved her life. She had saved his. Yet, he was still virtually a stranger and she was still on a mission.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll give you five minutes, but then I’m climbing out of this river. Also, I’m talking to you off the record. None of this goes to the press. None of this gets repeated as gossip. Okay? I’m trusting you here.”
“Yeah, I got it,” he said. “I’m good at keeping secrets and I can’t abide gossip. You can trust me.”
She took a deep breath and hoped that was true.
“Two months ago, a client contacted us saying his identity had been stolen and his bank accounts emptied,” Zoe said. “Police had no leads. We said we’d look into it, but honestly didn’t expect to find much. We’re a private security firm, not detectives. Then, three weeks later someone else called us claiming to be the victim of a grand conspiracy to ruin his reputation.”
“And you saw a connection?” Leo asked.
“Samantha did,” Zoe said. “She’s brilliant when it comes to online research and making connections. She started digging into something called the Dark Web and building these info charts, before finally hitting on The Anemoi. Basically, they’re a bunch of loosely connected crooks that steal very important things for people, for a very high price. They tend to go by handles from Greek mythology. Like, the guy who attacked me with the knife calls himself Prometheus after the Titan who stole fire from Olympus. In their twisted minds they’re convinced they’re the good guys, righting wrongs and wrecking lives they think deserve to be destroyed.”
Leo blew out a long breath. She waited. When he didn’t say anything more, she kept going.
“I get how ridiculous it probably sounds,” she said, “that there are these people, who are fooling themselves into thinking they’re some kind of heroes when they’re really just criminals being paid a whole lot of money to utterly ruin people’s lives.”
“In my experience most criminals tend to be pretty delusional and think that they’re justified,” Leo said. “Nobody wants to believe they’re the bad guy.”
She smiled. Okay, maybe he was the kind of person she could talk to. At least it seemed like he was taking her seriously.
“There were three of them at the gala tonight,” she said. “Their code names were Prometheus, Pandora and Jason. I guess Pandora pepper-sprayed me. I never saw Jason, but apparently he’s young, tall and thin. Like I told you, Samantha saw some online chatter about them scoping out a potential target at this gala and I went in undercover to see if I spotted anything fishy or could identify any members of the team. Something we could pass to police to help our current clients or even help us be on the lookout for the future. I have no idea why they’d set the coatroom on fire, unless it’s to keep someone from discovering what they’ve stolen or rifled through. We have no idea who their target is or what they’re attempting to steal. It could be something professional or intensely personal.”
There was another long pause. Again, she couldn’t shake the idea that he knew something he wasn’t telling her. This time she waited Leo out. Finally he said, “How do they usually warn their targets?”
“What?” She nearly slipped off his toes and into the water. “They don’t warn them. At least, I’ve never heard of anyone from The Anemoi warning anyone. Why?”
She waited again. But this time Leo didn’t answer.
“Leo?” Her tone grew sharper. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“Don’t worry about it. I saw a thin man—could be Jason—defacing a poster in the ballroom. But it might not mean anything.”
He was talking like it was no big deal, but that didn’t explain why his voice sounded both angry and strangled.
“Do you think you know who the target was?” she asked. No answer. A chill ran down her spine. “Could it be you? Do you have something worth stealing?”
“No, I don’t,” he said.
Why didn’t she believe him? Voices were clamoring above them now. People were running toward them.
“We’ve got some survivors over here!” a male voice bellowed above her. “Can someone grab us a rope?”
She looked up and was blinded by the glare of flashlights. Leo pulled her against the rock.
“I’m going to hoist you up,” he said. “You should be able to climb up from there. It’s not that far.”
Light fell from above, highlighting the lines of his chiseled jaw and the strength that lay beneath his wet dress shirt. But it was the depth of the worry pooling in his eyes that made her heart stop beating.
“What’s wrong?” Her hand brushed his jaw. “Tell me. Do you have any reason to believe you’re The Anemoi’s target? Is there anything you have that someone would think shouldn’t belong to you?”
To her surprise, he hugged her quickly with the shared relief of two people who’d been through trauma together. She hugged him back.
“Don’t worry about me.” Leo’s voice was a deep, gruff whisper in her ear. “I don’t have anything worth stealing, and definitely nothing that a vigilante would argue doesn’t belong to me. Thank you for everything.”
He hoisted her up. Other hands were reaching down for her. She stepped up onto Leo’s shoulder and grabbed onto one of the outstretched hands. A police officer pulled her up onto the ledge.
“Are you alright, miss?” a paramedic asked. There was a light in her still sensitive eyes. He took her arm and started leading her toward a bank of ambulances.
“I’m fine, thank you.” She pulled away.
The paramedic let her go without an argument. She wasn’t surprised considering the scene. Firefighters and emergency service personnel were trying to corral people, put out the fire and check for injuries. Party guests rambled around the gardens, ignoring orders and trying to take pictures on their phones.
She’d learned as a teenager that whenever there was a spectacle there’d be two different types of people running around. There were those who watched the show and those who kept people safe. Back then she’d been the spectacle, the fire, the flashy and fierce marital arts and gymnastics competitor who people cheered for loudly when she won and booed at when it all came to an end. But she’d known, even then, what kind of person she wanted to be. She wanted to be the one who protected people and rescued them from the metaphorical flames.
The crowd parted and she saw Leo hauling himself over the ledge. He stood on the edge of the rocks, with the fire to his right, the darkness to his left and the river swirling