Page 27 of Velvet Vaughn

“Okay. I need you to stay with me for ninety more seconds. I’m going to open the next folder, and I need you to tell me if you recognize the athlete. Can you do that?”

No. “Yes.”

She clicked 02-MAS.

The photos subfolder opened, and Leo’s stomach did a slow, sickening thing it hadn’t done since a runner’s cleats had come into his knee during his fifth season.

Miles Ashworth.

Miles had been Leo’s client for three years. He was an All-Star point guard for the Milwaukee Bucks, a kid from Gary, Indiana, who’d come up through the AAU circuit. He’d signed with Leo out of Villanova because Leo had been the only agent in the room who hadn’t talked down to his grandmother. Miles had left Leo nine months ago, under circumstances that still didn’t sit right, and gone to an agent named Danica Webb at a firm Leo had never respected. Miles had been polite about it. He’d insisted it was a business decision without ever looking Leo in the eye. Leo had eaten the loss and moved on, because that was the job, and there were more clients. You didn’t chase the ones who left.

The photographs on the screen showed Miles at a nightclub in Miami with people Leo didn’t recognize. Miles’s grandmother leaving a doctor’s office in Gary in a wheelchair. Miles’s younger sister, who was seventeen and starting at Notre Dame in the fall, walking across her high school parking lot with a friend.

Without meaning to, Leo jumped to his feet, the stool scraping hard on the oak floor. He took two steps away, stopped, put his hands on the back of his head, and stared at the ceiling until it came back into focus.

Breathe, De Luca. They are your clients. Devonte and Miles. You put both of them in rooms where people heard them say things in confidence. You introduced them to people you vouched for, and you walked them through the machinery of their careers. Somebody used that access to build this.

“Leo.”

Anja had come around the island. She was standing three feet away from him, close enough that he could feel her focused attention, far enough that she wasn’t crowding him. Her hands hung loosely at her sides, and her voice held the calm he recognized from cops and ER nurses and people who knew how to hold someone else’s worst day.

“I need to hear your thoughts out loud.”

“Devonte Cross and Miles Ashworth are mine.”

“Current?”

“Devonte, yes. I signed him coming out of LSU five years ago. His son is my godson.”

“And Ashworth?”

“He left me nine months ago. He went with Danica Webb at Kellerman Gates. The move didn’t make sense to me at the time. It doesn’t now.”

Anja went still, just as she had on the Clayton sidewalk months ago, half a second before a bad guy had tried to put a bullet through his brainpan.

“Say that again.”

“Miles left me for Danica Webb nine months ago.”

“Is there any reason a rival agent would want your client badly enough to run something irregular to get him?”

Leo made himself think, which was harder than it should have been, because his hands were still not quite attached to his arms, and his head felt as if it were stuffed full of packing peanuts.

“Miles Ashworth is worth roughly four hundred million dollars in career earnings across the next decade if his knees hold up. The agent of record takes four percent. So yes. There’s a reason.”

Tyler’s voice came from the laptop. “Anja, I’m logging that name. Danica Webb, Kellerman Gates. You want me to start a background?”

“Yes. Off the books, same as this call. I want her client list, financial footprint, and travel history for the last two years. I want to know if she’s been anywhere near Kansas City in the last six months. Do not flag anything to her or to her firm.”

“Anja, please.” Tyler sounded genuinely insulted.

“Sorry, Tyler. My bad. No offense.”

“None taken. Anything else while I’m in here?”

“One more thing.” Anja glanced at Leo. “Leo’s got a voicemail from Shaw on his phone, recorded the night before he died. It cuts off mid-sentence and sounds interrupted rather than dropped. I want it pulled and mirrored somewhere you control before tonight’s over. Audio file, metadata, all of it.”

“Send it through the secure client. I’ll grab it server-side.” Tyler’s eyes hadn’t left his own screen, fingers moving. “Two minutes, tops.”