Page 44 of Insidious Threats
He gestured for them to pull over two of the chairs stacked against the wall. “Not yet, but I do know something you don’t. Maybe we can agree to share our information?”
He leaned back and watched them consider his offer. Maisy, he knew, would jump at it. She was a journalist. Information was her life’s blood. Jordana, on the other hand, rubbed her chin and studied him. Her expression was lawyerly and knowing—eerily similar to a look Sasha gave him when she was calculating a response.
“Of course, sugar,” Maisy agreed.
“It depends,” Jordana interjected, shooting Maisy a cautioning look.
Leo wondered who was calling the shots here. Maisy paid Jordana’s salary. But Jordana was the podcast’s producer. Heaven help him if Jordana was in charge.
Maisy waved a hand at Jordana’s warning. “Oh, come on. We’ve been banging our heads against the wall for weeks, and you know it. I’m going crossed-eyed looking at financial records. It couldn’t hurt to pool our resources with a real … whatever Leo is.”
Jordana twisted her mouth skeptically. “Sure it could.” She eyed Leo. “Does Sasha know about this information you have?”
Maisy’s eyes went wide. “Oooh, good point. Does she?”
It was the one question he didn’t want to have to answer. But he had to answer it honestly because they’d never trust him again if they found out.
“No.”
A long silence stretched over the room. The two women waited. He raised both hands as if in surrender.
“I’m going to level with you and ask you not to mention any of this to Sasha.”
Maisy opened her mouth, and he cut off her objection before she gave voice to it.
“I’m going to tell her. I’ve been meaning to tell her. But I didn’t say anything back in July, and now I’m just waiting for the right time.”
“There’s never going to be a good time to tell your wife you’ve been keeping a secret from her for six months, Leo.”
He accepted Maisy’s point. “Probably not. ButIwill tell her. Not you. Got it?” He shifted his gaze from Maisy to Jordana, who nodded with clear reluctance.
“Sure thing. If you think we’re gonna fall all over ourselves to let her know, you’ve lost the plot,” Maisy told him.
“Good. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, do you want me to fill you in or what?”
They leaned forward in unison, their eyes gleaming with anticipation. There was nothing either of them loved more than the hunt. It was why their true crime podcast had become an instant success. He started at the beginning—well, near the beginning—with the unexpected delivery of a package from Landon Lewis after his fatal tumble from a window.
“How did Landon know where you live?” Jordana demanded. As Sasha and Leo’s favorite babysitter, she was well aware of their hyper-vigilance about protecting their privacy.
“He didn’t.” Leo explained that the package had been addressed to the office that he and Hank maintained, mainly as a cover and a mail drop.
“Was the letter opener in this package?” Maisy asked.
Jordana gave her a confused frown. “The letter opener?”
“Remember how Landon had two matching letter opener and pen sets—one at home and one at his office?”
“Yeah, one had his son’s date of birth inscribed on it, and the other had the date he was murdered.” Jordana shuddered. “Kind of morbid.”
“Right, and the one from his office was missing.”
“But you found it somewhere because I saw you give it to Deanne. Where was it?”
Maisy lowered her chin and fixed her gaze on Leo.
He coughed. He hadn’t planned to putallhis cards on the table, but what the hell. “It wasn’t in the package. The night Landon died, Sasha and I just happened to be in the alley—”
“Mmm-hmm. After youhappenedto hear a call over the police radio,” Maisy interjected.
