Page 69 of The Game

“Adam. You got unlucky one time; this is nothing like that. You don’t know what’s going on here. It’s one photograph. Nobody knows we’re digging into him, okay? He could have something on her that she doesn’t want made public. He might have forced this meeting.”

“Blackmail? You always did like the conspiracy theories. Sounds likely, though, given what you said about his finances.”

“You’d be surprised how oftensomething’s going on. Blackmail’s more common than you’d think.”

“Did you find anything on Pietr Petrov?”

“I’ve been concentrating on Maroz, but I’ll dig into Petrov a bit more.”

“I need to talk to her about this picture. What the hell am I going to say?”

“Just tell her you were worried about her and thought looking into Maroz might help. Simple enough.”

“Yeah. Can’t help feeling I went behind her back, though.”

“It came from a genuine place of concern. She’s not going to be unhappy with that.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. Thanks, Fab.”

“Should I say it’s my pleasure? I’m not sure. I’ll keep digging.”

When I head over to Anna’s later on, unease is still burning through me. What is she doing, and why didn’t she say anything? But I guess I didn’t tell her I was enlisting Fabian to dig into Arty, did I?

When I reach her building, the street is empty apart from a few pedestrians. No men with cameras. Maybe she met with Maroz to calm things down. That would make sense: If he stops creating a media storm, all the hassle goes away.

Anna meets me at the door, her hair down around her shoulders and soft-looking lounge gear clinging to every muscle. I can’t resist pulling her in for a kiss, and she smiles against my lips.

“I have a confession to make,” I say, as I follow her from the door to the kitchen island.

She swings around and blinks at me. “Something bad?”

I shake my head. “Arty Maroz visited me. So, I asked my hacker friend Fabian to do a little digging into him.”

She turns away toward the sink, silky hair falling forward. “What do you mean, he visited you? He came to youroffice?” When I nod, she says, “That asshole. He doesn’t know when to stop interfering.”

“He told me to stay away from you. Like a warning. It was odd, to be honest.” I scroll to the picture on my phone and hand it over to her. “But Fabian had him followed, and this photo was taken yesterday. I …”

Her eyes are wide on the phone when I place it on the countertop in front of her and my stomach sinks into my shoes. No famous person wants someone she’s sleeping with to set a tail on them and start taking photographs: There are quite enough paparazzi doing that. It’s very stalkerish.

“I wasn’t trying to spy on you, Anna. You didn’t mention seeing him and …”

She rolls her lips together. “That’s the problem with people that dig fordirt—they always find it.” Her voice is sharp, a tone in it I don’t think I’ve ever heard before.

I swallow. “Are you saying there’s some dirt on you and Arty? You’re entitled to meet with him, I just … You have a temporary order of protection against him. I wanted to tell you I had this picture. It would be dishonest not to.”

Her shoulders relax a bit, and she turns toward me.

“I met up with him to try and stop him from hassling me. You. Us. To see whether I could make him go away. He asked for a million dollars.”

“A million dollars!”

“Yeah. Now I wonder whether he’s always seen me as a meal ticket and that’s why he’s being such a pain in the ass. He wants money.”

I step into her and wrap my arms around her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to sound like I was suspicious. You don’t need to tell me what you do.”

She shakes her head. “I get it, Adam. I know this violates the restraining order, and I shouldn’t have met him but … sometimes I want to knock problems on the head, you know? I don’t like sitting around waiting for something bad to happen or think about seeing him in court.”

This sounds so like Janus that I almost laugh out loud.

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