by Lucy Score
Xavier was pissed at her for not saying no, and he was pissed at the studio for not taking into consideration the logistical hell of protecting Waverly in a nightclub on a Friday night in downtown L.A.
He’d worked his very fine ass off to extract a promise from the studio that their publicity team would announce her much anticipated return for the following day and express Waverly’s regrets for missing the festivities. If Ganim didn’t know Waverly had returned, it should buy her a few precious hours. At least until all the gossip sites caught her at the club. Even so, the FBI and local cops would have undercovers stationed in the club to be on the safe side.
“You mean with the disaster that’s waiting for us in L.A.?” Xavier asked, heavy on the sarcasm.
He was more pissed than she’d realized.
“Yes. What’s happening in my life that I need to know about?” she asked pointedly.
“Gee, I’m sorry. I thought you going out clubbing tonight meant you didn’t give a shit about your security.”
She stared at him coolly, not ready to voice the fifteen snarky comments she had on the tip of her tongue.
“Well, we could start with the fact that Ganim is still spouting off threats about teaching you some respect to the agent running your page. Or maybe we should talk about the fact that my team proved that the email allegedly sent by Tiffani Plotts to the investigating officer came from the guest WIFI network at the Rail Car Diner where Daisy Louchner worked—the diner that’s two blocks from Ganim’s house. And the convenient timestamp on the photos of the dead girls that Ganim sent to you proves that she was already dead when the email was sent.”
Waverly took a deep, cleansing breath. Then another.
“Or maybe we should talk about how asinine it is to sneak you back into the country only to parade you around in a nightclub filled with assholes with cell phones begging Ganim to make a move on you? Or the fact that our internal investigation turned up nothing on the leak that told Ganim you were staying with me the night of the premiere. So we still have no idea how he found you there.”
“X, relax,” Waverly sighed.
“How about you relax? You’re the one with the security ready to take bullets for you. You pay us to worry for you. I’m happy to serve my people up tonight so you can go out clubbing,” he snapped.
Her control was fraying. “You know it’s not my choice!”
“Everything is your choice,” he snapped back. “Some decisions are just more complicated than others. You are willingly walking into a fucking trap and dragging me and my team along for the ride.”
“Then don’t go,” she snapped.
“You’re starting to piss me off,” he warned.
“Starting to? You’ve been in dick mode since we took off,” she argued. “You think I want to go out tonight? You think I’m happy about opening you up to the threat that sees you as an obstacle to me?”
“Then don’t fucking go. Stay home and lay low. Don’t put other people in harm’s way so you can get your attention fix.”
He wasn’t playing fair. He was hitting her where it hurt on purpose.
“Xavier, I have a contract—”
“You have more fucking money than God. Fuck your contract. Stop being a doormat to these people who don’t give a shit about you.”
“Look, not everyone has the same freedom that you do. You can walk away from this easier than I can,” she told him.
“Oh, yeah, because that would look great to potential clients. Invictus let Waverly Sinner go out clubbing all by herself, and then she got attacked by a fucking serial killer. That’s a ringing endorsement for my business.”
“So that’s what you’re worried about? Your business. Wow, for a second I thought it was me. My mistake.” Sarcasm dripped from her words.
“Shut the fuck up, Waverly,” he snapped.
“No, let’s try it your way. Let’s talk this out.” She was fired up now. God, to think she’d forgotten that he could burn her like everyone else. It was a humiliation to realize she’d purposely let her guard down with him. He was just like everyone else. “I was feeling so dreamy-eyed from last night. I’m glad you’re clearing the air before we hit the ground and I embarrass myself by professing my undying love for you.”
Xavier leaned forward in his seat. “You’ve got me lined up as second prize to Stanford. I’m no one’s second prize. And we both know you’re not in love. You don’t know what love is.”
“Message received.” She released her seatbelt and stood.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“Somewhere where I don’t have to look at you,” she snapped.
She strapped herself into a seat in the back facing away from him and closed her eyes. How had she let herself be so vulnerable to him? She tucked her ear buds into her ears and cued up her Pissed Off playlist. She’d almost let herself… care for him. Almost let him in. Who was she kidding? She already did. She already had. Tears burned at the back of her throat, but she’d be damned if she’d shed them in front of him. They could wait until she was home, alone, in her own bed tonight.
As the lump in her throat choked her, all she could think of was that maybe her mother was right. Her phone buzzed with her first domestic text in three weeks. It was from a blocked number.
Welcome home. I’ve been waiting for you.
She frowned at the screen. No one had this number. It was probably just spam or a mistake. It certainly wasn’t anyone she knew. She decided not to mention the text to Xavier, mostly because the idea of broaching a conversation with him made her want to throw things.
The text couldn’t have come from Ganim, she told herself. If he had her number he would have been contacting her for months. It was just some random mistake.
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Bob Hope Airport was a decidedly different experience than landing at the paparazzi hive of LAX. Xavier snuck her in the country eighteen hours early under the radar by landing the jet in Burbank. Xavier and Waverly said nothing to each other as they exited the plane and headed into the terminal.
It was a matter of minutes before Waverly was transferred from the cream leather of the jet to the backseat of a black SUV with tinted windows.
With only Gwendolyn and a handful of studio execs aware of her return, she would be avoiding her house and was supposed to go straight to Xavier’s for the night. It was the last place she wanted to be. At the moment, she’d rather walk down Sunset Boulevard wearing a sandwich board begging Ganim to take his best shot.
She sat against the door as far away from Xavier as possible and cursed her body for being so aware of his presence. She wanted to be immune to him. She wanted him to mean nothing to her. But he was everything, and that was terrifying. She’d welcomed him into her life, bared her soul and body to him, and had the naiveté to be surprised when he too turned on her.
She distracted herself from her mad when they pulled into the parking garage of an unfamiliar building. “Where are we?” she asked coolly.
“I decided it would be better to keep you at one of our other properties,” he answered without looking at her.
“Good idea. Then I’m not putting anyone else at risk,” she said flatly. She didn’t wait for him to get out and open her door.
They rode the elevator with the driver to the fourth floor of the apartment building where Xavier led her to the first door on the left. It was a nicely appointed condo with a good view of Dodger Stadium.
Xavier ignored her and focused on setting up his laptop and files on the dining room table. Waverly wandered around until she found the one and only bedroom in the unit. She shut and locked the door behind her and lay down on the bed to cry.
She must have fallen asleep because she woke with a raging headache to a knock at her door.
“Ready to go in twenty,” Xavier said from the other side of the door.
Shit. She groggily sat up and swiped a hand over her face.
“Waverly?”
She wondered how long it would take for her name on his lips to mean nothing to her.
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She wore fire engine red. The dress showed off miles of leg and had a strip of red translucent lace that wrapped around her midriff. Her hair was down and styled with loose waves. She’d applied her make-up as if she was going to war. And in a way she was. She was going into that club ready to make fans swoon, investors worship at her feet, and tell Les Ganim it was time to make his move. She was tired. Tired of being a target. Tired of being a doormat. Tired of being hungry for someone to love her.
From now on, there was only one person she needed to look out for, and that was herself. It was about damn time that she started.
Thirteen was L.A.’s club of the moment. Waverly wasn’t a club goer herself by any means, but even she knew that if you wanted to be seen, you showed up at Thirteen. They aimed for an eleven p.m. arrival through the downstairs kitchen to avoid being spotted outside. There wasn’t much they could do about exposure once she was inside. Everyone had a phone with a camera, and the Celeb Spottings upload app. There were no secrets in L.A.
Xavier had stared hard at her when she came out of the condo’s bedroom. But she’d ignored him, and he hadn’t tried to start a conversation in the SUV on the way there. It had been a chilly ride.
But once inside, Waverly turned it on. She grinned and waved her way through the club’s kitchen and was already moving to the beat as she climbed the back stairs to the VIP lounge.
The subterfuge must have worked because the place went dead silent for two whole seconds before erupting when she sauntered in through the service door. And for once, as the crowd closed in on her, she didn’t feel Xavier’s hand at her back. But tonight she didn’t need it. She was determined to never need it again.
She was spun from person to person in a dizzying dance. Investors, producers, executives—each wanted a piece of her. A promise for even more than what she’d already given. None of them could guess that her quiet acquiescence was over. God help the suit that got in her way first, she smiled to herself.
Waverly ignored the bottle service and ordered a club soda and settled on a white leather sofa. She talked the talk and laughed when appropriate but on the inside felt absolutely nothing. She took a moment to wonder if this was how her mother felt.
She avoided Xavier’s gaze at all times, pretended he was nothing more than furniture, and lavished everyone else with attention. Sipping from her glass, Waverly could feel Xavier’s frustration, feel the friction he put off, and she secretly relished it. She shouldn’t be the only one hurting.
She was leaning in for a particularly juicy piece of gossip from a producer when the sudden wave of dizziness caught her off guard.
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Xavier stood ten paces away from Waverly and watched every move she made. She was pretending he was invisible, and that was fine with him. He was a millimeter away from dragging her out of here. It was stupid for her to be here, like dangling a mouse in front of an alley cat. And her lack of concern about her own well-being or the others who could suffer from her ignorant decisions pissed him off. They’d have it out tonight. One way or another, she would hear him.
He watched her as Waverly brought a hand to her head. It looked like a casual move to the untrained observer, but Xavier felt the buzz in his gut. She looked pale to him. Off. Maybe it was exhaustion. She was certainly entitled to it having been on the move for three weeks straight.
Shit. He was going to have to talk to her. He approached her from behind and leaned over the couch.
“Everything okay?” Xavier asked in her ear.
Her spine went rigid at his voice. “Fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Gee, thanks for that assessment.”
“Listen, smart ass, if you’re not feeling well, we can go. Just say the word, and I’ll call the car.”
“I just have a headache.” She took a shaky breath, and he wondered if she was about to lose her dinner. Then he realized he hadn’t bothered to feed her and cursed himself. “How about another fifteen minutes and you call the car?” she decided.
“I’ll have some food brought over to the condo for you,” he said, his tone gruff. “Do you want anything here?”
She shook her head, shook him off, and ordered another club soda from the server, who looked annoyed that she wouldn’t be seeing any tips from Waverly on the open bottles of Champagne and vodka that sat on the table in front of her.
He decided to follow the server so he could take the drink directly to Waverly. She didn’t need to wait while Miss Attitude took her time plugging in a notebook full of orders. Xavier nodded at Darius, one of his undercovers, to take over on Angel Watch for him. He followed the server to the bar and watched her ring in the order. The ticket spit out instantaneously, and the bar back ripped it. He was pierced and tatted and wore his black Thirteen shirt a size too small. A furtive glance around was Xavier’s first hint that there was trouble. The sweat beading on his forehead was the second.
He watched the bar back fill a fresh glass with ice, and then, a second before he reached for the soda gun, the guy pulled a small vial from his pocket. He poured a few drops of the clear liquid over the ice and then topped it with club soda. He wrapped the ticket around the glass so there was no mistaking who it went to.
The fucker was drugging Waverly’s drink, Xavier realized. He’d probably drugged the first one, too. It was his last coherent thought before his vision went red. There was no good reason that he could think of to control the rage that filled him.
The bar back looked around again, eyes skimming over Xavier and flashing through the crowd. Before he could set the glass on the service bar, Xavier was hauling him over the bar knocking over stools.
Two women in sequined dresses that barely covered their crotches screamed next to him, and the whole place erupted.
Xavier tossed the bar back down on the cement floor. His anger didn’t dissipate with the first punch or the second. Someone grabbed his arm on the third, and he took a swing at them too. All hell broke loose. Someone got in a lucky shot to his ribs and another to his face, but Xavier wasn’t going down. He swung with all his fury.
The other bartender jumped to the aide of his friend. The bouncer for the VIP section waded into the fray and called for backup. Five undercovers, guns in hand, jumped in from their respective spots around the club.
VIPs hid under tables or ran for the exits. Everyone was screaming over the beat of the music.
It took two precious minutes before Hansen and Travers’ badges convinced club security to let Xavier up off the floor. And in those two minutes it had gone down. Waverly was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Video surveillance showed Waverly slumping over at her table just as the fight broke out. While everyone else was distracted by the brawl, a man in a baseball cap slunk in, slipped her arm around his neck and half walked, half dragged her into the hallway near the restrooms. The fire exit’s alarm had been disabled.
Ganim had her, and Xavier knew it was his fault. He’d allowed himself to be distracted. He should have stayed with Waverly and let someone else go to the bar. But he hadn’t. They’d been pissed at each other, and he’d miscalculated.
The VIP section of the now-empty club had been turned into command central with Travers, Hansen, and fifteen men and women from their respective law enforcement branches and Invictus. People were yelling into phones everywhere.
The bar back, now with a broken nose, was sobbing in a booth as he answered questions.
His answers barely registered with Xavier. He’d walked up to him in the parking lot before his shift. Just a skinny guy in a black cap. Showed him a gun and said if he didn’t do what he was told, he’d shoot up the whole club.
They needed video surveillance of the entire block. They needed the car.
Ganim had gotten through the net.
Xavier’s head spun. Years of instinct and the need to act warred with the memories of what he’d said to her on the plane. Those wouldn’t be his last words with her. Not what she meant to him. No, their last conversation would be him accusing her of selfishly putting his people in danger.
“I need to find her!” Xavier railed. He fisted his hands at his side, ignoring the zing of pain from his split knuckles.
“You need to calm down, Saint. You’re no good to her like this,” Micah said calmly, laying his hands on Xavier’s shoulders. His partner had arrived just as the fight had broken out and had been the one to pull Xavier off the bar back.
Xavier knew Micah was right. It was his emotions that had put Waverly in danger in the first place. He hadn’t seen it, hadn’t felt it, until it was too late. That buzz of danger, he’d attributed it to something being off at the bar. Being pissed off at her, wanting her so fiercely, had dulled his instincts. And now his Angel was going to pay the price.
“Fuck.” He tried to get a hold of himself. But standing around with his thumb up his ass wasn’t going to save her. He had a window, a very small window, and he needed to find her. He needed to stop feeling and just think. Think.
He looked around them at the clumps of cops and agents who were following their painful, methodical protocols. “We need to be out there looking.”
Micah looked him in the eye and nodded. “I’m with you. Let’s go.”
They started for the door, and Travers stopped them. “You leaving?” he demanded, disconnecting a call.
Xavier clenched his jaw. If the feds tried to keep him locked down here, he wasn’t afraid to shoot his way out.