by Lucy Score
Until then she was to rest, heal, and stay invisible to the outside world, which thought Waverly Sinner was whiling away the hours in an undisclosed rehab facility for a DUI accident that never happened.
To gain a modicum of peace, or at least quiet, Waverly sent Marisol and Kate into town. Her go bag, while not typical of the average fast escape stash, wasn’t exactly stocked for a tropical vacation. She arrived in Belize with a cocktail dress, a pair of Zanotti Swarovski sling backs, a pair of distressed designer jeans, workout capris, a black tank, and a gray cardigan.
The clothes she’d arrived in had too many bloodstains to salvage. Kate and Marisol were on a mission to appropriately outfit Waverly’s closet here.
Waverly pulled on the black tank, a pair of bikini bottoms she’d left in a drawer on her last trip, and the silk robe from her bathroom.
She’d lay out by the pool and watch the ocean. And go through every single moment of last Saturday again until she could pinpoint where everything had gone wrong.
She chose a striped lounger in the sun and eased down onto the cushion to contemplate life.
Waverly had a good life. A solid life. One she’d chosen. She had a beautiful home, her pick of projects, and the occasional excitement that her side job offered. She and her parents had made great strides in repairing a relationship she’d once thought was a lost cause.
So her sex life was non-existent. She was very busy, and the few times she’d ventured down that road, sticking a toe into the relationship waters, it had been at worst a miserable failure and at best moderately disappointing.
No one had lived up to him. Waverly cursed the memory of Xavier Saint, his memory a shroud that clung to her.
It had been five years, yet not a day passed that he didn’t cross her mind… repeatedly. She’d finally put an end to her hobby of cyber-stalking him, reading interviews with him covering Invictus, scouring the gossip sites for his rare pictures. Since their time together, entertainment bloggers and even the mainstream media had been endlessly fond of him. But when he and the painfully beautiful Calla were linked together, when marriage speculations were made, Waverly had finally stopped looking and stopped hoping that she’d find that one piece of information that she needed to move on. The why.
Their time together had sparked hot and bright and then burned out, extinguished by anguish.
She wished she could forget him, wished she could move on. But something always held her back. So she focused on the other areas of her life. She made movies, started producing, and decorated a house that finally felt like home. She held her small circle of friends close and she waited for the something that was missing.
--------
Five days earlier…
Behind the wheel of the rented Aston Martin, Dante Wrede was whistling the theme song to his last movie. For all of five seconds, he’d not-so-secretly dated the pop star who had recorded it.
“Don’t tell me you’re missing Penelope?” Waverly teased from the passenger seat.
“Haven’t you heard, Waverly darling? I only have eyes for you now,” he said, grinning over his Prada sunglasses.
“Oh, is that where we stand? I can never remember whether we’re dating or broken up or secretly engaged—”
“Or having torrid love affairs with other people,” he filled in. “I just read the tabloids in the grocery store, and they tell me what our current status is.”
Waverly laughed. “You in a grocery store? Please, the day Dante Wrede shows his domestic side is the day snow cones go on sale in hell.” A very large population of women had succumbed to his British-accented charm.
Dante scoffed. “I fully intend to fall madly in love someday and spend the rest of my days spoiling the life out of the beautiful, lucky lady. What’s your excuse?”
“Why, Dante!” Waverly fluttered her lashes. “How could I possibly fall in love with someone else when I’m so enamored with you? At least for today.”
He stuck his tongue out at her.
“Very James Bond of you,” she snickered.
“Since you brought up work, Money Penny, let’s talk mission.”
Waverly studied Slide Mountain as it loomed in front of them, leaving Reno behind them. “You mean the oddly vague yet suddenly imperative mission to continue our blossoming friendship with Petra Stepanov?”
“That would be the one,” Dante said, accelerating down the highway looking every bit the careless playboy.
“You know something, don’t you?” Waverly accused him. “You think this job stinks, too.”
“I think there’s a possibility that there’s something rotten in Lake Tahoe,” he agreed.
“Aha! I knew it.” Waverly kicked back in her seat. Her gut had been telling her there was something wrong with this assignment from the start. Usually their jobs were straightforward. Get into this diplomat’s home office during the cocktail party and bug the phone, drag some information out of an under-the-influence, chatty son at the club regarding his father’s shady weapon dealings, put a tracker on so and so’s yacht while partying on it.
But the studio had remained tight lipped about the why of this particular assignment. Waverly had been tasked with establishing a relationship with the Russian billionaire’s daughter who had recently settled in Los Angeles in a cozy $20 million estate. Just Petra and her herd of tea cup Chihuahuas in a nine bedroom home with two tennis courts, a full-size movie theater, and one of the best views in Hollywood Hills.
She’d coordinated an introduction at a club a few weeks ago, and the two had hit it off, partying together, enjoying flashy shopping sprees that attracted every paparazzo in a ten-mile radius, showing up on red carpets as each other’s dates. Once the relationship was cemented—when Petra’s bodyguards felt comfortable leaving the two women alone—the studio insisted that Waverly and Dante resume their relationship charade to get his foot in the door. When Petra invited them both to Tahoe for a long weekend, the studio gave the trip the thumbs up with no added instructions.
“Which is precisely why you are to keep our little billionairess occupied while I do some recon around daddy’s lake house.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Dante,” Waverly warned him. “With the bodyguards he’s got on her, I can only imagine what security is like in a house that he actually uses.”
Dante was technically her mentor. With the ink still hot on her diploma from Stanford, Dante had brought her on board to the dual purposed “studio,” making movies on the public side and running contract clandestine operations for government programs that needed the special access that celebrity afforded. She’d lost her green and found her groove quickly, becoming an effective agent. She was still playing a role, as the party girl or the spoiled celeb, but it was a role she chose. A role she controlled.
But sometimes Waverly felt as if she were the senior agent running herd on a bullheaded new recruit. Dante was impulsive and, on occasion, a little reckless. She worked hard to keep him in line.
She’d done some digging on the Stepanov family. Grigory, the father, was a billionaire several times over. His vast holdings included everything from real estate in seven countries, a football club, the majority stake of a very successful oil company, and, to further round out his investments, the patents on forty prescription drugs.
Petra’s mother was Mrs. Stepanov Number Two, and Grigory was now on Number Four. Nothing popped for any of the wives. In fact, besides being outrageously wealthy, nothing was ringing a bell for Waverly. No hints at tax evasion or drug running or weapons smuggling. Nothing their usual clients would be interested in.
The weekend needed to yield answers. Waverly wasn’t a fan of working blind.
But the weekend had only yielded more questions.
Perched on a bluff, the five acre-estate boasted a timber frame home that was filled with every kind of Americana luxury that reflected the Old West. A butler dressed in jeans and a pressed plaid shirt led them upstairs to a ro
om with an unobstructed view of the lake. And for one second, Waverly recalled another room in another lake house. But she did what she always did when faced with an unbidden memory of Xavier. She ruthlessly shoved it aside.
This room wasn’t in a cozy family home in Idle Lake, Colorado. No, this timber behemoth included eight thousand square feet of living space including a basement bowling alley and nightclub and third floor cigar lounge. This particular bedroom could have shamed any five-star luxury resort in the country. The highlight, besides the wall of windows that peered over the rusts and oranges of fall foliage to the glistening lake below, was the bed. Hand-turned posts thick as tree trunks held up the metal scrollwork of the canopy.
There was a stone fireplace, less grand than the one downstairs but still impressive, with window seats tucked into each side.
Waverly wandered into the bathroom and raised eyebrows at the opulence. The entire room was done in floor to ceiling stone. The walk-in shower had enough square footage and jets for a modest party of six. The copper soaking tub was set against a window offering optimal views of forest and lake.
She was examining the heavy timber frame of the mirror that ran the length of the vanity when she heard a groan from Dante.
She found him facedown on the bed buried under half of the dozen pillows mounded at the head.
“Dibs on the bed,” he said, his voice muffled by goose down.
“We’ll switch off,” Waverly corrected him.
Dante rolled onto his side, propped his head on his hand. “You know, this would be much easier if we were actually sleeping together.” He looked every bit the British movie star lying there in tastefully distressed jeans, the gray V-neck sweater worn casually over a white button down and topped by a dark corduroy blazer. His short blonde hair curled lightly around his face.
Waverly threw a pillow at him and hit him square in the handsome face. “If by easier, you mean messy and complicated, then I totally agree.”
He laughed, flashing her a pearly grin. They joked about their fake relationship turning real, but neither of them was interested. Dante was not the kind to settle down, and Waverly wasn’t interested in the complications of a fling or a relationship. She’d dated a little in college, enjoying the normalcy of being removed from Hollywood, but she could still never be one-hundred percent sure that the guys were interested in who she was becoming or who she had been.
“You are here!” Petra Stepanov, decked out in leather leggings and a furry vest, trotted into the room in her five-inch Tom Ford stilettos. She had a tiny dog clutched to her chest.
She wrapped Waverly in a one-armed hug and gave her a smacking kiss on both cheeks. “I am so glad you could join me this weekend,” she squealed.
The daughter of an Italian dancer and Russian tycoon, Petra was a unique blend of cultures. She had the heart of her mother, her father’s head for investments, and a love of everything American from baseball to the Kardashians. She wasn’t the typical spoiled rich girl. From what Waverly had gathered, her father had dragged her to the office just as often as her mother brought her to the theater. She was bubbly and sweet, and Waverly suspected she wouldn’t survive a day in the wild on her own.
She made the introduction and rolled her eyes behind Petra’s back when Dante amped up the charm, kissing the woman’s knuckles.
“Thank you for having us, Petra,” Waverly said. “Hi, Pixie.” She rubbed a knuckle gently over the dog’s round forehead.
“You are so good with names!” Petra gushed. “You must teach me your trick.” Waverly wondered what the studio would think of her educating a Russian on tradecraft.
“This room is incredible,” she said, gesturing at the bed that Dante was dragging himself off of.
“I’m so glad you like it,” Petra gushed. “It took Papa six years to get everything just so.”
“He’s certainly got an eye for design,” Dante complimented.
Petra looked at him from under her lashes. “I helped, too, in some rooms.”
Waverly hid a snort.
“I will let you get settled,” Petra announced. “Dinner is at eight.”
--------
They dined on Russian caviar, white truffle pizza, and lobster tail at the dining table. Backed in leather, the dining chairs had foot-long tassels that hung from the seat cushions. They currently doubled as a chew toy for Pixie, the teeny Chihuahua. Dante regaled them with tales from movie sets all over the world and plied Petra with innocuous questions about herself and her father.
Dante’s value as an agent came primarily from his uncanny ability to draw information out of women. They couldn’t seem to help themselves and spilled every detail of their lives to him.
None of Petra’s answers were striking warning bells, though. Grigory was in Russia for the next few weeks working on a new real estate deal. He planned to join his daughter in L.A. at the end of the month.
After dinner, Dante excused himself to take care of some vague business, which Waverly knew was cover for checking in with the studio and, knowing Dante, do a little snooping.
Waverly kept Petra occupied by insisting on an evening walk to the lakefront. It was dark, but Grigory had the landscape designers flank the stairs and path with solar lights. Pixie wore a pink turtleneck sweater to protect her from the cold, and two of Petra’s bodyguards tagged along to protect them from the shadows.
The first round of gunfire had Waverly shoving Petra behind her back against a tree.
“Fireworks?” Petra asked, trying to peer over her shoulder. The guards took up their positions in front of them, weapons drawn.
“I don’t think so,” Waverly whispered. “I think someone’s trying to get in the house.”
“What? What do they want?” Petra’s voice trembled.
“I don’t know,” Waverly said grimly. Her gun was in her room. All she had was the knife strapped to her ankle under her boots. Where the hell was Dante?
“Do you have your phone on you?” Waverly asked Petra.
The girl shook her head, her dark ponytail trembling. “It’s charging in my room,” she whispered.
Another burst of gunfire ripped through the night. Shit, Waverly thought. They needed to move. They were sitting ducks if they stayed here. One of the guards was growling into a radio in Russian.
“Anatoli to house. Do you copy?”
There was no response. Nor was there one on his second attempt.
“Okay, we need to find a better hiding place,” Waverly told Petra. “You’re going to stay right behind me and be quiet.”
Wide-eyed Petra nodded and then flinched at a new volley of gunfire.
Waverly signaled to the guards to follow her. They weighed their options briefly in the language they didn’t know she spoke fluently while Petra trembled at her side.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, guys,” Waverly muttered in Russian. “We need to move.” She pointed toward the boathouse at the edge of the lake a hundred yards away. Finally the short, thick-necked one with the radio nodded his assent. Wishing she had a gun or at the very least a dark shirt, she dragged Petra along behind her. The guards brought up the rear. They darted from tree to tree and tried to stay out of the moonlight.
For goons, Petra’s guards moved with relative silence, which said training. It was Petra stamping over twigs and leaves that made them sound like a drunken circus bear stumbling through firecrackers.
The last thirty feet to the boathouse were out in the open. Waverly paused for a second and listened. The air was eerily silent as if everything alive was listening desperately at the same time.
She gave Petra a three count, and they began the sprint toward the boathouse. There was more gunfire, and Waverly heard wood splinter next to her head as she shoved Petra inside. There was an active shooter targeting them in the dark, which meant nightscopes, and that meant not your run of the mill break-in. They were here for someone, not something. The bigger of the two guards rushed in the
door behind them.
“Anatoli,” he said, gasping the name of the other guard and pointing to the door. “He is shot!”
Another round of bullets tore through the wood, and they dropped to the cement.
“Please tell me there’s a boat in here,” Waverly asked Petra.
“Yes!” she said through chattering teeth. “A m-motorboat.”
“Thank God, I thought we were going to have to kayak out of here. Okay, you! What’s your name?” she asked the guard in Russian.
“Yurgei.”
“Yurgei, you are going to put Petra and Pixie in the boat and motor your asses out of here. Stay on this side of the boathouse to block your escape and then stay down in the boat. Go to the other side of the lake and call this in.”
Yurgei grunted an okay.
“What about you, Waverly? Will you come with us?” Petra asked, shaking so hard Pixie whimpered.
“I’m going to find Dante.”
She waited until Yurgei had started the boat and raised the garage door before moving back to the side door. She would be a distraction while they made their escape.
The second the engine revved, Waverly was out the door, low and running. She zigged and zagged through the dark, hearing the bullets that hit the ground near her.
She saw the fallen guard. He’d dragged himself to the trunk of one of the pine trees that ringed the rocky beach, but he was still in the line of fire. She hustled to him. It was a leg shot, thankfully not life threatening unless the hilltop shooters decided to wander closer.
“Anatoli, can you walk?” she whispered.
“Not well, but yes,” he told her in thickly accented English.
She slipped his arm over her shoulder and helped him stand. She thanked God it had been him and not the heavier set guard who’d taken the hit. Anatoli weighed a good forty pounds less than his healthy counterpart.