by Jane Godman
“Oh.” She appeared to give it some thought. “People sharing their security passes. Cars tailgating each other. Delivery trucks not being properly checked. That was a big one recently after a company selling flowers got through without being stopped by the guard.”
He nodded. “I’ll take a guy and a gate over a wall and a camera any day.”
It was a long wait, but eventually a delivery truck pulled up at the checkpoint. The gate opened as the guard left his booth and approached the cab of the truck.
“Now.”
Bryce caught Steffi’s hand and propelled her through the gate on the opposite side of the truck to the guard and the driver. In their black clothing, and using the cover of the wall and the darkness, they were able to crouch low and sneak inside without detection. They walked stealthily past Steffi’s house several times, checking it out until Bryce was as certain as he could be that no one was watching the property. He supposed that three months after the murders the police were reasonably sure that Anya Moretti wasn’t coming back here. Probably they were unable to spare the man power to watch the house any longer. His biggest concern was whether Walter Sullivan had anyone on the lookout for them. Steffi had told Walter she knew where the cell phone was. It would be reasonable for Walter to make the assumption that it would be here. Bryce had expected Walter to have posted a couple of guys here at Steffi’s house. If they were here, they were staying well out of sight.
Tucked away behind high hedges and wrought iron gates, the Mediterranean-style villa was only just visible from the road. They had the advantage over other housebreakers. Not only did Steffi have a set of keys, she also knew the codes to the alarm system. As she led Bryce past the main gates, he caught a glimpse of an ornate fountain in the marble tiled courtyard. He resisted the impulse to give an appreciative whistle. He thought of his two-bedroom house on the edge of Stillwater with its view over the lake. With its fenced yard and decking that always seemed to need a coat of varnish, it was about as far from this miniature palace as it was possible to get. He had known that Steffi lived in a different world, but now the reality of that difference was thrust right under his nose.
“This is the way deliveries come in.” Steffi punched in a code on a door next to the quadruple garage and it swung inward. After a swift glance around, they slipped through.
Bryce took a moment to get his bearings. They were at the side of the house, sheltered from view by the garage. He figured anyone watching from a distance would be looking at the front entrance and not in this direction.
“Can you get us in around the back?”
Steffi nodded. Clinging to the shadows, they made their way along the garage wall and across to the rear of the house. Bryce took a moment to appreciate the features of the graceful property. Stretching beyond the house itself, green lawn surrounded an elegantly curved swimming pool. Beyond that, he could see intricate gardens and a gazebo. They crossed a sun terrace with neatly arranged patio furniture.
“It’s like I never went away.” Steffi shook her head in surprise. “The pool has been cleaned and the lawn is freshly cut.”
“Do you live here alone?” Bryce looked up at the imposing facade. From its size, the house had to have at least seven bedrooms.
“Yes, although my adoptive parents visit—” she bit her lip as she corrected herself “—visited sometimes.”
“Have you had any contact with them since Greg’s death?” Bryce could sense her distress. Although she had mentioned the couple who had adopted her after the deaths of her parents a few times, she hadn’t gone into any detail about them. This was the first time he had gotten any sense of her relationship with them.
Steffi took a steadying breath as she led him to a set of patio doors. “I called them once, the day I went on the run, just to reassure them that I was okay. They are very private people and I’ve always taken care to keep them out of the limelight.” Her voice wobbled slightly. “I knew they’d be worried about me, but I didn’t want to drag them further into this mess. I didn’t give them any details about where I was, or what my plans were. At least that way, when the police spoke to them, they wouldn’t be able to tell them anything. I didn’t know it at that time, but it seems it also worked in my favor when Walter visited them.”
Drawing the set of keys she’d brought with her from the pocket of her jeans, she inserted one of them into the patio door. It opened silently and they stepped inside.
“Wait here while I switch off the alarm.” Steffi moved quickly through the darkened house. After a minute or two, Bryce heard a faint electronic beeping and her footsteps returning.
She gave a relieved smile. “I had a horrible feeling that someone might have been in here and changed the codes.”
Although they couldn’t switch on the lights for fear of alerting the security guards who patrolled the other houses on the road, there was enough light from the streetlamps and the almost full moon for Bryce to appreciate the luxurious features of the house. As Steffi led him through a lounge with elegant, light-colored rugs and furnishings, he noticed several sculptures on stands and paintings on the walls. Something about the way they were displayed told him they were original pieces of art.
“This is my study,” Steffi said as they stepped inside a smaller room, furnished with a desk and chair. One wall was lined with books. “Normally, Elsa would bring my mail in here and leave it on my desk for me to open each day. I haven’t checked my mail since before I went away to Italy on location. If Greg sent the cell phone to me, I’d expect it to be in here.”
“Unless the police went through your mail and took it,” Bryce said.
“If they didn’t know what they were looking for, why would they take it?” Steffi moved toward the desk. Sure enough, there were several neat piles stacked up on its surface. Even in the gloomy light cast by a streetlamp, it was easy to see that each item had already been opened.
“Even if Walter has been in the house during your absence, we know he didn’t find the phone.” Bryce eyed the piles of letters and packets. “If he had, he wouldn’t have needed to ask you where it was. He would have just killed you as soon as he found you in Stillwater.”
“We should still go through this mail. Greg might have sent me a note that wouldn’t mean anything to someone else.” Steffi glanced at the window. “If we close the drapes we can switch on this desk lamp.”
Half an hour later they had been through every item on the desk and found nothing from Greg. Steffi, who was seated in the chair, slumped back in an attitude of despondency.
They had discussed the possibility of calling Greg’s cell phone to see if they could hear its ringtone. But, as Bryce pointed out, after three months of not being charged, there would be no life in the battery.
“We didn’t expect to find anything here,” Bryce reminded her. “We just have to eliminate this place and Greg’s apartment and hope to find something that might give us a clue.”
She nodded gloomily, her whole body drooping in an attitude of defeat. “I guess just being here again brought it all back to me.”
He drew her close, wrapping her in his arms and trying to instill some warmth into her trembling limbs. They stayed locked together like that until the sound of a footstep on the tiled floor of the hall disturbed them.
Chapter 10
Bryce pressed a finger to his lips. Steffi’s heart was pounding so hard she thought it might give her away. Because she knew the layout of the house so well, she could tell the person who had come in had taken the same route as them. Coming in through the patio doors and cutting across the lounge area before heading into the marble tiled hall. He, or she, was heading their way.
“Who is there?” The voice was high-pitched, wavering and familiar.
“It’s Elsa,” Steffi whispered to Bryce. “My housekeeper.”
The footsteps came closer
to the study, then paused. “What are you doing here? This is private property.” Elsa’s tone was panicky now.
“Who is she talking to? She can’t see us.” Bryce whispered as he moved cautiously toward the door. Before he reached it, Elsa let out a scream. It was followed immediately by a thud. Steffi couldn’t be sure, but it sounded a lot like a person falling to the floor.
Bryce moved quickly, pulling Steffi down with him behind the desk. Silently, Steffi slid open the bottom drawer. Twelve months ago an overenthusiastic fan had managed to get onto the grounds of the house. He hadn’t been dangerous, quite the opposite—he had been harmless and friendly—wanting to talk to her about how much he enjoyed her movies. But the incident had troubled her. Not to the point where she was prepared to have live-in security—her privacy was too important to her for that—but enough to make her think about protection.
Steffi hated guns. It didn’t take much imagination for her to work out why that might be. Every time she worked on a film that involved a shooting scene, she had flashbacks to the deaths of her parents. Nothing would have convinced her to get a gun. Instead, she had upgraded her alarm system and placed pepper spray in strategic positions around the house, including a canister in the bottom drawer of her desk. Now her hand closed eagerly around the comforting cylindrical shape.
The frame of the desk blocked their view, but she heard the footstep as someone entered the room. Her senses told her this wasn’t Elsa. The person who had just come into the room was big, his or her movements dominating the small space. And he—she just knew somehow that it was a he—was light on his feet, as though sneaking around in the dark came naturally to him. If it had been a police officer, he would have announced his presence by now, and he wouldn’t have harmed Elsa. No, Steffi was willing to bet that this person spoke with a Russian accent.
The lamp was still on and, as the footsteps approached the desk, Bryce sprang to his feet. Although he motioned for Steffi to stay down, she ignored him. Clutching the pepper spray in her hand, she faced the intruder side by side with Bryce. Her hunch had been right. Although the left side of his face was still a mess of cuts and bruises where she had smashed the quartz into him back at the lake house, Sergei managed a sneer.
“The Big Guy said you would come here sooner or later. You are wasting your time. We’ve searched every inch of this place and the phone isn’t here.” He reached into his inside pocket. “The Big Guy also said it’s time to say goodbye to the boyfriend.”
Steffi moved fast. Vaulting across the desk, she tried to remember the instructions she had been given when she purchased the pepper spray. Aim for the eyes. That was the most important one. Extending her arm, she shot a jet of the fiery liquid straight at the upper part of Sergei’s face.
Letting out an enraged bellow, he dropped to his knees, rubbing wildly at his eyes. With a shaking hand, Steffi disarmed the canister and tucked it into her pocket. She turned to find Bryce looking at her with an expression of mingled exasperation and admiration.
“I was going to tell you to start trusting me and listen when I want you to stay back, but I guess it worked out okay this time. We’d better get going. Erik and Alexei won’t be far behind.”
As they passed Sergei, who was writhing on the floor and moaning, Bryce reached into the Russian’s pocket and withdrew the gun he had been reaching for. Although Sergei tried to kick out at him, the temporary blindness induced by the pepper spray rendered his actions ineffective.
Steffi shuddered. “I hate guns.”
“If we meet up with Walter again, I’ll feel safer if I have this in my hand.”
An image of Greg’s dead body came into her mind and she bit her lip before nodding. “I guess you’re right.”
When they passed through the hall, Steffi gave a soft cry as she saw Elsa stretched out on the tile floor. Bryce dropped down on one knee, quickly checking the housekeeper’s unconscious form. “She’s alive. Looks like he hit her over the head. It’s lucky for us she came into the house and interrupted him when she did. If she hadn’t called out to him, he could have sneaked up on us.”
“We can’t just leave her here.” Steffi couldn’t bear the thought of the loyal, kindly woman who had worked for her for so many years lying injured and at the mercy of Walter’s thugs.
“Let’s get out of the house and through the gates. Then we’ll call for help.” Bryce’s clasp on her hand was warm and reassuring. “We can tell the police they might want to take a look at the man in the study and his associates in connection with the murder of Greg Spence. Who knows? They may even listen.”
* * *
On the drive back from her house, Steffi had made up her mind. As wonderful as sex with Bryce was, it would be a mistake to get too involved. She was going to tell him they should cool things down. That it should be a one-time-only thing. The situation they were in had gotten them all fired up and they had let the supercharged emotions go to their heads...and other parts of their bodies. They were adults; they could share a hotel room and deal with a little physical attraction without ripping each other’s clothes off again.
Only now they were back in their hotel room, Bryce was moving toward her in a very determined way, and her carefully rehearsed speech had dried up. At that precise moment, Steffi couldn’t remember why she had even prepared a speech. She was struggling to remember her own name. Her brain was thinking Why not? and her body was responding very enthusiastically to the purposeful look in his eye.
“Come here.” A smile quirked one corner of his mouth.
“You’re bossy.” Although his forcefulness was one of the things she found most attractive about him, she felt she should at least try to make a stand about his high-handedness. While she could still think straight.
“And you are overdressed.” The smile deepened. “So let me rephrase my earlier instruction. Take your clothes off and then come here.”
It was as if he had her body on remote control, Steffi decided, as her fingers moved to the buttons of her shirt. The light in those brown eyes told her he knew her better than she knew herself. She couldn’t even pretend she was able to fight this. A raw, primal hunger surged through her. She was acting on adrenaline and impulse. Rational thought was relegated to another time and place. Bryce had awakened something in her she had believed didn’t exist.
Steffi had always thought she wasn’t a very physical person. Had always put that down to her issues with trust and commitment. The rare sexual encounters she’d had in the past were brief and pleasant. Apart from not being able to climax, she had enjoyed them, but she had never understood the burning intensity that led other people to make fools of themselves over sex. Murder, war, infidelity? And for what? She lived in a world where excess was normality, but she just didn’t get it. Sex wasn’t that important to her. She could even—she’d admit in a whisper—live without it. Occasionally she had wondered if she was missing some vital part of her psyche. She had no close friends; no one she could ask. It wasn’t the sort of question she could discuss with an acquaintance. Is there something wrong with me? I just don’t think sex is all that great.
Now she wanted to laugh out loud at the memory of that time. Of the person she had been when she had those thoughts. I just hadn’t met Bryce Delaney back then. Hadn’t seen that look in his eye, experienced the dominance he could exert over her body or felt the sizzling, uncontrollable force that surged between them. He was like a tornado, sweeping past her puny defenses, tearing down any barriers she attempted to put up and leaving her breathless and longing. It didn’t matter how much she told herself she shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t want him.
Common sense tried to intrude and remind her that they were living on a knife edge of danger. That she was on the run from the police, wanted for a double murder. That Walter Sullivan and his Russian bodyguards were breathing down their necks. That even if by some miracle they got out of
this alive, they lived in different worlds, one in which she was an ice-queen movie star and he was a small-town super stud. None of it mattered. He only had to look at her to have her breath catching raggedly in her throat.
Bryce closed the distance between them, pulling her shirt the rest of the way off and tossing it to the floor.
“I thought you wanted me to undress myself?” She tipped her head back to look at him.
“You were overthinking again.” His voice was a growl as he tugged down the lace of her bra, exposing her breast. Steffi shivered at the hunger in his gaze as he lowered his head to lick her nipple. “So pretty.” The glittering look in his eyes as he raised his head almost brought her to her knees.
“Too small.” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “And now I’m skinnier than ever...”
“You’re perfect.” His hands moved around to undo the clasp of her bra. Sliding the straps down her arms, he dropped it at her feet. His palms were warm as they covered her breasts. “Don’t ever let me hear you say different.”
His hand caught the back of her neck, holding her at the perfect angle as he brought his lips to hers. His kiss was melting, stealing her breath away at the first touch. Steffi tilted her head, her senses consumed by the taste of him. How had being in his arms suddenly become the most natural thing in the world? He was a living flame, lighting the darkest corners of a world she was only now recognizing had been desperately cold and lonely before she found his presence.
As he scooped her up and carried her to the bed, Steffi realized she had found something that had been missing from her life. Security. In Bryce’s arms she felt safe for the first time ever.
He placed her on the bed, removing the rest of her clothes and shedding his own before lying next to her. “Your body is beautiful.” His lips stroked the hollow of her throat before moving along her collarbone. “The most perfect thing I have ever seen.” He probably said that to every woman he met, but in that moment, the heated, husky note in his voice was so potent, Steffi actually believed him.