Crossing the Line (A Sinner and Saint Novel Book 1)

by Lucy Score

  It didn’t make sense to Waverly. Why would Ganim go to that much trouble to get close enough to her without attempting an abduction or some kind of physical harm? Was it because Xavier had been so close? Had his mere presence scared Ganim off?

  Xavier entered the living room, his own mug in hand, and leaned over the back of the couch. “We’re all going to the office, so everyone needs to shower and pack in case we can’t come back here tonight.”

  Waverly met his gaze. “Expecting trouble?”

  “Expecting a logistical nightmare,” he clarified. “We’re pulling in everyone including your parents, Gwendolyn, Phil, and Detective Hansen’s team. And did I mention the FBI is now involved?”

  Her parents. Crap. It hadn’t even occurred to her to call them last night. Had they been worried? Or was her mother thrilled at the prospect of so much publicity? She’d find out soon enough.

  Kate took her leave to hit the shower first, and Waverly watched more news coverage. The studio would have been in touch with Phil and Gwendolyn by now. Decisions being made for her left and right. Someday she would call her own shots. She thought of the letter from Stanford, tucked away in her bedroom in the pool house. Maybe sooner rather than later.

  Xavier’s house phone rang, and he frowned at the readout on the caller ID.

  He took the call in the dining area, his voice low. He was already reaching for his cell phone before he disconnected the call. He spoke quietly, his free hand on his hip, his head bowed.

  “What is it?” Waverly asked when he hung up.

  “There’s a delivery for you at the front desk.” His tone was chillingly calm.

  Waverly sat ramrod straight. “Who knows that I’m here?”

  “The three of us and two of my team.”

  “My mother…”

  “She doesn’t know where you are. I told her I was taking you to a hotel.”

  Waverly felt a sad roll of relief.

  “What’s the delivery?”

  “I had one of my team watching the parking lot overnight. She’s checking out the package at the front desk.” He prowled now, back and forth by the front door, pausing to pull a handgun out from a false bottom in a side table drawer. He tucked it into the waistband of his pants, and together, they waited in silence.

  A knock sounded on the front door. One hard rap followed by two short, sharp ones. Xavier checked the peephole and opened the door.

  A woman in her mid-thirties wearing nondescript jogging clothes entered. She looked like any busy mom out for some early morning exercise before work, but Waverly saw the canniness in her eyes. Field training of some kind, she speculated.

  “They were flowers,” the woman started without preamble. “White roses. I left them at the desk in case they’d been tampered with. But I brought this up.”

  She handed over a generic card. Xavier read it and the line between his eyes deepened.

  His gaze returned to her and after a moment’s debate, he handed the card to Waverly.

  Don’t worry, my love. I just wanted to be closer to you last night. We’ll be together soon enough.

  She shook her head. It wasn’t possible. Ganim had found her here. No one knew where she was.

  Xavier and his investigator quietly discussed the situation while Waverly’s head spun.

  Hunted. It’s what he wanted her to feel. Trapped. And it was working. Anywhere she went, she would be putting people in danger.

  She wanted to disappear, to run. Alone. At least no one else would be exposed to the threats she faced.

  But she felt Xavier watching her, felt the weight of his gaze so unbearably intimate as if he knew what she was thinking. He stood between her and the door. Between her and freedom. Between her and danger.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  He dragged them out of his apartment ten minutes later. A complaining Kate with wet hair and an unshowered Waverly in the clothes she’d slept in piled into the backseat of Xavier’s Tahoe. They’d packed quickly and ran a complex surveillance detection route that took them into Glendale and Eagle Rock before heading downtown to Invictus Security offices where traffic was only mildly oppressive at this early hour.

  It was housed in one of the glossy high rises that reflected the early morning sun in blinding brilliance. He parked in a reserved spot and were met by a three-man security team that escorted them up to the building’s third floor, home of Invictus Security.

  “Thought you’d have the penthouse, X-Man,” Kate said with disappointment.

  “Never house your office higher than the ladders of fire trucks can reach,” Xavier lectured her.

  The smoked glass doors to the suite opened with a swipe of a badge, and they were ushered inside. They hustled past a long front desk guarded by two staff members who looked more like sentinels than secretaries.

  Xavier led them left past rows of cubicles and a handful of offices, all occupied by busy-looking staffers. A woman with a razor sharp bob and exotic eyes rattled away on the phone in what Waverly thought she recognized as Korean. Her officemate was reviewing traffic camera footage on a monitor the size of a jumbotron.

  She saw a sleek, modern kitchen tucked away in the back and a wall of glassed-in conference rooms. Employees in sharp suits held animated discussions with men and women dressed in anything but office attire. Undercovers, she assumed.

  The entire operation reflected efficiency and a single-minded intensity, a devotion to the task at hand. She’d known Invictus was at the top of the private security game, but what Waverly hadn’t realized was just how top.

  Xavier pushed open an office door and ushered Waverly and Kate inside. He spoke quietly to the rest of the entourage and closed the door.

  “We’re meeting with Hansen and one of the FBI suits in half an hour. Waverly, there’s a bathroom with a shower through there.” He gestured to a door on the far wall. “My admin, Roz, will be in shortly. She’ll get you anything you need.” He stopped, considered Kate’s mess of wet hair. “I’ll see if she can dig up a hairdryer for you so you don’t scare the cops off.”

  Kate stuck her tongue out at him, and Xavier gave her a harried half grin. “I’m going to brief the team. Neither one of you is to leave this room until I come back for you, got it?” The finger he pointed landed squarely on Waverly. “I mean it.”

  He stared at her for a beat longer and then nudged her under the chin. “Hey. Chin up, Angel. We’ll get this figured out. It’s nothing for you to be worried about.”

  She wasn’t sure if the “this” he was referring to was Ganim or what was happening between them.

  Xavier left them, closing the door behind him and Kate busied herself setting up her laptop and planners. She pulled out a digital camera from her bag, explaining Waverly’s fans would be clamoring for a proof of life shot sooner or later.

  Waverly’s good night’s sleep now forgotten, she felt the exhaustion of despair weigh in on her shoulders. She headed toward the bathroom, hoping a shower and fresh clothes would somehow make it all better.

  She returned to the office with clean skin and clothes. She couldn’t stomach the thought of donning the pencil skirt and heels Kate had packed for her and instead went with a comfortable pair of black athletic pants with cargo pockets and a long cashmere cardigan over a white tank. She’d used a light hand with her makeup to chase away the paleness caused by worry over her immediate future.

  She didn’t know where she’d be laying her head tonight, but Waverly was sure it wouldn’t be in her own bed. Or Xavier’s.

  --------

  The meetings were an eye-opening experience for Waverly. Xavier introduced her to his partner, Micah Ross, in the hallway outside the conference room.

  “Ms. Sinner, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Micah beamed, shaking her hand with the enthusiasm of a sports fan meeting his hero.

  “Really?” Waverly asked in surprise.

  “Do you by chance have a flagpole at your house?” />
  “Okay, no more talking,” Xavier said, shoving Micah into the conference room ahead of them. “Remind me not to explain that to you later,” he told Waverly with a grimace.

  Detective Hansen and his team had been busy in the last twelve hours. While uniforms and forensics examined every speck of dust on and around the theatre, the detective had techs methodically work their way through surveillance footage in a four-block radius of the blasts. They’d hit pay dirt when they spotted a figure acting inconsistently with the rest of the traffic on the sidewalks on the grainy camera footage of a convenience store.

  They’d caught up with him half a block later on an ATM camera and then again after he turned down a side street and got into a ten-year-old sedan matching the one identified by Xavier’s team. With a full plate number and some traffic camera luck, they’d been able to track the suspect to a motel in Hawthorne.

  Their luck had run out there. By the time they’d sifted through the footage and tracked the car, Ganim was gone. He’d left the car behind in the motel parking lot and the room had once again been wiped clean. They were back to square one.

  The FBI agent, who had been on the case a grand total of six hours, was a grumpy looking man close to Xavier’s age. Agent Malachi Travers was exactly what Waverly pictured for the quintessential FBI agent. He was overworked, underpaid, and had been with the bureau long enough that the idealistic bloom had worn off of him. He was dressed in the on-the-job law enforcement uniform of a wrinkled button down with rolled up sleeves that he’d already spent too many hours in.

  Without preamble, he announced that the FBI had unsealed Ganim’s juvie file. It wasn’t good news.

  “We’ve got an animal cruelty charge when he was sixteen,” Travers began, tossing out papers to all those assembled around the table except for Waverly. “Ganim killed the family dog of a neighbor girl who’d turned him down—not very gently—when he awkwardly asked her out.”

  Waverly saw Xavier’s jaw tighten at the news, and she suppressed a shudder. Violence against animals was a common indicator of a serious mental disturbance. Not that building and using explosives was a ringing endorsement as a human being, but it showed a pattern. Waverly realized they weren’t just investigating, they were building a case—one that they could prosecute whether she was alive or not.

  Hansen, shifted his bony frame in the chair across from Waverly. “Ms. Sinner, I assure you, it’s only a matter of time before we find this guy.”

  Travers agreed that she could rest easy with the resources of the LAPD and FBI behind her. He’d struck at some of LA’s most elite citizens last night, and the city wouldn’t stand for it. They’d have him in custody in thirty-six hours, Hansen predicted.

  As the meeting wrapped up, Xavier and Micah extracted promises from Hansen and Travers to share information as they worked the investigation from both ends.

  Yet Waverly felt no safer than she had the night before. Ganim had a plan, of that she was sure. And she felt like every step was bringing him closer and closer to her. There was a possibility that no one could stop him.

  The next meeting didn’t make her feel any safer. They exited one conference room of law enforcement and entered another full of executives. And it was there that Waverly experienced one of those moments of knife-edge clarity, an almost out of body experience, as a dozen people who earned huge fees for their particular areas of expertise argued about what was best for her.

  Exactly when she had become a commodity, she wasn’t sure. Waverly had a suspicion it had been at conception. Her mother’s pregnancy, she’d learned years later, had served to quiet the infidelity rumors that had begun to surface. But with such undeniable biological proof of her parents’ love, the rumors had withered and died.

  Now, she sat at a long glass conference table, Xavier on her left arguing a point on safety with Gwendolyn while her parents, Kate, Phil, and a handful of studio execs chimed in with their opinions. Micah and a few of the Invictus team filled out the empty seats.

  Everyone had a say but Waverly. And as she took in the scene with an eerie sense of calm, she felt the reality she’d built begin to swallow her whole. Somehow, she’d allowed herself to become this valuable, delicate thing. An asset of great worth yet easily damaged in capricious hands.

  And so an army of agents, executives, and security experts rallied to protect her from harm while keeping her on display in her gilded cage.

  She took a lull in the debate of her future and excused herself from the room. She needed a break so she didn’t break, not in front of all of them. Waverly quietly let herself into Xavier’s office and closed the door behind her. She didn’t bother turning on the light, just stood in the dimly lit office and wondered how she’d gotten to this point.

  The door opened and closed behind her, and she could sense Xavier’s presence. He didn’t order her back to the conference room. He didn’t say anything at all as he pulled her into his arms. She let herself sink into him. Breathing him in, Waverly let the heat that pumped off of his body start to thaw the ice collecting in her veins.

  His heart beat slowly, steadily, under her ear, soothing her. There was no danger right here or right now. Just the unknown of the future she needed to face and the reality of the present that she’d allowed to exist.

  She felt his lips brush the top of her head before moving to her forehead. Somehow he knew. He sensed that she was just hanging on by her fingernails, ready to rail at the ridiculousness that had become her life. The intimacy of last night had bled into the light of day, and she once again felt bared to Xavier.

  But she couldn’t lean on him. She couldn’t depend on Xavier to protect her from everything, couldn’t trust him not to betray her. She needed to start standing on her own two feet and stop expecting everyone else to take up the fight. She would get through this with the help of her army, and once Ganim was behind bars, she would take her life back. And maybe then she would figure out if she and Xavier fit together.

  Decision made, Waverly felt fortified. She smoothed the lapels of his jacket under her palms and straightened his tie. And then she’d stepped out of his arms and walked back to the conference room, a new layer of calm protecting her.

  She walked into a heated debate.

  Sylvia was on her feet shooting a withering screen goddess glare at one of the studio suits. “I understand your point, David,” she said, color rising to her cheeks. “But this is my daughter we’re discussing. And we’re not compromising her safety so you can sell more movie tickets. Parading her around the talk show circuit to discuss her psychotic stalker is just going to bait him into making another move. And I’m sure that’s not what you want.”

  It was a glimpse of the mother she’d known and loved. She was still in there somewhere. Waverly offered Sylvia a small smile and received a regal nod in return.

  Gwendolyn smoothly assumed control. “I agree with Sylvia here. If anything, we could put more focus on the international tour by keeping Waverly under wraps until the London premiere. The press will be clamoring for a personal statement. I think this—” she paused and glanced in Sylvia’s direction, “unfortunate situation could provide a great deal of publicity for the film.”

  “So what do we do with her for eight days?” one of the suits wanted to know.

  --------

  She woke as the jet began its slow descent. Stretching, Waverly craned her neck to catch a glimpse outside the window. Idle Lake, Colorado, spread beneath her, a tiny lake town basking in the late afternoon sun.

  There were no high rises, no snarls of traffic, not even an international airport. They were putting down on a skinny municipal strip used mainly by the local flying club.

  “You grew up here?” she asked Xavier as she peered out the window.

  They were the first words spoken since take off. And in the silence, Waverly had done a lot of thinking.

  A plan had been crafted at the offices of Invictus. Xavier had ushered everyone
out of the room except for Waverly, Kate, Micah, and Robert and Sylvia. Robert had offered up a last-minute family vacation on the Mediterranean. It would put her closer to her London premiere, and he just happened to know a friend with a yacht. God, Waverly hoped his friend was a man.

  With one phone call, it was arranged, and Monday, the Sinners would convene on a cozy one-hundred and sixty-foot luxury yacht for six days before Waverly kicked off her six-city international publicity tour for The Dedication.

  Until then, Waverly needed to get out of L.A., away from Ganim. She hadn’t known where until they got to the airport. Two days in Xavier’s hometown at his parents’ house. Even Kate, who’d returned to the Sinner estate under guard and packed for Waverly, had no idea where she was.

  No one but Xavier and the pilot.

  What made Waverly nervous wasn’t being out of touch with everyone. If she was being honest, the idea of being incommunicado for two days was incredibly appealing. What did get her pulse jumping and the butterflies fluttering was meeting Xavier’s parents. It wasn’t like she was meeting a boyfriend’s parents for the first time. But it certainly felt like it. She wanted them to like her just as she wanted to see him at home in an environment he was comfortable in.

  He leaned forward to look through his seat’s small window, and his fingers drummed a beat on his knee. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who was nervous?

  “This is it,” he said finally, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. She doubted he knew it was there. Though he’d gotten even less sleep than she had in the past twenty-four hours, there was an energy, a lightness about him that she’d never seen before. Right now, he was just a man recognizing home. And she was going to get an up close look at Xavier Saint’s personal life.