by Lucy Score
“Stay where you are,” he instructed.
They waited until the upper deck was mostly clear. “You’re going to stand up and take off your gun.”
Waverly glanced at her seatmate, her eyes unreadable behind Petra’s huge sunglasses.
“Just how am I going to keep her from running if I don’t have a gun?” she gritted out the words.
“Be creative. Now do it.”
They both stood, and Waverly reached under her shirt to pull out her .38. There were three men left on the bus, all staring at her.
“There’s a good little starlet. Now put your gun on the seat and walk off the bus.”
Waverly glowered at the men as she carefully set the handgun on the vinyl cushion. Keeping her hands in plain sight, she gestured toward the staircase, and together they climbed down. The brass railing was sticky under her hand. The lower level was completely empty, and Waverly chose the rear exit of the bus over the front. They skirted the crowd of tourists waiting to be assigned a seat on the tram car, and Waverly led the way, jogging down the side of one of the huge steel buildings.
She wanted to get them out of sight of the henchmen so she didn’t have to worry about a bullet in her back. Thankfully, it was clear that Brad wanted one last villain speech with her before ending her life because they rounded the back of the sound stage with no interference.
“Let’s get this over with, Brad. Where are you?”
“I made it easy for you,” he said. Open the door on your left.
Waverly glanced over her shoulder and spotted the thick metal door. The handle moved under her grip.
She looked into Petra’s gigantic sunglasses and mouthed, “Show time.”
The brunette nodded, and Waverly opened the door. Sound stages all smelled the same. It was a musky scent of old props, fresh paint, and bad ventilation. The glow in the dark tape on the floor directed them forward, and Waverly could make out light ahead. They pushed through heavy black curtains and stepped into a literal scene out of a movie.
“Isn’t this a little melodramatic?” Waverly asked, glancing around the dimly lit set. It was the graveyard set for the sequel to a popular zombie comedy.
“The world loves the perception of drama, even when there is none,” Brad said smugly, holding a pistol loosely in his left hand.
Waverly’s gaze flew to her mother. Sylvia was tied to the same chair as the picture, but she was awake now. Her blue eyes widened as she tried to process the scene before her.
“Is that why you’re doing all this? The backdoor deals, blackmail, murder? For the drama?” Waverly demanded.
“Do you know how sick I am of dealing with your righteous, spoiled, delicate egos?” Brad snapped. “I don’t give a flying fuck about your set trailers or who gets top billing. You make me more money by playing spy than you ever could onscreen. But when lover boy started making noise about his assignments, I had to cut him loose before he screwed me out of billions. Do you get that? Billions.”
Brad was pacing over fake graveyard grass, ranting now. “I make things happen for the right people, and I’m rewarded. It could have been the same for you, but you couldn’t just do your job and keep your mouth shut.”
“We were working for the government, and then you decided to start dipping into other streams of income. It’s not what I signed up for.”
“You think every government operation was so pure and good? Wake up, Waverly. Wake up from the delusion. You actors think you’re so much better than everyone else because you play dress up and you read words that other people wrote. You think you’re important and special.” He threw up lopsided air quotes with the pistol still in his hand. Gone was the smooth and genial man who’d promised to make Target Productions the biggest studio in Hollywood history. In his place was a raving maniac, sweaty and righteous in his fury.
“You think you have power because you get attention. How much power do you have right now, standing in front of me with no weapons, no help, no bargaining chips?” he gestured wildly with the gun.
“You were never going to let me walk out of here alive,” Waverly shot back.
“And yet you still brought me what I wanted,” Brad said, finally acknowledging the key to his billions. “Hello, Petra.”
Waverly felt the woman tense next to her and gave the nod.
She pulled a nine-millimeter from her back and yanked off her hat, wig, and glasses.
“Who the fuck are you?” Brad screeched.
He made a move toward her, but the woman leveled the Beretta at him and bared her teeth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m being rude. Did you think this was Petra?” Waverly laughed. “This is Carolina. She works for Xavier. She’s done quite a bit of fieldwork in investigation and executive security. She also looks a whole lot like our friend Petra, don’t you think? Did I mention she’s an amazing shot? I wouldn’t try anything funny with her.”
Brad’s California tan face was turning an unhealthy shade of red, and he raised his gun. “Where is Petra?” he screamed.
Waverly reached under Carolina’s poncho and pulled out a Glock. Two against one. “You must feel incredibly stupid right now,” she said, her voice oozing with sympathy.
“You are going to regret this,” he hissed, his gun pointing in her direction.
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what they all say,” Waverly said, hurrying to Sylvia’s side. She yanked the tape off her mouth while Carolina ordered Brad to put the gun down and put his hands on his head. Waverly worked the bindings around Sylvia’s wrists free. “Are you okay?” she asked softly.
“Does getting drugged and kidnapped count as a blip in my sobriety?” Sylvia asked with a shaky smile.
Waverly grinned and worked her feet free. “I think you’re in the clear. But I’ll have a talk with your sponsor if you want.”
“I think you’re going to have to have a talk with your father and I first,” Sylvia said looking pointedly at the gun in Waverly’s hand.
“Yeah. Long talk later. Right now, I need you to get out of here. Are you okay to walk?”
Sylvia answered by standing and then swaying. Waverly caught her around the waist. “You got this Carolina?”
“Oh, yeah,” the woman said with a deadly smile.
Brad cocked the hammer on his pistol and trained it on Sylvia. “Wait!” Brad cried out desperately. “I can still get you the cash. Just tell me where you have the girl.”
Waverly glared at him. “You took my mother, drugged her, tied her up, told me you were going to kill me no matter what, and you think I still want to deal with you?”
“I can get you more than twenty-five million.”
“Not interested,” Waverly said as she guided Sylvia off the set.
Brad’s laughter, a creepy echoing snicker, made her pause. And then she saw what he found so amusing. A half dozen shadows stepped into the light. Waverly recognized four of them as her stuntmen assailants from the alley. They all held guns. Waverly trained hers on the ninja whose ass Xavier had kicked. Seven against two, she calculated.
Carolina kept her gun trained on Brad and ignored the new arrivals. They stood back-to-back with Sylvia sandwiched between them. It wasn’t the best odds, but Waverly still had a few cards to play.
“Don’t tell me you can’t do your own dirty work,” Waverly taunted Brad. “You just keep calling in others to do it for you. You surround yourself with minions and then sacrifice them like pawns. Like you did Dante.”
Brad lifted his hands. “When you have money and power, you don’t have to get your own hands dirty. Dante was a liability just like you turned out to be.”
“Sooner or later you run out of pawns,” she warned him.
“I’ve got an army loyal to me,” he bragged.
“So you have the FBI investigate me for running the espionage ops you sanctioned, and you throw my name out there in connection with Dante’s disappearance?”
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“It’s your word against mine,” Brad smirked. “And I’ve got enough evidence pointing at you that no one is going to believe a word you say. Not that you’ll be around to defend yourself.”
“It’s illegal! What you’re doing includes blackmail, kidnapping, murder, and probably treason. You had Dante killed!”
“So what? I’m not stopping now. I spent so many years kissing the ass of people like you. People whose power only comes from the way they look at a fucking camera. Do you know how good it feels to finally have real power?”
“Oh, I do.” Waverly’s laugh had no humor in it.
“You have nothing,” Brad spat out.
Time to play a card. “Why don’t you check Celeb Spotting and then decide what I do or don’t have,” she suggested.
For a second she thought he wasn’t going to do it. But curiosity won out in the end.
“What is this?” he hissed.
“It’s a prepared statement from Dante’s publicist refuting the erroneous story about his disappearance.”
“Nobody believes publicists anymore,” Brad spat out.
“Oh, but what about the pictures?” Waverly said, never taking her eyes off of the man pointing the gun at her. “That’s going to be a lot harder for you to spin.”
“How did you get this?”
“Hmm, the one of me and Petra and Grigory Stepanov right now, cruising down Hollywood Boulevard in a convertible? Because that’s not actually me, but it is actually Petra. A pretty convincing alibi, don’t you think?”
Brad was staring at the phone as if it were a live snake. “You have Grigory?”
“I have everyone,” she said coolly. “Did you see the other photo? I imagine that one’s blowing up right now. Xavier, Dante, and Petra and I all had a cozy breakfast together this morning. I believe the caption says something like ‘Looks like these exes are still friendly. Dante Wrede has returned from his extended vacation with rumored girlfriend Petra Stepanov, daughter of Russian mogul, Grigory Stepanov,’” Waverly recited.
“Dante Wrede is dead!”
“I’d check your sources on that,” Dante suggested, sauntering in from stage right, his gun leveled at Brad.
Thank fucking God, Waverly allowed herself a small sigh of relief. Seven against three. Her message had been received. Waverly could see Brad’s hired guns buzz with confusion, and she hoped to God Dante didn’t need to take a shot at anyone. They’d all be ducking for cover then.
“You said he was dead!” Brad waved his gun menacingly at his men.
“Looks like it’s getting harder and harder to find good minions these days,” Dante quipped. “None of them managed to put a bullet in me.”
Brad took a step forward, and Carolina tensed, ordering him to stay put. His henchmen were getting antsy, and Waverly swung her gun from man to man, daring them to step forward. Everyone was yelling, and Waverly knew it was only a matter of time before someone’s trigger finger got itchy. She pressed herself hard against her mother.
“Brad Tomasso, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping,” Detective Dan Hansen of the LAPD stepped into the light. He was flanked by the wall of Xavier, Micah, and Malachi, all with guns drawn.
“It’s about damn time,” Waverly grinned at Xavier.
He winked at her before going back to frowning fiercely at Brad.
“This is not happening!” Brad shrieked.
She’d seen people lose it before, knew that their reactions were unpredictable after the point of no return. Still, she saw it in her mind’s eye before it happened.
Detective Hansen made a move toward Brad. Brad raised his gun and fired. As Hansen fell, Waverly shoved her mother to the ground and spun low. A second, third, and fourth shot rang out, and the studio went pitch black.
A burst of light off to her left caught her eye. Brad was escaping through a side door on the set. “Take my mom,” Waverly told Carolina. She took off at a jog, lifting her feet high to avoid any cables on the floor. She stumbled twice over God knows what before she found the wall. It took her precious seconds before her fingers found the door in the dark.
She yanked it open and wedged a folding chair in it to keep it open for the others. It was a temporary hallway as wide as a spaghetti noodle that ran between stages. She spotted Brad turning the corner fifty feet down the hallway and took off after him, the cement blurring under her feet. Brad Tomasso was not getting away.
She rounded the corner into an even longer straightaway and barely dodged the shot he squeezed off. She raised her gun and fired a shot in return. He must have decided the odds were in his favor in a foot race because he took off again, yanking open a door on the right and running inside. Waverly heard footsteps pounding down the other hallway and knew exactly whom they belonged to. “Xavier! First door on the right!” she yelled.
She went in low and blind, and the impact of the bullet nearly took her breath away. It fucking hurt like hell. That was going to cost him.
She decided against returning fire and hit the deck as the door closed leaving them in darkness. She added a moan for good measure. The fingers of her left hand closed around the one thing that sat inside the studio door of every sound stage at Target Productions.
She could hear Brad’s breathing, the sharp ragged gasps of the damned. He was close and easing closer. He should have just run. There was a chance he could’ve gotten out of the building, off the lot. But he was beyond thinking about escape. He wanted revenge for his ruined plans. Waverly counted down, holding her breath. Three, two, one…
The door behind her flew open again, this time with enough force to have it slamming into the wall. Waverly turned on the flashlight and fired once. She caught Brad in the face with the beam and the midsection with the bullet as Xavier dove through the door. Brad had already raised his gun blindly and squeezed off a shot just as Waverly swung like a homerun hero connecting the flashlight to skull. “That’s for kidnapping my mother!”
He went down to his knees, dropping the gun to the cement, and she kicked him in the balls. “That’s for shooting at my fiancé!” She backhanded him with the light, and he went down to the floor hard. “And that’s for shooting me!”
She didn’t know if she would have hit him again or not, but Xavier was grabbing her arm and dragging her back.
“Are you hurt? Angel? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. I swear, X. Hit me in the vest.”
Xavier, not taking her word, patted her down to make sure she was, in fact, still wearing the bulletproof vest he’d outfitted her with.
Finally satisfied that she wasn’t bleeding out, he let them sink down to the floor in each other’s arms. Brad groaned pitifully next to them. The flashlight lay on the floor illuminating his crumpled form in its beam.
“I really wanted to shoot him,” Xavier lamented, his breathing still heavy.
“Sorry, X,” Waverly said. “What took you so long, by the way?”
“The tail I had on Tomasso got waylaid by security and lost him when he drove onto the lot, so we didn’t have an exact location on him. Do you know how big these fucking buildings are? We went in on the far side and had to hike through some kind of Willy Wonka meets John Wayne disaster.”
“I take it you got my message at the market then.”
“What? The Invictus knock with the foot attached to the ankle wearing your tracker?”
Waverly smiled in the dark. “You’re so damn smart. I knew you’d get it.”
“We used it to track you to the stage. How is it still working by the way? I gave that to you five years ago.”
Waverly shrugged under the weight of her bulletproof vest. “I had Micah replace the battery in it for me last week. I thought it might come in handy.”
“God, you’re sexy when you’re an evil genius,” Xavier chuckled.
“Please tell me we got what we needed.”
“We made it just in time for Hans
en to get the earful we needed.”
“Thank God. I was getting a little nervous there. I was worried Carolina and I were going to have to shoot our way out. I’d already played the breakfast picture card with Kate tooling around in the convertible with Petra and Grigory. Anatoli’s pictures were perfect, by the way.”
Xavier pressed a kiss to her temple. “It was a good plan,” he admitted.
“I changed my mind,” she said leaning back against him. She felt him tense.
“About getting married?” he asked carefully.
“No. About your timing. It’s excellent. Is Hansen, okay? That was a pretty direct shot.”
“Yeah, took one in the vest. He’s mad as hell from what I heard before I left to chase you. I hope he takes it out on the feds for fucking all this up.”
“Is my mom okay?”
“Once the shock of seeing her daughter go all spy girl on her wears off, she’ll be fine. She was kicking one of Brad’s muscle in the balls when I came after you.”
“Like mother like daughter,” Waverly grinned. “Are you mad at me for going after him?”
“Oh, hell yeah. But I’m going to wait to yell at you until later.”
“I appreciate you using your discretion. We should get back,” Waverly sighed. “Help them clean up this mess.”
Xavier nuzzled her ear. “Definitely.”
She made a purring sound at the back of her throat. But when she shifted to find his mouth, she felt something warm and wet against her side.
“Xavier, either you just had the most inopportune orgasm or you’ve been shot.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
He’d been shot. A flesh wound on his arm, but Waverly had carried on like it was life and death. It could have been if she hadn’t blinded Brad when she did. His Angel had saved his life in a kind of perfect, poetic circle.
Brad Tomasso had been carted off to the hospital by a sore and pissed off Detective Dan Hansen and a handful of uniformed officers. Hansen had played a role in the Ganim investigation and had once again proven useful. Xavier imagined the man was enjoying the pissing match he’d started with the FBI. For tonight at least, Invictus’ role in the mess was over.
