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The men had started to search the house, and Steffi could still recall the choking sense of panic when two of them pointed up to the trapdoor. As one of them pulled up a chair and prepared to stand on it, police sirens could be heard approaching the house, and the other man cursed, pulling his friend by the arm; they both ran off.
“The police found us eventually. Mama had told us not to come down, so we didn’t,” Steffi said as she finished recounting this memory to Bryce. Tears sparkled on the ends of her lashes, but she blinked them away. “We told the police what we saw, but no one was ever convicted of the crime.”
“Didn’t you know his name? The man who pulled the trigger?”
“We knew him as our Uncle Waltz, although we had heard our father call him ‘Big Guy.’ The police couldn’t trace him from either of those names. Looking back, I’m not sure how hard they tried. My father wasn’t exactly a law-abiding citizen. Perhaps they were glad his murderer had put an end to the activities of his criminal organization.” She gave a rueful smile. “I went to my new home, became Steffi Grantham, had counseling, of course, and started a new life. Greg’s adoptive parents and mine tried to keep in touch for a while, but it was hard and eventually we lost contact with each other.”
“Until recently,” Bryce said.
“Yes.” Steffi felt a tiny, reminiscent smile touch her lips. “Our mother was an actress, and I suppose we both inherited the gene. It was all I ever wanted to do and it seems Greg was the same. The chances of us ending up on the same movie together were crazily remote, but we liked to think it was fate’s way of bringing us back together. Once we found each other again, we spent so much time together, the press invented this big romance and we decided it was easier to go along with it than tell the truth.”
A shadow passed over her features and Bryce observed it with a frown. “Tell me the rest, Steffi.”
“We talked about the way our parents died, of course. We were curious to find out why it happened. So we set about discovering exactly who our father really was. It wasn’t easy. Getting information about him from Russia was hard, and he had covered his tracks well, but we managed to piece enough together from a number of sources. It was a shock to learn just what he had been involved in.” Steffi turned to look directly at Bryce. “To learn that the father you loved did some horrible things...that’s not an easy discovery to make. But it got worse.” She covered her face with her hands as the memories came flooding back. “It got so much worse when we realized who the Big Guy was.”
* * *
Bryce fixed more coffee and finally delivered the toast he’d promised hours earlier. When Steffi shook her head, he tried for the authoritative tone Leon had used the previous day. “You have to start taking care of yourself. You’ve been ill and you haven’t eaten properly for days.”
He was worried about her. Those pictures in the celebrity magazines had shown a woman with a stunning figure. The Steffi he knew was thinner than the Hollywood actress they depicted. Now she had lost even more weight and her illness of the last few days had given her an air of fragility. Her cheek and collarbones jutted and her pale skin appeared almost translucent. Whatever ordeal Steffi had to face next, whether it involved the police and the media or more running, Bryce wondered if she would have the strength to deal with it.
Her story so far was a wild one, but he believed it. Although he hadn’t known Steffi very long, his gut told him she wasn’t a liar. That might sound like a bizarre claim to make since she had gotten a job in his company under false pretenses, but he was prepared to stake his honor on it. And his honor meant more to Bryce than anything.
His ribs were aching as he left Steffi begrudgingly nibbling on a slice of toast and made his way to the bathroom. Pulling his T-shirt over his shoulders was a painful process and, when he checked his reflection in the mirror, his sides were a patchwork of marks in varying shades of red, pink and purple. He winced as he felt his way around, but decided there were no bones broken. His body might be hurting, but his mind felt clearer than it had in a long time. When it had mattered most, the nightmares of flames and blood hadn’t intruded. The doubts and fears hadn’t held him back. He had done what he needed to do. He had gone to Steffi’s aid and fought the bad guys. It felt like he had defeated a monster. A monster that had lived inside him for a long time.
Opening the medicine cabinet, he rummaged around for the salve he knew Laurie kept in there. He remembered her talking about the natural remedy she had purchased at the monthly farmers’ market in Stillwater and about how well it worked on bruising and swelling. Taking the salve and a roll of bandage back into the family room, he presented them to Steffi. She regarded him with raised brows.
“I can’t reach all the way around to get this stuff on my back. And, if I try to put my own dressing on, I’ll look like I’ve been engaging in a bondage ritual.”
Although she attempted a smile, Steffi’s lip trembled slightly as she viewed his injuries. “I wouldn’t have dragged you into this for anything.”
“Just tell me you really do have a commercial driver’s license, and you haven’t been driving my trucks around illegally these last few months,” he said, shivering slightly as her fingertips connected with his flesh and she began to smooth the salve over his bruises.
“Of course I have one.” She glanced up from her task, her expression indignant. “Vincente checked out my qualifications when he employed me.”
His curiosity was aroused by her words and he thought again how little he knew of her. “Why would a Hollywood actress need a CDL?”
“I had to play a truck driver in one of my movies and, although the actual driving was done by a stunt driver, I wanted to make the close-ups look realistic. So I got a license.”
That statement summed Steffi up, Bryce decided. It told him more about her than anything else. It epitomized the determined, unyielding, downright bullheaded way she approached the world. Knowing something of her story, he now knew where that came from. There were still so many things he needed to ask her. There was the whole story about the murders. His instinct from the start had been to believe Steffi when she said she hadn’t murdered Greg Spence and the woman who was with him. It was hard to say why. He barely knew her, but he knew he trusted her. She might drive him crazy on a daily basis, but he had never once doubted her integrity. She hadn’t told the truth about who she was when she came to work for him, but she hadn’t lied, either. She had simply hidden her identity. Once she told him Greg was her brother—with genuine love and grief in those amazing eyes—he had known for sure she wasn’t responsible for the deaths. Even so, she still had a lot of explaining to do.
“If you didn’t kill them, why did you run?”
“I found their bodies.” There was a haunted look in her eyes. “And, just before I did, I saw a man with a tattoo on the back of his hand leaving the elevator in Greg’s apartment building. It was the same tattoo I’d seen on the hands of the men who killed my parents. The same one that was on the man who broke into my cabin today.” Her voice trembled on something close to a sob. “I panicked and ran.”
There were other questions battling for supremacy, and, as Steffi’s soothing fingers continued to apply the salve, Bryce struggled to make sense of and prioritize them. Why had she fled? Why had she come to Stillwater? Who were the men who had pursued her—Bryce had heard an accent and a smattering of a language he didn’t know. He had guessed Eastern European and knew now it was Russian—and how had they found her?
In the end, as Steffi wound the bandage around his waist, he went for the question that seemed the least important, but the one that, for some reason, really mattered. “Should I still call you Steffi?”
She paused, her hand resting on his abdomen. Her touch sent a shimmer of heat through to his nerve endings. It felt a lot like arousal, but that couldn’t be right. How totally out of place would that be in this situation? And anyway, this was Steffi. He might like sparring with her; she might be the only person who could hold his attention for longer than five minutes these days, but did that mean he felt something for her? And if he did, he should shake that aside fast. His head and his heart were in such an almighty mess that neither of them was in any state to consider sharing their contents with another person.
In spite of everything, there was a hint of mischief in Steffi’s eyes as she smiled. “My full name is Stefanya. I use Anya as my stage name, but my family—and my friends, the few I have—have always called me Steffi.”
“Do I qualify as a friend?” He didn’t know why, but it was important to know the answer to that question.
The smile changed and he got a glimpse of full-on Hollywood charm. It nearly knocked him off his feet. “Engaging in a car chase and shooting the bad guy for me? I think you qualify.”
Steffi finished winding the bandage around his torso and neatly tied the ends. Bryce shifted from side to side. It wasn’t comfortable, but hopefully it would help him heal. “I’ll get one of Cameron’s T-shirts and then you can tell me the rest of the story.”
Steffi nodded, her smile vanishing and nervousness taking its place. He turned away, intending to make his way to the bedroom...just as the front door came crashing in.
* * *
The three men who burst through the door clearly meant business. Bryce sprang into action, reaching for the gun he had placed on the table. Before his fingers could close over the butt, one of the intruders aimed a kick at his head. Steffi heard the sickening crunch of a boot connecting with Bryce’s skull and watched in horror as her only hope crumpled to the floor.
“Shall I finish him off?” The man who had kicked him spoke with a pronounced Russian accent as he trained his gun hopefully on Bryce’s unconscious form. Steffi recognized him as the giant, tattooed intruder who had burst into her cabin and been in the process of dragging her down the hall when Bryce had knocked him out. The darkening bruise on his chin confirmed it. Her heart thudded uncomfortably as she waited for a response to his question.
“No.” The man who answered him had a shaved head and an air of authority. There was barely a trace of an accent when he continued. “The Big Guy doesn’t like it when people he knows nothing about get involved in his business. He’ll want to ask this guy some questions before you get to put a bullet in his brain and throw him in the lake.”
Even though the future didn’t sound hopeful for Bryce, it was a reprieve. Of sorts. Steffi began to slowly back up toward a side table on which a large piece of rose-colored quartz was the centerpiece. If she could just get her hand around that chunk of mineral...
The man who was in charge turned his attention to her. Like his companions, he had the tattooed eye on the back of his right hand.
“You have led us on quite a chase, Stefanya. Yuri has a bullet in his knee courtesy of your friend here. Luckily, he was able to notice you had a flat tire as you drove off. We followed the shredded rubber and the marks your rims made on the asphalt. They led us right here.” He shook his head with mock sadness. “The Big Guy is not happy at the delay.” He signaled to his companions. “Erik, pick up the guy, get him in the car. Sergei, bring Stefanya. Let’s get moving. No more screwups.”
Erik was the huge man who had kicked Bryce. He tucked his gun into the waistband of his pants. Placing his hands under Bryce’s armpits, he began to drag him across the floor toward the door. Sergei, who until now had remained in the background, made a move toward Steffi. Even as her instincts for self-preservation went into overdrive, her fear for Bryce’s well-being kicked up a notch. She wanted to run to him and check he was okay, to shove the thug who was hauling him aside and cradle his head against her breast. The tender feelings welling up inside her were new, unexpected and highly inconvenient.
As Sergei reached out a hand to grab her, Steffi ducked under his arm. He called her an unflattering name and moved in closer. Steffi came up to one side of him, grabbed the piece of quartz and swung the heavy object into the side of his head. It made a satisfying crunch as it connected with his temple. He staggered backward from the impact, clutching a hand to his head as blood blossomed between his fingers. It bought Steffi a few precious seconds, but as she darted toward the open glass doors that led to the deck, she heard him coming after her.
When she reached the deck rail, she turned, taking Sergei by surprise as she gripped the wood with her hands and used it to support her weight. The years of dance training she had engaged in during her time at performing arts school came to her aid and, springing up with the full power of her body behind her, she kicked Sergei in the groin with both feet. He dropped onto the deck like a stone.
She didn’t have time to waste on feelings of gratification. The leader of the group burst through the door seconds later, gun in hand. There was only one way for Steffi to go. It was a long way down, but the alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Taking a deep breath, she placed both hands on the deck rail and vaulted over, propelling her body outward to avoid the jagged rocks.
As she landed on the pebbly lakeside beach, her left foot turned at an awkward angle and she gave a sharp cry of mingled pain and dismay. Struggling to her feet, she attempted to break into a run. It was impossible. Sharp, screaming agony shot from her ankle right up through her calf. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. She couldn’t even walk. With a sob of frustration, she sank back down onto the pebbles.
“Go down there and get her.” There was a note of smug pleasure in the leader’s voice as it drifted down from the deck above her. “And Sergei?”
“Yes, boss?”
“Try not to screw up this time.”
Chapter 5
Bryce felt like he was crawling through a long, dark tunnel. Getting to the other side was taking too much time and effort. His head hurt like hell and the closer he got to the end of the tunnel, the more it hurt. Maybe he should just give up. Staying inside the tunnel wouldn’t be so bad, would it? He couldn’t remember why he wanted to get out, but something nagged at him. There was a reason why he had to get out. An important one.
He could hear voices, but they were fading in and out of his consciousness in a peculiar manner, like a radio with an intermittent signal. One of them was familiar and he focused his attention on that one. It was a woman and she was doing what she did best. She was arguing. There was only one woman he knew who was that skilled at disagreeing.
Steffi. His memory came back to him in a rush and with it came the impulse to let loose with his fists. He guessed, from the pain in his head, that any attempt to put up a fight right now would get him another trip straight back into that dark tunnel of unconsciousness. He stayed where he was, lying on his side in the back seat of a fast-moving vehicle. The driver was cutting corners, swinging wildly, with an occasional squeal of tires adding to the cinematic car-chase effect.
He had no idea where they were going, but at least he and Steffi were both alive. For now.
Through his half-open eyes, Bryce could see the driver. His shaved head was the giveaway. Bryce had a vague memory of him being the first one through the busted-down door of the lake house. Next to him was another of the thugs who had been with him. In the seconds before he lost consciousness, there had been enough time for Bryce to take in the details of his appearance. Bryce couldn’t turn his head, but he knew Steffi was next to him from the amount of squirming and complaining that was going on. From the occasional exasperated grunt he could hear, he figured the third guy was on Steffi’s other side. That must be the muscular guy who had kicked Bryce in the head, the same one who had been in Steffi’s cabin.
“Can’t you shut her up?” The man in the passenger seat turned his head and Bryce caught a glimpse of congealed blood on the side of his head. He was seized by a fierce sense of pride. It was obvious Steffi hadn’t succumbed to this abduction without a fight.
“Like you did, you mean? You got whacked around the head with a rock and kicked in the balls.” The man on Steffi’s other side snarled the words. “I sure as hell wish I could find a way to shut her up.”
Bryce could have told them they were wasting their time. He’d known Steffi for three months and he’d never found a way to silence her once she got started. If they ever got out of this, he made a promise. He would never again make the attempt.
“And another thing.” Steffi bumped against Bryce’s leg as she struggled against the man who held her. “My DNA will be all over the coffee cup in that house at the lake. You do know I’m the most-wanted woman in the country, right? Now Sergei’s blood is in that house, as well. It won’t take the police long to link you to me.”
The driver said something in Russian. Although Bryce had no idea what it was, it sounded a lot like a curse. “She’s right.” He half turned to look at Steffi. “Who owns that house?”
Bryce lifted his foot and pressed it down on Steffi’s in a warning gesture. It was the lightest of touches, but she squealed so loud he almost started upright in shock.
“What in God’s name is wrong with you now?” It was clear Steffi was seriously testing the driver’s patience.
“My foot hurts.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you jumped off that deck.” He suspected the man’s response involved gritted teeth.
Bryce’s admiration for Steffi kicked up a notch higher. She’d jumped from the lake house deck? If he wasn’t pretending to be unconscious he’d have given an admiring whistle. That must have taken some guts. He was finding out that one thing Steffi had in abundance was courage.
“Where are you taking me?” She was back to haranguing her abductors.
“We told you, Stefanya. The Big Guy wants to talk to you.”
“There was no need for all this fuss.” She really was amazing. Her tone of voice was that of a schoolteacher scolding a group of naughty pupils. “Why do you think I came to Stillwater? It isn’t some random place I chose by sticking a pin in a map. I’ve been trying to get to see him. You should tell him to try coming home more often.”
Bryce tried to process what she had just said. There was a lot of information in those few sentences. Steffi’s words implied that this “big guy” they kept talking about lived in Stillwater. How was that possible? Bryce’s hometown might be the county seat, but it was still a small city in West County, Wyoming. Stillwater was a place where everyone knew everyone else. He had complained more than once, when he had been subjected to the scrutiny of the local gossips, that everybody knew a little too much about each other’s business. Bryce did a mental review of his acquaintances. Not one of them struck him as the sort of person likely to be involved with Russian organized crime.
“No one tells the Big Guy what to do.”
A slowing in the car’s pace and a change in the road surface signaled that they had left the highway. Bryce’s years of driving army vehicles came in handy and he judged they were on a gravel drive of some sort. When they halted, he did some quick thinking. His cell phone was in the front pocket of his jeans. If his captors found it—and, let’s face it, if he kept it on him, they were going to find it—he would give them everything. His identity, his contacts...his family. He had to find a way to get rid of that phone. Fast.
When they came for him and began to drag him out of the car, he opened his eyes and took a look at his surroundings. The unusual, intricately styled mansion built at the base of a mountain told him what he needed to know. With its quirky architecture and rolling gardens, Woodland Lodge was instantly recognizable. The Big Guy’s identity was no longer a mystery. It was a shock, but it wasn’t a mystery.
“Sleeping Beauty is awake, is he?” Sergei’s voice grated on Bryce’s nerves. “Good. That means I don’t have to carry you.”
There was an ornate pond and an elaborate arrangement of fountains in the marble courtyard in front of the house. There. Bryce needed to get to that pond. As Sergei, his hand clamped around Bryce’s upper arm, marched him past it, Bryce made a performance of staggering and falling, using the action to fumble his cell phone from his pocket into the palm of his hand. With a snarl, Sergei dragged him to his knees. Bryce put out his hand as if to use the marble surrounding the pond to help pull himself up from kneeling to standing. There was only the tiniest plop as he slid his cell phone into the water.
He breathed a sigh of relief and allowed Sergei to manhandle him the rest of the way inside the house that belonged to Walter Sullivan, billionaire businessman and aspiring senator.
Walter owned several factories in Wyoming and retail outlets throughout the country. He was one of the biggest employers in Stillwater. Born and bred in the city, he was fond of boasting about how he liked to give some of his wealth back to his hometown. Bryce hadn’t heard anything about his involvement with Russian gangs, but he had heard it wasn’t a good idea to get on the wrong side of Walter.
Which didn’t make his and Steffi’s future seem a whole lot brighter.
* * *
When Steffi had run from Greg’s apartment after she found the bodies, her only thought had been to keep running and find a place where she could hide forever. She had returned from filming in Italy the day before and the purse she carried still contained her passport and driver’s license with the name of Steffi Grantham—which was, of course, her real name—some cash, and the card for her checking account.
For the next few days, she had used the card to withdraw the maximum amount of cash. Once she knew she was the main suspect in the murders, she disposed of it in case it could be used to trace her.
Sitting in a cheap motel, hacking at her hair with shaking hands, she had finally drawn a breath and stopped to think. Fear was still her overriding emotion, but anger had started to creep in. Was she going to live with this feeling for the rest of her life? Look over her shoulder every minute of every day? Or was she going to take this fight to the man who had started it and bring it to an end...one way or another?
Her decision made this meeting the ultimate irony. She had come to Stillwater intending to see Walter Sullivan on her terms. When she and Greg had realized the identity of the man they used to call Uncle Waltz, they had been stunned.
Although Steffi’s adoptive parents lived in Sheridan, Wyoming, she had moved to Los Angeles six years ago. And she really didn’t pay much attention to politics. It had been Greg who had found the article about Walter Sullivan, the Wyoming businessman who was predicted to sweep his way to a seat in the national Senate.
They had both stared at the accompanying photograph in horror. He was a little grayer at the temples, had a few more lines around his eyes. But there was no question about it. Walter Sullivan and Uncle Waltz were the same person. Then Greg had been killed by a man with an eye tattooed onto the back of his right hand and Steffi’s world had been turned upside down.
Am I next? That was the first of the many questions Steffi wanted to ask Walter. Maybe coming to Stillwater and planning to meet with him in private wasn’t the smartest move, but it was the only one she could live with. She could run, but she couldn’t outdistance the nightmares.
When she’d fled, she hadn’t run from Walter. She’d run to him. Her biggest fear had been that his men would find her and kill her before she could look him in the eye and demand to know why.
For the last three months she had driven out this way every few days, studying his unconventional mansion for signs that its owner was in residence. There had been nothing. The place had been closed up, the gates locked, the windows shuttered on the outside. Impatiently, she had followed his whereabouts on social media, hoping to discover his intentions. Walter relentlessly documented his progress on various sites and he had not stepped foot in Stillwater throughout the time Steffi had been in the city. Since he had announced his intention to run for a Wyoming seat, he had traveled all over the state. One of the few places he hadn’t been was his hometown. Possibly he believed his popularity there was so great he would win without too much campaigning. The media and polls seemed to agree with him.