Page 120 of Breaking the Rules
Thankfully, the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community agreed that disclosing the details of Target’s role—and by extension Waverly and Dante’s roles—in operations would be detrimental to say the least.
For the foreseeable future, the entire case was classified.
He slid into the buttery leather seat of the private jet and fastened his seatbelt. The Invictus jet had become more of a home to him in the past few weeks than any building. Flights to D.C., London, and back to Los Angeles had wreaked havoc with his sleep. But he was working with a purpose.
He’d dealt with a small team made up of trustworthy, tight-lipped FBI and SEC agents who had quietly conducted an investigation into Nancy O’Mara and Axion Pharmaceuticals without the knowledge of the Joint Intelligence Community Council. Tomasso had clammed up after his arrest and hadn’t spoken to anyone but his attorney since. If he was waiting for his partner to bail him out, he was shit out of luck. Guards had caught a sanctioned hit just as it began in the cafeteria. Tomasso was alive—barely—but it was clear O’Mara was tying up loose ends.
With the patient digging of the investigative team and the inmates who connected an O’Mara aide to the attempted hit, they had enough for an arrest. Travers had extended a courtesy invitation to Xavier to play a role in the takedown. He could have passed on it. But he wanted to see this through. O’Mara and then Axion were the last two dominoes that needed to fall into place before he could finally begin his life with Waverly.
The arrest had gone down quietly at O’Mara’s tri-level Georgetown brownstone that morning. She was a statuesque woman in a four thousand-dollar pantsuit with what many who had faced her in committee meetings called a really shitty attitude toward the intelligence community.
And that shitty attitude had reared its ugly head when she realized the connection had been made between her and Tomasso. It had gotten ugly enough that once she spit in the face of an SEC investigator and slapped the female FBI agent who dared try to cuff her, Xavier took great pleasure in sweeping her legs out from under her and slapping on the cuffs a little harder than necessary.
“That’s for Waverly,” he’d whispered in her ear as she shrieked about her constitutional rights and demanded her lawyer.
He’d turned O’Mara over to Travers and considered his job finally done. He was flying home tonight, crawling between the sheets, and sleeping next to Waverly for a week. Then he was going to make love to her for another week. And then he was going to talk her into eloping somewhere. Anywhere.
He was ready for their new beginning.
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Their new beginning was off to a rough start.
Waverly wasn’t home, and her luggage was missing. He swore, looking in her closet and rifling through drawers. She was supposed to tell him when she was traveling. Technically, he should have called to tell her he was coming home tonight. But he’d wanted to surprise her.
He dialed her number and bit off a curse when it went straight to voicemail. He tried Kate’s phone and got the same result.Where the hell would she be?
He spotted it on the dining table downstairs. A heart shaped sticky note.
X,
Taking a little vacation.
Love,
W
Swearing, he dumped the dirty clothes out of his bag and stomped back upstairs into Waverly’s closet. He’d moved more clothes in on his too-short stopovers between D.C. and London and hastily repacked his bag.
If she thought she could sneak away from him, Waverly Sinner had another thing coming.
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It took nearly eighteen hours for him to find her, make travel arrangements, and get there himself. Xavier gave into exhaustion and slept on the nearly nine-hour flight and woke to tropical sunshine and a new country. In deference to the humidity, Xavier changed into shorts before going through customs.
He was still tired and still ready for a fight by the time he made it out onto the sidewalk and into Bridgetown, Barbados.
The cab smelled like fried food, and the driver swerved around potholes like an Indy car driver, honking his horn at locals and shouting greetings out his open window. It would have been entertaining had Xavier not had murder on his mind.
She should have waited for him. Everything he’d done in the weeks since the sting had been for her, and she couldn’t wait one day for him to come home? With a honk and a wave, the cab pulled into a white stucco resort draped in pink, vining flowers.The Palm Court, read the gold script on the weathered sign. Beyond the hotel, he could just catch a glimpse of the kind of blue waters that made men dream of beautiful women in bikinis and trays of umbrella drinks.
The woman with a thousand curls and a pearl white smile behind the front desk directed him to Ms. Sinner on the beach. She told him she would see that his bag was taken to his room and handed him a rum punch.
“Welcome to Barbados, Mr. Saint,” she smiled.
Xavier wondered if he was so tired that he was hallucinating. He hadn’t introduced himself, yet she knew his name and insisted that he had a room booked. He decided it was best not to argue and took his rum punch to wander through the lobby to an open-air bar. The bartender in a smart navy vest waved a greeting. “Glad you made it, Mr. Saint.”
Xavier lifted a hand in greeting and confusion. What game was Waverly playing? He plucked his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on to face the sun glinting off the crystal waters of an infinity edge pool that seemed to merge with the ocean.
