Page 77 of Breaking the Rules
“Either they’re planning on taking her from you as soon as you get her out, or we’re walking into a trap,” Xavier said.
“I’m the squeaky wheel at Target right now. They need me to get Petra, but once I’m no longer useful, they’re going to want to shut me up and sooner rather than later. We need to take her early.”
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“Don’t look at it as kidnapping,” Xavier advised Micah. “Look at it as us illegally saving someone’s life.” The girls had cleared out of the conference room to begin reviewing security footage from the Stepanov estate, leaving Xavier the unenviable job of convincing Micah that this was the only play that would work.
“We don’t know that she’s in danger!” Micah’s voice was on the low side of yelling. He paced in pissed off laps around the oval conference table, pausing every once in a while to kick one of the wheeled chairs out of his way.
“Someone wants her kidnapped—that’s textbook danger. She’s a client. We owe it to her to—”
“To what? Be the ones to kidnap her? Saint, this isn’t what we do. And if we break this rule now, what’s to stop us from doing it again?”
“I understand where you’re coming from, Micah, but I don’t see a choice. Either we do it this way, or you’re sending Waverly and me in there without support. Those guards aren’t just hired muscle, and they don’t trust Waverly. They’re not going to detain her if they see her jumping a wall. They’re going to shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Listen, Saint, next time I bust on you about settling down and starting a family, make sure you do it with some PTA-attending cookie baker who has a regular job.”
“So noted.”
“I wouldn’t put this company on the line for anyone else but you,” Micah sighed, sinking down onto one of the leather seats.”
“I appreciate that, and if this goes south, I’ll take full responsibility for it. I’ll sign everything over to you and walk away with the heat.”
“Let’s make fucking sure it doesn’t come to that,” Micah said, swiping a hand over his forehead.
If it meant that Waverly would be safe, he’d walk away from everything he’d spent the last seven years building. And he wouldn’t regret a damn thing.
Xavier picked up the pen Waverly had left behind and tapped it on the table. He’d won the battle, but there was a war to fight yet.
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While Xavier worked on convincing Micah that snagging Petra was the best course of action, Waverly commandeered Xavier’s office. She focused on reviewing the security footage Micah had pulled from previous Thursdays. Kate poked her head out to talk to Xavier’s scary efficient assistant, Roz, about what to order for lunch. Chelsea worked furiously on her laptop doing God knows what.
When Waverly spotted the pattern at the front gate, she backed up and reviewed eight weeks of footage. Same time every Thursday like clockwork. And it would be better than scrambling over a ten-foot wall and ending up with a gun in her face.
“Sandwiches are on their way,” Kate announced when she came back in. Her eyes narrowed. “You have the ‘got something’ look on your face.”
“Oh, boy, do I.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Laverne’s Organic Produce was an exclusive delivery service that brought the bounty of a farmer’s market to the door of those who would prefer to purchase non-genetically modified broccoli and chemical-free avocadoes in their own kitchen.
Every Thursday at nine a.m., Laverne’s biodiesel-powered van stopped at the gate of the Stepanov estate before being ushered up the drive. And every Thursday between 9:25 and 9:30, the van exited the gate.
Laverne herself had driven a hard bargain. Waverly spun the tale of researching a role about an organic farmer. The cost of a ride along in her produce van was the promise of a special appearance by “Xaverly” at her new juice bar when it opened the following month.
It would be worth it, Waverly thought from her hiding spot under a crate of yellow wax beans and behind a stack of Bok Choy boxes.
Xavier, who would be less recognizable to Petra’s guards, was sitting up front with Laverne’s driver. He was a quiet man by the name of Tony who asked no questions and wore a thin mustache under his nose. Waverly couldn’t help but wonder if the man bought their expanded role research story—she was now doing a movie about an organic farmer spy who needed to break into a house—or he just didn’t care. Tony’s instructions were clear. Get them inside the gates, and if they returned in time, get them back out again. Either way, there was a hefty bonus in his future.
“Doing okay back there?” Xavier asked from the supremely comfortable passenger seat.
She was hunched over in a literal vegetable prison. She glanced at the basket of fruit on her right. “Just peachy.”
“Ha.”
“You’re five minutes out,” Micah’s voice rumbled in her ear through the earpiece she’d been fitted with.
