Page 69 of Crossing the Line
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.
