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