The Soldier's Seduction

“Try not to screw up this time.”

Chapter 5 (#u4aa186bc-28f6-5553-bed8-42ac5f27d921)

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.

Now, instead of putting into practice her plan to sneak into the house and confront Walter on her own terms, Steffi was being carried through the front door by a thunder-faced Erik. Behind them, Sergei was dragging Bryce along with him. The bald man, who clearly had some sort of seniority within the group, strode on ahead of them. Steffi risked a brief glance in Bryce’s direction. A vivid bruise was already standing out on one side of his face and he looked pale, but, as she gazed at him, one eyelid drooped ever so slightly into a wink. It was just enough to give her waning spirits a boost. She didn’t know why it should. They were hopelessly outnumbered, in the hands of a group of murderous thugs, and about to be brought before the ruthless killer responsible for the murders of her parents and brother. Even if she was able to escape, she couldn’t run anywhere on her injured ankle. She very much doubted she could walk. But somehow that tiny gesture from Bryce mattered. It told her she wasn’t alone. It gave her a glimmer of hope.

That glimmer lasted about as long as it took for Erik to march into a luxurious dining room and deposit her on her feet beside a vast mahogany table. In acknowledgment of the cooler weather, a fire blazed in the huge grate. Heavy, full-length crimson drapes had been pulled across the windows, giving the disconcerting effect that night had fallen, even though it was afternoon.

Steffi winced as her injured ankle protested at the sensation of bearing any weight. Sergei shoved Bryce through the door so that he stood next to her. While Erik remained in the room, Sergei, walking with the delicate gait of a man in some discomfort, left.

The man sitting at the head of the table pushed aside an empty plate, wiped his lips with a snow-white napkin and regarded them from beneath hooded lids. Walter Sullivan was one of the most famous men in the state. His business interests, the factories and retail outlets he owned all over the country, raised him to the status of a celebrity, and his charitable giving had made him hugely popular. His darkly handsome features had graced television news programs and newspaper spreads almost daily in the past twelve months. His rise to prominence and his recent campaign had been stylish and intelligent. This was a man who was destined for greatness. Even though he was just beginning his campaign for the Senate, his name was regularly mentioned in connection with a possible future presidency. Now that Greg was gone, Steffi seemed to be the only person who knew what lurked behind that charming exterior.

It scared her that she was the only thing standing between Walter and the political power he wanted, but she wasn’t going to let that fear show through. Tilting her chin, she met his gaze bravely. He had unusually dark eyes. It made reading his expression difficult. The last time Steffi had looked into those eyes, she had called this man Uncle Waltz. What frightened her more than anything was that he was regarding her with the same amused, affectionate smile she had seen from him all those years ago.

“You have caused me a great deal of inconvenience, Stefanya.” Walter’s voice expressed the same mild irritation with which he would rebuke a troublesome child. She had heard his voice on TV recently, but being in the same room as him, hearing those cultured tones up close...that was what took her right back to the night he’d murdered her parents. It took every ounce of her strength to keep from screaming.

“You killed my brother.” She was pleased with the way the words came out clearly, betraying no trace of the nervousness she felt. “I wasn’t in the mood to make things easy for you.”

Something shifted in the depths of Walter’s eyes. Something dangerous. Something she guessed he wouldn’t want the voters to see. It was gone in an instant, to be replaced immediately by the public smile he showed the world.

“I haven’t got time to waste sparring with you. Where is the cell phone?”

Steffi took a moment to consider the question. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably, causing the pulse in her throat to hammer wildly. It was an unpleasant choking feeling. She had no idea what he was talking about. She knew nothing about any cell phone, but she sensed giving Walter that piece of information might not be the smartest move she could make right then.

“Why should I tell you that?”