Mission Beach rental house

The Mission Beach rental house serves as both a secluded training venue for Willa Ashford’s return to competition and the temporary center of Colt Fontaine’s security operation. Its private court and extensive amenities offer the athletes a place to train away from public attention, while its exposed setting and repeated security breaches turn the house into a test of whether a well-equipped residence can keep danger outside.

Selection and Setting

Vic Bello arranges the house through a contact in the volleyball world who has recently bought a home on Mission Beach and built a private outdoor court. Willa’s comeback has generated substantial media attention, so the team plans intensive training there rather than in a public setting. Vic has already declined individual interview requests for the week; moving the operation to the house extends that effort to keep the athletes’ preparation out of view. The team expects to use the property for the week before the tournament in Serenidad.

The location immediately troubles Colt. The neighboring houses stand close together, many practically on the road, leaving little space to create a defensible perimeter. The driveway is only about fifteen feet long and can fit three cars if they park tightly; with visitors expected throughout the week, Colt considers using a public lot down the beach. He would prefer a fenced compound, but must work with the house he has been given. Its proximity to other homes, the road, and the beach complicates the protection that its private court seems to promise.

Architecture and Facilities

The four-story house combines concrete and wood, with glass walls that open onto views of the water. Bedrooms occupy the upper two floors, and doors lead from them to private decks. The main floor includes the kitchen, living room, office, craft room, media room, laundry, and a security alcove. In the basement, one side is a fully equipped weight room with a sauna; the other holds arcade and pinball games, a dartboard, an electronic basketball game, a pool table, a card table, and several televisions.

Accordion doors connect the interior directly to the private volleyball court. Bleachers stand along one side, and a scoreboard is positioned at each end. An eight-foot bamboo wall separates the court from the public beach, creating a degree of privacy without removing the property from its exposed coastal surroundings. Nearby, an outdoor kitchen and bar sit beneath a thatched roof, while an eight-person hot tub occupies a separate tiki-style shelter.

The house has eight bedrooms, allowing Vic’s group and the security team to stay on site. Colt plans the sleeping arrangements with protection in mind: he assigns the end suites on the top floor to Willa and Vic, takes the middle suite to remain near Willa, and places Tabby in the main suite on the second floor, with Anja Johansen next door. He expects Victoria to use another room, depending on whether she stays with her father. Luca Russo and Olga Garten are assigned main-floor bedrooms as part of the planned security presence. Colt also regards Tabby as someone the team should protect, although she is not their client.

Security Systems and Breaches

The house comes with a security alcove and a system Colt considers serviceable but incomplete. It has a few cameras and high-quality keypad locks, yet he intends to cover every entry point and the perimeter with additional cameras. Because it is a rental, he cannot know how widely the entry codes have circulated or how often they have been changed. He requests temporary exterior cameras and door sensors to track visitors, and changes the alarm code rather than replacing all the locks.

A later sweep finds four cameras with listening devices, including cameras in the basement and facing the volleyball court; there are none in the hallways or bedrooms. The devices came with the house’s security setup and were not active when Colt found them. He activates them and sends the feed to his phone with help from Tyler Redmond. Colt considers it plausible that the owner installed them to learn if something happened inside, perhaps for insurance purposes, but the monitoring also becomes useful to the protection detail. He adds cameras to watch the kitchen after concerns that someone may have tampered with food. A feed catches Drew Black secretly eating Victoria’s Oreos and mini donuts; the episode reveals that Drew’s furtive behavior is gluttony, not evidence that he poisoned himself or anyone else.

The alarms prove more consequential when they detect people approaching the house. On one occasion, Colt receives an alert from a front camera and sees someone peering through windows and testing the doorknob. He approaches from a side door and pins the man to the ground, binding his hands with zip ties before the others come outside. In a later breach, cameras show a person climbing over the volleyball-court fence. Colt coordinates with Anja and Luca: Anja takes another route, Luca waits to switch on the outdoor lights, and Colt moves to intercept. When the climber drops onto the sand, the floodlights expose him to the team’s armed response. The man is identified as Mike, who says he parked in the public lot; Luca escorts him back to his vehicle. The fence, court, cameras, and lights thus become parts of an active response, not merely features of the property.

Departure and Narrative Significance

After Anja is shot, the house is no longer used as the group’s base. With crime-scene personnel moving through the property, Colt turns off the alarms rather than endure their repeated beeping, and sees no need to reset them because the group is not staying there. He remains connected to the system, however. Later, a critical alert wakes him; when he tries to access the network, it is down. The failure comes after the house has ceased to be their refuge, leaving its final security signal ominous but unresolved in the available account.

The house’s significance lies in the contrast between privacy and exposure. Its court, decks, and extensive indoor facilities support concentrated training and shared living, while the crowded beachfront setting and uncertain access make complete security difficult. Cameras and alarms give Colt ways to detect and respond to intrusions, but they do not prevent people from testing the doors or scaling the fence. The property therefore functions as both a practical shelter for Willa’s comeback and a recurring measure of how fragile that shelter remains.