Flash of Death

Groaning in pain and embarrassment, she pulled the sheet up over her head and prayed for death. Or at least a long, long unconsciousness.

Trent burst into the conference room Jeff Winston had appropriated from the gentlemen’s club to do business in while he was here for the wedding. Several of the other Code X operatives were there, complete with their own genetically engineered mutations, and they all looked worried.

“What the hell’s going on?” he demanded without preamble.

Jeff answered, “Novak scared up some video from a traffic camera and ran the license plates of the SUV that tried to run down Chloe Jordan last night.”

“And?”

“And it belongs to a corporation that doesn’t exist.”

Trent frowned. “Come again?”

“It’s registered to a dummy company. Address is a P.O. box that doesn’t exist, phone number is a fake and no company by that name is currently doing business in the United States. It’s a cover for someone.”

“Like who?” he asked his boss.

Jeff shrugged. “No idea. But it does lead me to believe it was no accident last night. Someone was out to hurt Chloe.”

Trent replied grimly, “Wrong. Whoever gunned that SUV at her was out to kill her.”

And that meant Code X had a problem. Chloe’s sister had just married one of Code X’s charter members—a guy who could hold his breath under water for over twelve minutes. And Chloe had spent the past two days in the company of the lot of them at various prewedding functions. How could her attempted murder not be aimed at the Code X team?

Trent suggested hopefully, “She said she’s a forensic accountant. Maybe it was just a bit of revenge by an enemy she’s made in her job.”

“Possible,” Jeff replied slowly. “If that’s the case, we’ll need a complete list of companies she has investigated.” Trent watched as his boss pulled out his cell phone and dialed Chloe’s cell phone number. As Jeff’s frown deepened and he didn’t speak into the device, Trent’s apprehension grew.

Jeff put the phone down. “Her cell’s turned off.”

Trent winced. “She probably turned it off so schmucks like us wouldn’t disturb her.” She was probably sleeping off her hangover. But he wasn’t about to share that little detail with the guys in this room. They would want to know how he knew that, and then they would inevitably draw the exactly correct conclusion. Frankly, it was none of their damned business how he and Chloe had spent the evening. Hell, even if he told them exactly what the two of them had done, these guys would never believe it. They would guffaw that quiet, controlled Chloe Jordan couldn’t possibly be that wild.

Hah. Little did they know. He was a pretty adventurous guy in the sack, but that girl had made him blush a time or two last night. She was some woman.

“Maybe someone should go to her room and check on her,” Jeff suggested, startling Trent out of recollections that were going to get him all hot and bothered very fast.

“Nah. I’m sure she’s just sleeping. She was pretty wiped out last night.”

“You walked her to her room and locked her inside sit?” Jeff asked.

“Yes. I searched her suite from top to bottom before I left. She clearly wasn’t planning on going out again last night and was safe and sound when I left her.”

Of course, she’d also been sexually sated and sleeping like the dead when he slipped out of her bed. She no doubt would need most of today to sleep off the booze and sex, though. A few of the things she’d asked for were going to leave her good and sore for a couple of days, but he’d been careful to do nothing she wouldn’t recover from.

He wasn’t sure he would recover anytime soon, though. How was any woman going to top that for him?

“Rather than bother her, couldn’t we call her employer and ask for a list of companies she’s investigated?” one of the twins, recent Code X additions with truly scary mental skills, suggested.

Trent shook his head. “She mentioned that she’s a freelance consultant. I assume she contracts with law enforcement agencies or maybe banks. If we leave her a message, when she wakes up she can fire us a list of companies she has investigated.” He desperately hoped his efforts to protect their little secret weren’t rousing any suspicions.

Jeff nodded. “In the meantime, someone should keep an eye on her.”

“As in surveillance?” Trent blurted, surprised. Damn. He’d been plotting ways to arrange a repeat of last night, but if the other guys were watching her around the clock, that was going to be hard to pull off. Unless he was the guy doing the surveillance …

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” he volunteered.

Jeff nodded. “I’ll spell you when you need to sleep.”

Speaking of which, it was about time for him to pop some sleeping pills and power down for a few hours. He might be able to go like the Energizer Bunny for days at a time, but when he crashed, he completely shut down. To that end, he commented, “I’m going to go catch a few zzz’s now, so I’ll be good to go tonight.”

Jeff nodded. “I’ll make a call to the concierge at her hotel. He can give us a heads-up if she leaves her room in the next few hours.”

The powwow adjourned, and Trent headed for his own room. He showered again, popped his pills—a sleeping medication that would drop an elephant—and fell into bed. The soft sheets against his naked skin made him think of Chloe draped across him last night, and he fell asleep with a smile on his face.

Trent rolled over and glanced at the clock beside his bed. Six o’clock? Wow. He’d slept all day. Chloe’d tired him out more than he’d realized. Another side effect of his special abilities kicked in and his stomach growled loudly. He’d been known to burn in excess of twelve thousand calories a day when he was really active.

After ordering a steak, two baked potatoes, a large salad and a chocolate milkshake from room service, he moved over to his window to have a look across the street. Chloe’s room was on the fourth floor, last one on the left. No light showed through the curtains. Given that Jeff had left no messages indicating that she’d left her room, she must still be sleeping off last night.

He probably shouldn’t take satisfaction from that, but he couldn’t help it. The idea of having made love to her until she had to sleep all day to recover made him smile. The last time he’d felt this kind of adolescent pride had been his first time with a girl when he was about sixteen.

A houseboy arrived with supper, and he pulled the wheeled cart over by the window to eat. His body eagerly absorbed the calories, and he eventually pushed back his empty plate in deep satisfaction. That should hold him for a few hours. He picked up a newspaper and browsed it while he kept an eye on Chloe’s window.

Somewhere between the business and sports sections, her lights finally came on. Good thing. He was starting to get a little worried about her. About a half hour later, his cell phone rang. His pulse leaped as he dug the device out of his pocket. He was disappointed to see Jeff Winston’s name on the phone.

“Hey, boss.”

“Chloe just sent me a text. Turns out this Paradeo company is her first forensic accounting job. She says she’s been hired to take a look at their books. Didn’t say who hired her, so I assume she doesn’t want to name her employer. We’ll be in the conference room, researching Paradeo if you feel up to helping. You may have a long night tonight watching our girl, so don’t feel like you have to come down.”

“No problem. I slept and just finished eating. I’m on my way.”

As the group researched Chloe’s employer, nothing seemed out of the ordinary about it. Paradeo was a smallish investment firm specializing in Central and South American markets. They reluctantly concluded that the Code X team might be forced to follow her and wait until another attempt was made on her life before they identified her attacker. Assuming there was one.

But Trent knew what he’d seen. That SUV had waited until she stepped into the street and then gone straight at her with the intent to seriously harm or kill her.

“Anybody know Chloe’s travel schedule?” Jeff asked the room at large.

Novak’s voice came across the speakerphone almost immediately. “She’s flying out of Denver Stapleton tomorrow morning. Arrives in San Francisco at 2:10 in the afternoon.”

Jeff nodded. “We’ve got the manpower here to get her to Stapleton and onto that plane safely. Trent, if you want to go on ahead to California and get into position at the other end to take over watching her, that would be great.”

He didn’t like the idea of leaving her, even for a few hours. But what choice did he have? The odds were much greater that she’d be attacked at home rather than here where she was surrounded by Jeff and the rest of the Code X team.

Reluctantly, he packed his bags and headed for the late flight Novak arranged for him with Jeff’s last warning ringing in his ears. “It would kill Sunny if anything happened to her sister. And you know what’s on the line if this thing turns out to be aimed at Code X. I’m counting on you, Trent.”

One thing he knew for sure. Chloe Jordan was not getting hurt on his watch.

Chapter 3

Chloe inhaled the seaweed and fish smell of San Francisco Bay, and grief that never grew less painful washed over her. The scent reminded her painfully of living on the boat with her family for that last year, before Mom and Dad had left her and Sunny behind and sailed to their deaths in the Indian Ocean to protest commercial fishing practices decades before it was cool to do so.

It had been a mistake to take a job in this town. Too many memories lurked here, waiting to ambush her. Too much loss. Too many ghosts. This was the last place she’d been happy, innocent, carefree. But all of that was long gone.

Not that Denver was destined to fare much better in her memory. Her experience there had been an embarrassing anomaly in too many ways to count.

In spite of it being in San Francisco, she was glad to get back to her regularly scheduled life. Her orderly, quiet, controlled life. No more whiskey, no more drunk hookups, and no more unleashed fantasies.

She took a taxi to her modest apartment in a relatively quiet corner of downtown. Stepping into the spartan elegance of her modern Asian-fusion flat, she soaked in the calm of it. She hit Play on her phone’s voice messages while she set about unpacking her things.

“Chloe, Don. We need to talk. Call me.”

Don Fratello was the FBI agent-in-charge of the secret investigation into Paradeo Inc., a firm that was suspected of being a money laundering operation for a Mexican drug cartel. Despite her inexperience in forensic work, Don had cut her a break and given her a shot at this gig, for which she would be eternally grateful to him. It was nigh unto impossible to get hired without experience, and until she got hired for some jobs she couldn’t get any experience. This chance he’d given her was a huge deal and she wasn’t about to blow it.

She was working as quickly as she could on the case, but the firm used the most complicated accounting system she’d ever seen—a possible sign that Paradeo was playing fast and loose with where its dollars came from and went.

She put a load of laundry into the tiny washing machine that was one of her flat’s best selling points and picked up the phone. “Hey, Don. It’s Chloe.”

“Are you back in town yet?” he demanded without preamble. “How was the kid sister’s wedding?” he added as an obvious afterthought.

“Great. She’s safely married off, and I’m a free woman now.” She’d meant the comment as a joke, but what Trent said about her being alone in the world came back in a flash. A hot knife of pain twisted in her gut. Damn him, anyway.

“There’ve been a few developments at Paradeo since you left.”

Interested, she replied, “Do tell.”

“A new guy’s been brought in. Name’s Miguel Herrera. Title’s Chief of Security. He looks like a major thug to me. My contacts south of the border have heard rumors of the guy strong-arming various judges and political officials.”

“Which means what? You want me to target him specifically because he’s a big fish?”

“No!” the FBI agent replied sharply. “Steer clear of him. This man could be dangerous. As in you disappear and never come back if he figures out what you’re up to.”

She highly doubted it was as bad as all that. This was San Francisco, for goodness’ sake. Not some lawless Mexican frontier town.

“This guy could be a drug cartel hit man. If that’s the case, he won’t hesitate to kill you or worse.”

“What’s worse than being killed?” she asked.

“Trust me. You don’t want to find out. Just be careful, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll be careful.”

She’d accuse Don of being a nervous Nellie if he wasn’t an experienced FBI field agent. But if he was that uptight about Herrera, she’d take his advice and stay away from Paradeo’s new security chief.

She hung up the phone and resumed listening to her messages. There were the usual hang-ups from telemarketers, a request for gently used clothing items for some charity, and then another male voice began to speak in hushed tones.

“Chloe? It’s me, Barry Lind, from Paradeo.”

Barry? She looked up, surprised, at her telephone. What was he doing calling her? He was a bookkeeper and did basic data-entry work for the firm. He was very good at his job but not particularly social with his coworkers. Chloe considered him at best a casual acquaintance.

His tense voice continued, “I didn’t know who else to call. Can we meet somewhere to talk? Outside of the office. Call me as soon as you get this message.”

Bingo. This was exactly the sort of break her professors had told her to look for during an investigation. The statistics were shocking as to how often the break came from a low-level worker. They always knew all the dirt.

Eagerly, she dialed the number Barry had left for her. “Hi, it’s Chloe. I just got back into town and got your message—”

He cut her off sharply. “Can’t talk now. Julio’s after work? Say six o’clock?”

“Uhh, sure. I’ll be there.” Wow. He really sounded nervous. Her stomach leaped in anticipation. He must have stumbled onto something big. Perfect. The faster she took down Paradeo, the faster she could get away from thugs like this Miguel Herrera guy.

She unpacked, shopped, finished her laundry, and generally put her life in order while she waited for six o’clock to roll around. Finally, it was time to go. The streets were crowded at this time of day as workers poured out of their offices and headed for home.

Barry was waiting for her when she got there. His sandy brown buzz cut was distinctive in the shadows. The guy was not ex-military, but at a glance, someone might mistake his short hair and beefy build for that of an ex-Marine. He looked past her nervously as she slipped into the booth, predictably a dark one in the back corner.

“Hey, Barry. How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” he muttered without moving his lips, his gaze sliding away from her and over her right shoulder. Wow. He was acting really nervous.

She smiled broadly. “A word of advice. If you act like a criminal with a big secret, people will watch you more closely. Relax. Try to look natural. No one’s going to walk up to the table and shoot us.”

“That’s what you think,” he grumbled. His hands were planted on the table like it was going to fly away if he didn’t hold it down.

She reached a sympathetic hand out to him and gave his icy fingers a squeeze. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“So, yesterday I was working late. With the end of the quarter coming up and you out of town, we were behind.” She nodded her understanding. “Anyway, I took a break to go to the bathroom. Except the one on our floor was closed for cleaning. No problem. I went upstairs to use the john.” A sheen of sweat broke out on his upper lip, and he paused to mop at it with a cocktail napkin.

“So there I am, sitting on the can doing my business, and these guys walk in. And they’re talking, see. In Spanish. My wife’s from Mexico, and I’ve learned it from her over the years. Anyway, these two guys are talking about needing to destroy records.”

“What kinds of records?” she prompted while he paused to mop his face again and grimaced.

“Financial records from Paradeo. They said there was this new accountant poking around and they had to get rid of the paper trail.” His gaze darted toward the door yet again. Man, this guy was tense. And the feeling was contagious.

If Paradeo’s executives were onto her, she would never get the dirt on them. They’d erase everything from the company’s computers and she’d never find a trace of anything. She asked, “Who were the executives? Did you recognize their voices?”

“I think one of them was the new guy. Herrerra. Oh. You haven’t heard about him, yet, have you? New Chief of Security. Supposed to be a real hard-ass.”

Crud. The last thing she needed was a violent killer suspicious of her.

“What did you do?” she asked Barry belatedly.

“I waited till they left, then I went back to my desk and I copied every last financial record I could lay my hands on in the company’s computers.”

Chloe gaped. “Are you serious?”

“Yup.” He reached into his jacket pocket then laid his palm flat on the table and slid it toward her. “Take this,” he muttered ventriloquist style.

She laid her hand over his and as he withdrew his, she felt the oblong shape of a flash drive. She palmed it unobtrusively and stuck it in the pocket of her jeans. “What do you want me to do with these files?”

“You are the new accountant they were talking about, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then poke around and see what you can find, eh?”

She blinked, startled at how directly this guy was telling her to uncover the dirt in his company. “What do you have against Paradeo?”

His gaze hardened. “My wife is Mexican, remember? I have heard of Miguel Herrera’s associates. If Paradeo is mixed up with animals like that, then the company needs to go down.”

“Fair enough. I’ll take a look at these files and see what we’ve got.” She finished the soda the waitress left her and tried to engage Barry in small talk for long enough that it wouldn’t look suspicious if she got up and left. But the guy was so freaked-out he couldn’t follow the thread of even the simplest conversation. Eventually, she gave up and signaled for the bill. And all the while, that flash drive was burning a hole in her pocket. She couldn’t wait to see what it revealed.

Trent fidgeted in the produce market across from some dive called Julio’s. Who was the guy Chloe was with? He gnashed his teeth as she reached out again and touched the guy’s hand across the table. Was that her boyfriend? He looked pretty normal. Could no doubt give Chloe a white picket fence and 2.2 kids and a Volvo station wagon. All the things Trent could never give a woman. His gut twisted in something resembling jealousy but a hundred times more painful.

Since when did this particular green monster bite him in the butt? He never cared who women slept with besides him. He’d always figured what was okay for him was okay for the women he had sex with, too. And it wasn’t like he was looking for a permanent relationship complete with all the trappings. But Chloe … she had managed to blow his mind sufficiently that he might consider pursuing an actual, exclusive relationship with a woman like her. Okay, with her specifically.

But as that bastard in the bar leaned across the table to murmur something intimate to Chloe, Trent tasted for the first time the bitter gall of having been a one-night stand when he wanted to be more.

Had she played him? Was she the accomplished pickup artist who’d conned him into giving the hot sex she wanted and then walked away without a backward glance? He was pretty sure he could hear women laughing uproariously on several continents at this very moment.

And to think he’d been plotting ways to romance her, to sweep her off her feet and into a relationship with him. All the while, she’d just been using him. Damn, she had that vulnerable and lonely act down to a fine science. He could not believe he’d fallen for it!

Fuming, he moved to another vantage point inside the small grocery store he was using for surveillance. In this day and age, a guy couldn’t lurk in a dark alley for too long without someone calling the cops. No one wanted a terrorist hanging out on their block.

“You gonna buy something, mister, or are you just fondling the fruit?”

Trent glanced down at the tiny Korean woman glaring up at him like he was some kind of pervert. “Yeah, sure. I’m buying.” He threw a few bananas, a bunch of grapes and a container of cut, fresh pineapple into a small basket and shoved them at the woman. He hated leaving the window, but he had no choice. And he could do without seeing the bastard kiss Chloe. The way the guy was leaning across the table, he was gonna lay a big wet one on her any second.

Trent threw a couple of bills on the counter and waited impatiently for the proprietor to ring up his sale and count out his change. Hurriedly, he grabbed the plastic bag and headed for the front of the store.

Dammit! Chloe and Lover Boy were no longer at their table. Trent bolted out the grocery’s front door and looked up and down the street frantically. There. Pale, golden hair in a flawless French twist. Relief made him faintly nauseous as he hurried after Chloe. She was almost a block ahead of him.

Not that he had any trouble catching up. Even at a walk, his extraordinarily quick reflexes allowed him to cover a lot of ground fast without really seeming to. Chloe crossed a street, but a changing traffic light forced him to wait at the corner. She opened up a gap with him again. But he had gotten close enough to realize with a start that Lover Boy was not with her. Where had he gotten off to?

Trent didn’t know whether to be more relieved that Chloe hadn’t gone home with the guy or worried that she was out strolling around after dark by herself when someone wanted to kill her.

The light changed and he pushed through the thinning foot traffic until he was within about fifty feet of her. She walked another three blocks or so and never once checked behind her to see if anyone was following her. Someone had to have a serious conversation with her about situational awareness. Of course, she probably had no idea that she was in danger, let alone the target of a would-be assassin. Despite Jeff’s decision not to alarm Chloe until they had proof someone was trying to kill her, Trent was going to have that talk with her. Soon.

Although how he was supposed to just call her and casually bring up the fact that she was in mortal danger, he had no idea. Hell, she probably wouldn’t pick up the phone if she knew it was him. Not after the way she’d taken advantage of him in Denver.

He was irritated enough that his attention lagged. One second she was in front of him, and the next, she was gone. Startled, he darted to the spot she’d been standing in a few seconds before. Where did she go? He was at the mouth of a dark alley full of trash Dumpsters and piles of bulging garbage bags. Several apartment buildings were nearby and she could have ducked into any one of them. Her place was still a half-dozen blocks away … maybe she was rendezvousing with the eager schmuck from Julio’s.

Trent heard a muffled noise behind him and leaped into the alley. He made out violent movement in the gloom and a female form being dragged deeper into the alley by a much larger male form. A flash of pale hair caught what little light trickled in from the street.

His muscles coiled and sprang so fast he barely managed to control the motion. He regained his balance and his fist shot past Chloe’s head to smash into her attacker’s face almost too quickly for his eye to see the movement.

The mugger grunted and shoved her hard into the brick wall beside him. She cried out and her knees crumpled, but Trent had no time for her, yet. He threw punches at lightning speed until the mugger started to draw a weapon in slow motion from the back of his waistband. It was ridiculously easy to knock the weapon out of the guy’s hand with a fast chopping blow. The guy’s mouth opened slowly and his arm cocked back at what seemed to be about one-tenth that of normal speed.