Читать книгу Flash of Death - Cindy Dees - Страница 9

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.

Trent brought his right knee up as fast and hard as he could and slammed it into the guy’s crotch. The attacker grunted and doubled over right into Trent’s best uppercut. The guy went down like a rock.

Trent spun toward Chloe. She was slowly sliding down the wall toward the ground. He reached out, grabbed her shoulders and dragged her upright. She let out a squeak of terror.

“Chloe. It’s me, Trent. You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”

She sagged against him, taking huge, sobbing breaths. He held her for a moment, registering for the first time the stench of the alley.

“Honey, I need you to stand up on your own for a minute, okay?”

She nodded against his chest but made no move to step away from him. He pushed her gently back against the wall and knelt down to check on the status of the attacker. The guy was out cold. He looked about thirty and was dark-haired and scruffy. Might be Hispanic, maybe Mediterranean. Hard to tell in the dark.

Trent reached into the guy’s back pocket and whipped out the attacker’s wallet. He pulled out his own cell phone and took a quick picture of the guy’s driver’s license. Trent put the I.D. back and stuffed the wallet back in the man’s pants. He searched the guy’s pockets for anything else that might be informative and found nothing. He did pick up the attacker’s .38 pistol, which had skidded a half-dozen feet away, and tucked it in his sweatshirt’s front pocket. If they got lucky, the gun might tell the guys at Winston Ops who this yahoo worked for.

“Is that really you?” Chloe asked tentatively. “You’re not a hallucination?”

“Yup, I’m me. In the flesh.” She looked like hell warmed over. “C’mon, Chloe. Let’s get you home.”

“The police … arrest him … report …”

“I’ll take care of it,” Trent answered smoothly. He pitched his voice to calm and reassure her. The last thing he needed was police snooping around and asking too many questions. Besides, the beating he’d administered to her would-be assailant was a more effective deterrent than anything the cops could do. However, it also opened Trent up to some questions by the police that he’d really rather not answer. Like how he was so fast, and had disarmed the assailant so easily, and why he didn’t have a scratch on him.

“I didn’t recognize you in those clothes,” Chloe commented randomly.

He glanced down at his jeans riding low on his hips and his University of Hawaii hoodie sweatshirt. This was what he usually wore. “What’s wrong with my clothes?” he asked.

“Nothing. I’ve only seen you in a tux or—” She broke off.

Or naked. He grinned down at her. If she could think about sex after having just been assaulted, she was going to be just fine once she got over the initial shock.

They walked the rest of the way to her place in silence. He watched without comment as she let herself into her apartment. But when she reached for a light switch, he forestalled her. “Stay here,” he murmured.

She nodded as he slipped into the darkness and took a quick look around her place. It was as tidy as her hotel room had been. Its spare, modern furnishings left little or no room for someone to hide, and his search was complete in under a minute.

“Okay, Chloe. It’s safe. You can turn on the lights.”

A row of recessed halogen lights went on in the snug kitchen that was open to the living room. He watched cautiously as she dumped her coat on a bar stool and unceremoniously started stripping off her outer clothes in front of him.

“Whoa, there. What are you doing?” he asked in alarm. She wasn’t going to jump his bones here and now, was she?

“I stink. I can smell him on me,” she muttered.

And then he noticed her hands were shaking and she was unnaturally pale. In fact, her entire body was trembling. He moved to her swiftly and wrapped her in his arms. She went stiff against him.

“It’s okay, honey. I’ve got you. You’re safe. I swear. You can let it go, now.”

She might have been close to tears in the alley, but she didn’t break down like he expected. Instead, she pushed against his chest and he turned her loose, surprised. Where was the funny, relaxed, adventurous woman from two nights ago? Surely she was locked inside Chloe somewhere.

“Turn your back,” she ordered tightly.

He did so, frowning. He felt her move past him and head for the single bedroom that opened off the living room. The door closed with a thud and a lock snicked into place. She thought a lock would work against him, huh? He didn’t disabuse her of the notion. All the guys at Code X learned how to pick nastier locks than her little bedroom door’s as part of their extensive military-style training.

He sat down on her sofa to wait her out. He didn’t buy for a minute that this tense, uptight woman was the real Chloe Jordan. She’d emerge eventually, and then they’d have that conversation about who might want to kill her.

Chloe scrubbed furiously at her skin under a scalding hot shower until it was red and felt raw. Whether she was trying to get rid of the feel of her attacker’s arms or the feel of her rescuer’s she couldn’t say. Where in the heck had Trent Hollings come from, materializing out of nowhere to save her? He must have been following her. But why? Obviously, he was some kind of stalking creep. She couldn’t believe he’d followed her from Denver all the way to San Francisco. Apparently his notion of playing for a living included terrorizing single women. Was he some kind of pervert?

An insidious thrill that he might have flown halfway across the country to see her again insinuated itself into the back of her brain. She tried to scrub it away, too, but failed.

After rinsing shampoo out of her hair for the third time, she gave up on getting any cleaner and stepped out of her shower. She felt horribly vulnerable being naked with Trent in the next room, and forewent her usual, meticulous drying and moisturizing ritual to hurry into clothes. She pulled on jeans and a bulky sweater that was the most concealing article of clothing she owned. She even put on socks and shoes. Anything to cover herself from him. The humiliation of waking up stark naked in that hotel room and knowing he’d seen her—all of her—and done all those things to her, and that she had let him, was far too fresh in her mind.

She dried her hair and pushed it back from her face with a simple headband. In her efforts to delay facing him even further, she even applied a little makeup. Finally, when even her watch was strapped to her wrist and she couldn’t think of a single thing more to do, she gathered the rest of her filthy clothing in her arms.

Oh, God. The flash drive. The mugger had groped her coat pockets—no doubt looking for her wallet. She didn’t remember if the guy had reached into her pants pockets, though. She’d been too panicked to register such details.

Chloe reached frantically into the pocket of her jeans and felt a hard rectangle of plastic. Exhaling in relief, she tucked the drive into her underwear drawer. It wasn’t the most original hiding place ever, but it would do until she could get rid of Trent Hollings and make a bunch of copies of the data files. And she wasn’t giving him permission to go fishing through her lingerie anytime soon.

Steeling herself to face the devil, she opened her bedroom door and stepped into the living room. As she’d expected, he was still sprawled on her sofa, waiting. In that baggy sweatshirt and tennis shoes with his hair all tousled, he looked like an overgrown kid. She could barely believe he’d been the dark, dangerous lover of two nights ago.

“Feel better?” he asked neutrally.

“Yes, thank you,” she answered equally neutrally. Lord, she barely recognized him like this with that tousled hair, sloppy clothes and dark stubble on his jaw. He looked nothing like the wealthy trust-fund playboy he apparently was. He reminded her of some surfer-dude, hippie throwback of her parents’ days. Ugh. She much preferred him in an Italian designer tuxedo.