Flash of Death (16 page)

A silver SUV was stopped at a red light about a block away. Was it the same one that had been following them earlier? He glanced at the black maw of the parking garage. Should he head inside to check for Chloe or should he follow that SUV on the chance that it was her?

He had only a millisecond to make the decision. His gut said not to lose that SUV. He stretched his legs out into a full run, devouring the pavement with each stride as he tore toward the vehicle. The light turned green and it pulled away from him. No way was he losing it! He pushed for even greater speed, determined to catch the vehicle. It turned a corner, and he swerved after it, dodging pedestrians and ignoring the occasional squawk as he shoved past someone.

Despite his incredible speed, the SUV gradually pulled away from him. He began to suck for air, and then to gasp for it. His thighs burned like acid, and muscles pushed beyond all human limits finally began to cramp and fail.

Devastated, he searched the avenue ahead and could find no sign of his quarry. He glanced around to get his bearings. Maybe the police could pick up the trail. And that meant a quick call to Winston Ops to pull some strings with the San Francisco Police Department—

It dawned on him abruptly that he was only a block from the Paradeo office. And it was in the same direction the SUV had been heading. What were the odds?

He took off running again, this time at something resembling a normal human speed. It was the best his exhausted body could manage. And frankly, he was starting to feel a little light-headed. He must have burned through a gazillion calories with that mad dash across the city.

Five minutes brought him to the Paradeo building.
Be inside, Chloe. Be alive, baby.

He burst into the lobby, which was deserted after business hours, and reluctantly admitted to himself that he’d better take the elevator up to Paradeo’s floor. It was immensely frustrating to have his body give out on him like this. Normally, anything he could imagine, he could do. Did comic book heroes ever feel like this?

The elevator dinged open and he eased out to one side. The space yawning before him was dim. Only every tenth overhead light or so was lit. A cubicle farm stretched away from him, still and deserted. If thugs from Paradeo had grabbed her, they would take her someplace private and quiet to question her. His mind shied away from imagining them doing anything else to gentle Chloe.

He slid along the wall, hugging the shadows and gliding silently across the carpeted floors. All of Paradeo’s offices were on this floor. They would probably take her someplace tucked away in the back of the building. Skirting the open cubicles, he passed a pair of conference rooms. A hallway narrowed before him and he slowed, easing toward the first closed door.

She had to be here. She just had to.

* * *

Chloe had seriously expected to wind up in some dank, dark alley or deserted warehouse, not in a perfectly normal-looking, antiseptic office in the very place where she worked. She’d assumed they would want to torture her to death in peace. Where no one would hear her screams. She tested the duct tape that secured her wrists to the arms of an office chair. Not a chance she was getting loose anytime soon.

She nodded in unsurprised recognition when Miguel Herrera stepped into the office. Of course he was behind her kidnapping.

“Miss Jordan.”

She stared up at him.
What did he want from her?
The unspoken question vibrated angrily between them. What was so important that he had to treat her like a criminal and kidnap her?

“My employers want their money back, Miss Jordan.”

Money? What on earth?
“What money?” she blurted.

“The money you stole from Paradeo.”

“That I—”
Was this guy crazy?
She was looking for funny business Paradeo’s executives were pulling, not doing the stealing herself! “I haven’t stolen anything from Paradeo!”

Herrera sighed and perched on a corner of the desk in front of her. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. But make no mistake. Before you walk out of here, you’re going to tell me how you did it, where those funds are now, and how to transfer them back to Paradeo.”

“Well, Mr. Herrera, that’s going to be a bit difficult since I didn’t take any money, I’m not hiding it anywhere and I cannot return what I didn’t take.”

“Make no mistake, Miss Jordan. I will not hesitate to turn the boys loose on you.”

She glanced over involuntarily at the four big men, standing silent, eerily eager, in front of the window. A shudder passed through her. Never had any of her forensic accounting professors mentioned that she might find herself duct-taped to a chair with a roomful of thugs flexing their fists in anticipation of pummeling her senseless...or much worse. This was a nightmare. Fear for her life coursed through her anew. The idea of suffering the kind of pain these men could so easily inflict on her turned her insides to water.

Trent hadn’t been wrong, after all. She’d been an ignorant fool to believe she was safe from harm.

She looked Herrera directly in the eye and saw only hard determination. There would be no quarter granted from this man. The calming effect of finding herself in such a normal and familiar environment fell away as the true jeopardy of her situation sunk in.

Satisfaction gleamed in Herrera’s black gaze as he loomed over her. “Talk to me, Chloe.”

She closed her eyes for a moment to draw strength from within. “Mr. Herrera. I am telling you the God’s honest truth. I have never taken a dime from this company.”

“Hah! Do you need me to show you the records? The missing funds, a little bit here and there? And funny thing, all from accounts you have direct access to.”

“How much money are we talking here?” she asked, curious in spite of her terror. Not to mention, if she kept the guy talking, it delayed the inevitable moment when he lost patience and turned the dogs loose on her.

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t take it.”

“How long have you been with this company?”

“What does that have to do with whether or not I took your missing money?” she blurted.

“Answer the question,” he snapped. But he frowned at her, almost as if perplexed.

“Six months, give or take. How long has the money been going missing for?”

“About four months.”

“If it’s that recent, it should be reasonably easy to track down. It can’t have gone too far,” she replied reasonably.

“Where exactly has the money gone?” he repeated darkly. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this man didn’t have a whole lot of patience, and what little he had was wearing out fast. She eyed his meaty fists warily. This was really going to hurt. How was it she could go so damned fast from feeling so strong and in control of her life to feeling so weak and completely
not
in control? Was the order she imposed on her world that thin a veneer?

Understanding exploded across her brain. She’d been deluding herself all along. Life had always been this scary and insecure, and she’d been lying to herself to think otherwise. She could no more force the world to conform to her needs any more than she could Trent. She felt adrift, at sea without a life jacket, totally at the mercy of the currents she floated upon. She had, without question, never been this terrified in her entire life.

Her voice shook as she stated with all the sincerity she could muster, “I have no idea where your funds have gone. You can ask me the question a hundred different ways, but my answer is always going to be the same...because it’s the truth. I didn’t take any money and I don’t know where it is.”

He leaned down close to her, his breath hot in her ear. Her skin crawled and she leaned away as far as her bound wrists would allow, but it wasn’t far enough.

He followed, murmuring, “You think you can steal from me and mine and we won’t make you pay? You think if we show weakness to our enemies they won’t turn on us like rabid dogs? You think I’m gonna let you walk out of here alive? That I won’t make you suffer until you scream and beg and sing like a canary?”

She shook her head, too terrified to make a sound. She’d seen the news. Heard the stories of the atrocities the drug cartels inflicted on their victims.

“Imagine the worst thing you’ve ever heard my kind doing to an enemy. Multiply it by a hundred. A thousand. Before I’m done with you, little girl, you’re going to be a front-page news headline that shocks the world. You have no idea how much suffering a human being is capable of. But I’m going to show you every last bit of pain your body can stand. And I’ll just be getting warmed up.”

Her knees were already shaking, but the rest of her joined in as adrenaline surged through her veins, screaming at her to run for her life.

“You’ll try to scream, but I’ll cut your tongue out. You’ll gabble like an idiot and choke on your own blood. And no one will hear you. I’ll skin you slowly, peeling the flesh back in strips to expose nerves you never knew you had. You think having your flesh burned to a blackened crisp and your muscles charred to the bone sounds bad? Oh, you’ll find out for yourself. And I’ll just be getting warmed up.”

She was going to be sick. Her body twitched in horrified anticipation of the things he was describing, and her nerves tingled from head to foot, demanding that she run away. Begging for it. Sobbing for it.

“Did you know that the only pain in the human body you’re not able to pass out to escape comes from the kidney? I’m going to stick needles in yours. The pain will be so exquisite you’ll beg me to kill you. And there will be
no
escape. It’ll go on and on and on until you literally go mad from the agony of it. And I’ll still just be getting warmed up.”

Oh, God. Kill her now.

“There are twenty-six bones in the human foot, twenty-eight if you count the sesamoids at the base of the big toe. I’m going to break them one by one with a hammer. You’ll be a cripple for the rest of your life. And if you still haven’t told me what I want to know, I’ll do the same to all twenty-seven bones in your hands. One by one. I’ll smash them into useless pulp. You’ll be unable to perform even the simplest tasks for yourself. And then I’ll start on your teeth. I’ll break them in your jaw, and then I’ll pull out the pieces one by one. And all the while, you won’t be able to scream. Won’t be able to escape it. And then we’ll move on to the real torture. Things so horrible that even contemplating them will make you scream.”

She realized that tears were running down her cheeks and that rattling sound was her teeth chattering in abject terror.

“Do you need a small demonstration, little girl?”

She shook her head violently in the negative, her throat muscles so convulsed with fear she couldn’t make a sound.

He leaned down to murmur in her ear, “If you scream, maybe I won’t kill you so soon. You hear me? Scream for me, little girl.” Without warning, he ripped the duct tape off her left wrist.

And she did scream. At the tops of her lungs. Every hair on her forearm had been pulled out by the roots, and tiny droplets of blood sprinkled across her flesh where the tape had forcibly torn off the outer layers of her skin. Her wrist went from ghost white to brilliant scarlet as she stared at it. Her arm felt as if she’d laid it on a stove burner and left it there long after her body shouted at her to yank it away. Tears ran down her cheeks as the stinging intensified and insulted nerves roared their displeasure.

She became aware of a whimpering noise and realized with a start that it was coming from her. Herrera reached for her other wrist. Sounds began to pour out of her mouth in a steady, pleading stream. “Nononononoooo...”

* * *

Trent jolted into motion as Chloe screamed. Someone might as well have stabbed him, so sharp and visceral was his reaction to the thought that someone was hurting her. A powerful need to kill flowed through him, giving his limbs lightness and speed, his mind a hyperawareness, that even he’d never experienced before.

At least he knew she was in the building and approximately where she was. Given that there was no one out here acting as a lookout, he had to assume that all four of the guys who’d been chasing them in the Moscone Center were in that room with her. He couldn’t take them all at once. He needed to draw one or two of them out and pick them off. He looked around and spotted a wood-backed chair behind a receptionist’s station. Perfect.

Ducking down behind the station, he intentionally banged the hard, wooden slats into the desk. He didn’t have long to wait. A door opened, and the sound of Chloe moaning floated out to him. Trent’s gut tightened.
Hang on just a few more minutes, baby.

After a cautious check of the darkened hallway, two men surged out like fire ants protecting their mound. He ducked to avoid being spotted. The good news was neither man had pulled a gun. Yet. He waited until they’d split up and were moving away from him before he pounced. The first man was a piece of cake. He never saw Trent coming. A fast chop to the back of the guy’s head and the big man went down like a tree.

Small problem: trees don’t fall silently. The second man whirled, and all chance of surprising him was blown. Trent took a wary step backward. Glanced over his shoulder as if contemplating fleeing. It was too easy. The thug bought Trent’s head fake and attacked on the assumption that Trent was scared stiff and planning to run rather than stand and fight.

Time seemed to slow. Trent watched the thug’s mouth open on a silent yell, his legs pump in exaggerated slow motion, his hands come up like glacial claws creeping forward toward his prey.

Trent ducked under the slowly arcing fist with casual ease, his own hands coming up to pummel the guy’s vulnerable face. The problem with thick, muscular targets was that body blows had little immediate effect on them. For a fast takedown, he went for the bridge of the nose. The temples. Eyes.

In a flurry that even his gaze struggled to follow, he slammed his fists into the attacker’s face over and over. Streams of blood flew through the air like tiny red rainbows, and the thug’s torso arced away from the assault. The guy fell heavily to his knees, then toppled over, face first.