Flash of Death (17 page)

The office door opened and three more men poured out into the hall. Not good. Trent might be fast, but his build ran to the lean side and he was of average strength. Three huge guys landing on him would effectively immobilize him no matter how fast he was when loose.

He turned to run, hopefully to lead the men away from Chloe and give her time to escape. The men scrambled to give chase, and as they careened around the corner, the one in the lead stumbled. He threw his arms wide, knocking his buddies off balance, as well. Flailing like a human windmill, the first guy staggered into the second, knocking him into the third.

Looking over his shoulder, Trent watched in shock and relief as all three men went down in a pile. He spun on a dime, raced back toward the swearing and shouting pile of men and hurdled them all. He skidded into the room Chloe was in, and she looked up in panic.

Her tear-stained face was terrified and he bit out,
“Let’s go.”

“I can’t,” she wailed, clawing at her ankles.

He saw the problem immediately. Her left ankle was taped to the leg of a chair. It appeared she’d already torn loose the tape securing her right ankle. He snatched up a letter opener off the desk and stabbed at the half-torn tape. She grabbed the loose end, gritted her teeth, and gave it a yank. A sharp gasp and she was free.

He pulled her out of the chair and half out of the room in one mighty heave. She stumbled and righted herself as they raced out into the hall. Shouting and swearing erupted behind them as her kidnappers struggled to untangle themselves and gain their feet.

“Run for your life,” Trent grunted.

Chloe took off in an impressive sprint, and he kept pace beside her using his excess capacity for speed to yank chairs into the aisle behind them and even to pull over a tall filing cabinet to block their pursuers’ path. As it crashed to the floor, a cloud of flying paper filled the air behind them.

“Call the elevator,” he ordered as he paused just shy of the elevator bank to pull out more furniture and create a pile of obstacles for the thugs to navigate. Pounding footsteps announced that they had untangled themselves and were giving chase.

An elevator dinged behind him as three big, angry shadows burst into view. “It’s here. Hurry, Trent,” Chloe called urgently.

He dived around the corner and into the elevator with her. She was already mashing the Close Door button frantically. Would those doors
never
move?

The footsteps grew louder. Finally, ever so slowly, the elevator doors began to slide shut. A shout went up in Spanish. Trent swore in a steady stream under his breath. They weren’t going to make it out of here before the bad guys caught up with them. He braced himself to jump. If it came to it, he would throw himself out there and buy Chloe the few extra seconds she needed to escape. Whatever had been planned for her would end up being perpetrated upon him, but so be it. She
had
to get out of here alive.

The guy who’d stumbled before slid around the corner, and promptly slipped on a manila file folder. Yet again, his feet went out from under him and he neatly leg-tackled the thug who was just barreling around the corner behind him. Both men went down.

The doors were halfway closed now. Through the gap, Trent recognized with shock the face of the clumsy man. Miguel Herrera. The Chief of Security for Paradeo. He was personally involved with this kidnapping? What was so important about Chloe that a man in his position would risk himself directly? Why not pass the dirty work to low-level henchmen who would take the fall for it if they got caught?

The doors shut with a quiet whoosh, and the car started downward. Trent’s taut body relaxed a tiny bit. Chloe took a sobbing breath and turned into him, burying her face against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, panting. “Catch your breath, baby. We’re not home free, yet.”

She lifted her head to stare at him in dismay.

“We’ll get a little head start because of the elevator, but you can be sure your kidnappers are running down the stairs this very moment. And they may have someone in the lobby waiting for us.”

“What are we going to do?” she gasped.

“When the doors open, we’re going to run out like a pair of charging bulls. Plow right through anyone who stands in your way. When we hit the street, turn right. There’s a big hotel about a block down and it’ll have a taxi stand with plenty of cabs.”

“Where do we meet if we get split up?” she asked fearfully.

“Go to the nearest police station and call Jeff Winston. But we’re not going to get split up this time.”

“Promise?” she asked as the elevator lurched gently to a stop.

“Promise.” And then the doors slid open and it was time to run again.

No one was waiting for them in the lobby and they burst out onto the street together. Chloe veered right and ran beside him with the choppy strides of panic. She collapsed into a cab with him, hyperventilating. He gave an address to the driver and turned to her in concern.

“Did they hurt you? Are you all right?”

She nodded, unable to speak. Whether she was nodding to having been hurt or to being all right, he couldn’t tell. He turned his attention to her more immediate crisis. “Hold your breath and try to count to three before you exhale. You need to build up more carbon dioxide in your blood to settle down your breathing.”

It took her several tries to follow his instructions, but gradually, her breathing deepened from shallow pants to something vaguely resembling normal.

The cab approached the block where she lived and Chloe was recovered enough to ask in alarm, “What are you doing? We can’t go back to my place. Herrera knows where I live!”

“We’re not going to your place. We’re going to mine.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending.

Trent explained, “When I first got to San Francisco, I rented a room in a bed-and-breakfast across the street from your apartment so I could watch you, remember? I’ve still got that room. And frankly, I doubt Herrera and his pals will look for us so close to your place. We need somewhere to crash until we can form a plan and get some backup into town.”

She nodded wearily. He knew the feeling. The crash after a big adrenaline surge was a killer. And the idea of Chloe being hurt or killed by her kidnappers had definitely been a major adrenaline event for him. He was going to need to sleep fairly soon. But there was no way he could go down for the count until Chloe was safe.

He instructed the cabbie to let them out around the block from Chloe’s apartment. No sense making her visible to Herrera’s men if they were staking out her place. He ushered her out of the cab, tucking her protectively under his arm as he led her into the B&B. They went directly up to his room, and as he hung out the Do Not Disturb sign and double locked the door, she moved over to the window.

“Wow. You do have a great view of my place from here,” she commented dryly.

He moved over beside her and gazed down into her living room. “Yup. I saw every move you made.”

“That is so creepy.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and tugged her back to lean against him. “I assure you, it was only for your safety. I would never have invaded your privacy like that unless it was a matter of life and death.”

She sighed, a gentle nudge of her ribs against his chest. “I guess we’ve established that Herrera and his goons are out to do me serious harm?”

“I’d say so. How are your wrists and ankles? Your skin looks pretty mad.”

She looked down at the red stripes across her fair skin. They looked like scraped knees and burned like them, too. “I need to wash them and get some antibiotic cream on them.”

But neither moved to treat her wounds. Instead, they stood still, leaning against one another, silently savoring the fact that they were alive. There would be time enough in a minute or two to get back to business. Right now, they needed to acknowledge that they’d survived a near miss with death.

“Thank you for coming after me,” she murmured.

His hands tightened on her shoulders. Like it or not, this was no longer entirely business for him. Somewhere along the way his feelings for her had become personal. “I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you, Chloe. I...care...about you.”
A lot.

More than he’d realized until he’d watched her running from her pursuers in the Moscone Center and he’d been helpless to protect her. More than he’d realized until he’d heard her scream and it had felt like his own heart getting ripped out. More than he’d realized until he’d been prepared to leap through the gap of those closing elevator doors and sacrifice himself to save her.

She shuddered in his arms, clearly in need of some serious reassurance. He drew her gently to the bed and sat down, leaning back against the headboard. She curled against him like a frightened baby animal seeking comfort. His heart literally ached for her.

“Tell me everything that happened,” he said quietly.

She described the chase through the Moscone Center, her terror when Herrera’s men grabbed her, the shock of realizing they were taking her to Paradeo’s offices. He was not surprised by the sequence of events. But then she told him how Herrera demanded to know where Paradeo’s money was.

“He thought
you
were embezzling from Paradeo?” Trent exclaimed.

“Weird, huh? Here I am trying to find how their money’s being laundered and what’s wrong with their books, and so are they.”

“There’s a thief inside the company,” he breathed. Shock vibrated through him.

“But who would dare steal money from a dangerous drug cartel?” Chloe asked.

“Someone who doesn’t know who they are, I suppose.”

“Or someone who doesn’t care,” she added.

He froze beneath her. “Are you telling me you think some rival of the cartel behind Paradeo is making a move on it?” Good God. If there was about to be a drug turf war, he had to get Chloe out of town and far, far away from the violence about to erupt.

“I don’t know if another cartel’s moving in or not. But I know where to find the answer.”

“Barry’s files.”

“Exactly. I need to finish my analysis. And fast. At least I know now why I kept finding anomalies I couldn’t explain. I was looking at two financial crimes and not one. If we can find this thief before Herrera does, maybe the FBI can turn him or her into an informant. The thief could testify against Paradeo in return for some sort of plea deal or immunity from prosecution.”

He didn’t particularly relish the idea of racing Paradeo’s violent security chief to identify whoever was brave enough to steal from a vicious and efficient drug cartel.

Chloe was speaking again, “But I need a computer and internet access to do it.”

“Done.” He leaned over and picked up the telephone. In a moment, the owner of the B and B had agreed to send up a laptop computer and a laser printer within the hour.

“How did you get the owner of this place to do that for you?” she asked curiously as he hung up.

He frowned. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because you could steal the thing and rip him off.”

He shrugged. “I told him to buy me new equipment and charge it to my room bill.”

“You charged a
computer
to room service?” she asked incredulously.

“Better living through trust-fund-assisted convenience,” he remarked dryly.

“No kidding,” she grumbled.

“Is my having money a deal breaker?” he asked soberly.

“Depends on the deal,” she replied cautiously.

Now there was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. What deal, indeed?

Chapter 9

S
he slept that night, and Trent slept the next day while she worked. Herrera had mentioned small amounts taken from many accounts she had access to, and now that Chloe knew what she was looking for, the work went more quickly. She was able to pick out the trail of the laundering from the trail of the embezzling more easily. If someone was taking money from Paradeo, the thief was doing it very well and leaving practically no traces.

As the day wore on, though, something else began to dawn on Chloe. Herrera hadn’t been wrong. The missing funds all came from accounts she was directly responsible for. If she didn’t know better, she’d say
she
was the thief. Alarm started to vibrate low in her gut, gradually growing in volume and intensity as the afternoon wore on.

Who else in the company had access to the same accounts she did? She poked around but no one else had exactly the same financial footprint as hers. Paradeo was a highly compartmentalized company, and no matter how hard she searched, she couldn’t find anyone else with access to all of her accounts. Not good. Not good at all.

Trent woke and immediately asked that food be brought up to them, but she ignored the plate he set down beside her. Eventually, he actually took her by the shoulders and turned her away from the computer. “You need to take a break, Chloe. Eat. Drink some water. Stretch your muscles a little.”

Now that he mentioned it, her stomach was growling and her throat did feel rough with thirst. It didn’t help that her alarm had grown into panic clawing at the back of her throat.

“Any progress?” he asked as she picked up a sandwich and commenced eating.

She winced. “I’m on the trail of something. I’ve identified a number of tampered-with transactions, and now that I’ve seen what accounts the thief is targeting and how he or she is disguising the thefts, I should be able to spot more fishy transactions quickly. Once I do that, I ought to be able to give you an idea of how much money has been stolen.”

“When will you know who’s taking it?”

“Honestly, it looks like I’m the only person with access to all the accounts the thief stole from. I may have a hard time finding someone else to add to the suspect list.” She blurted, “I’ve got to solve this or else I could be in serious trouble.”

“Are you being framed?”

She stared at him in dismay. It was entirely possible. But who could be setting her up?

“You’ll figure it out,” he said encouragingly. But his smile didn’t reach his beautiful gaze. Instead, worried crinkles formed at the corners of his eyes. Worry that she shared in spades.