Flash of Death (5 page)

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

C
hloe 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.