Flash of Death (6 page)

* * *

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.

She bustled over to the closet by the front door that hid her washing machine and stuffed her smelly clothes into it. She doubted they would ever be wearable again, but getting that awful stench out of them felt therapeutic, at any rate.

Too nervous to be still, she moved into the kitchen and poured herself a big glass of water. Although it annoyed her to do it, she poured Trent one, as well. Just because he was a possible stalker didn’t mean she could bring herself to be rude, particularly when he was behaving himself so well at the moment. It just wasn’t in her nature. And that darned thrill in the back of her head kept doing backflips that he was here.