Flash of Death

by Cindy Dees

  “I don’t think we can get to all of that tonight, Chloe, but we can definitely make a dent in your list.” He rolled out of bed and fetched her discarded panty hose. With quick efficiency, he tied her wrists together and then to the headboard and knelt between her knees, his eyes burning with dark fire.

  “Let’s see just how far you’re willing to go, my nice, normal little accountant.”

  Chapter 2

  Trent slipped out of the hotel’s delivery entrance in the last dark before dawn. He couldn’t sleep anyway, and there was no sense humiliating Chloe by strolling out through the hotel lobby in his rumpled tuxedo for all the staff to see.

  Normally, he would’ve spent the night in her bed and enjoyed a morning-after brunch with her, but he had a hunch that, after last night, she’d just as soon wake up alone. For one thing, she was going to have a hell of a hangover. And, if she was telling the truth and had never done any of the things they’d done together last night, he’d lay odds she was going to suffer a rather large dose of morning-after embarrassment. He hadn’t been kidding when he called her a nice girl.

  Who’d have guessed such a prim-and-proper lady would be such a wildcat after a few shots of whiskey? She’d pushed even a few of his sexual boundaries last night, and that was saying something. He’d spent most of his post-pubescent life enjoying the favors of beautiful women. But he’d never met one quite like Chloe Jordan, all sweet and virginal in public, and jaw-droppingly not virginal in private.

  He crossed the street, stopping at the spot where the SUV had nearly run her down last night. As he’d thought. Not a skid mark in sight. That vehicle had accelerated toward her. Now why would anyone be out to hurt an uptight accountant who lived and worked half a continent away?

  And more importantly, who would want to kill her?

  Frowning, he returned to his own suite in the men’s club where the wedding had been held. His family owned the apartment, and he used it when he was in town. As its dark wood, leather and Ralph Lauren décor surrounded him, he breathed in the easy, old-world elegance with guilty pleasure. Most of the time he shunned the trappings of his family’s wealth. He was much more likely to be found in a shack on a beach, waxing a surfboard than lounging in high-end men’s clubs. And frankly, he was more at ease in the shack. People were more real there. Had a better sense of what really mattered in life.

  Being diagnosed with his illness in his second year of college had put everything in perspective for him. Life was too short to waste doing things or being around people who made him crazy.

  But he had to admit, this condo’s luxury was nice once in a while.

  He took a six-jet steam shower to work out the worst of the kinks from last night’s athletics with Chloe, and shaved and dressed quickly. Then he sat down at the walnut desk in the corner and made a phone call to Winston Ops.

  It was the headquarters of a private, corporate intelligence network for all of the many Winston Enterprises companies around the world. The duty controller, a computer genius named Novak from somewhere in eastern Europe, took his call.

  “Trent Hollings, here. I need you to run a quick background check for me on Chloe Jordan.”

  “Sunny’s sister?” Novak asked, surprised.

  “I think someone tried to kill her last night.”

  “Are you serious?” Novak exclaimed.

  “As a heart attack.”

  The duty controller instantly shifted into all-business mode. “Got it. So, we’re looking for enemies in her life.” Trent heard clacking keys in the background as Novak typed furiously. “How was the wedding?”

  “Great party,” Trent answered. “Can’t remember the last time I saw Aiden so happy. He’s a lucky man.”

  “Maybe you should find yourself a nice girl and settle down, too.”

  He laughed. “Not me. I’ll never slow down enough for any girl to catch me.”

  “When you least expect it, one’s gonna come along and trip you all up, buddy.”

  Visions of a blonde accountant blowing his mind in bed flashed through his head. “Nah,” Trent replied. “Not me. It’s not like I can give any girl a life evenly faintly resembling normal.” Hell, he couldn’t even promise to give a girl children. With his inherited disorder, careful genetic counseling would be necessary to ensure that his condition—spinal muscular atrophy—wasn’t passed on to his offspring.

  “Okay, Trent. I’ve got a preliminary report on our girl. She’s a certified public accountant. Just finished a master’s degree in forensic accounting. Company called Paradeo filed a W-2 on her about six months ago. But they’re an investment firm, not forensic accountants.”

  She’d said she was freelancing. And there’d been that reference to taking a company down. Must be investigating her employer for someone else. “Where’s this Paradeo company headquartered?”

  “San Francisco. No satellite offices. Anything else you need to know right away, Trent?”

  “Do you see anything at a glance that could explain someone trying to run her down in a large SUV?”

  “Other than some rich, pissed-off CEO she might have put in jail? Nope. You don’t suppose it has anything to with Code X, do you?” Novak asked.

  The controller’s question made Trent’s blood run cold. That was the one place he’d been mentally avoiding going this morning. He’d known it would give him exactly the headache he felt coming on. “I don’t know. Keep digging and let’s see what you come up with before we go there.”

  “Roger. I’m on it.”

  Trent paced the spacious room restlessly. He never had been able to sit still even before he’d accepted the experimental stem cell therapies that were both his miracle cure and the heart of the Code X project. Toss in a liberal dose of stress and worry now, and he could forget sitting down, let alone being still. He changed out of the clothes he’d donned only minutes before and into running gear. It was early enough that he should be able to stretch his legs a little without anyone seeing him.

  He jogged down the stairs, too jumpy to wait for the elevator, and restrained himself until he’d cleared the lobby of the club. But when he hit the sidewalk, he couldn’t contain the bursting energy any longer. He exploded into motion, sprinting down the street with strides that grew longer and faster with every step. In moments he was flying along at twenty-five miles per hour, the wind ripping through his hair and making his eyes water. God, it felt good.

  Every time he ran like this, he remembered the early onset of his disease, the progressive muscle weakness, the loss of tendon strength, the continuous respiratory infections, the pain. And the fear. Not knowing what had been wrong with him was the worst of all as his body had literally wasted away before his eyes. It had taken over a year to get the diagnosis. SMA usually showed up in infants and small children, and it threw the doctors off when his case waited until adulthood to present itself.

  A delivery truck backed out of an alley in front of him and he dodged around it with a lightning-fast move a professional football player would have envied.

  He accelerated again, reveling in the flow of muscles and sinew and blood working in extraordinary harmony, his quick twitch muscles reacting completely off the charts for a normal human. But then, he wasn’t normal at all. Not anymore. Not since Jeff Winston had called and suggested that there might be a radical cure for Trent’s disease. It was highly experimental and had side effects, of course. He’d grabbed on to the lifeline his old friend had thrown him and never looked back. He was entirely and for the rest of his life a creature of Code X.

  He ran for nearly an hour, slowing only when people began to emerge onto the streets and he risked someone seeing him race along at world-class sprinter speed for block after block.

  He’d turned around to head back to the club when the cell phone in the breast pocket of his skin-tight running shirt vibrated. He slowed to a walk to take the call. It was his boss and friend, Jeff Winston.

  “Hey, Jeff. What’s up?”

  “Couldn’
t you at least sound out of breath after tearing around like you do?” Jeff groused.

  Thankfully, along with his quick twitch muscles had come extraordinarily quick oxygen uptake. “Sorry, bro. I’ll try to huff and puff a little. What can I do for you? It’s early for you to be up, isn’t it?”

  “I need you here at the club ASAP. Take a cab.”

  “I can get there about as fast if I run.”

  “I don’t need you drawing any attention to yourself just now,” Jeff answered in clipped tones.

  “What’s going on?” Trent was alarmed. It was completely unlike Jeff to be this terse.

  “When you get back.”

  Trent spotted a taxi stand and jogged to it at normal human speed, chafing at the slowness of the pace. He jumped into the first cab in line and gave the club’s address. Had Novak uncovered something else about Chloe? Something that would explain her attempted murder? What on earth could it be?

  * * *

  The first thing Chloe became aware of was that her brain felt twice its normal size inside a skull that hadn’t expanded one bit. Every beat of her heart sent throbbing pain through her head. As she swam slowly toward consciousness, she registered lying on her stomach among wildly tangled sheets and blankets, which was strange. Usually she was a quiet, neat sleeper who didn’t disturb her bed much. And the rest of it registered. She was naked.

  That startled her the rest of the way to full consciousness. She never slept in the buff. What if there was a fire and she had to race outside to safety? She rolled over onto her back and groaned as her entire body protested, sore. God, she felt like she’d been run over by a truck. Vague memory of that exact thing nearly happening tickled the edges of her fuzzy brain.

  Memory of Trent came back to her. He’d been such a smooth operator, and she’d been so blessed eager to have him seduce her. Where was he now? Peeling one eyelid open, she groaned as sunlight creeping insidiously past the curtains pierced her skull like a sword. Agonizing pain exploded behind both eyes. No sign of Trent. He and his sexy tuxedo and bedroom eyes were gone. It was as if he’d never been here and knocked her world completely off its foundation.

  The old hurt stabbed at her heart. Everybody always left her. Every time she took a chance on caring about someone, she ended up all alone. Her parents. Her foster families. Even Sunny. They all abandoned her sooner or later. An urge to cry nearly overcame her. Was it too much just to want a normal life? To find a nice man, settle down in a modest home, have a few kids and a dog, and be happy?

  By way of an answer, her stomach gave a mighty, and threatening, heave. Moaning in pain, she forced herself upright and ran for the toilet. After duly worshipping at the throne of the porcelain god and emptying what little remained in her stomach from last night’s binge, she felt a few inches further away from death. But that wasn’t saying much. A shower sounded good, but the idea of listening to the pounding of water sent her back to bed showerless.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a hangover, and she’d never had one that even began to compare to this. Prepared to sleep for another, oh, decade, she crawled back into bed and threw an arm across her eyes.

  A jangling noise that nearly split her skull in two made her swear and dive for her cell phone on the nightstand. “’Lo,” she grumbled.

  “Hey, sis! I missed you leaving the party last night.”

  Oh, God. Did Sunny have to sound so darned perky this morning? “Sorry. I drank a little too much champagne, and then some guys lit up cigars. The smoke made me nauseous, so I snuck out early.”

  “Rats. I was hoping some hot guy picked you up and took you back to his place.”

  Visions of the hot guy who’d knocked her off her feet, and then brought her back to her room and knocked her world completely out of orbit flashed into her mind.

  Oh. My. God. Had she really asked him to... Had they really... She would never be able to look anyone from this wedding in the eye again... And she could never, ever, face him again... Mortification almost sent her back to the toilet a second time.

  “Chloe? Are you still there?”

  Her brain engaged belatedly. “Uhh, yeah. I’m here. Why are you calling me, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon?”

  “Aiden and I are at the airport. He won’t tell me where we’re going, but Jeff loaned us the Winston jet to get there. I just wanted to say goodbye. Aiden says I won’t have phone service where we’re headed.”

  “Wow. Sounds private and sexy. Have fun, eh?”

  “It’s my honeymoon and my hubby’s a hottie. How can I not have fun?” Sunny retorted, laughing.

  The cheerful sound nearly made Chloe’s eyeballs fall right out of her head. She pressed a hand to them to hold them in. “Love you, baby sis.”

  “Love you, big sis.”

  Chloe groaned as she disconnected the call and turned her cell phone completely off. She prayed to sleep off the mother of all hangovers before she had to go back to San Francisco tomorrow. And then she prayed fervently that Trent Hollings would leave town today and go somewhere far, far away. Forever. There was no way she could ever look him in the eye after what they—what she—had done last night.

  She took a solemn vow then and there never to touch alcohol again as long as she lived. The idea of losing all her inhibitions like that again made her positively ill. Who’d have guessed a few shots of whiskey would turn her into such a slut?

  Groaning in pain and embarrassment, she pulled the sheet up over her head and prayed for death. Or at least a long, long unconsciousness.

  * * *

  Trent burst into the conference room Jeff Winston had appropriated from the gentlemen’s club to do business in while he was here for the wedding. Several of the other Code X operatives were there, complete with their own genetically engineered mutations, and they all looked worried.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded without preamble.

  Jeff answered, “Novak scared up some video from a traffic camera and ran the license plates of the SUV that tried to run down Chloe Jordan last night.”

  “And?”

  “And it belongs to a corporation that doesn’t exist.”

  Trent frowned. “Come again?”

  “It’s registered to a dummy company. Address is a P.O. box that doesn’t exist, phone number is a fake and no company by that name is currently doing business in the United States. It’s a cover for someone.”

  “Like who?” he asked his boss.

  Jeff shrugged. “No idea. But it does lead me to believe it was no accident last night. Someone was out to hurt Chloe.”

  Trent replied grimly, “Wrong. Whoever gunned that SUV at her was out to kill her.”

  And that meant Code X had a problem. Chloe’s sister had just married one of Code X’s charter members—a guy who could hold his breath under water for over twelve minutes. And Chloe had spent the past two days in the company of the lot of them at various prewedding functions. How could her attempted murder not be aimed at the Code X team?

  Trent suggested hopefully, “She said she’s a forensic accountant. Maybe it was just a bit of revenge by an enemy she’s made in her job.”

  “Possible,” Jeff replied slowly. “If that’s the case, we’ll need a complete list of companies she has investigated.” Trent watched as his boss pulled out his cell phone and dialed Chloe’s cell phone number. As Jeff’s frown deepened and he didn’t speak into the device, Trent’s apprehension grew.

  Jeff put the phone down. “Her cell’s turned off.”

  Trent winced. “She probably turned it off so schmucks like us wouldn’t disturb her.” She was probably sleeping off her hangover. But he wasn’t about to share that little detail with the guys in this room. They would want to know how he knew that, and then they would inevitably draw the exactly correct conclusion. Frankly, it was none of their damned business how he and Chloe had spent the evening. Hell, even if he told them exactly what the two of them had done, these guys would n
ever believe it. They would guffaw that quiet, controlled Chloe Jordan couldn’t possibly be that wild.

  Hah. Little did they know. He was a pretty adventurous guy in the sack, but that girl had made him blush a time or two last night. She was some woman.

  “Maybe someone should go to her room and check on her,” Jeff suggested, startling Trent out of recollections that were going to get him all hot and bothered very fast.

  “Nah. I’m sure she’s just sleeping. She was pretty wiped out last night.”

  “You walked her to her room and locked her inside sit?” Jeff asked.

  “Yes. I searched her suite from top to bottom before I left. She clearly wasn’t planning on going out again last night and was safe and sound when I left her.”

  Of course, she’d also been sexually sated and sleeping like the dead when he slipped out of her bed. She no doubt would need most of today to sleep off the booze and sex, though. A few of the things she’d asked for were going to leave her good and sore for a couple of days, but he’d been careful to do nothing she wouldn’t recover from.

  He wasn’t sure he would recover anytime soon, though. How was any woman going to top that for him?

  “Rather than bother her, couldn’t we call her employer and ask for a list of companies she’s investigated?” one of the twins, recent Code X additions with truly scary mental skills, suggested.

  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...