by Cindy Dees
“A couple of days!” she exclaimed.
Rather than try to explain the unexplainable, he backed out her door and headed for his bags and his bottle of pills. He started as her voice came from directly behind him. “What are those? Superstrength Xanax?”
“Something like that.” In point of fact, the medication was a custom blend of powerful sleeping medications and a surgical anesthesia drug. The doctors running the Code X program hadn’t found any other remedy for his intractable insomnia so far.
He popped the pill dry and kicked off his shoes. Chloe came back with a blanket and a pillow for him as he stretched out on the couch. She handed them over, murmuring, “Sweet dreams.”
He plumped the pillow under his head as the medication began to have its effect, and he gratefully sank into its embrace. He replied groggily, “If I dream about you, they will be.”
* * *
As Trent passed out, Chloe retreated into her bedroom and breathed a sigh of relief. Facing him after today’s epic mistake on her living room floor was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. It had been bad enough to have hot sex with the man when she was under the influence. But this time...this time she had no excuse at all. She’d jumped that man like a complete hussy, and she’d been stone-cold sober.
She laid her head down on her desk in humiliation and self-loathing. She was not that kind of woman! In the hippie, free-love world she’d spent her childhood exposed to, she’d seen plenty of people happy to jump in the sack with anybody who came along. She’d always promised herself she would be different. Modest and respectable. How did that old adage go? Square parents raised round children, and round parents raised square children? She was a square, darn it. She was not round!
Trent brought out a side of her she’d vowed never, ever to let gain control of her. She was not a captive of passion, was not following in her parents’ disastrous footsteps! She would control her life, and she would not cave in to these base desires Trent roused in her.
No more slips. He was strictly hands-off from now on. But a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach warned her the promise was going to be a lot harder to keep than it sounded.
She took a hot shower, attempting to scrub the feel of his hands and lips off her skin with the scratchiest loofah she owned. But it didn’t work. Even after she’d toweled dry, she could feel him on her. It was like he’d branded a memory of his body on hers.
She had to draw a line with him and stand by it. If she didn’t, she stood in real danger of losing control of her feelings, her desires...heck, her entire life! And that wouldn’t do at all. She’d mapped out the life she wanted for herself, and it didn’t include a high-speed surfing bum with no job and hot sex on his mind.
Girding herself to face the monstrous temptation that was Trent Hollings, she stepped out into her living room. He was out cold. As in she could pick up his hand and drop it across his stomach without disturbing him even a little.
Man, those sleeping pills of his were powerful. She scooped up the bottle and did a quick internet search of the chemicals and dosages listed on the label. Dang. One of these pills could drop ten men...and very possibly kill one man. How did his body tolerate them?
She poked around on the internet for information on insomnia. When that didn’t yield anything helpful, she moved on to researching extraordinary human speed. A few articles talked about how world-class sprinters had better quick twitch reflexes than most other humans, but nothing she found could explain Trent’s incredible speed.
The cab had been going well over twenty miles per hour as it pursued Trent. And he’d been pulling away from the vehicle. Which meant he was measurably one of the fastest human beings ever recorded.
Who was he? Or more accurately, what was he? If only Sunny were back from her honeymoon. Maybe she could shed some light on Trent’s superhuman capabilities. After all, Sunny had been hanging out with Trent and his buddies for the past several months at the Winston compound.
Winston...hmm. That gave her an idea. She searched the internet for all of Winston’s many subsidiary companies. One in particular caught her attention. Winston Computer Research, Ltd. was a small firm run by Jeff Winston personally. Trent was listed as an employee, as were all of the groomsmen in Sunny’s wedding, including Chloe’s new brother-in-law, Aiden McKay.
But what really made her sit up and stare was the list of other staff members. Over a dozen physicians and medical researchers were employed there. What did doctors have to do with computer research?
Using her temporary FBI access code, she poked into the bureau’s records of Winston Computer Research, Ltd. and immediately ran into a firewall declaring the records she sought classified.
Was Jeff’s company working with the government in some capacity? She glanced through her open door to the big man sloppily sprawled, unconscious, on her sofa. Was Trent involved with the government in some way? Was his speed the reason?
A shocking thought struck her. Or was his speed a result of working with the government?
She walked out into the living room and gave his foot an experimental nudge. He didn’t react in any way. She turned on the television full blast. Nada. She added a radio and her stereo system to the din. Still no reaction. Frowning, she fetched a pair of pot lids from her kitchen and clanged them together directly over his head, succeeding only in making him roll over.
If she made much more noise, her neighbors were going to call the police. She turned everything off and sat down to stare at Trent sleeping away. She might as well take advantage of the opportunity to learn all she could about him.
Being careful not to disturb the contents, she searched his luggage and discovered an array of high-tech gear that looked like it would mostly be used in surveillance—microphones, headsets, binoculars and various small electronic gadgets that looked suspiciously like bugs. But nothing in his equipment or personal possessions suggested he was any sort of secret supersoldier.
She returned to the internet to see what it could tell her about Trent’s life. His family was, indeed, worth tens of millions and he was, indeed, rumored to have a substantial trust fund. His acceptance to Stanford was notable; he must have been a good high school student, and she knew him to be highly intelligent. He’d won several local surfing competitions during the first three years of an unremarkable college career. But then he apparently dropped out of school for a while. She found one reference on a surfing website that noted he’d withdrawn from a big competition due to his ongoing illness. The date placed it in the summer before his senior year of college.
An illness? What illness?
Her blood ran cold as another website gave it a name. Spinal muscular atrophy. As she read a description of the disease, she couldn’t reconcile its debilitating effects with the man sleeping in her living room. He was the picture of health—and more.
She kept digging. Trent had spent the last several years traveling competing in—and winning—major surfing competitions. Clearly, his SMA had miraculously resolved itself. Did that have anything to do with all those doctors working at the “computer research” firm? An uneasy feeling nagged at her gut. She didn’t see the connection, but she could feel it there, just out of sight.
His statement that he played for a living appeared to be mostly accurate, for he showed up as often in gossip columns these days as the sports pages. Clearly, he never lacked for female company. Which made his hookup with her in Denver all the weirder. He’d had his choice of all the single women at Sunny’s wedding, yet he’d chosen her. As Chloe recalled, there had been plenty of good-looking women panting after him during the reception.
When he woke up, she’d have to ask him about it. If he could interrogate her about her personal life, she had no problem doing the same to him. Her internet sources exhausted and Trent still out cold, she resorted to looking at Barry’s files.
Most of the records were boring and straightforward. However, after an hour or so, the very boring-ness of the files m
ade her suspicious. As convoluted as the company’s accounting methods were, there wasn’t an error to be found anywhere. No company’s records were this perfect.
She performed an online cross-check of a random set of receipts against the scanned originals of the invoices. Huh. The columns of pristine sales figures didn’t exactly match up to the actual transactions. This must be how they were laundering money. The discrepancies weren’t large, a few dollars here and there. Except it looked like money was disappearing from the accounts, not showing up in them. Laundered money would be flowing into legitimate accounts, not out of them.
A bloodhound on the scent, now, she dug deeper into the invoice files. She lost track of time and was startled to realize it had gotten dark outside when she finally looked up from her screen.
Trent had been asleep for nearly eight hours. Was something wrong with him? Should she try to wake him up? She moved into the living room to examine him. He was so still she laid an alarmed hand on his chest to see if he was still breathing.
Without warning, his hand shot up and grabbed her wrist in a movement so blindingly fast she barely saw it. She jumped, badly startled.
“What’s wrong?” he bit out, sitting up so fast he nearly knocked her off her feet.
“Nothing’s wrong. You’ve just been asleep a long time and I was checking on you.”
“How long?” he rasped. His throat sounded dry.
“Eight hours.”
He stared at her. “Eight? I never sleep that long.”
“Well you just did.”
“What have you done to me?” he demanded as he headed for the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water.
She watched, bemused, as he immediately set about broiling steak and boiling potatoes. The question wasn’t what she’d done to him. It was what he’d done to her. No man had ever made her insides feel all quivery and uncertain like this.
Out of reflex, Chloe went on the offensive. “So, Trent. Tell me about the medical research you’re involved with at Winston Computer Research. Doctor Gemma Jones is in charge of the program, I believe?”
The pan of boiling water slipped out of his hand and crashed to the floor, splashing scalding water all over her kitchen. And Trent jumped out of the way fast enough to avoid a single drop of it touching him. She had never, in all her life, seen another human being move that fast.
“You’re not just fast. You’re freakishly fast.” Chloe surged to her feet. “Who are you?” she demanded.
He looked up at her grimly, his lips pressed stubbornly together.
“Or should I ask, what are you?”
Chapter 7
Trent knew in his gut that diverting probably wouldn’t work, but still, he had to try. “I think we’ve been over that already. I’m a rich bum who goofs off and doesn’t do anything more serious than surf big waves.”
“And yet, you’re on Jeff Winston’s payroll. In fact, you’re the man he chose to entrust my life to. Now why is that, Mr. Surfer Bum?”
Frustrated and cornered, he just stared at her, willing her to leave it alone. Of course, she didn’t.
“Could it have something to do with that lightning-fast speed of yours? Tell me, Trent. Were you born with that speed? Or does this have something to do with your miracle cure of a supposedly incurable degenerative muscle disease?”
“You found out about my SMA, huh?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“It never came up in conversation. And I’m over it.” The next words out of his mouth came unbidden and he couldn’t have stopped them if he tried. “Is there any history of spinal muscular atrophy in your family?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Thank God.” Their children would be okay. He’d still insist on genetic counseling to make sure she didn’t carry a recessive gene for SMA, of course. But odds were it would have shown up at some point in her family tree if the gene was there.
She’d already circled back to the speed issue. “If you were that fast as a kid, your parents or coaches would have pushed you into sports. You’d be a superstar playing for the professional sports team of your choice or an Olympic track star.”
In point of fact, if he used his skills to play any sport full out, he would probably rewrite the record books for it.
“That means,” she continued relentlessly, “you came by this speed as an adult. Now how is that?”
He tried not to wince or give her any hint that she was on the right track, but it didn’t slow her down. He mopped up the spilled water on the floor and started a new pot of potatoes.
“Then the self-avowed trust fund bum takes an actual job. And the job is with an obscure research company that, although it’s supposedly a computer research firm, has a shocking number of physicians and medical researchers on staff. Why is that, do you suppose?”
He stared at her from the kitchen, doing his damnedest to hide his dismay. “You’re the one on the logic roll. You tell me.”
“You’ve had something done to you,” she accused.
“Like what?” His voice might sound mild, but his guts were jumping all over the place. Most of it was panic that she’d somehow uncovered his secret, but a tiny part of him actually wanted her to figure it out. Sometimes it was damned hard having a secret like his and nobody to share it with. Sure, the gang at Winston Enterprises knew about the Code X research, but that wasn’t the same as having someone personal—a friend, or confidante, or even a girlfriend—who knew how extraordinary he was.
He checked himself. Extraordinary might not be exactly the right word for it. Strange. Bizarre. Weird. All of those words applied to him and his colleagues. Each of the men and women in Code X had a different enhanced ability. Some were massively strong or could see for miles, while others could calculate complex math equations like a computer or swim like a fish. As for him—he was Fast. Capital F.
“I have no idea what they did to you,” Chloe answered. “Maybe they dipped you in a vat of radioactive chemicals or hooked you up to machines or injected you with some bizarre cocktail of drugs. But you’re definitely not normal.”
He did wince then. She was right. He was not normal. But that didn’t mean he could admit it to her. Mentally, he sighed. He knew what he had to do. He hated it, but sometimes the only decent defense was a good offense.
“Like you’re one to talk,” he retorted. “You act like a frigid virgin ninety-nine percent of the time, and then all of a sudden you turn into a totally different woman, uninhibited and unbelievably hot. Why is that, Chloe? Why are you so repressed? And where did you even learn to imagine some of the things you had me do to you in Denver? Not that I’m complaining, mind you. That was a night I’ll never forget and one I’d like to duplicate. But what’s the deal? You’re like Jekyll and Hyde.”
Yup. That distracted her. She reddened from hairline to neckline and spluttered in what looked like a combination of outrage and embarrassment. And guilt. She knew he was right. And he’d lay odds she knew the answers to his questions, too.
“C’mon, Chloe. What gives?”
“If I thought you actually gave half a darn about me, I might just tell you,” she snapped. “But all you care about is yourself. Having a good time. Where the next party’s going to be and how you’re going to get the next chick into the sack with you.”
So. It was brutal honesty time, was it? He could do that. And he was just frustrated enough to take the gloves off. “Since you seem to have knocked yourself out on the internet, researching me while I was asleep, when was the last time I showed up in a tabloid wearing a piece of blonde arm fluff?”
She frowned and didn’t answer.
“I’ll tell you when. Three summers ago. I gave up the partying and the women, cold turkey.”
“Why?”
“Because Jeff Winston forced me to take a look at myself and my life. He asked me if I respected the man I had become, and I realized I didn’t. With his help, I decided to make a change.”
“How big a change?” Chloe challenged.
Damn. He should have known she’d be like a dog with a bone in its teeth and refuse to let go.
“A big change,” he allowed. “I can neither confirm nor deny any of your speculation, but I will say the changes in my life have been dramatic.”
“That’s a word for it,” she muttered.
“Okay, your turn,” he announced. “Time for you to share something about yourself with me.”
She squirmed uncomfortably, and he felt like a cad. He’d successfully avoided giving her any real information about his physical transformation and had now put her on the hot seat. It was a mean tactic. But what choice had she left him?
“When was the first time you ever had sex?” he challenged.
“That’s damned personal,” she snapped.
“Chicken to be honest with me?”
Her gaze narrowed. Yup, he’d pegged her as the type who wouldn’t refuse a dare. She glared as she bit out, “High school.”
“Did you like it?”
“No!” she blurted with enough vehemence to make him grin. “It was disgusting. And messy.”
“So you’ve always been a neat freak?”
“Growing up, everything around me was so chaotic that I craved order. I’m not actually obsessive-compulsive like most people accuse me of being. I just want a modicum of calm. Structure. Predictability.”
“And what made your childhood so chaotic?”
She sighed. “My parents were, in every clichéd sense of the word, hippies. They ran all over the world championing environmental causes. Sometimes they dragged me and my sister around after them. We had no steady school, let alone a steady home or steady income. We never knew where the next meal was coming from or if it would come. And yes, they were heavily into the whole free-love thing. Orgies were frequent events in my world.”
Trent caught the tiny shiver of recollection that rippled through her. “And when they weren’t dragging you along to orgies?” he asked.
“We got dumped with various friends and neighbors so they could protest.” A note of bitterness crept into her voice. “Their causes were more important than their own children, apparently.”