Flash of Death

by Cindy Dees

  Her mouth curved into a slow smile. “I’m game if you are.”

  Trent laughed quietly. “Ahh, sweet Chloe. You are a brave woman. Let’s see what we can do about that empty feeling.”

  He shifted until he rested between her thighs, supporting his weight on his elbows. He didn’t move. He just lay there, staring down at her. And the strangest thing happened. Her body started, unbelievably, to respond to him once more. He didn’t touch her, or kiss her, or even move against her. He just continued to stare deep into her eyes. It was if he’d stripped her soul bare and gained some sort of magical power over it. All she had to do was remember the pleasure and lust he’d brought forth from her and it was all right there. The building heat, the jangling need, the wild rush toward completion.

  “How do you do that?” she whispered, amazed.

  He merely smiled, his gaze enigmatic. And when she thought she was going to explode yet again, he thankfully shifted. Male flesh pressed impatiently against her and she shifted to bring their bodies into perfect alignment. And then he filled her, indeed. The stretching sensation was extraordinary, her ultrasensitized flesh weeping its pleasure.

  She unraveled in a matter of seconds, crying out against his shoulder as he began to move within her. The exquisite pleasure went on forever, growing in force and power as he surged toward some unseen destination, drawing her with him. She hung on to him with legs and internal muscles wrapping herself around him body and soul and clinging tightly as he took her to the stars one last time.

  As her now hoarse cries built in the back of her throat and the volcano gathered itself to explode one last time and incinerate them both, he froze, tensing against her.

  “Do you surrender?” he demanded, his voice rasping with desperate control tenuously maintained.

  “What?” she gasped.

  “Do you surrender? Unconditionally and completely?”

  “Yes,” she groaned as he slammed into her, shoving her over the edge and into the heart of the beast. They burned up together, hanging on to one another for dear life as the volcano took them both. Her flesh and his fused into one. They had no beginning and end, just this moment of scorching perfection they’d made together.

  Consumed and reborn in the same instant, she lost herself in Trent’s eyes and found herself staring back.

  They must have stayed that way for a long time, but she’d lost all sense of time passing in the wonder and discovery of it all. She’d had no idea...never guessed...but then, what they’d just done went a lot deeper than mere sex....

  And then it dawned on her. This was what love felt like.

  She let go of the headboard then and wrapped her arms around the man who’d finally had the courage to break down her stupid walls and silly misconceptions to truly and unconditionally love her. And then she cried.

  * * *

  Trent was deeply alarmed when Chloe burst into tears without warning. He’d meant to knock her off her rocker with great sex, not make her sob uncontrollably in his arms. He rolled onto his side and gathered her against him, completely flummoxed.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” he murmured into her tangled hair.

  “Nothing,” she mumbled wetly against his chest.

  Huh? Women were the damnedest creatures, sometimes. He tried again. “What’s upsetting you? Tell me.”

  “I’m happy.” She hiccupped in punctuation to her declaration.

  “You want me to fix that? Am I supposed to return you to your previously unhappy state?” God, he was confused.

  “No, silly.” A sobbing breath. “I’m crying because I’m happy and there’s nothing to fix.”

  “Oh.” Well okay, then. He’d never made a woman cry because the sex had been so great. He relaxed and drew her across his chest as he rolled over onto his back. She was warm and silken and boneless against him, just the way a satisfied woman should be. He was feeling pretty damned boneless himself, at the moment.

  They relaxed like that for a long time. Long enough that he was just on the verge of slipping into unconsciousness before it dawned on him that he was actually falling asleep without drug assistance. Go figure. Epic sex apparently cured his insomnia. He drifted once more, reveling in the feeling of going to sleep with this gradual, natural ease.

  Chloe murmured against his chest, “I know you’ll leave me someday, and I’ll probably be too mad to tell you then, but thank you for this night.”

  His eyes popped open and his body abruptly tensed. So much for sleep. “What do you mean I’ll leave you?” he demanded.

  She rolled off his chest and laid on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She answered matter-of-factly, “It’s not like you’ve ever made any secret of your lifestyle. You’re a playboy. You travel the world, and lord knows, the beaches you hang out on are full of girls all too eager to jump in the sack with you. Why would a hot guy like you settle down with a girl like me?”

  He pushed up onto an elbow to glare down at her.

  She continued, not looking over at him, “Denver was a casual hookup for you, and had someone not tried to kill me, we would never have seen each other again.”

  He’d been plotting ways to see her again before he’d ever climbed out of her bed that night in Denver. “Yes, we damned well would have seen each other again,” he burst out.

  That made her look his way. She recoiled, and he realized he was probably glaring daggers at her. Tough. She was really pissing him off. “News flash, Chloe. What we shared tonight was damned special. Once-in-a-lifetime stuff.”

  “Well sure, it was the best sex I’ve ever had, but I’m not like you. I don’t have a ton of experience.”

  “That was not sex! That was making love, dammit!” He probably shouldn’t be yelling at her like this, but he couldn’t seem to help it. She seriously thought tonight had been some casual thing for him?

  “I bared my soul to you, Chloe, and I thought you’d done the same to me.” He exploded out of bed, too agitated to lie still another instant. He moved around the room fast, grabbing up bits and pieces of his clothes. He yanked a fresh shirt out of his bag and pulled it over his head.

  Chloe was sitting up in bed, the sheets pooled around her waist, a red rose petal clinging to her left breast just over her heart. “How in the hell do you do that, Trent?”

  He whirled to glare at her. “Do what?” he snapped.

  “You move so fast my eye can barely follow the movement. No human being moves like that. What have they done to you?”

  “They,” he spit out the word angrily, “saved my life. They gave me stem cell transplants that restored my muscle tone and then some. Jeff Winston saved my life, but to do so he had to turn me into a superhero. Have you got a problem with that?”

  She just stared, apparently struck speechless.

  On that note, he stormed out the door and slammed it shut with an entirely satisfying reverberation of angry sound behind him.

  The streets were dark and deserted. He stretched his legs into a ground-devouring run and flew into the darkness, losing himself in the night.

  * * *

  Chloe stood in the shadows of the room, peering around the edge of the curtains, using the rough cloth to hide her nakedness. And as Trent raced away from her at the speed of sound, a tear slid down her cheek.

  What had they done to him? Jeff Winston and his doctors had turned Trent into some kind of freak. The inability to sleep, the incredible metabolism, and the speed. God, his speed. She’d never seen a human being even begin to move that fast as he’d raced away from her. Was it a fair trade-off? Life in return for being a circus sideshow? He’d been gone so quickly she’d barely had time to register what she’d seen.

  And now she was alone. Again. Just like always, anyone she’d dared to love had run screaming from her at the first available opportunity. This time, it hadn’t been enough for the guy to run away at normal speed. No, this one had run from her at superhuman speed.

  She slid down the wall beside the window and curled i
nto a little ball, hugging her knees and burying her forehead on them. This time, she wasn’t going to recover. Trent had shown her just how magnificent love could truly be, and she had no illusions that she would ever find another man who could take her to the places he had. How could she ever settle for anything less?

  No doubt about it. He’d ruined her heart. For good.

  Chapter 11

  Sometime during the night, Chloe dragged herself back to bed and pulled the covers up over her head. When she awoke, the morning outside was foggy and gray, totally appropriate to her mood. There was no sign of Trent having returned to the room during the night.

  Heart heavy, she sat down at her computer and listlessly opened up Barry’s files to poke at them. The entire list of files took a while to load, and she stared at the blinking cursor, blank-eyed. Idly, she wondered how he’d managed to get access to all of these files. She didn’t come close to having the security codes to get half of these files....

  And then it hit her. How did Barry get access to all of these files? God, it had been right in front of her all along! Paradeo was a highly compartmentalized company. No one had access to all the financial information sitting before her. Barry had to have broken into multiple servers to retrieve all this information. But how?

  He had managed to get passwords and access codes for at least three different systems within the company. And if he could break into the servers, he could also break into every single account on those servers. Was he the thief?

  Immediate guilt for suspecting a dead man swamped her and she pushed away the notion. But her brain kept circling back to it. There truly was no one else at Paradeo who could be the thief. Even the Chief Financial Officer had to have other members of his staff open locked servers for him when he wanted access to them. It was the one cardinal rule of the firm. Nobody could touch everything.

  Except Barry had managed to do it. Had he been working alone? Or did he have a cadre of accomplices? Lord knew, enough money was missing for several people to live comfortably on it for a long time. Her calculations showed the missing funds to be on the order of twenty million dollars.

  This must be why he’d been murdered. But then Chloe frowned. Why had Miguel Herrera accused her of stealing money from Paradeo if the big bosses had already identified and eliminated the thief? They must think she was one of the accomplices.

  She picked up her cell phone and called Don Fratello but was passed immediately to his voice mail. “Don. It’s Chloe. I’ve found something big at Paradeo. This isn’t just a money laundering problem at all. It’s an embezzlement case, too. Barry Lind—that bookkeeper who was murdered a few days ago—was stealing money from Paradeo. Lots of it. We’re talking millions. I think he had help, though. If you look at his bank records, I’ll bet he’s been passing money to one or more people who’ve been helping him. The FBI should be able to track down his accomplices easily. Call me when you get this message.”

  Satisfied, she hung up the phone. A quick double-check of the last time money had been skimmed off an account made her jaw drop. Yesterday. Even after Barry had been brutally murdered, his accomplice had continued to steal. She had to give the unknown person credit for having nerves of steel. No way would she have kept taking money right from under Paradeo’s nose if she thought violent drug lords were on to her.

  There was still plenty of work left to be done tracking down where Paradeo’s money came from in the first place. The original money laundering case was still open. But it was time to hand that over to the FBI. It would take their resources and access to privileged banking information to track the transactions back to their various sources. She had all the starting points identified, though, and it would be an easy matter for the FBI to finish the investigation.

  Which left her at loose ends with not much work to do. And that meant she had plenty of time to ponder her own mess of a life. She glanced at the time. Nearly 8:00 a.m. Where was Trent? Was he ever coming back?

  Reluctantly, she picked up her cell phone again and stared at it doubtfully. She was too chicken to dial him directly after last night. He’d been so furious when she confronted him with the truth. But there was no way he would stick around for the long haul with any woman. It was written all over him. She’d merely read the obvious signs and called him on it.

  He was right about one thing, though. She had a knack for pushing men away from her. Slowly, she dialed the Winston Ops phone number.

  “Winston Ops. Good morning, Miss Jordan. What can we do for you today? Did you lose Trent again?”

  It was the duty controller, Novak. She steadied her voice as it started to tremble. “Actually, I did. He left last night a little after midnight and he’s still not back.” Her voice dropped to a tearful half whisper in spite of her best efforts as she confessed, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Trent ordered up a full security team for you sometime last night. I can look up the time if you want. It was before I came on duty. At any rate, they’re inbound to you now. Should be there in a couple of hours.”

  Oh, God. He’d washed his hands of her. Trent was handing her off to a bunch of strangers rather than look out for her himself. The pain of his departure cut right through her, eviscerating her soul. Her legs collapsed and she found herself sitting on the floor again, leaning against the bed this time.

  “Just a moment, ma’am. I’ll get Jeff.” God, did Novak have to sound so sympathetic? She was so pathetic.

  Jeff Winston’s voice came on the line in a matter of seconds. “What’s wrong, Chloe?”

  It was the last straw. He was so gentle and sounded so concerned. She slapped her hand over her phone’s microphone jack as a sob escaped her.

  “Chloe? Where’s Trent? What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  She dragged in another sobbing breath and then steadied herself. She had to get through this conversation. “I don’t know where he’s gone, Jeff. He left last night.” She added reluctantly, “We had a fight.”

  Give the man credit for not asking what about. Instead he went for the safer but obvious question. “Are you in a secure location right now?”

  “Yes. I’m in the hotel room Trent was using to do surveillance on my apartment.”

  “Stay there. We’ve got a team on a jet. They’ll land in San Francisco in about—” he paused while somebody no doubt supplied the answer “—two hours. They should be with you by noon.”

  “I don’t need your team,” she replied wearily. “I solved my case a little while ago. Or at least the part that was going to get me killed.”

  “Really?” Jeff responded with interest.

  She filled him in briefly, ending with an assurance that the FBI could take the case from here. The big dogs at Paradeo should find out the identity of Barry’s actual accomplice(s) just in time to call their dogs off her before they went to jail themselves for money laundering. “And so,” she concluded, “I’m pretty much off the hook.”

  Jeff made a noncommittal noise. “Still, I’d like to keep a few guys on you until the FBI’s investigation is wrapped up and Paradeo’s senior managers are behind bars. Just for your sister’s peace of mind.”

  “Why does everyone keeping using Sunny to guilt me into cooperating? She’s a grown woman and can take care of herself. She’s got Aiden and doesn’t need me anymore.”

  Jeff answered quietly, “We always need our family, Chloe. Sunny loves you wholeheartedly. She’d die if something happened to you. Why do you think she asked me to keep an eye on you in the first place? She was worried about your new line of work getting you into trouble. Frankly, if not for her concern, you could be dead right now.”

  “How’s that?” Chloe asked, startled.

  “It was because of her that I asked Trent to keep an eye on you at the wedding. Had he not been there to knock you out of the way, that SUV would have hit you.”

  Oh. My. God. Trent had spent the night with her in Denver because he was under orders to? He hadn’t even wanted to hook up with he
r in the first place! Her humiliation was complete. And then she’d asked him to do all those things... God, what he must think of her. Poor, desperate, spinster sister of his buddy’s hot bride. Where was a rock for her to crawl under and never come out?

  She mumbled something incoherent and all but hung up on Jeff Winston. No way was she sticking around for another team of his guys to come and take pity on her. Gee whiz, maybe they’d give her a group orgy if she acted pitiful enough. Her skin crawled at what Jeff and his men must think of her.

  Oh, God...what must Trent think of her? Not that it had kept him from having sex with her whenever he wanted it, of course. In the wake of her gut-squirming humiliation, anger took root, growing like Jack’s beanstalk until it reached the sky and beyond. How dare he?

  Literally shaking with fury, she punched out Winston Ops’s phone number once more.

  “Hi, Chloe, what can I do for you, now?” Novak asked cautiously.

  “Where’s Trent?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know you can track his cell phone. You did it before. Where is he right this second?” Her tone of voice brooked no refusal.

  “Uhh, just a sec,” Novak muttered. “He’s in Malibu. Or rather, off the coast of Malibu.”

  “Like in the ocean?” Chloe asked in surprise.

  “Yes. I’d imagine he’s surfing. He’s pretty good at it, you know. World champ two years ago—”

  She hung up on Trent’s accomplishments. Whatever. World champion surfer, world champion jerk. Same diff. Eyes narrowed, she considered how to find him and give him a serious piece of her mind. Her car. It was in the parking garage underneath her building across the street. She had to get to it without Herrera or whoever might be staking out her place spotting her.

  She headed downstairs to ask the owner of the B and B for a favor. If the guy could buy Trent a laptop, he could certainly fetch her car for her. Sure enough, the fellow was more than happy to trot across the street and get her car for his best customer’s girlfriend.