Flash of Death

“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 never 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?