Flash of Death

Barry? She looked up, surprised, at her telephone. What was he doing calling her? He was a bookkeeper and did basic data-entry work for the firm. He was very good at his job but not particularly social with his coworkers. Chloe considered him at best a casual acquaintance.

His tense voice continued, “I didn’t know who else to call. Can we meet somewhere to talk? Outside of the office. Call me as soon as you get this message.”

Bingo. This was exactly the sort of break her professors had told her to look for during an investigation. The statistics were shocking as to how often the break came from a low-level worker. They always knew all the dirt.

Eagerly, she dialed the number Barry had left for her. “Hi, it’s Chloe. I just got back into town and got your message—”

He cut her off sharply. “Can’t talk now. Julio’s after work? Say six o’clock?”

“Uhh, sure. I’ll be there.” Wow. He really sounded nervous. Her stomach leaped in anticipation. He must have stumbled onto something big. Perfect. The faster she took down Paradeo, the faster she could get away from thugs like this Miguel Herrera guy.

She unpacked, shopped, finished her laundry, and generally put her life in order while she waited for six o’clock to roll around. Finally, it was time to go. The streets were crowded at this time of day as workers poured out of their offices and headed for home.

Barry was waiting for her when she got there. His sandy brown buzz cut was distinctive in the shadows. The guy was not ex-military, but at a glance, someone might mistake his short hair and beefy build for that of an ex-Marine. He looked past her nervously as she slipped into the booth, predictably a dark one in the back corner.

“Hey, Barry. How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” he muttered without moving his lips, his gaze sliding away from her and over her right shoulder. Wow. He was acting really nervous.

She smiled broadly. “A word of advice. If you act like a criminal with a big secret, people will watch you more closely. Relax. Try to look natural. No one’s going to walk up to the table and shoot us.”

“That’s what you think,” he grumbled. His hands were planted on the table like it was going to fly away if he didn’t hold it down.

She reached a sympathetic hand out to him and gave his icy fingers a squeeze. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“So, yesterday I was working late. With the end of the quarter coming up and you out of town, we were behind.” She nodded her understanding. “Anyway, I took a break to go to the bathroom. Except the one on our floor was closed for cleaning. No problem. I went upstairs to use the john.” A sheen of sweat broke out on his upper lip, and he paused to mop at it with a cocktail napkin.

“So there I am, sitting on the can doing my business, and these guys walk in. And they’re talking, see. In Spanish. My wife’s from Mexico, and I’ve learned it from her over the years. Anyway, these two guys are talking about needing to destroy records.”

“What kinds of records?” she prompted while he paused to mop his face again and grimaced.

“Financial records from Paradeo. They said there was this new accountant poking around and they had to get rid of the paper trail.” His gaze darted toward the door yet again. Man, this guy was tense. And the feeling was contagious.

If Paradeo’s executives were onto her, she would never get the dirt on them. They’d erase everything from the company’s computers and she’d never find a trace of anything. She asked, “Who were the executives? Did you recognize their voices?”

“I think one of them was the new guy. Herrerra. Oh. You haven’t heard about him, yet, have you? New Chief of Security. Supposed to be a real hard-ass.”

Crud. The last thing she needed was a violent killer suspicious of her.

“What did you do?” she asked Barry belatedly.

“I waited till they left, then I went back to my desk and I copied every last financial record I could lay my hands on in the company’s computers.”

Chloe gaped. “Are you serious?”

“Yup.” He reached into his jacket pocket then laid his palm flat on the table and slid it toward her. “Take this,” he muttered ventriloquist style.

She laid her hand over his and as he withdrew his, she felt the oblong shape of a flash drive. She palmed it unobtrusively and stuck it in the pocket of her jeans. “What do you want me to do with these files?”

“You are the new accountant they were talking about, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then poke around and see what you can find, eh?”

She blinked, startled at how directly this guy was telling her to uncover the dirt in his company. “What do you have against Paradeo?”

His gaze hardened. “My wife is Mexican, remember? I have heard of Miguel Herrera’s associates. If Paradeo is mixed up with animals like that, then the company needs to go down.”

“Fair enough. I’ll take a look at these files and see what we’ve got.” She finished the soda the waitress left her and tried to engage Barry in small talk for long enough that it wouldn’t look suspicious if she got up and left. But the guy was so freaked-out he couldn’t follow the thread of even the simplest conversation. Eventually, she gave up and signaled for the bill. And all the while, that flash drive was burning a hole in her pocket. She couldn’t wait to see what it revealed.

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.