Flash of Death

by Cindy Dees

  She swerved away, startled. How did that thing know her name? It must use some sort of credit card or I.D. sensor as people walked past it. Still, it was creepy. She stepped into a glass elevator that turned out to have no buttons in it. Great. How did this thing work?

  “Where can I take you?” a honey-smooth woman’s voice purred.

  “Millennium Health Club.”

  “Right away,” the elevator intoned. The doors slid shut and she shot up a clear tube into the innards of the building. She was duly disgorged on the sixth floor with an admonition by the elevator to have a great workout. Wow. Double creepy.

  A blessedly human girl with a perky voice and entirely too perky body welcomed her at the front counter.

  “I’m here to meet Chip Jones,” Chloe said. “Is he here, yet?” She highly doubted Trent had managed to peel away from that crowd of surfing fans and somehow beat her here, but she had to ask.

  “Let me check.” Perky girl scanned a flat-screen monitor quickly. “I’m sorry. He hasn’t arrived, yet.”

  “Then I guess I’d like to rent a private workout room or whatever it’s called. He should be joining me shortly.”

  “Are you a member here, ma’am?”

  Crud. Now what was she supposed to do. “Uhh, no. I’m not. But Chip is.”

  “No problem. I’ll just use Mr. Jones’s member number. After you try our facilities, perhaps you’d like to consider joining. I’m sure Mr. Jones will give you a recommendation, and I’d be happy to go over our member services with you. Our facilities are soundproof, and use one-way glass to the outside. They’re completely private....”

  Chloe pasted on a fake smile and mumbled something incoherent as the girl finished her canned spiel, passed her a plastic key card and pointed down a hallway to her right. This place looked like an office, not a gym. She stepped into the designated workout room and stared at the array of weights, mats, mirrors and machines before her. A dozen people could work out in here and never get in each other’s way!

  While she waited for Trent, she strolled around the private room, examining the various computerized machines and trying to figure out what a few of them did. Bored, she swung a personal television around on its arm to face her. Idly, she stepped onto a treadmill and strolled along to the drone of an all-news channel.

  She heard the door open quietly behind her. Thank God. Trent was finally here. She turned to smile a greeting at him...and screamed as four strange men burst into the room and charged her. She dived under the treadmill’s hand rail and behind a stand of assorted dumbbells. Picking one up, she heaved it at the men, shouting for all she was worth for help. But the blasted soundproof walls undoubtedly had completely contained her cries for help. One man went left and another went right. She kicked and scratched and bit as they grabbed her, but she didn’t stand a chance against them all. They bodily picked her up to subdue her.

  Cautiously, one of the men released his grip on her and fetched several large towels from the heated rack in the corner. He wrapped her tightly in the thick terry cloth, effectively immobilizing her. He stuffed a wadded washcloth in her mouth for good measure. Furious and frightened, she glared at her captors.

  “Here’s how this is going to work,” the towel guy said in a Hispanic accent. “We’re going to walk out of here like we’re all friends and everything’s fine. If you so much as look at anyone wrong, we’re going to kill the girl at the front counter and anyone else who tries to help you.”

  Horror roared through Chloe. These guys were going to murder innocent people on her account? That was awful!

  “You got it?” he demanded.

  She nodded, deflated. No way would she be responsible for someone else’s life being taken. It was bad enough dealing with her guilt over Barry’s death. And he’d taken those files entirely on his own with no prompting from her.

  “Okay. We’re gonna let you go now. But my guys all have guns. See?”

  The other thugs obliged by flashing pistol butts under their sports coats.

  “Not a peep out of you. Not one hint there’s a problem,” her captor warned as he reached for the door handle.

  Chloe walked as slowly as she could out of the room and down the hall, hoping against hope that Trent would step out of the elevator and rescue her. But he didn’t. The phalanx of armed men hustled her into the elevator.

  “Going down?” the elevator asked pleasantly.

  “Lobby,” the leader growled.

  “Si, señor. Tiene una tarde agradable.”

  How on earth did the elevator know to tell this guy to have a nice evening in Spanish? She risked commenting, “Even the elevator knows who you are. And so does my bodyguard. He’s going to track you down and take you out if you don’t turn me loose right now.”

  Her threat only made her captors laugh. So much for intimidating these guys. Her throat went dry when she contemplated what these men might do to her. All of a sudden, she understood all too well Don Fratello’s comment that some things were worse than death. When they reached the street she was going to put up a fight whether these jerks liked it or not. But when they stepped out of the elevator, they didn’t head for the lobby. Rather, they turned left and hustled her deeper into the building.

  They used a dim, concrete stairwell that stood in marked contrast to the shiny modernity of the rest of the building, and she stumbled down the steps as someone shoved her from behind.

  “I’m going to fall and break my neck if you push me again like that,” she snapped over her shoulder. “And obviously your boss doesn’t want me dead, or you guys would have shot me already.”

  Her captors scowled and one of them made a rude comment in Spanish about what a bitch she was. She didn’t bother acknowledging that she’d understood him. The steel security door at the base of the stairs opened to reveal a grim underground parking garage. Nobody would hear her scream down here.

  They had to pass between a row of parked cars, and she faked a stumble against a door handle in hopes of snagging her shirt and leaving behind a thread or something to indicate she’d been here.

  Her plan worked a little better than she’d anticipated. Her entire shirt snagged on the handle, and when one of the thugs gave her a hard shove, the hem tore with a loud ripping sound. She steadied herself against the car’s window, leaving what she hoped was a perfect handprint on the glass.

  The leader, who was in front, growled something about hurrying up, and the guy behind her shoved her again. He could really quit doing that. It was starting to get on her nerves.

  No surprise, she got shoved into the middle seat of the silver SUV and men squeezed in on either side of her. She was surprised, however, that they didn’t seem to care if she saw where they were taking her. That couldn’t be good. They must expect to kill her after they extracted whatever they wanted from her.

  But when the SUV pulled to a stop in front of its destination a short time later, she abruptly understood. They’d taken her to Paradeo’s offices. And that was when she broke out in a cold sweat.

  Chapter 8

  Trent was on the verge of doing violence to his surfing buddy by the time he managed to peel himself away from the crowd the guy’d blithely gathered around to hem him in.

  He searched frantically for their pursuers. Were they lurking nearby waiting for him to make a move? But there was no sign of a single one of them. That answered that. This wasn’t about him and Code X at all. As he’d suspected, these guys were purely after Chloe. He swore violently and his terror climbed another notch.

  If she’d done as he ordered and run for it, she’d had enough of a head start that she should have been able to get outside and fade into the crowd. Maybe grab a taxi or duck into a store and hide. If. Should. Maybe. Dangerous words to hang a person’s life and limb on. Particularly a woman he cared about greatly.

  He didn’t panic often, but he panicked now. She had to be okay. The idea of her injured or worse made his chest feel like someone had blown a massive hole thr
ough it.

  She was no doubt cooling her jets at the Millennium Club, bored out of her mind and wondering where the heck he was. He would join her there, and she was going to laugh her head off at him for worrying that she couldn’t take care of herself.

  He headed outside of the Moscone Center to hail a cab, and while he waved at taxis he dialed her cell phone. It rang three times, clicked, and then cut off. That was weird. Not only had she not answered, but it hadn’t kicked over to voice mail. The hole in his chest expanded until it choked off his breathing. He dialed again, praying fervently that her wireless network had just dropped the call. This time, he got a message that the number he’d dialed was not available.

  Swearing in a continuous stream, he jumped into a cab and bit out the address of the Millennium Club and urged the driver to hurry. He’d run, but the streets were still crowded, and, at all costs, he couldn’t give away Code X by letting the public see his mad speed. Of course, telling a cabbie to hurry was like giving a crack addict a shot of adrenaline. The taxi ride turned into a death-defying stunt derby...and he didn’t care in the least.

  He raced past all the cool electronics in the health club’s lobby and fretted impatiently as the elevator whisked him up to the sixth floor. Racing to the health club’s front counter, he asked urgently, “Has Chip Jones arrived yet?”

  The receptionist smiled. “A woman showed up asking for him a while ago. And then those other men came and she left with them.”

  It was all Trent could do not to dive across the counter and grab her shirt. “What men?” he demanded sharply.

  The receptionist recoiled in alarm. “There were four of them. In suits. She walked out with them like she knew them.”

  “Let me see the room she was in,” he ordered. He was scaring the receptionist to death, but he had no time to play nice. Something was terribly wrong.

  “Of course,” the girl stammered. She led him down a hallway to a closed door and leaned down to swipe the master key card hanging from a lanyard around her neck. He barged past the girl into the room.

  Empty. Damn! The hum of the treadmill running was the next thing he noticed. And then the dumbbells scattered on the floor. As if they’d been tossed willy-nilly. Crap. Had Chloe been trying to defend herself?

  A pile of towels in the middle of the floor and a lone washcloth made no sense. He took another look at the washcloth. It was wadded up and looked damp. Like it had been shoved in someone’s mouth. He swore more violently.

  At least there wasn’t any sign of blood. If her captors merely planned to kill her, here would have been as good a place as any. These rooms were soundproof, and had he not come along demanding entrance, this room would have been left undisturbed for the rest of the evening. This was a very discreet club.

  Apparently, someone wanted to talk to her before she died. And that meant he had a window of time to find and rescue her. Possibly a very small one, but it was better than nothing.

  “Did they head down in the elevator?” he asked the girl tersely.

  “Uhh, yes. I guess so.”

  “How long ago?”

  “A few minutes.”

  “Is there a parking garage under this building?” he yelled as he sprinted for the exit.

  “Yes!” the girl called at his back.

  No time for the elevator. He slammed his shoulder against the stairwell door and burst through it, taking entire flights of stairs in a single leap as he practically flew downward. There was a chance...a tiny one...that her captors hadn’t left the building yet with her. He tore through the lobby and burst out onto the side street where the parking garage had to empty out. He looked left and right.

  A silver SUV was stopped at a red light about a block away. Was it the same one that had been following them earlier? He glanced at the black maw of the parking garage. Should he head inside to check for Chloe or should he follow that SUV on the chance that it was her?

  He had only a millisecond to make the decision. His gut said not to lose that SUV. He stretched his legs out into a full run, devouring the pavement with each stride as he tore toward the vehicle. The light turned green and it pulled away from him. No way was he losing it! He pushed for even greater speed, determined to catch the vehicle. It turned a corner, and he swerved after it, dodging pedestrians and ignoring the occasional squawk as he shoved past someone.

  Despite his incredible speed, the SUV gradually pulled away from him. He began to suck for air, and then to gasp for it. His thighs burned like acid, and muscles pushed beyond all human limits finally began to cramp and fail.

  Devastated, he searched the avenue ahead and could find no sign of his quarry. He glanced around to get his bearings. Maybe the police could pick up the trail. And that meant a quick call to Winston Ops to pull some strings with the San Francisco Police Department—

  It dawned on him abruptly that he was only a block from the Paradeo office. And it was in the same direction the SUV had been heading. What were the odds?

  He took off running again, this time at something resembling a normal human speed. It was the best his exhausted body could manage. And frankly, he was starting to feel a little light-headed. He must have burned through a gazillion calories with that mad dash across the city.

  Five minutes brought him to the Paradeo building. Be inside, Chloe. Be alive, baby.

  He burst into the lobby, which was deserted after business hours, and reluctantly admitted to himself that he’d better take the elevator up to Paradeo’s floor. It was immensely frustrating to have his body give out on him like this. Normally, anything he could imagine, he could do. Did comic book heroes ever feel like this?

  The elevator dinged open and he eased out to one side. The space yawning before him was dim. Only every tenth overhead light or so was lit. A cubicle farm stretched away from him, still and deserted. If thugs from Paradeo had grabbed her, they would take her someplace private and quiet to question her. His mind shied away from imagining them doing anything else to gentle Chloe.

  He slid along the wall, hugging the shadows and gliding silently across the carpeted floors. All of Paradeo’s offices were on this floor. They would probably take her someplace tucked away in the back of the building. Skirting the open cubicles, he passed a pair of conference rooms. A hallway narrowed before him and he slowed, easing toward the first closed door.

  She had to be here. She just had to.

  * * *

  Chloe had seriously expected to wind up in some dank, dark alley or deserted warehouse, not in a perfectly normal-looking, antiseptic office in the very place where she worked. She’d assumed they would want to torture her to death in peace. Where no one would hear her screams. She tested the duct tape that secured her wrists to the arms of an office chair. Not a chance she was getting loose anytime soon.

  She nodded in unsurprised recognition when Miguel Herrera stepped into the office. Of course he was behind her kidnapping.

  “Miss Jordan.”

  She stared up at him. What did he want from her? The unspoken question vibrated angrily between them. What was so important that he had to treat her like a criminal and kidnap her?

  “My employers want their money back, Miss Jordan.”

  Money? What on earth? “What money?” she blurted.

  “The money you stole from Paradeo.”

  “That I—” Was this guy crazy? She was looking for funny business Paradeo’s executives were pulling, not doing the stealing herself! “I haven’t stolen anything from Paradeo!”

  Herrera sighed and perched on a corner of the desk in front of her. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. But make no mistake. Before you walk out of here, you’re going to tell me how you did it, where those funds are now, and how to transfer them back to Paradeo.”

  “Well, Mr. Herrera, that’s going to be a bit difficult since I didn’t take any money, I’m not hiding it anywhere and I cannot return what I didn’t take.”

  “Make no mistake, Miss Jordan. I will not hesit
ate to turn the boys loose on you.”

  She glanced over involuntarily at the four big men, standing silent, eerily eager, in front of the window. A shudder passed through her. Never had any of her forensic accounting professors mentioned that she might find herself duct-taped to a chair with a roomful of thugs flexing their fists in anticipation of pummeling her senseless...or much worse. This was a nightmare. Fear for her life coursed through her anew. The idea of suffering the kind of pain these men could so easily inflict on her turned her insides to water.

  Trent hadn’t been wrong, after all. She’d been an ignorant fool to believe she was safe from harm.

  She looked Herrera directly in the eye and saw only hard determination. There would be no quarter granted from this man. The calming effect of finding herself in such a normal and familiar environment fell away as the true jeopardy of her situation sunk in.

  Satisfaction gleamed in Herrera’s black gaze as he loomed over her. “Talk to me, Chloe.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment to draw strength from within. “Mr. Herrera. I am telling you the God’s honest truth. I have never taken a dime from this company.”

  “Hah! Do you need me to show you the records? The missing funds, a little bit here and there? And funny thing, all from accounts you have direct access to.”

  “How much money are we talking here?” she asked, curious in spite of her terror. Not to mention, if she kept the guy talking, it delayed the inevitable moment when he lost patience and turned the dogs loose on her.

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t take it.”

  “How long have you been with this company?”

  “What does that have to do with whether or not I took your missing money?” she blurted.

  “Answer the question,” he snapped. But he frowned at her, almost as if perplexed.

  “Six months, give or take. How long has the money been going missing for?”

  “About four months.”