Flash of Death (15 page)

She looked back frantically and couldn’t see any of their pursuers. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there. She walked toward the exit, panic nipping at her heels, her steps getting faster and faster until she finally broke into a run. To heck with blending in. She raced for the door as fast as her tired legs would carry her. Faces flashed past in a kaleidoscope of irritation and frowns as she bounced off bodies heedlessly in her flight.

All of a sudden, she burst outside. The relative calm of the street startled her. She dived into the traffic, ignoring the horns that blared at her. She frantically flagged down a cab heading the opposite direction and leaped into it, shouting at the driver, “Go, go!”

Startled, the cabbie hit the gas.

Crouching low in her seat, she watched her pursuers pile into the silver SUV from before. Where had it been loitering? As the convention center retreated in the rearview window, the SUV was still struggling to make an illegal U-turn to pursue her.

“Turn here,” she ordered the driver. He screeched around the corner, getting into the spirit of the thing. “Turn again,” she called.

They wove across downtown San Francisco for another dozen blocks before she finally said, “Okay. I think we lost them. Take me to the Millennium Health Club, please.”

“The one on Stockton?” he asked.

“That’s the one.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“My ex-husband has a private eye stalking me, and it’s making me nuts.”

“I hear you. My ex is a crazy bitch....”

She tuned out the guy’s diatribe about his family troubles and lawyers demanding alimony he didn’t think he should have to pay. She was still breathing hard. Trent had really run her around back there. Thank goodness he’d had the foresight to set up a meeting place if they got separated.

They had to quit splitting up, though. She hated being alone like this, so exposed. Had she always been this vulnerable and just not realized it?

She ran her credit card through the cab’s card reader and typed in a generous tip for the driver. As she hopped out of the cab, he called through the window, “You need me to stick around for a minute? Make sure you get inside without that guy spotting you?”

She smiled in gratitude at the driver’s kindness. “Thanks. But I’ll be fine, now.”

The Millennium Health Club was housed in a newly refurbished high-rise that was all brushed nickel, frosted glass and high-tech gadgetry. A male model depicted on an electronic billboard spoke up as she walked past. “Hi, Chloe! How about a fizzy break from your day?”

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

T
rent 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 through 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.