Crash and Burn (20 page)

“Is that a promise?” His brown eyes were full of heat as he peered over the blankets.

She could feel the embarrassment starting again. This was ridiculous. They knew each other’s bodies particularly well by now. She should’ve been way past embarrassment but no…she still blushed at the slightest hint of anything sexual. No more. She’d face this head-on. She flashed him her sassiest smile, then ran her tongue along her bottom lip provocatively. “Oh yeah. You’d better rest up. You’re going to need your strength for later.”

Daily sex on demand. Sounds good to me.

She heard a muffled groan as he pulled the covers farther over his head. Cool.
Have pleasant dreams, Daniel!
Chuckling to herself, she walked over to the desk and set up the laptop, the wireless Internet connection a particular bonus. She wanted one when this was all over. If it ever ended, that was.

* * * *

After nearly two hours painstakingly checking over the previous year of appointments, Beth was exhausted. A slight ache had begun behind her eyes and she rubbed her forehead with her fingers to ease some of the tension.

Zip, zilch, nada—nothing had shown up. Nothing that made sense anyway. There were several regular appointments with people only identified by initials. One set more than the others—T.B. There was another couple with T.I. and a couple of times the meeting content was listed as B.H., T.B. and T.I. which meant nothing to her, but B.H. had been her father’s initials—Brian Hamilton. Could there be a connection? And who the hell were T.B. and T.I.? She massaged her neck and leaned back in the chair. Were they ever going to figure this out?

A pair of hands touched her shoulders and she nearly jumped off the chair. A warm breath whispered in her ear and set the goosebumps rising all over her body. “Relax. It’s only me.” Daniel massaged her tense muscles with an expertise that told of years of practice.

She groaned with pleasure as she slowly lowered her head to give him better access. Tingles spread over her skin. “Ah…that feels wonderful. Oh yeah…yes, right there. Oooh, that’s good. Keep it up and I’ll put you on my payroll.”

“It’ll cost you. My services are in great demand.”

She smiled up at him and winked. “Oh, I think you’ll be satisfied.”

Abruptly Daniel removed his fingers and crouched beside Beth to check out the laptop screen. “So what have you got?”

All business again
. Okay, she could play it that way too.

“A series of initials with no explanations as to what or who they are. But they do occur with regularity.”

“T.B., T.I. and B.H. Do they mean anything to you?”

“Only B.H. Those are my father’s initials.”

“That’s not much to go on,” Daniel sighed. “I guess we go with Plan B then.”

“Plan B?”

Daniel flicked his index finger across the tip of his nose. “Honey, hold on to your hat. We’re in for a bumpy night.”

“You’re mixing up your movie quotes, Daniel. What the heck are you talking about?”

“What I’m saying is— Tonight we go and search Peter Wilson’s files.”

“Hack in, you mean?”

“No. We break in to his office.”

Chapter Eleven

They parked the car a block away from the government offices. Beth sat in the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel as if her life depended on it. Maybe it did, thought Daniel. If he got caught inside the building, she’d need to drive like a bat out of hell to get away, and he wanted to make sure she was ready for it. He’d instructed her to wait thirty minutes then leave. No exceptions. She was still sulking but she’d finally agreed, only because they’d made arrangements to meet at a place outside the city if they got separated. She’d better not be humoring him. He’d meant it when he told her to drive off without him. It wasn’t safe for her to hang around if he didn’t make it out. Until they knew who was after them, he was taking no chances.

He leaned over the seat to the back and picked up a small backpack. Opening it, he pulled out a flashlight and placed it in his pocket. Next he pulled a black flannel balaclava over his head then turned to face Beth. Her face was pale in the moonlight, her eyes indistinguishable from the peak of the baseball cap she’d worn to cover up her fiery hair.

“Thirty minutes, okay? Then drive off.”

“I’m not happy about it, and if it’s twenty-nine minutes and I see you coming down the street, I’m waiting for you, okay?”

“Beth…” He reached for her arm, but she pulled away.

“Just go and do your spy stuff. I’ll be all right.”

He moved closer to her and framed her face with his hands, preventing her escape. He covered her mouth in a fierce, burning kiss that was over almost before it began. “I know what I’m doing, Beth. I’ll be in and out of the building before you know it.”

The street was dark and deserted, but Daniel didn’t want to take any chances, so he inched his way toward the government building in the shadows to avoid being detected. Almost at the front entrance, he hung back momentarily to retrieve an instrument from the backpack. He attached the small box to the bottom of the door and pressed a button. A red light flashed, beeped and changed to green. The lock clicked as the alarms and locking mechanism disengaged. Sometimes he loved the gadgets that came with his job!

He found the lobby empty. From his research that afternoon, he knew it was the security guards’ change of shift. He had five minutes tops to get through the foyer and up to Peter Wilson’s office. One last scan of the area and he pushed the fire door open and slipped through. He peeled a pre-cut piece of tape from his wrist and placed it over the sensors on the jamb, silently closing it before moving to the fire escape. He repeated the process again and made his way up the stairs to the third floor.

So far so good
.

His luck continued when he found the corridor deserted as he exited the stairwell. He proceeded down the hall silently, stopping halfway when the sound of talking reached him. He ducked into the office on his left side and closed the door.

He held his breath as the two security guards made their rounds. Lucky for him they weren’t thorough, choosing not to search the room he was hiding in. He checked his watch. Time was something he didn’t have, so as soon as their voices receded, he continued down the corridor to the office he knew from floor plans to be the one Peter Wilson had used. He locked the door behind him and quickly found the cubicle. It was clean. Not one file or scrap of paper remained, let alone the computer terminal.
Fuck!
Of course it would be clean
. The files he’d hacked into were on the department intranet. Thank God for slack IT departments. But damn, where else could the physical files be? Destroyed? He hoped not. He left the room and headed back to the stairwell.

* * * *

Beth stared at her watch again.
Damn
, it had been only five minutes since the last time she’d checked. Daniel still had twenty minutes to go. She pulled her jacket closer across her chest and shivered.
He’d better be okay, the idiot.
She knew they had to do this, but the temptation to run away to a desert island and leave this all behind them was a pretty damned good option about now. She peered at her watch again. Bummer, not even a minute. Crossing her arms, she willed some warmth into her chilled body. The street where she’d parked continued to be deserted and the road shimmered with water. Since it hadn’t rained all week, it probably came from a street cleaner’s truck. The night was clear, but the stars were hard to pick out through the glow from the city lights. She could only imagine where they were as she scanned at the night sky to stop herself checking her watch again.

The door of the car wrenched open and a hood came down over her head, blocking her vision.
Holy shit!
She attempted to pull it off as gloved hands grabbed her own and she heard the zip of tape being unrolled, felt it wrapped tightly around her wrists in front of her.

“What are you doing? Let me go!”

Her assailant remained silent, but she caught a whiff of expensive aftershave as strong arms yanked her to her feet and pulled her a short distance away. Her assailant pushed her forward and she stumbled, hitting her shins against something hard before falling forward into what felt like the back of a van or a utility truck. Before she had a chance to right herself, a door slammed behind her and the engine started. She slipped across the floor with the momentum of the van as it screeched along the street.

Oh God! Calm down and think.
She had to get away, but from whom? Who was this guy and how the hell did he find her?

“Who are you?”

No answer. The van swerved around a corner and she slid toward the front of the van, banging her head against the seat.

“What? Too much of a coward to show your face?”

She heard a chuckle from the front seat. She’d heard that laugh before.
Oh no…it couldn’t be…

* * * *

Daniel rifled through the archive boxes in the storage room of the building’s basement. It was sheer luck he’d found it. Checking the computer database had turned up nothing. He figured that staff were slow catching up on work everywhere, and took a chance that boxes for archiving would be in a holding area waiting their turn. He’d lucked out. The box in front of him contained the personal effects of Peter Wilson. On the surface it had appeared to be a load of junk, but a framed photo had revealed some ripped pages hidden behind the picture. He hadn’t had a good look at them yet. They could wait until he finished checking everything else. He glanced at his watch. Shit, he had less than ten minutes before Beth was supposed to leave without him. He’d better get a move on. Skimming the papers he’d placed on the desk, he saw something that made the hairs on his neck stand up—two names and a nickname—Brian Hamilton, John Addison and ‘The Irishman’.

Shit!
Beth was in danger!
He pulled out his mobile and called her number. It rang out.
Fuck!

He abandoned the box and ran out of the basement and up the stairs to the lobby. He didn’t care if he was seen. He had to get to Beth. Running down the street, he heard the sound of screeching tires where a van turned the corner and drove away at breakneck speed. The door to the car was open and there was no sign of Beth. In seconds he had the car started and followed the direction of the van, but to no avail. He’d lost him already. He pulled over and slammed his fists against the wheel.
Fucking hell!
Beth was gone and he knew who was behind it. He’d been betrayed by everyone he trusted, and he had no idea where to start looking for her.

* * * *

“Kevin?”

The van swerved and stopped. A hand grabbed the hood and yanked it off. The baseball cap fell away as she shook her head to get her hair out of her eyes. When her vision cleared, Daniel’s childhood friend sneered. Gone were the cheeky grin and the flirty eyes. Instead he leered at her, his eyes staring at her breasts stretched tightly against the T-shirt where the jacket was gaping.

“I can see now what got Daniel all fired up.”

She shivered with revulsion. How in hell had she thought she’d liked this man?

“Why are you doing this? I thought you and Daniel were friends?”

“I’m doing this for the age-old reason, my love. Money. Getting to have some fun with Daniel? Well, that’s a bonus.”

“You must really hate Daniel. What did he ever do to you?”

“Hate? That’s such a strong word. It implies all sorts of emotions I’m sure I don’t have.” He turned away from her and grabbed a bottle of water from the seat next to him, taking a sip.

“So why are you really doing this?” She scanned the interior of van while she kept him talking. There had to be a way to escape.

“It’s all about winning, Beth, my love. For most of my life, I’ve come second to Daniel. He beat me in exams. He beat me in rugby. He even got a higher security level job than me. But this time I’ve outsmarted him. He doesn’t realize it, but I’ve been calling the shots for a while now, and there’s not a thing he can do about it.”

“Who’s paying you? Is it terrorists?”

Kevin snorted and started choking on his drink. He slapped his chest through the coughs until they settled down. “Ah, that’s funny. No, not terrorists, sweetie. Worse than that. But I’ll leave that titbit for when Daniel joins us. I can’t wait to see his face when he finds out who’s behind this.”

Beth shuddered. So much resentment and hate. How had Kevin managed to hide it from Daniel for so long? Daniel would be devastated when he realized it was Kevin all along—another reason to blame himself for what was happening to her. She thought of Lisa and she knew she had to get out of this. Not only for her own sake, but for Daniel’s. It would destroy him to fail again. She shifted in place and felt something sharp underneath her thigh, pricking her though the material of her jeans. She saw a lump under a rough scrap of old carpet that doubled as a small mat across the back of the van. She needed to keep him talking for longer. “So why did you let us go when we were at your place?”

He laughed. “Oh, that would have been too easy. This way I get to play.”

“What do you mean ‘play’?” She grabbed the edge of the carpet with her foot and inched it over to the side. If she could keep him occupied for a bit longer, she might get to see whatever the object was. It was sharp, so she might be able to use it.

“Ah Beth. I could have killed you both, but this way I get to see Daniel squirm first and to see him realize that this time I’ve outsmarted him. This time
I
win!” He twisted back to her and she stopped moving. His eyes gleamed and his smile was anything but friendly.

“Enough chit-chat. We have places to be, people to beat.” He turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. I’ll be calling Daniel to join us, so you might want to conserve your strength. Oh wait…what for?” He laughed as he accelerated down the road.