Collision Course by Desiree Holt Page A

taste in her mouth. She shouldered her bag. “Well, I’ve
enjoyed the competition but I have to get to work.”
    Trey
felt as if a wall had dropped between them. He had the distinct feeling he’d touched
a raw spot and he had no idea why.
    “Yeah.
See you in a while.”
    She gave
him a half-hearted wave as she walked away and climbed into her truck.
    Trey
stood there for a long moment, watching her drive away. The woman was a puzzle.
He wondered why her history seemed so…distasteful to her. There was no other
word for it. As if she wished those years hadn’t existed. And why, with all her
training and experience, did she spend her days working at the Half ’n Half,
even if her parents did own it?
    Did she
date? Have a relationship with anyone in town, the place where she’d grown up?
    None
of my business.
    He
needed to keep that in mind. If he let himself be distracted…well, he didn’t
even want to go there.
    Okay.
Time to get on with the business of the day.

 
    Chapter Six
     
    They met
in Mexico, at Tobias Serrano’s luxurious mountainside villa. El-Salaki had once
again been the one to demand the gathering, and Bennett refused to have them
come to his own home. Or anywhere in the States. Photographers hid everywhere
and his enemies would be more than happy to find a chink in his armor and widen
it.
    On the
flight down, he’d kept asking himself how the fuck he’d gotten into such a
situation. He’d started out with such ideals. Developing BGE had taken grit and
hard work, and a lot of capital he didn’t always have. But he’d managed and
received a lot of press as an aggressive, knowledgeable businessman. Press he’d
gobbled up, that fed his ego. Maybe a little too much.
    The
night he’d met Serrano at the home of one of the wealthiest Mexicans, he had
been in throes of a temporary cash flow problem. It astonished him to discover
the drug lord knew as many intimate details about him as he did. And about his
business. Serrano slipped his need to have cargo shipped to another part of the
world into the conversation. He offered to pay a premium price if Bennett could
arrange to circumvent inspections.
    Oh, yes,
Bennett had learned fast whose hands to grease. He also knew not to ask for
details about the cargo. And so it began. One thing led to another and as the
cash flow increased from a stream to a river, BGE grew exponentially. He
established himself as a philanthropist and foundations courted him. National
and international business groups sought him to address their conventions and high
level meetings. Soon invitations came to him from the White House, from
palaces, to attend parties where the cream of the crop made up the guest list.
    He
basked in his success, even as the methods he used to run his empire got
dirtier and dirtier. In the beginning, riding a fine edge of danger excited
him. Even when El-Salaki became the third leg of the triumvirate, his
excitement grew. He was in high company in both his public life and the one
hidden from the rest of the world.
    So when
had it begun to wear on him?
    Maybe as
he aged and grew more tired. Maybe when his previous executive vice president
had stumbled over damning evidence and had to be eliminated. Which made his
leaving the secure phone out an even worse lapse on his part. Too many balls in
the air. Too much to juggle. Now, because he’d lost his edge, Trey Haggerty, a
man he thought of as a son, topped his hit list.
    He tuned
out the insignificant conversation between Serrano and El-Salaki and gazed out
the enormous picture window filling most of a large wall. The spectacular view
took in the mountains covered with lush foliage and the thick fields of poppies
they shielded. How nice to grow your product where you could see it every day.
    In the
courtyard right outside the window, three children played under the watchful
gaze of a nanny. The scene could have been one at any other home except for the
armed guards standing as sentinels, constantly