Collision Course Read Free Page B

thick despite his age, although threads of
silver were now woven into it. Light brown eyes watched the world from a
bulldog face, a face that alarmed people when his anger surfaced. Many had
kidded him it reflected the tenacity he exhibited in everything he did. He made
no pretense of being anything but ugly. Fortunately, the people he did business
with didn’t care what he looked like. As for women, when he wanted one, he paid
for her. He’d long ago accepted the pattern his life had become.
    “I shouldn’t
be more than a half hour,” Bennett told his driver.
    “Very
good. I’ll be waiting.”
    Bennett
took his key cards out, swiped one in the slot by the elevator and punched the
button for his floor. When the doors swooshed open, he headed directly for his
office suite, unlocking the door and entering his private area. All the while
he was in Bahrain and on the flight back, he’d tried to remember if he’d locked
the secure phone away.
    He’d
left for this trip in such a fucking hurry. Emergency, he’d been told. Come
now. Had he locked the damn thing away before leaving work the night before? An
unpleasant feeling niggled at him the entire time he was gone. He had to check
before he did anything else, hoping it was safely tucked away and no bad news
awaited him. Too many irons were sizzling in the fire and the trip had taken
longer than expected. He was tired, his digestion upset by the strange foods
he’d forced into it and he had a fatigue headache he couldn’t seem to get rid
of.
    Maybe
I’m getting too old for this.
    Unfortunately
his “business partners” didn’t consider retirement an option, unless it was the
permanent kind. So he’d continue to play the game, add to his massive fortune
and hope to find a way to ease out of it before too long.
    The
first thing he saw was the phone sitting out in plain sight. Fuck! Damn, damn,
damn. How could he have been so careless? He turned it over with hands not
quite steady and entered a code into the special keypad on the bottom. Then he
pressed a tiny button and waited for the built-in recorder to play his
messages, praying there was nothing on it out of the ordinary. His partners
would kill him over something so stupid. The first three messages were
inconsequential, updates on the arms deal he’d arranged the previous week. The
fourth one, however, froze him in place. Not a message but a recorded
conversation. As he listened, a combination of dread and anger surged through
him, wiping away his fatigue with one swoop.
    Pressing
the button again, he replayed it. And yet again, having a difficult time,
believing what he heard. Trey Haggerty had answered the phone. He recognized
his voice. And of all the people for him to speak to, Hassan El-Salaki was one
of the worst. What had the Arab been thinking, blurting out information without
verifying the person on the other end?
    Because
you assured him no one would ever answer that phone but you.
    Shit!
    Then he
spotted the report he’d requested sitting on his desk. Left where he’d told
Trey to put it. And probably at the exact moment the phone rang. People
answered calls automatically, right? Without thinking?
    He used
the office phone to call down to the guard in the lobby to confirm his
suspicions. There might have been other people working late, but none who had a
key to his office.
    “Yes,
Mr. Bennett?”
    “Can you
tell me the last person to sign out last night and what time he put down?” he
demanded.
    “Mr.
Haggerty,” the guard answered. “At one forty-five.”
    Exactly
what I thought.
    Damn!
    “Thanks,
Henry.”
    He sat
down in his chair and closed his eyes, trying to get the gut-wrenching anger
under control. The situation was not just bad, it was disastrous. He had hired
Trey Haggerty for his smarts, his intellect, his excellent instincts. Bennett
wouldn’t let what he’d heard go without asking a lot of questions. He feared
Trey wouldn’t ask him about it, but would instead try to dig