Innocent as Sin

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Amen.”

  Grace came out of the bathroom wearing maternity jeans and a T-shirt advertising the joys of exercising your constitutional right to silence. When she saw Faroe, she said, “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Uh-oh,” Lane said. “Am I old enough to hear this?”

  “No, which is why you’re studying in here and we’re all going out there.” Grace swiped her son’s thick hair off his forehead and peered into his eyes. “Maybe the book would make more sense if you could see it.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Just a thought.” She smiled and let the hair flop back in place. “I can’t wait for international soccer stars to cut their hair.”

  Lane ignored her, but his grin gave him away.

  For a moment Kayla wanted to be a student again, with no more worries than the next paper, the next test, the next party. But reality was what it was, and her reality right now was a roomful of relative strangers and a man with sage-green eyes she felt she’d always known.

  Don’t forget the guy who would like to kill you. He’s way too real.

  With a shudder, Kayla went to the bungalow’s main room. As soon as the door shut behind her, Grace turned to the younger woman.

  “Can you monitor Bertone’s correspondence account from outside the bank?” Grace asked.

  “I’m not authorized for remote access,” Kayla said. “That’s only for the brass, people at Steve Foley’s level and above. Why?”

  “If Bertone gets wind of you being with St. Kilda Consulting, he’ll pull the deposits out of the account you set up before I can persuade a judge to freeze everything.”

  “Then we’ll have to chase that money all over hell again,” Faroe added.

  “We don’t have time,” Martin said, panicked. “That can’t happen, okay?”

  “Good-bye,” Faroe said to the TV crew. “We’ll call you if we get anything new.”

  Martin started to object, looked at Faroe’s eyes, and made a round-them-up-and-head-them-out gesture with his hand. Very quickly the bungalow’s living area was empty of all but St. Kilda employees.

  “Can you freeze the funds in Bertone’s account?” Kayla asked.

  “We’ve been working on a judge since we debriefed you,” Grace said.

  “Problem is, Bertone is real well connected,” Faroe said, heading for the little kitchen. “Sit down, amada, it’s going to be a long day.”

  Grace slanted him a dark-eyed look, but sat down. He was right. Any day that began with a dawn raid was bound to be a long one.

  Kayla frowned. “Bertone mentioned moving a lot of money into the account. Last I heard, it was only at forty million and change. If you freeze the account…”

  “That’s the heart of the problem,” Rand said. “St. Kilda is playing high-stakes poker with Bertone. They want him to move all his money into the account before they freeze it. If they freeze it too soon, a lot of money goes missing. Freeze it too late, and it all goes missing. Timing is everything.”

  “According to the intel I’ve been getting from Brazil,” Faroe said, returning with a cup of coffee, “we have until bank opening Monday morning. After that, Camgeria goes in the shitter.”

  Kayla closed her eyes briefly and tried not to see snapshots of bloody children. “When you get a temporary restraining order, the bank won’t have any choice but to hold all transactions, no matter how many complicit bankers Bertone might have in his pocket.”

  “Then it becomes a legal battle,” Faroe said. “But thanks to Grace, it’s a battle we have a chance of winning.”

  “So you want me to figure out a way to monitor the account so you can freeze the money when it’s all in and before it’s paid out?” Kayla asked.

  “Bingo,” Faroe said. “But you’re going to have to do it from somewhere else.”

  “Why?”

  “The feds,” Rand said.

  “But—” she began.

  “Now that feds of various stripes are hanging around,” Rand cut in, “we need a new place to hide. If one of those feds identifies you, and word gets back to Bertone, Camgeria is up that nasty creek without a paddle.”

  “Are you telling me that Bertone can get federal agents to do his dirty work for him?” Kayla asked in disbelief.

  “You need to understand something about investigators,” Faroe said calmly. “The dudes Grace just ran off—and even the FBI agents I’ll bet are hiding in the bushes out there—are feeding their findings back to some faceless desk officer in Washington, who is briefing some nameless senior official in the White House or at Langley or wherever.”

  Faroe took a sip of coffee.

  Kayla kept her mouth shut and waited.

  “That nameless senior official has an interface with Bertone,” Faroe continued. “Maybe Bertone is a major political contributor. Maybe he’s become so successful in the oil brokerage business that he can call in favors from somebody in the Energy Department. Maybe Bertone is playing the old boy network left over from his days as a spook. Doesn’t matter how he does it. The point is that he can.”

  “The point is,” Grace said to Kayla, “that we have to keep you under wraps in order to keep our assignment viable and you intact.”

  “Right now,” Faroe said, “Bertone’s working like a dirty bastard to find you. If he links you to us, he’ll have no choice but to eliminate you and St. Kilda Consulting—man, woman, and child.”

  Kayla looked as horrified as she felt.

  “The really bad thing,” Faroe added, “is that Bertone’s rich enough, powerful enough, and smart enough to get away with it.”

  Kayla wanted to argue.

  She couldn’t.

  Faroe looked at Rand. “Come with me to the bedroom. I’m loaning you something. The last time I left home without it, I ended up in the hospital.”

  42

  Royal Palms

  Sunday

  8:05 A.M. MST

  Just as Rand finished buttoning up his shirt, Kayla walked out of the bathroom and stalked to the living area of the St. Kilda bungalow. She was covered head to socks, face to fingertips. The sun-protective clothing and very wide-brimmed hat were stylish, colorful, cool on her skin, and concealed her identity quite thoroughly. The wide wraparound sunglasses added a final anonymous touch.

  “This is so not me,” Kayla said, flicking her fingers against the hat. “Do you have anything in the Stetson line?”

  “If I can shave”—and wear Faroe’s body armor—“you can sport a silly hat,” Rand said, cinching the hat under her chin. “Wear it until we lose our tail. Then you can strip and go as naked as my cheeks.” He grinned. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  Snickers came from the direction of the kitchen, where Faroe and Grace were eating breakfast.

  Kayla rolled her eyes. “This outfit is the kind of thing Elena Bertone would wear to protect her flawless complexion. Mine, in case you hadn’t noticed, is already desert leather.”

  Rand finished zipping her backpack and threw one strap over his shoulder. Then he ducked in under her hat brim and brushed his lips across hers. “I think your skin feels just fine,” he said in a low voice. “Now get a move on. You’re distracting me.”

  “Huh.” She ran both palms over his face. “All that smooth skin on your face is distracting me. Thank God Freddie left enough hair up top for me to get my fingers into.”

  Rand gave Kayla a kiss that really distracted her, then dragged her out a patio door.

  Kayla wasn’t sure what kind of escape vehicle she expected, but what she got wasn’t it. She stared.

  “Are you kidding?” she asked.

  “Think of it as a souped-up golf cart. Gas, not electric. It’s an ATV in disguise.”

  “That’s your story and you’re stuck with it.”

  Smiling, Rand tossed her backpack onto the shelf behind the seat where his stuff was, slid onto the bench, and checked the controls. Then he grabbed the Stetson Faroe had stashed on the floorboards and jammed it on his head.

>   “Get aboard,” he said. “Faroe’s diversion won’t last long.”

  “He’s paranoid,” she muttered.

  But she got in.

  “He’s smart. There are probably a dozen feds out in the parking lot, with a dozen surveillance vehicles ready to roll out on our tail. Some will follow Faroe. Some won’t. But we’ve got the fastest ATV on the track.”

  Or he hoped they did. Faroe was betting the feds didn’t have anything better than an electric golf cart out on the course.

  “Doesn’t this thing have a lap belt?” she asked.

  “Use that,” Rand said, pointing to a handle firmly bolted to the dashboard in front of the passenger.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve heard it called a lot of things.” He grinned and began rolling forward. “My favorites are ‘Jesus Bar’ and ‘Oh Shit Bar.’”

  “Why?”

  Rand twisted the throttle. The ATV leaped forward, slamming Kayla back into the seat.

  “What are you—Oh shit!” Kayla said, grabbing for the bar.

  “There you go.”

  Grinning, Rand cut the wheel hard to the right, shot through a gap in the oleander hedge, and burst into the sunlight on the tenth fairway of the resort’s golf course.

  The ATV four-wheeler moved so fast that she had to pull the wide brim of the sun hat around her face to keep from strangling on the chin strap. She was completely hidden when a mid-thirties white man dressed in resort clothes stepped out of a stand of bamboo near a water hazard. He carried a camera that was dwarfed by a long telephoto lens. Swearing, the cameraman started banging off pictures as the ATV sped past.

  Rand gave him the back of his head and the universal sign of friendship.

  “Are you trying to piss them off?” Kayla asked.

  “Hey, if the feds are going to stand in the sun and shoot surveillance photos, they should be rewarded. Federal cops are way too used to having things go their way.”

  “Do all St. Kildans have a bad attitude about authority?” Kayla asked.

  “Most of us have had enough authority in our lives to know its limitations. Federal cops still have to learn.”

  “And you live to teach them,” she muttered.

  “It’s a dirty job—” he began.

  “And you love doing it,” she interrupted.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Clenching her teeth, she hung on to the dashboard bar while Rand swerved around a sand trap and shot up over a dune at the far side of the fairway. When she risked a peek over her shoulder through the folds of her hat, she saw that a second man in casual clothes had joined the first fed. He, too, had a fancy camera. He was talking on a cell phone or a radio.

  “They aren’t chasing us,” she said.

  “Surveillance teams don’t pursue. They radio ahead. Now we pray they don’t have anyone positioned on the far side of the golf course.”

  Rand cut across another fairway before he hit open rolling desert at the eastern edge of Scottsdale. A mile ahead of them lay the concrete piers of the 101 Loop Freeway and a scattering of multistory buildings in new industrial and office parks.

  Kayla braced herself and kept a stranglehold on the bar. The ATV was well suited for cross-country desert travel, but it wasn’t always comfortable. The wheels raised a thin cloud of grit as Rand slewed around creosote bushes and dodged patches of prickly pear.

  “There it is,” Rand said, barely missing a rock.

  Kayla squinted through her glasses as he skidded onto a narrow dirt track that headed toward civilization again. He twisted the throttle on the ATV. Suddenly they were rushing along at more than thirty miles per hour on a road just bumpy enough to make the ride interesting.

  Kayla felt like laughing out loud. When she’d sold the ranch, she hadn’t expected to be on an ATV anytime soon. Even though she was used to being the driver, she trusted the man beside her. He had the lanky yet powerful build of a bronc rider. The Stetson added to the aura.

  Too bad the ranch is gone. Rand would have looked right at home on it.

  Without thinking, she touched the back of Rand’s hand on the steering wheel. His fingers lifted, caught hers, squeezed, and released. He slowed the ATV as the road crested a bank and dropped down into a dry wash. He braked, then turned downstream toward an office park that was under construction. The ATV’s two-stroke engine screamed with the pleasure of being let off the leash on a brilliant desert morning.

  Minutes later they flashed up over another bank and through the open gate of a construction yard. A white Dodge SUV with heavily tinted windows was parked inside the yard. Rand braked to a skidding stop next to the vehicle.

  “Backseat,” he ordered Kayla.

  He snatched the backpack and his laptop computer off the cargo shelf and tossed them into the back of the SUV. Kayla slid into the right rear seat and made a startled sound.

  The driver was Jimmy Hamm.

  He looked past her, searching for any dust from followers. “You’re clean,” he said to Rand. Then, “Shit, what happened to the fur?”

  “Freddie.”

  Hamm glanced at Kayla in the rearview mirror and smiled. “Hey, darlin’. Love that take-no-prisoners grin.”

  With that he put the idling vehicle in gear and accelerated out of the construction yard onto the street.

  Kayla dipped her chin, looking over the rims of her sunglasses at the man who had flirted madly with her for the past several months.

  “Liar,” she said.

  He took his eyes off the road for a second and glanced in the mirror at her, surprised. “What? What did I do?”

  “You let me think you had the hots for me,” Kayla said. “But you were just trying to get inside Andre Bertone’s life and his bank accounts.”

  “Babe, you thought I had the hots for you because it was the truth.” He gave her a friendly leer. “That was the easiest cover I ever put on.”

  Rand turned back from watching their rear and said to Hamm, “Remember what Faroe said about the interesting ones.” Rand smiled from the teeth out.

  “Well, hell,” Hamm muttered. “Kayla, can you ID the dude that made the hard pass at you last night?”

  Startled, she looked at Rand.

  “In Bertone’s garden,” Rand said, and this time his smile was real.

  She hoped her floppy hat covered her blush.

  “Yes,” she said to Hamm. “Not that I want to see that cockroach again, but I’d recognize him.”

  “I did a little nosing around with my colleagues on the security detail,” Hamm said. “Then I checked the employee database and came up with a possible name, Gabriel Navarro. He’s supposed to be some kind of majordomo of the estate grounds, but nobody remembers seeing him around any of the gardening crews.”

  “I recognize the name from the employee payroll,” Kayla said, “but if Mr. Navarro is a gardener, even the chief cheese, he’s really well paid.”

  “How much?” Rand asked.

  “Ten thousand a month.”

  “I’m betting he plants things in six-foot holes,” Rand said.

  Images of the handcuffs and the ugly little pistol spiked through Kayla’s memories. Gooseflesh rippled. She hated being scared, but she was too smart not to be.

  Hamm wheeled onto a westbound on-ramp, merging with light Sunday-morning traffic. “St. Kilda hacked into the employee database at the Castle in the Sky, so we know where Gabriel lives. Faroe hired two private types to stake out Gabriel’s house. He’s there, but we need Kayla for an eyeball ID.”

  The last thing Kayla wanted to see again was the face of her nightmare. “Sure. Whatever. Let’s get it over with.”

  “Change into these first,” Rand said, dropping jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap on Kayla’s lap. Then he looked at the driver. “Handsome, if I catch your eyes in the rearview mirror while she changes, you’ll need a new nickname.”

  Hamm kept his attention on the road. Strictly.

  43

  Guadalupe, Arizona

/>   Sunday

  8:55 A.M. MST

  Hamm parked on a dirt side street that had a view across a sandy town square toward two ancient whitewashed churches. If Kayla squinted enough to fuzz out the freeway in the background, she could almost believe she’d been transported five hundred miles south, into the Sonoran Desert of interior Mexico. The bells in the tower of the larger church began ringing, calling the faithful to worship. A knot of dark-skinned, dark-haired young men plodded across the sandy square toward the church.

  “That explains something,” Kayla said.

  “What?” Rand asked.

  “The man in the garden—”

  “Gabriel Navarro.”

  “—was Latino but not really Mexican. He was too dark, like mahogany-colored lava.”

  Rand waited, absently rubbing his shaved cheek. He felt naked. “So?”

  “This little town is called Guadalupe,” she said. “It was established more than a century ago by Yaqui Indians from northern Mexico, refugees from the Mexican Civil War. The man in the garden was muy indio, very dark.”

  “That means we’re going to have a hell of a time getting closer,” Hamm said.

  “Wrong color?” Rand asked.

  “Or something,” Hamm said. “The Yaquis are clannish as Gypsies and twice as suspicious. They don’t even trust their fellow Mexicans. That’s why there are two churches side by side, both Catholic, one for Mexicanos and the other for Yaquis.”

  “Guess we won’t be walking around,” Rand said.

  “Don’t have to. We have those local private investigators hanging in the neighborhood, passing themselves off as repo guys from a car dealer. They can work in close to Gabriel’s house. We’ll stay here and work at a distance.”

  “Binoculars?” Kayla asked.

  “Telephoto camera,” Hamm said, passing it over the seat. “Tourists like to hang out here on the weekend, watch the funny locals.”

  He opened the glove box and dug out a Diamondback baseball cap that matched the one he was wearing. He tossed it to Rand, who ditched the Stetson, grumbled about being a Mariners fan, but put the cap on anyway.