Innocent as Sin

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Hope is good.” Grace yawned. “It’s all that’s keeping me from grabbing someone and squeezing his balls until his eyes cross.”

  “Oily bureaucrats don’t have balls,” Faroe said.

  “Quiet, you’re ruining my fantasy.” She looked at Rand. “Joe has already filled me in on your meeting with Foley. Anything to add?”

  “Bottom line hasn’t changed,” Rand said. “Bertone is trying like a dirty beggar to move that money, but so long as the account is protected by Kayla’s password, that money is as secure as it would be under a temporary restraining order.”

  Kayla touched the back of Rand’s hand and said, “Not quite. It’s secure from the remote access program, but if Steve Foley goes back to the office, he could override my password with his own. If he thinks of it.”

  “Will he?” Grace asked sharply.

  “He’s a doofus on the computer, but he’s under a lot of pressure right now.” Kayla turned her hands palms-up. “He could figure it out, or he could get some computer-literate underling to talk him through it.”

  “Not good,” Faroe said.

  “No shit,” Rand muttered.

  Grace started to push herself to her feet. “I’m going to start chewing a personal underling’s ass. We’ve got to get that warrant now.”

  Faroe gave her a hand. He knew as well as she did that the chance of getting the warrant in time was melting away like ice on a hot griddle.

  “Would St. Kilda get all upset if I moved the money in Bertone’s account to one of mine?” Kayla asked.

  “Forget it,” Rand said instantly. “It’s called theft, and you’d do hard time when it’s discovered.”

  She looked at Faroe, then at Grace. “Is that St. Kilda Consulting’s official answer?”

  “Officially, St. Kilda hasn’t heard a word of this,” Faroe said. He looked at his wife. “Right?”

  “Heard what?” Grace said automatically, but she was frowning as she settled back into the furniture. “Just for the sake of having a Plan B, no matter how unlikely it is to be used, tell me more about steal—moving Bertone’s money to an account he can’t touch.”

  “If I—um, whoever wanted to do that would have to go to my office.”

  “Too dangerous,” Rand said flatly. “By now Bertone has probably speed-dialed every hit man in Phoenix.”

  “Why your office?” Grace asked, ignoring Rand.

  “I don’t have any kind of remote access,” Kayla said. “I have to be at my office computer to, um, work with the account.”

  “Assuming someone got into your office and had the password,” Grace said, “what would happen next?”

  “I—someone would transfer the entire proceeds of the Bertone correspondent account to a personal trust fund.”

  “Can you really move almost two hundred million dollars into your own account?” Faroe asked, astonished.

  “Sure. Moving money is what I do all day.”

  “How long would it take?” Grace asked.

  “About three keystrokes,” Kayla said.

  “Followed by fifty years to life,” Rand said roughly.

  “But—” Kayla began.

  “It’s called grand theft,” Rand said over her.

  Grace sighed. “St. Kilda may push the frontier of law, but we usually leave ourselves a legal defense.”

  “Or no witnesses,” Faroe said.

  Grace ignored him. “Among other things, my job is to make sure we run as little risk of prison as possible.”

  Kayla tried to measure the risk rationally, but she kept seeing images from the DVD, tragedies and deaths that could have been avoided.

  Should have been.

  “I’ll take the risk,” she said.

  “When you’re one-hundred-percent certain of being caught, it’s not called risk,” Rand snarled.

  “If the bank catches me—”

  “—when they catch you,” Rand cut in.

  “Fine. When they catch me.” She turned to Rand. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Can’t prove it by Plan B.”

  She gave up and faced Grace. “The bank is superconscious of its public image. If St. Kilda Consulting and The World in One Hour spread muck all over Andre Bertone, I could end up looking like a brave little bank gofer who averted a tragic and illegal war.”

  “And if no one can spread enough muck on Bertone?” Rand asked.

  “Then I gambled and lost,” she said without looking at him. “Shit happens. This is the cleanest way to destroy Andre Bertone.”

  “No.”

  Kayla said distinctly, “It’s a lot better than your Plan C, which is dumping Bertone in cold blood. You’re not that kind of killer.”

  Faroe looked at Rand. “Plan C?”

  Rand didn’t say a word.

  “Tear up my employment contract with St. Kilda,” Kayla said to Faroe. “If I get caught, I don’t want to take everyone down with me.”

  “Then you better tear up my contract while you’re at it,” Rand said to Faroe. “I’m going with her.”

  “You can’t,” she said.

  “Watch me.”

  “I’ll watch you as far as the front door of American Southwest Bank. After that, the security department will watch you waiting in the parking lot. No one—repeat no one—who isn’t preauthorized gets into the operations area. It’s basic security against kidnap and extortion.”

  Rand let out a long breath and tightened the leash on his temper. Nothing was turning out the way he wanted it to.

  Kayla would be at risk.

  And he couldn’t stop her.

  Rand stared at her for a long time, then said, “If anything jumps the wrong way, at any time, I’m going back to Plan C.”

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Faroe said. “When finesse doesn’t get the job done, there’s always brute force.”

  56

  Phoenix

  Sunday

  1:15 P.M. MST

  With a grim kind of pleasure, Kayla pulled into the parking space marked “Employee of the Month” and shut down the engine of the new rental car. Faroe and Rand had both insisted that she drive a “neutral” vehicle. In Phoenix, it didn’t get much more neutral than a white SUV.

  At the head of the parking lot, a bush covered with red flowers just made for a hummingbird’s beak was an explosion of color.

  “Enjoy the view,” she said to Rand. “Come tomorrow, I bet they revoke my parking privileges.”

  “Embezzlement,” Rand said.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “That’s the word I’ve been trying to remember,” he said. “It’s when an employee diverts an employer’s money. Losing your gold-star parking space is going to be the least of the fallout.”

  She reached over and kissed him on the corner of his unsmiling mouth. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Good,” he shot back. “Then maybe you can explain it to me.”

  “It’s really simple,” she said, spacing each word, speaking slowly. “I’m going to shift the money in Bertone’s correspondent account into an account at the United Arizona Bank. The account was my grandmother’s. I’ve kept it open, a kind of safety valve. I put my travel funds there.”

  “Kiss it good-bye.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just take it and run.” She nuzzled his chin and fanned her eyelashes outrageously. “Would you come with me?”

  Rand stared at her for a moment, then gave up and laughed. “Hell, why not? Anywhere but Camgeria. The San Juan Islands in Washington would be good. The worst of winter is over. Maybe the FBI won’t look for you on a nameless islet with no electricity.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  He pulled her close for a hard kiss.

  When he finally released her, she blew out a deep breath. “Hoo-yah. You mean it.”

  “Sure do. You?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She reached for her purse on the backseat.

  “What in hell—?” he said suddenly.

  She turned
and looked out the windshield. A dark, strikingly large hummingbird was hovering around the bush directly in front of the car. As the bird turned in the sunlight, its vivid green gorget flashed, setting off the distinct white spot behind its eye.

  “Magnificent,” she said. “Wow.”

  “Pretty, too.”

  “No, that’s its name, the magnificent hummingbird. They’re one of the biggest and rarest, but we see them regularly in Arizona.”

  “I wish I could bug him,” Rand said.

  “What?”

  “It’d be easier to keep an eye on you.”

  The bird zoomed off, returned, hovered, zoomed, and vanished.

  Rand focused on the glass wall of the ten-story bank building. “Which one is your office?”

  “Third floor, third from the corner,” she said, pointing it out. “Foley’s is the corner. Other private bankers are between.”

  “No lights on.”

  “Bankers’ hours. Gotta love ’em. No weekends, no holidays.”

  “Turn your lights on as soon as you get to the office,” he said. “Turn them off when you leave. You get five minutes coming, five minutes in the office, and five minutes to get back here. Any longer and I’m kicking over a beehive. Got it?”

  “Um, yeah. Five minutes up. Lights on. Five minutes with computer. Lights off. Five minutes back. Or you go postal.”

  “Believe it.”

  She looked at him and believed. “Start counting.”

  He reached for his door at the same time she reached for hers.

  “No,” she said urgently. “The weekend guards are off-duty Phoenix PD. They’re authorized to carry live ammunition. They don’t cut slack for anyone, not even sweet young things like me.”

  He looked at her across the console. “What’s my cell number?”

  “It’s number one on the speed dial Faroe gave me along with the car.”

  Rand closed his eyes and saw his brother’s blood.

  Everywhere.

  “Come back to me, Kayla.”

  She brushed her hand over his cheek, his lips. Then she grabbed her purse and walked quickly to the bank entrance.

  This will work.

  It has to.

  57

  Phoenix

  Sunday

  1:22 P.M. MST

  Kayla slid her employee ID card through the card reader. The latch on the glass door released.

  One down.

  How many to go?

  The guard looked up from his Guns and Ammo magazine. He was a Latino with a buzz cut and a gentle leer.

  Kayla didn’t recognize him.

  “What’s a pretty thing like you doing working on Sunday?” he asked, laying the magazine aside and reaching for the entry log.

  “I’m here to rob the bank,” she said cheerfully. “Sunday seemed like a good day.”

  The guard spun the log and offered a pen so she could sign in. “Need any help?”

  “If the bags are too heavy, I’ll holler.”

  “Bet there’s a handcart in the janitor’s closet,” he said, watching her write. “Just let me know.”

  As Kayla signed in, she saw that she was the first employee to log in since Saturday. She had the run of the place.

  Time’s a-wasting.

  She turned toward the elevator.

  “Uh-hummm.” The guard cleared his throat.

  “Is there something else?” Kayla asked, hesitating.

  “You don’t know the drill, do you? I need to verify your ID.”

  She handed over her ID card. “I keep my weekends to myself. But this time…” She shrugged. “No help for it.”

  “I guess it’s only executives who put in the long hours.”

  “Yeah.” On the golf course.

  Something bankers and judges apparently had in common.

  The guard compared Kayla’s signature to the name on the badge, then consulted an employee directory.

  “Private bank. Third floor, right?” he said, handing the badge back.

  Kayla nodded.

  “Don’t go anywhere else.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “The security chief has issued new regs. He doesn’t want anyone wandering after hours. You want to use a bathroom, come back to the lobby.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. What I have to do will only take a few minutes.”

  “Whatever,” the guard said, glancing over his shoulder at the elevator status board on the wall behind him. “I can check every floor from here to the roof with closed-circuit television monitors, so just go right to your office and come right back.”

  “Closed-circuit TV? That must make for some interesting videotapes.”

  The guard grinned. “I caught one of the vice presidents last weekend. He was polishing the wall of the elevator with his secretary’s panties. She was still wearing them.”

  “Too much information. Way too much information.”

  “It’s just for your protection, chica, so I can keep an eye on you.”

  “I feel safer already.”

  She headed for the elevator.

  Forty seconds later, the doors slid open. As she walked into the third-floor corridor, she waved at the television camera mounted in a bracket just below the ceiling. Then she went directly to her office, turned on the lights, and looked down at the parking lot.

  Rand was leaning against the SUV’s front grille and staring up at her window. She waved. He waved back, then made a “spoolup” motion with his right index finger, telling her to hurry.

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” she muttered.

  She dropped her purse on the desk, sat down at her chair, and booted up her computer.

  It took forever.

  The machine labored over the start-up page, then whirled and whirled before processing her log-in to the operations server.

  Password Invalid

  Her heart slammed.

  Is there a special weekend access code?

  She took a deep breath and logged in again. The computer accepted her with a welcoming bong.

  Ten keystrokes later she was inside the Bertone account.

  Holy holy hell!

  Two hundred and fifty million dollars.

  Her fingers shook over the keyboard. Numbers, that’s all. Just numbers in a column. Put it here. Put it there.

  No big deal.

  Hell, the bank has deposits of more than twenty billion—that’s bee-boy-billion—dollars.

  Next to that number, Bertone’s working fortune was lite beer.

  But it could buy a lot of misery just the same. It could take apart a weak African nation, murder every citizen who objected, rape every natural resource, and leave behind starvation, disease, and ruin.

  Her fingers were poised over the keys.

  Trembling.

  Here goes nothing. Well, not quite nothing. More like a quarter of a billion dollars.

  She keyed in instructions that shifted the contents of the Bertone account to a Bank of America account in Tucson, punched enter, and waited. Seconds later, the screen confirmed that the money was now in her late grandmother’s account a hundred miles away.

  Grinning, she pushed back from her workstation and stood up, turning toward the door.

  And right into Steve Foley’s silver-plated pistol.

  58

  Phoenix

  Sunday

  1:25 P.M. MST

  What are you doing here?” Foley demanded.

  Kayla stared at the shiny pistol and thought of the trophies he had in glass cases in his office.

  Games, that’s all. Paper targets or tin cans or bowling pins.

  “Answer me!”

  Fear slammed through Kayla. Fight or flee, and she couldn’t flee. Her inner bitch rose up and snarled. “It’s my office. What are you doing here?”

  “Listen, bitch—” he began.

  “Watch the sexist stuff,” she cut in, forcing her voice not to tremble. “The company manual is real clear on that.”

  �
��Shut up or I’ll shoot you where you stand. What are you doing here?”

  “Looking at you.”

  His knuckles whitened on his pistol hand. “If Andre didn’t want you alive…”

  “But he does,” Kayla said. And she sure hoped he didn’t change his mind before St. Kilda found her. “So don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Killing you wouldn’t be stupid. It’s your fingerprints all over Bertone’s account. You’re alone in the world. I could bury you in the desert and play dumb. The bank and the FBI would look for a long time and finally decide you’re living in Venezuela or Brazil.”

  Carefully Kayla raised her trembling hands and backed around her desk, away from Foley.

  Toward the window.

  “Stop!” Foley said.

  She looked at the black circle aimed right between her eyes.

  She stopped.

  “Bertone is a bad enemy,” she said quietly. “If you kill me, he’ll kill you.”

  “There’s a lot I can do that won’t kill you. You’ll wish it had. And what I can’t think of, Bertone will.”

  No argument there, so she waited.

  Rand, I need you.

  Now would be a good time to bring on Plan C.

  But Rand was in the parking lot, fifty yards and a world away.

  “Sit at your desk,” Foley said sharply. “Hands in front of you.”

  Kayla put a leash on her inner bitch and her fear. She sat with her hands in plain sight. Foley’s eyes were too wide, almost wild. She didn’t want to get him so mad he forgot he needed her alive.

  But being angry felt so much better than the icy fear coiled in her gut.

  He kept the pistol trained on her and walked to the window. A brief glance was all it took. “Couldn’t get your stud past the lobby guard, huh?” Impatiently he yanked the cord that closed the blinds.

  Like the computer, it wasn’t something he was used to doing for himself. The blinds jammed partially open.

  “He knows I’m here,” Kayla said. “He’s expecting me in about three minutes. He knows everything I know. It’s over, Steve. Put down the gun. I have friends who can help you. You won’t even go to jail. It’s Bertone they want, not you.”