Innocent as Sin

by Elizabeth Lowell

  It was intended to simulate a standard business-building arrangement, a place where a weapons team could practice tactics to use against a man who had gone postal.

  Fifty-fifty.

  I storm the hallway and take one door, only to find the shooter is waiting behind the other.

  Rand didn’t move. It wasn’t like Bertone to settle for even odds.

  The attack will come from the far end of the corridor while I’m busy shooting at empty doorways.

  He circled to his right and came at the shooting maze from the other end. It was the only way he had a hope of surprising Bertone. With each quick step, he tensed against hearing Kayla’s scream.

  Nothing but silence.

  Way too much silence.

  But at least he’d distracted Bertone from Kayla.

  Three more steps.

  A leather sole squeaked on the smooth concrete ahead and on the other side of a wall.

  Rand had run ten feet when sound exploded, a shattering burst from the M-60 machine gun. Apparently Bertone had found more ammo for his heavy iron. Slugs chewed through the Kevlar partition where Rand had been. The sound was more shocking than the bullets that ripped through the wall.

  Rand couldn’t hear his own breath, which meant that Bertone was also deafened for a time. Moving fast, Rand turned the corner of the shooting maze.

  There was another long, dimly lit corridor with a series of facing doors and a side hall that cut away. At the far end of the corridor, a steel stairway climbed halfway up to the open ceiling and then cut back on itself.

  Perfect ambush.

  Tactical nightmare.

  A defender could hide at the cutback point and fire down the corridor or wait at the second-floor landing and fire down on his attacker.

  Rand focused on a Mylar dome hanging from the ceiling halfway down the hall. He’d seen gear like it in high-security installations all over the world. Closed-circuit TV cameras lived behind the Mylar. Other similar installations covered the rest of the shooting rooms.

  Son of a bitch. Bertone can monitor every step I take.

  Rand stepped into the center of the corridor and lifted the AK with his left hand, forcing his right arm to support the barrel. The fingers had feeling again, but his right shoulder wasn’t worth shit. He fired three shots.

  The closest plastic dome exploded in a shower of sparks as Rand raced back to cover.

  The hard black snout of a machine-gun muzzle poked out of a seam in the corridor wall. A hail of bullets screamed and whined off the concrete floor. Bertone had turned jacketed slugs into a shotgun blast of shrapnel that shredded the wall three feet from where Rand was hiding.

  Cute. If I’d stopped to admire my work like Foley, I’d be bloody rags on the floor.

  Like Foley.

  Breathing softly, listening hard, Rand wondered what Bertone’s next trick would be.

  78

  Arizona Territorial Gun Club

  Sunday

  2:40 P.M. MST

  Kayla pulled and twisted against the duct tape covering her mouth, scrubbing it against the rough console in the control room. High up on her thighs, flesh burned and bled where Bertone had cut her. She noticed it only because the blood got in her way when she tried to rub off her duct-tape gag on her jeans. Blood trickled down over the duct tape binding her ankles.

  God, Rand, Bertone can see everything you do.

  Can you hear me?

  I’m screaming it!

  But nothing useful got past the duct tape.

  Breathing hard through her nose, she was forced to slow down for lack of air. She managed to roll up against the wall and look around. The first thing she saw was the ugly pistol Bertone had left on a metal table near one of the huge, silent monitors.

  It was a better chance than she’d hoped for.

  She began to work at getting cuffed hands in front of her, rather than behind. As she did, she watched the monitors.

  One section was blank.

  The section next to it showed Bertone lying in wait.

  Rand was soft-footing it along a different corridor, a pistol in his hand. In front, across his chest, a wicked-looking weapon waited to be used.

  Heart pounding, body struggling, Kayla watched the two men play a lethal kind of hide-and-seek.

  Obviously Rand had figured out where Bertone was waiting behind a wall. Instead of continuing down the shredded corridor, Rand had retreated and reentered the maze from the front.

  Kayla watched, worked, and tried to breathe through the duct tape as Rand ghosted up the metal stairs. Halfway to the top, he looked up. He ran up the rest of the way, grabbed a handful of wires, and ripped.

  Another camera went out.

  No shots followed.

  Sweating, terrified, she wrestled with the cuffs and watched as Rand disappeared from the monitors. She looked overhead at the network of catwalks and observation platforms for the action below.

  There was no cover.

  And no cameras to track him.

  Watching, raking her gag against the rough console as she struggled, Kayla saw Rand move down the catwalk one slow, gliding step at a time, scanning the maze below for movement. She could tell when he spotted her in the control room in the center of the maze.

  Rand shifted the weapon from his chest to his back and eeled toward the control room on his belly.

  Bertone was nowhere in sight.

  Kayla gave up on her cuffs for the moment and struggled toward a bank of monitors, pointing with her bound feet, clearly wanting Rand to look at the TVs.

  Two rooms away, he watched the big screens that were still working. Each was being fed in rotation by several cameras, perhaps as many as a dozen cameras covering the tactical course. The right-hand screen rotated through a blank monitor every four or five seconds, one of the holes he’d left in the coverage.

  Kayla breathed hard through her nose and watched the screens like a bird watching a snake. Rand watched with her through several cycles.

  A flash of movement.

  Bertone was sneaking back across the corridor near the end of the maze, still carrying the heavy M-60 like it was an assault rifle. He was sweating but not breathing hard.

  Damn, that’s one strong bastard, Rand thought. It will take a lot of lead to bring him down.

  And he was closing in on Kayla.

  On the monitor she saw Bertone head for a concealed door in the control room. She slumped back against the console just before Bertone walked in.

  She forced herself not to look at the ceiling catwalk.

  Bertone gave her an amused look. The blood on the floor told its own story about her useless struggles. He focused on the monitors.

  Motionless, Rand hugged the catwalk and sweated. He could hear his own breathing again; the deafness from the blast of the M-60 had faded. That meant Bertone’s hearing was back online, too. Moving on the metal catwalk to get closer to Bertone would be difficult, but the range was too great for Rand to be accurate with a borrowed pistol.

  Kayla was too close to the target.

  Bertone studied each of the monitors through a complete sequence. Nothing moved. He shifted the M-60 and cat-footed it back to his peephole overlooking the corridor.

  Kayla rolled as far as she could from Bertone’s position, wanting to give Rand as much of a firing field as possible. Watching slugs ricochet off the stone lobby floor had been an education.

  Am I making enough noise? she asked Rand silently.

  She threw in some shoe scrapes and muffled thumps. She balanced on the tightrope of helping Rand cover his approach, yet not making so much noise that Bertone knocked her out—which he’d done before he found the duct tape.

  Rand used Kayla’s sound as cover, closing in on the control room. Now he could see a Glock pistol with an extended magazine lying on a narrow table beside one of the screens. A Glock tricked out like that was a mini machine gun, twenty shots on semi- or full automatic.

  Using Kayla’s muffled thrashing, Ra
nd eeled to the place where another catwalk cut across the shooting house. Bertone hadn’t moved from his ambush spot.

  Now, Kayla thought. Time to see if those yoga classes live up to their ads.

  It was her last chance. If Bertone found her, she would die. But then, he was planning to kill her anyway.

  After he made her scream some more.

  She shifted and wiggled and strained until she fell over. She glanced at the screen and saw that Bertone hadn’t moved. She forced her cuffed hands over her butt, down her legs, then fought her ankles and feet through.

  Her blood helped to grease the way.

  When she was finished, she was sweating, her chest was heaving, and she felt like she’d strained every muscle in her arms. She was still cuffed, but at least her hands were in front of her.

  She peeled down enough of the gag to breathe more easily, then dragged herself over to the ugly pistol Bertone had left behind. Her shoulders ached in time to the rapid beat of her heart.

  She watched the screen.

  Bertone hadn’t moved.

  She pushed herself to her knees and grabbed the gun. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but she guessed it would have a hard recoil. She knew enough to recognize the safety. It wasn’t on. Very carefully she set the pistol next to her on the floor. Watching the screen, she started clawing at the duct tape around her ankles. This time the blood got in her way, making her fingers slip. An inch at a time, she managed to peel the sticky stuff off.

  She glanced up at the catwalks as she pulled the tape free.

  Rand was grinning like a pirate. He gestured with one hand, sweeping her back out of the line of fire he would have to use if Bertone came back into the room.

  She glanced at the screen again.

  It was empty.

  79

  Arizona Territorial Gun Club

  Sunday

  2:44 P.M. MST

  Bertone moved with incredible speed for a man of his bulk. By the time Kayla caught the motion on another screen, he was in the hallway just outside, his heavy gun pointed at the catwalk.

  Rand saw him before Kayla did. He threw himself to the side and tried to pull the AK-47 into firing position. Something hung up on the catwalk. Suddenly the gun spun off and fell down into the opening below. He lunged for a narrow steel observation platform as he grabbed his pistol.

  The sound of the M-60 deafened him all over again.

  The hail of heavy slugs punched and clanged and sang around him as he wriggled on his stomach to the edge of the steel platform. A fragment of metal ricocheted so close that he felt a burning line drawn across one eyebrow. Pistol ready, he leaned over the edge just enough to see Bertone.

  Too far for a pistol.

  But not too far for the machine gun.

  Bullets punched and exploded around Rand. Bertone was chewing the observation platform into ragged steel lace.

  Rand rolled over and over. It was suicide for him to stay on the platform and certain death if he went back to the catwalk. Ignoring the blood dripping down his face, he took a new position, leaned over the edge, and fired two times, the shots a bare instant apart.

  Bertone jerked and swung the machine gun. Rand kept firing as he watched the muzzle brake of the M-60 turn into a tunnel of death looking for him.

  Finding him.

  He kept pouring bullets into Bertone. He might as well have been pumping bullets into a tree for all the good it was doing. At this range, the little bedside pistol just wasn’t getting the job done.

  Or Bertone was wearing body armor.

  Kayla stepped out of the control room and closed in until she couldn’t miss Bertone. Eyes open, jaw clenched, she aimed at the back of his head and held the trigger down. Bullets and fire came in a continuous stream until the magazine was empty and the slide locked back.

  With a violent shudder she flung the gun away and turned her back on the twitching Bertone. She had taken all she could, and then she had taken more.

  She was done.

  Distantly she heard sirens screaming and Rand talking to her. His arms held her.

  “Easy, love, easy,” he said. “It’s over.”

  She closed her eyes and sagged against him. “You sure?”

  He looked at what had once been Andre Bertone. “Yeah, I’m sure. Body armor only protects what it covers.”

  Leaning on each other, they walked slowly out of the bloody shooting house, toward the sound of sirens pouring in through the shattered front doors.

  80

  Phoenix

  May

  Kayla stood close to Rand and watched a lone hummingbird dip and drink, dip and drink, a tiny feathered pump sucking nectar from a feeder dangling above her apartment balcony. When the bird leaped back, hovered, and darted off into the velvet dusk, Kayla sighed and straightened.

  “Okay,” she said, “I’m ready now.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I need to.”

  He didn’t argue. He knew what some of her dreams were like. He’d held her through them.

  She’d held him through his.

  He shut the patio door, threaded his way through the painting gear that had taken over the living room, and went to the TV. An unmarked DVD stuck out like a silver tongue from the slot.

  As he bent to shove the disc into place, she asked automatically, “How are your ribs?”

  “Ask me next week, when we get to the cold, wet Pacific Northwest.”

  “Do you want to stay here?”

  “Not unless you do.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve always wanted to see Washington’s San Juan Islands.”

  He picked up the controller and sat next to her on the couch. “If you’d kept your grandmother’s bank account, you could own those islands.”

  “I didn’t even like taking the St. Kilda bonus.”

  “It didn’t come from Bertone’s money,” Rand said. Not directly. Hell, in today’s world, clean money is a joke. “And you earned every last penny of your percentage. Did I say thank you for saving my life?”

  “Same back at you, and yes, every time you look at me and smile.”

  Smiling, he ran his fingertips down her face. She had a faint scar from Foley’s ring. There were other marks, high on her legs. At first seeing the scars had enraged Rand. Then he’d accepted them for what they were—a warrior’s mark of courage, more beautiful than perfection would have been.

  Just as he had finally accepted that he had lived and Reed hadn’t.

  He pushed the button on the controller. Brent Thomas’s handsome face smiled out at them from the screen. The backdrop was a Camgerian village.

  “Thank you for joining me. I’m in Camgeria, Africa. Many of you will remember our March show, which featured the rise and fall of international gunrunner Andre Bertone. Much of the graphic footage of starvation and disease in that hour was filmed in the village behind me.”

  Kayla wanted to look away as the camera reprised the village’s brutal past, but she didn’t. She had learned the hard way the truth that lay at St. Kilda Consulting’s core: when civilized people were too sensitive to face evil, then evil would bring down civilization.

  “Today, I have the rare pleasure of sharing with you a miracle of rebirth. Villages all over Camgeria are being transformed, thanks to the outpouring of viewers like you.”

  “Plus St. Kilda’s gift of two hundred million and change,” Rand said, taking her hand. “And the courage of a certain unnamed banker lady.”

  “Don’t forget the unlikely artist.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  “What’s unlikely about—”

  “Shhh. I can’t hear,” Kayla interrupted.

  “—clinic opened today. There will be free exams and treatments for everyone in the village. Thanks to our viewers’ generosity, the school has more supplies than they can use, so staff from The World in One Hour has been supplying schools in neighboring villages. The biggest blessing is the village well. With
it, the waterborne diseases that have plagued these people in the past will be eradicated.”

  The view shifted to laughing children playing a local version of tag while their mothers lined up with buckets for a turn at the astonishing, ever-flowing silver water.

  The scene shifted again, more angles on the difference a few hundred thousand dollars had made in a village that had known only poverty, violence, and despair.

  When Thomas signed off, Kayla took the controller and killed the TV. “Amazing what one little old television program can do all by its little old self.”

  “Hey, Okay Martin begged you to—”

  “Sell my soul for a few minutes of fame before the bruises healed,” she cut in. “No thanks. I understand why St. Kilda shuns the spotlight.”

  “Public theater is necessary for society.”

  “So are public sewers.”

  Rand gave up, laughed, and pulled her into his lap. “Speaking of things that float, do you suppose Elena watched the show?”

  “I doubt it was televised in Brazil.”

  He nuzzled against her hair. After all of it, she still smelled like cinnamon and vanilla. “Last time I talked to Joe, he was still wondering how you conned Grace and Steele into letting Elena get a slice of Bertone’s pie.”

  “It was a very small slice. Microscopic, actually.”

  “It was a big pie.”

  “Her kids no more deserved poverty and privation than the kids in Camgeria. And there was no way to punish Elena without punishing them.”

  Kayla leaned against Rand, remembered his injury, and straightened.

  He pulled her back against his chest.

  “Your ribs—”

  “Are healed,” he said. “Cracked, not smashed, thanks to Joe’s body armor. I owe him a new set.”

  Kayla savored the warmth of being close to Rand. After a few minutes she stirred and kissed his neck. “Are you going to do it?”