Elizabeth Lowell - Innocent as Sin

The longer she went without artificial light, the more she saw. Features of the landscape became distinct; subtle divisions between rock and plant and shadow became clear.

“I used to ride at night,” she said finally. “I loved it. Nobody was trying to kidnap me then. But I see things even more clearly now.”

“Amazing how a little fear sharpens the senses. You ran straight for me in the garden, like a cat.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way. I was too busy being scared silly.”

“You weren’t silly,” he said. “You had your best weapon and were ready to defend yourself no matter what the odds. That’s all anyone can do.”

She was silent for a moment, then let out a long sigh. “Thanks, Rand. I needed that. I felt so damned helpless.”

Rand remembered holding Reed, seeing death take life from his eyes. “I’ve been there. Helpless and screaming inside.”

“You sure didn’t look helpless tonight.”

“Different time, different place. Next time, next place-” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

What she could see of his face told her the same thing his voice did. He meant every word.

Not Tarzan, yodeling through the jungle on waves of testosterone.

Not a lapdog.

Altogether intriguing.

The SUV popped over a rocky ridgeline and started down into Dry Valley. In the distance, a light burned. As they came closer, the single yard light in a fixture on a power pole next to the ranch house outlined every detail around the small house.

“No cars,” Rand said. “No trucks. But then, I’d put my wheels out of sight and wait inside.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. Do you really think someone’s inside my-Bertone’s-house?”

“Probably not. But why regret not doing what’s smart?”

He drove slowly into the yard between the corral and the low-roofed ranch house. The cone of light from the single bulb fell across a post that was mounted with three swinging arms, each about a foot long. At the end of each arm there was a hummingbird feeder with a clear plastic barrel and red plastic base.

“You still have a key to the door?” Rand asked.

“I never lock it.”

“You live alone and you don’t lock up?”

She shrugged. “Mom and Dad never did. There’s a deadbolt on the inside I can use if I’m home.”

“The last of the innocents,” he said softly. “After I get out, crawl over to the driver’s side. Don’t open the door. If you see anyone but me, hit the horn and drive like a bat out of hell to the Royal Palms. Ask for Joe Faroe.”

“What about you?”

Instead of answering, Rand lowered the window and listened.

Above the sound of the engine came a rush of wind, the rub of dry plants against each other, the call of a song-dog wishing for the moon. Rand listened as the coyote called again.

Nothing answered.

“Put your hands over the dome light,” he said.

She stared for a moment, then put her palms squarely over the SUV’s interior light. Her hands glowed red when he opened the door. Quickly, quietly, he shut the door behind him and disappeared into the shadows beside the corral and barn.

Kayla scrambled across to the driver’s seat and watched the ghost that was Rand. He used every bit of darkness and landscape to break up his outline against the pale dirt and star-blazing sky. Slowly he circled toward the back of the house.

And vanished.

When he disappeared, she felt a sudden isolation. She was in a place that was utterly familiar to her. And utterly unfamiliar, because a stranger was in the shadows of her childhood home looking for other strangers carrying bags holding handcuffs and duct tape and silenced guns.

I don’t know who advised people to believe three impossible things a day, but I’m working on it.

Don’t work, she told herself. Just accept.

Treat this like a foreign country. I don’t need to understand everything at once. I used to be good at that, at letting go, at not getting hung up on differences to the point that I couldn’t enjoy a new place.

Now I’m in a new place.

Accept it.

Rand appeared at the other end of the ranch house. The silenced gun gleamed dully in his hand. He tested the front door, found it unlocked, and pushed it wide open. Then he waited, listening. After a few moments he went inside.

Kayla waited, listening, breath held. She flinched and let out an explosive breath when a light turned on inside the house. Other lights came on. Rand reappeared on the porch and walked to the SUV. The gun was nowhere in sight.

“Shut it down,” he said. “We’re alone.”

She turned off the engine and got out of the car, walking into a familiar, foreign land.

He took her arm with his left hand. It was an impersonal gesture, a means of guiding her, yet Kayla was aware of his touch immediately, intensely. Then she saw that his right hand never strayed far from the gun at the small of his back.

“I thought you said we’re alone.” She looked pointedly at his right hand.

“I’m ninety-seven percent sure. The gun’s for the other three percent.”

“Are you certain you aren’t a federal cop?” she asked.

“Would you feel better if I was?”

“No.”

He stopped by the front door. “Interesting. Why?”

“I saw Bertone talking to some of the most powerful politicians in the state tonight. I’ve seen thousands and thousands of dollars in campaign donations flow from the Bertones to national politicians all over the States.”

“So?”

“So right now I don’t trust anyone who draws a public paycheck. Call me a cynic.”

“I’d call you a realist. Money is just another word for power.”

Rand suspected that Faroe could name every politician who’d taken Bertone’s money, but Rand would ask Faroe just to be certain.

Bertone’s political allies were Kayla’s enemies.

“Anything look out of place to you?” Rand asked when Kayla walked into the house.

She glanced around. “Considering that I’ve been packing up stuff, no.”

She walked into the bedroom.

He followed.

“You’re neater than I am,” Rand said, looking around the room. “Or did you pack up all the little things already?”

“No. But too much clutter is like a traffic jam-it makes me edgy.”

An open book lay facedown on the bedside table. Rand picked up the paperback. The Lonely Planet guide Australia and New Zealand on a Shoestring. She’d been reading about the high lake and glacier country of South Island.

“Is this where you were going to go to ground?” he asked, gesturing with the book.

“Up until yesterday, all I had was itchy feet.”

“And now?”

“I itch everywhere.”

He almost smiled. “Smart.”

“Uncomfortable.”

“You get used to it.”

“I’d rather go to Queenstown and stop itching.”

He gave her a sideways glance and saw that she was looking wistfully at the picture of glaciers and lakes.

“You mentioned blackmail,” Rand said.

“I did?”

“Back in the garden. You said Bertone was the blackmailer, not you. What did you mean?”

“Guess my dossier wasn’t quite complete,” she said.

He closed the book and turned to her.

“Thursday I sold the ranch,” she said. “Got a really great price, never met the buyer.”

“Bertone.”

“How did you know?”

“I know Bertone.”

“Well, thanks to him,” she said bitterly, “now I look like a down-and-dirty banker.”

“Figures.”

“You believe me?”

“It fits with the rest of your dossier,” Rand said. “You’re too clean to volunteer for the kind of mud bath Bertone needs. He had to have a twist on you. Why didn’t you go to the feds?”

“Bertone has a lot more traction with the feds than I do. I didn’t want to bet my freedom on a he-said-she-said slanging match. Maybe I should have. But I couldn’t get enthusiastic about my chances of winning, so I looked for another way out.”

“Find one?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t know.”

Kayla turned and walked out of the bedroom. The kitchen area was the center of the small ranch house. With the ease of long familiarity she pulled out several stockpots, dumped in sugar and hot water, and put the pots on the gas stove. Each burner came on with a soft whump.

She stared at the flames.

“What do you think?” she asked finally. “Should I go to the feds?”

Rand thought of Neto being refused a visa-not in U.S. interests-and of the politicians sucking up expensive champagne at the Bertones’ paint-off. “As a last resort, maybe.”

“What about running?”

He shook his head slowly. “You don’t have enough money to hide for the next fifty years.”

“That’s what I figured. Then I went to my boss.”

“Which one?”

“Steve Foley.”

Another name to run by St. Kilda’s research department. “And?”

“I can talk about what happened to me, my personal finances. I can’t talk about my clients. I could get fired.”

“There are worse things. Handcuffs, for instance.”

Kayla flinched. “I have a responsibility to my clients and my bank.”

“That’s what Bertone is counting on. A sweet little bird who’s terrified of singing outside the choir.”

She set her jaw, stirred each pot, and watched bubbles rise.

“So Bertone is leaning on you to do something illegal with his money, using the bank,” Rand said after a time. “It’s called laundering, and the feds hate it. Right so far?”

Kayla didn’t bother to deny the obvious.

Or confirm it.

“What’s your stake in this?” she asked him.

He hesitated.

“No lies,” she said. “Remember?”

Silence stretched in the kitchen as Rand watched Kayla stir sugar syrup until it came to a boil. When she turned off the burners beneath the pots, he went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bucket of ice cubes.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He shoveled ice cubes into one of the pots until the syrup was cool.

“We don’t have all night to wait,” he said as he tested the syrup. “You don’t want a silly hummer to burn its tongue, do you? You have to dilute the syrup anyway.”

He tested the solution. Getting there. A few more cubes and it wouldn’t be a threat to the tender tongue of any hummingbird desperately clinging to a perch at the edge of the yard light.

Kayla tilted her head and looked at him like a curious cat. “I was going to pull out my big feeders, but even the biggest will be cool long before morning.”

Rand nodded. “That’s fine, but right now there’s a very hungry little guy needing to be fed. He’s waiting on a perch, hoping for a miracle to pull his feathered ass out of a crack.”

“At this time of night?” she asked, startled. “Hummingbirds shut down at sunset.”

“Unless they’re having a tough time on migration. Then they push too hard. The lucky ones find a yard feeder. The unlucky ones starve to death. Where are the feeders you want to use?”

“Cupboard behind you.”

She watched him take out a clean half-gallon feeder and fill it with cool, diluted syrup. Every movement was efficient, practiced. He might not be answering the question she’d asked, but he sure hadn’t lied about knowing how to feed hummingbirds.

“You’ve done this a lot,” she said.

“At the height of the season, I go through more than five pounds of sugar a day.”

“Holy hell. You must be feeding hundreds and hundreds of the flying pigs.”

“Easily. May and June are the big months. The birds are pretty well gone by the end of July.”

“And they’re all rufous?” she asked, trying to imagine what it would be like to see clouds of flying bronze jewels feeding at once, flashing their crimson gorgets to warn off others.

“Nearly all my birds are rufous. Nasty little heathens,” he said, smiling slightly, “but damn beautiful. They remind me that no matter how pretty, life is always a battle.”

Kayla waited until Rand had topped off the last feeder with cool syrup before she asked, “Are you going to answer my question about why you’re helping me?”

“Like you, not everything I know is mine to tell.” Rand screwed the feeding platform in place. “You already know the most important things.”

“Which are?”

“I want you alive and Bertone dead.”

Dry Valley

Saturday