Elizabeth Lowell - Innocent as Sin

The last thing he’d expected when he married the gorgeous Elena was to find the heart of a good mother beating inside the sex-goddess body. Watching Elena with their children had at first been baffling, then amusing.

Now he was charmed.

“It’s time for angels to be in bed,” he said, lifting the covers.

Elena and Miranda came to bed as a unit.

Smiling, Bertone stroked Miranda’s fine hair and wondered when his contacts in the government would find Kayla Shaw. She was an annoyance. A dangerous one.

And soon, a dead one.

Royal Palms

Sunday

7:00 A.M. MST

Okay!” Ted Martin clapped his hands together and laughed.

“Okay, that’s really fine!”

Rand didn’t bother to look at the TV, which had been playing and replaying “film” since the agents left. DVDs didn’t wear out, which was a good thing. But Martin had cloned this one, just in case.

“Pregnant woman stands off raiding party.” Martin hooted. “Okay! At this rate we’re going to get the whole hour, girls and boys. The whole mother-hugging hour!”

“Sound quality is spotty,” Thomas said.

“All the better,” Martin shot back. “We’ll do print at the bottom of the screen, leave the off-center shots, the jigging camera, make the viewer feel like he’s right there, watching it go down. Great stuff! Gotta love that red silk robe.”

Faroe and Rand exchanged looks and said nothing.

“You going to blank out her face?” Thomas asked.

Martin looked uneasily at Faroe. “I hope not.”

“Jury is still out on that,” Faroe said.

Martin wanted to argue. He didn’t. When Faroe’s eyes went narrow, smart people backed off.

“Okay, play it again, Sam,” Martin said.

Thomas stared at his producer. “You didn’t really say that.”

“Just play it, okay?” Martin snapped.

“Right,” Thomas said. “You want me to do a voice-over in the background?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Somebody knocked on the door.

Faroe shot a look at the cameraman, who’d immediately grabbed his small, shoulder-held video camera. “Not unless I give the signal. Got it?”

The man swallowed and set aside the camera. “Got it.”

“It’s the deliveryman,” called a voice from the other side of the door.

Rand went to one of the heavily curtained windows and lifted the cloth just enough to see a slice of the front porch. There was a small electronic device on the window. It put out vibrations that disturbed any attempt at long-distance sound surveillance. There was one such device on every window in all three bungalows. It was doubtful that the feds had put that kind of high-tech equipment in place before they were routed, but Faroe was a paranoid bastard.

It was one of the things Rand really liked about him.

Faroe went to the spy hole. He saw a distorted, barely recognizable Jimmy Hamm, complete with face-shielding sombrero and wraparound sunglasses.

“He’s alone,” Rand said to Faroe. “Hands full of packages. Where’d he get that hat-Central Casting?”

“He mugged a burro.”

Faroe unlocked the door, opened it just enough to let Hamm in, and locked it tight again.

“Should I take Kayla’s clothes over to her?” Hamm asked.

“No. There’s a blind spot between the two bungalows. She’s in here with Grace.”

“Blind spot?”

“As in can’t be covered by long-distance surveillance,” Rand said. “I’ll take these to Kayla.”

Reluctantly Hamm passed over the purchases he’d made in the gift store-after he woke up the management. “You got a thing going with her?”

Rand gave him a look Faroe would have been proud of.

“Well, dang,” Hamm said. “All the interesting ones are taken.”

“As long as you remember that, your pretty face will stay intact,” Faroe said.

He went to the bedroom door, opened it, and stuck his head in. “If you and Lane are finished trading acronyms about the Krebs cycle, we need you out here.”

Kayla glanced up from a textbook thicker than her wrist. “This is hip, highly colored, diagrammed-up-the-wazoo gibberish. They had better texts when I was in school, which was shortly after the dinosaurs went extinct.”

“That book was personally approved by every politician in the state of California,” Faroe said. “What can I say?”

“A camel is a horse made by a committee,” Kayla said, setting aside the book.

“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.”

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.