Elizabeth Lowell - Innocent as Sin

“Really sweet.” Rand smiled grimly. “Hide behind the camera, Kayla.” Then, to Hamm, “Get closer to that club van. Go real slow, like a gringo looking for his drug dealer.”

Hamm started to object, then remembered Faroe’s orders: Rand was the boss.

“There are four males in the carport area,” Hamm said, slowly driving closer, “including the redhead from the van. My spotter says they’re moving something from the club van to the back of a beat-up, solid-sided blue panel truck.”

Hamm made a right and a left. The town square gave way to a tired little subdivision of one-story houses with satellite dishes and swamp coolers on the roof.

“Coming up.”

Kayla focused the camera on the sidewalk and made a startled sound.

“What?” Rand said.

“Where’s the Oh Shit Bar when I need it?” she said. “That’s Steve Foley. Next to him is Gabriel. I don’t recognize the other two.”

“Slouch down.” Rand enforced the command by pulling her facedown into his lap. “Hamm, eyes front when we go by.”

“Yessir.”

Whatever Kayla said was muffled by Rand’s lap.

Hamm passed the house slowly, seeming to pay no attention to it. Rand lounged with his shoulder against the door, largely shielding his face. But he managed a long sideways glance up the driveway and past the gleaming, lipstick-red club van, which was sitting stern to stern with a weary-looking blue Chevrolet delivery van. The Chevy’s rear cargo doors didn’t match. And one of them had some thin, rectangular patches on it.

“Did you see the weapons?” Hamm asked Rand after they were past.

“Yeah.”

“We done?”

“Yeah.”

Gradually Hamm picked up his speed.

Rand helped Kayla sit up again.

She swatted at him with her cap. “That’s for the mouthful of lap.”

He leaned closer and said softly, “You didn’t mind last night.”

She swatted him again.

“Did you see what they were unloading?” Hamm asked.

“Galil assault rifle,” Rand said.

“What?” Hamm asked, looking in the rearview mirror. “You sure?”

“Positive,” Rand said. “Bertone was the only one who could get Galils into Africa. I guess he still has good connections. Good enough that he could drop two Galils on Steve Foley to hand over to Gabriel.”

“Two?”

“I saw that many. Could be more.”

Hamm swore. “Then they just expanded their killing field by about a thousand yards.”

“There were what looked like gun slits in one van’s back doors,” Rand said. “Metal sliders.”

“Judas Priest,” Hamm muttered. “What next?”

Kayla’s cell phone rang, reminding her that she’d forgotten to turn it off. She dragged the phone out of the backpack and glanced at the caller ID window.

She flinched.

“Who is it?” Rand asked.

The cell phone rang again as she showed the ID window to Rand. “Steve Foley.”

“Ten to one he’s setting you up for Gabriel,” Rand said.

Nobody took the bet.

Guadalupe

Sunday

9:15 A.M. MST

Kayla stared at the cell phone in her lap. It wasn’t ringing any longer.

Foley hadn’t left a message.

Hamm closed his cell phone with a distinct click. “The Arizona Territorial Gun Club van is still in Gabriel’s driveway.”

Rand nodded and listened to Faroe on his own scrambled cell phone. Without taking his glance from Kayla’s pale face, Rand asked questions, listened to answers, and made his own requests. When he was certain everything would be in place, he hung up.

“Foley will call again,” Rand said. “Bertone has to smoke you out for Gabriel. We have two choices. Stay quiet or use this opportunity to take Gabriel off the board.”

And pray like dirty bastards that he doesn’t take Kayla out of the game instead.

All in all, Rand would rather have that skinny snake in a cage than loose on the streets with a Galil. He just didn’t want Kayla to be the bait. But no matter how he’d argued, Faroe hadn’t budged. If Rand revealed himself to Bertone as the one who could ID him with a planeload of arms in Africa, Bertone would get in the wind faster than St. Kilda could follow.

It was Kayla Bertone was looking for.

It was Kayla Bertone expected to find.

Kayla, who sat with her hands clenched around the Stetson he’d taken off. Her fingers had left creases in the hat’s creamy surface. She’d overheard enough of what he’d said to know that she was going to be an actress again.

She hated acting.

“Your choice, Kayla,” Rand said. “I mean it. If you don’t want to talk to Foley, you don’t talk. End of subject.”

Her cell phone rang again.

Rand waited.

Kayla listened to her gut instinct. Answer or not?

The phone rang.

She picked it up but didn’t open it.

“If you answer, put it on speakerphone,” Rand said quietly.

She changed the setting on the phone and looked at it without answering.

“Hamm, head for that mall we saw from the freeway.”

“Chandler Mall?” Hamm asked.

Her phone rang.

“Is it the closest?” Rand asked.

“Yes,” Kayla said. “Any final instructions before I answer?”

“Play hard-to-get before you invite him to the Cheesecake Factory at Chandler Mall. Don’t tell him about me.” Then, to Hamm, “Go.”

She opened the phone as the SUV accelerated away from Gabriel’s house.

“Hello,” she said tightly.

“Hey, Kayla, it’s Steve, how’s your Sunday going?” Foley’s voice was clear, friendly as a salesman.

“Just great,” she said, “but I’m breaking a personal rule, talking and driving eighty miles an hour on the 101 Loop. What’s up?”

Rand gave her a thumbs-up for the response.

“Well, look,” Foley said, “I hate to bother you on a weekend, but something has come up. I have to see you. Can we meet at your ranch?”

Simultaneously, Hamm and Rand gave her a negative head motion. She gave them a Well, duh eye roll.

“I’m really jammed up today,” she said. “Can’t we handle it by phone?”

“Sorry.” Foley’s voice said he wasn’t sorry at all. “It absolutely has to be done in person. That’s what being a personal banker is all about.”

“Hell,” Kayla said, just loud enough for Foley to catch. “I’m just really, uh, busy right now. I’m entitled to a private life on the weekends.”

“At the expense of your career?”

The whip in Foley’s voice would have worried her if she hadn’t already written her career off.

“This is bank business?” she asked.

“Why else would your supervisor be giving you a direct order?”

You’ve given me lots of direct orders, jerkwad, and you usually change your mind a few minutes later. But all Kayla said aloud was, “I’m listening. What’s so urgent?”

Rand made a motion with both hands and mouthed, Draw it out.

“I certainly hope it doesn’t involve the Bertone account,” she added.

Her tone was so sweetly reasonable that Rand had to smile-sweet reason had nothing to do with her eyes. They wanted Foley’s ass on a platter.

“Actually, it does,” Foley said. His tone was less certain, like an actor whose lines had been changed.

“I thought it might,” Kayla said gently. “I left the fund-raiser rather quickly last night. I wondered if Andre and Elena would be upset.”

“What happened?” Foley asked. “We’ve been worried about you.”

Rand wanted to spit on the floor.

From the twist of Kayla’s mouth, she did, too.

“Well, I was kind of upset,” she said. “A stranger made a hard pass at me in Bertone’s garden.”

“Uh-” Steve cleared his throat. “That’s awful. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Somebody happened along at the right moment and wilted the guy’s dick.”

Rand almost laughed out loud.

“But I was too upset to stay,” Kayla said. “I spent the night at a friend’s house in Gilbert.”

“Someone from the bank?”

“No. No one you know.”

“Are you headed to the ranch now?” Foley asked. “I know you’ve got more stuff to clean out.”

Rand shook his head.

“No,” Kayla said. “I’m just running some errands.”

“Oh. Well, maybe I’ll drop by the ranch later, when you’re home, and help you out. I hate to think of you being alone after what happened last night. Poor baby. I’m so sorry.”

Kayla lifted her middle finger at the phone, but her voice was smooth as she said, “Hang on a sec.” She put her hand over the microphone, looked at Rand, and said softly, “Sure you don’t want him at the ranch? We could give him and his gun-freak pal a real welcome.”

Her smile was hard and predatory. Clearly she liked the idea of ambushing the ambushers.

Concrete hummed beneath the SUV’s wheels. Hamm had turned onto the freeway and was speeding away from Guadalupe.

Finally Rand shook his head. “Too many places for a sniper to hit you along the way.”

Kayla took her hand off the microphone. “Oops, damn, I’m about to drop in the cell-phone dead zone at Shea. I’ll call you right back.”

“Who were you talking to?” Foley asked.

“Myself, same as always. Can’t break the habit.”

“You’ve lived alone too long, babe. Why don’t-”

She punched out and looked at Rand.

“Why can’t we just call the cops and have them rig a trap at the ranch?” she asked.

“Faroe is trying, but do you have any idea how much hassle it would be to wire the Maricopa County Sheriff ’s Office into this situation on a moment’s notice?” Rand asked. Then he added in a breathless falsetto, “Oh, Deputy, a very wealthy citizen who also happens to be an international arms smuggler and money launderer is trying to have me killed. He’s using a prominent banker, a Yaqui Indian thug with some ugly friends, and illegal automatic weapons he smuggled into the country.”

“But St. Kilda-” Kayla began.

“Is working for a foreign country in a gray area of the law. And the attack on you last night was never reported. Explain that away.”

“Crap. I feel like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.”

“Get used to it. The first data dump on the Bertones’ political activities just came back from St. Kilda’s research group. Last year they gave more than $1,700,000 in contributions, half to local politicians and half to national candidates. And that’s just the money we’ve traced so far. Who knows what they’ve given to elect the local sheriff? Money like that buys a certain amount of clout with local and federal cops.”

“St. Kilda found out all that overnight?” Kayla asked, startled.

“The Internet never sleeps and neither does a St. Kilda researcher. But it was no big hacking deal. Legal political contributions are mostly a matter of public record.”

“So you’re saying we can’t count on any help from the authorities?”

“Eventually, yes, they’ll trip all over themselves to help us. But not until we have solid evidence against Bertone. A lot of it. If we don’t get that, we’ll use the outrage after Okay Martin runs the show to twist the politicians, who will then lean on the cops.”

Kayla laughed. “Okay. That’s Martin’s favorite word.”

“You noticed. Anyway, we can’t count on outside help right now. If nothing else, it’s a weekend. Local cops with enough brass to go after Bertone are playing golf.”

“Why can’t St. Kilda do the job?” Hamm asked.

“If we go looking for a gunfight, ex-judge Grace Silva Faroe will have our balls for breakfast.”

Kayla grimaced. “I’d rather eat at Cheesecake Factory, thanks all the same.”

“In a booth away from the windows after eleven,” Rand said. “Anyone good enough to use a Galil is a sniper who will wait for a sure kill. Last thing he wants is you in a hospital surrounded by cops.”

“What if Foley doesn’t want to play it my way?” Kayla asked.

“Then tell him you’re too busy, you’ll see him at work Monday.”

“He could fire me on the spot. Then we’d never figure out what he and Bertone are up to.”

“Then we lose Bertone and live with it. I won’t let you meet Foley in a place we can’t control.”

“I’m willing to risk it.”

“I’m not,” Rand said. “Call Foley back.”

“But-”

“Call him,” Rand interrupted, “or I’ll visit him personally and boot this whole bloody act into the crapper where it belongs.”

Kayla looked at Rand for a long moment. Shaving off his beard should have made him look softer, more civilized.