Elizabeth Lowell - Innocent as Sin

Being blackmailed by a client was distracting as hell.

“I know what part of your problem is,” she said. “The portal isn’t set up for access to correspondent accounts, only for private-bank checking and savings accounts.”

“You mean there’s no way to conduct business right now?” Foley’s voice was raw.

“Not until the main system comes back online,” Kayla said casually. “Even the bank president can’t move money from that account until Monday morning at nine.” At least I sure hope that’s the case.

Foley muttered something savage under his breath.

“I’ll be glad to take care of the transactions on the account first thing Monday morning,” she offered.

He shook his head abruptly. “No. Andre’s instructions for the transactions are very detailed. Nine o’clock Monday?”

“Not a minute before. But everything would be posted to the account Monday, anyway, even if you made transfers today. So Andre won’t lose any interest or anything. On an account of that size, interest will matter.”

Rand started humming “Diamonds and Rust.”

Kayla kicked him again under the table.

“You said my portal was only part of the problem.” Foley frowned at her. “What’s the rest?”

“You don’t have the password. Without it, you can’t move money out of the account.”

Foley shrugged. “Bertone will give it to me.”

“He doesn’t have it.”

Rand went still.

Foley’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “What?”

“Everyone was in such a lather to open the account, I couldn’t get through to Bertone for him to choose a password, so I did it. I’m the only one who can move money out of that account.”

“Christ Jesus,” Faroe breathed in Rand’s ear. “Why didn’t she tell us!”

It took Foley a moment to digest her words. When he did, he spoke through clenched teeth. “What. Is. The. Password.”

Subtly Rand gathered himself, ready to jump Foley if he went through with the violence vibrating in his voice. He’d rather belt Foley than twitch to imaginary music any day.

“I don’t know the password,” Kayla said.

Rand forced himself not to react.

Faroe groaned. “So near and yet so far.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Foley asked.

Kayla yawned and nudged Rand in the ankle. “I use a million passwords, so I write them down in code in my little black book.”

“Where’s the book?” Foley demanded.

“At Jerry’s apartment with my overnight case.”

Chandler Mall

Sunday

11:33 A.M. MST

Bertone couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, could barely think.

Kayla had the password.

Gabriel would kill her the instant she left the restaurant.

Cursing in five languages, Bertone punched Gabriel’s number into his cell phone. He tugged one of the earphones out, slammed the cell phone to his ear, and listened to it ring.

And ring.

Foley’s voice talked into his other ear. “Get it. Right now. I’ll follow you.”

Kayla’s voice declining. “We’ve got errands to run. I’ll call you with the password as soon as I get it.”

“I want it now!”

“What’s the hurry? Even with the password, you can’t move anything until Monday morning.”

Gabriel’s phone was still ringing.

Nobody was answering.

Caught between rage and fear, Bertone willed Gabriel to pick up his cell phone.

“Wake up, Jerry.”

And a man’s voice. “You finally through, sweet thing?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll call you in a few hours, Steve. Enjoy our meals.”

Bertone listened to the sounds of Kayla and her boyfriend leaving the booth, walking away, heading for the restaurant door.

Going straight into Gabriel’s ambush.

Numbly Bertone sat and waited to hear the shots that might as well be aimed at his own heart.

Chandler Mall

Sunday

11:34 A.M. MST

Just as Rand and Kayla passed Faroe’s table, he shoved to his feet, bumping against her. He grabbed her arm to steady her.

“Sorry,” Faroe said. “Didn’t see you.”

Then in a voice so soft Rand thought he imagined it, Faroe said in his ear, “Take her shopping. It’s going down now.”

Rand pulled Kayla close. “You okay, sweet thing?”

“Never better, stud.”

Faroe’s mouth twisted as he fought a smile.

“Remember that naughty little pink thingy you showed me?” Rand said. “I’ve decided I’m going to buy it for you right now.”

He hauled Kayla out the restaurant’s side door and onto an escalator headed for the second floor of the shopping mall. He made sure that he was standing between her and any view of the parking lot. He wasn’t going to expose her until he was sure Gabriel and the two Galils were out of the game.

“What was that all about?” Kayla asked under her breath.

“Faroe didn’t want us in the parking lot right now,” Rand said.

The escalator gave him a clear, gliding view of the parking lot in front. The place was alive with squad cars.

“Now that’s sweet,” Rand said, grinning.

“I can’t see.”

He leaned aside.

Kayla saw five white Chandler squad cars pulled up at odd angles around the tired-looking Chevrolet van she’d seen in Guadalupe. Officers swarmed around the van, which was parked with its rear cargo door pointed in the direction of the restaurant’s front door. Three officers had opened the cargo doors and were leaning in to examine the interior of the van.

Two men were facedown on the asphalt, their hands cuffed behind them.

“Is it-” she began.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, glancing around while he appeared to be nuzzling her hair. “Hell’s angel was flying too close to the ground. Crash and burn, you bastard.”

An officer emerged from the cargo area carrying a lethal-looking long gun with a sniper’s scope on it.

“One of the guys on the ground, the skinny one-” she began.

“Yeah,” Rand said. “Say buh-bye, darling. He’s going down, big-time.”

“Is that one of the guns we saw in Guadalupe?” Kayla asked very quietly.

“I’d bet on it.” Then, “End of the ride. Watch your step.”

She walked off the escalator, but all she could concentrate on was her memory of the parking lot with its silent show-and-tell. “You were right. About the gun slits.”

“Sure was.”

“Don’t sound so cheerful. I was the target, wasn’t I.”

It wasn’t a question.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Rand said. “But if it was Bertone on the other end of Foley’s wire, he must have been shitting green lizards.”

“Why?”

“Because you, you clever little banker lady, have the key to his millions. If he kills you, he kills himself. But he didn’t know that when he pointed his skinny death angel at you and told him to pull the trigger.”

Her mouth flattened. “Now what?”

“Tell me you didn’t forget Bertone’s password.”

“I didn’t.”

He let out a breath. “Good.”

“Just because my hips swing when I walk, I’m not stupid. And I sure don’t have a little black book of passwords.”

“Dang.” He smiled slowly. “Here I was getting all hard just thinking about it.”

She gave him a look as he hustled her past windows full of things with price tags and blank faces. “Are we going somewhere in particular?”

“No. We’re waiting for Bertone to get in touch with his inner password.”

“What about my naughty pink thingy?”

“I’ll get in touch with that.”

Chandler Mall

Sunday

11:40 A.M. MST

Lane walked eagerly next to his dad as they strolled toward the gang of squad cars blocking the parking lane in the crowded mall lot.

“This is a classic example of a felony takedown,” Faroe said. “Watch and learn.”

“Beats hell out of the Krebs cycle,” Lane said, peering at the milling officers.

“Gotta watch that adrenaline. It’s witchy stuff. Just remember, your mother as a judge has done more to leave the world a better place than she found it than I have hanging with St. Kilda.”

“Then why isn’t she still a judge?”

“Ask her.”

“I did.”

“What’d she say?”

“To ask you,” Lane said.

“Sometimes good doesn’t get the job done. Then St. Kilda does. We’re the guys in the gray hats.”

“Look at that gun! What kind is that?”

“Ease back,” Faroe said quietly. “The cops have things under control, but they’re still full of adrenaline and their guns are full of bullets. Give them plenty of room and don’t do anything sudden.”

One of the cops who was leaning out over the hood of his squad car with a shotgun at the ready glanced up at them and said flatly, “Stay back. This is a crime scene.”

Faroe stood with his hands out at his sides, palms open.

Lane imitated him.

The cop nodded.

“I’m just worried about my car, Officer,” Faroe said. “I don’t want any buckshot holes in it.”

“Your car’s fine, sir. Just stay back out of the way.”

“Yessir,” Faroe said.

He drew Lane back behind a red Ford pickup, where they could watch without making anyone nervous.

“The nice thing about Arizona cops,” Faroe said, “is they’re used to dealing with armed suspects and felony takedowns.”

“You mean that open-carry law that Mom is always rolling her eyes over?”

“Yeah. Note how the cops all pulled in from separate directions, but left firing lanes open in case the mopes in the van tried anything. Good technique.”

Lane watched the officers unload two heavy-caliber automatic weapons and a half-dozen magazines of ammunition from the van.

“Why didn’t the dudes fight back?” he asked. “Look at the firepower they had. Those things are more than a match for shotguns, aren’t they?”

“The mopes on the ground are pros, just like the cops,” Faroe said.

“How can you tell?”

“They survived a felony takedown.”

“Huh?”

Faroe put his hand on Lane’s shoulder and continued teaching his son the things that someday might help him to survive when others died.

“Note the jailhouse tattoos and the iron-pile physiques on those cuffed arms,” Faroe said. “Pros know when to fight and when to fold. It was folding time. If there are six cops here now, there are eighteen more on the way, and the clowns on the ground want to live to fight another day.”

“How did you get them to send six cops in the first place?” Lane asked. “Mom wasn’t sure the desk sergeant would respond at all.”

“I made sure that the police got two different calls, both with pretty much the same level of detail,” Faroe said. “A single call about a Mexican in a van brandishing a long gun might have gotten the dispatcher to send a car or two. That would have tempted the bad guys to try something, which would have been messy but would have kept Gabriel off Kayla.”

“Messy was what Mom was afraid of.”

Faroe shrugged. He hadn’t been thrilled with the odds, but he hadn’t had a lot of time for finesse. “I made the first call and she made the second. Both of us specified the vehicle and the kinds of weapons, which brought the threat level way up. Then we had Javier Smith-the tall guy pretending to be a gardener-call the cops and give them a heavily accented tip about a gang hit going down in Chandler Mall.”

“Awesome.” Lane’s eyes were bright with excitement.

“It got the job done. Cops usually do the right thing if they have enough information at the beginning. It’s only when they start fumbling around in the dark, hunting rattlesnakes with their bare hands, that things go to hell real quick. Today was one of the good days.”

Lane watched as the cuffed men were levered to their feet.

“C’mon,” Faroe said. “Recess is over. Time to go back to the Krebs cycle.”

Chandler Mall

Sunday

11:45 A.M. MST

The instant Foley answered his cell phone, Bertone began talking.

“I’m four rows down from the restaurant’s front door. White Toyota rental sedan with California plates. You have three minutes to find me.”