Elizabeth Lowell - Innocent as Sin

“I was an honest banker. That means I never thought of my client’s money as, well, accessible to me. Their money was just numbers in a column.”

“So when did the lightbulb come on?”

“When I realized I hadn’t given the password on Bertone’s new account to anyone. You can add money without a password, but you can’t subtract it from the account, even as a transfer to another of the client’s accounts. I was going to tell Bertone at the party, but I forgot.”

“Before or after the handcuffs?”

“About the time Bertone was telling me how he required special service from his bankers.”

“Yeah, that’d be downright distracting. But was the rest of what you told Foley the truth?” Rand asked.

“Which part?”

“The one about not being able to move money from a remote access portal.”

“I think it’s true.” She shrugged and nibbled along Rand’s chin. “But true or not, Foley won’t be able to. When it comes to computers, he doesn’t know his butt from butter. He won’t be able to do anything until Monday morning.”

Rand kissed her hard, then straightened. “I hope that’s enough time.”

“For what?”

“Grace to get that restraining order on the account.”

“Is there a problem?” Kayla asked.

“With bureaucrats, there’s always a problem.”

Scottsdale

Sunday

12:02 P.M. MST

Grace tapped her finger impatiently on the scratched and gouged end table next to the rump-sprung bed.

“Of course I know it’s the weekend,” she said crisply into the phone. She’d been so informed by a series of underlings until she had finally broken through to the judge’s personal underling. “Unfortunately, criminals don’t work regular hours.”

The person on the other end of the line repeated his unwillingness to disturb an already overworked judge on the judge’s birthday.

“As a former judge, I sympathize,” she said. “However, as a judge, I wouldn’t have minded the few minutes it would take to lock down a money launderer’s accounts. I would consider it time well spent.”

She closed her eyes and listened to the same unwillingness restated in different, less polite words. Pushing him any harder would just make him angry, which would make him even less helpful later on.

If there was a later on with Bertone’s account.

Why do laws work so well against the lawful?

“Thanks, I really appreciate all you’ve done,” Grace lied sincerely. “If anything new breaks on this, I’ll call you.”

She hung up and said bitterly, “But I don’t know quite what to call you. Joe will. He’s good with those kinds of words.”

Pushing herself to her feet, she straightened her T-shirt over the growing mound of her pregnancy and headed for the unbolted doors connecting two of the cheesy motel’s even cheesier rooms. The sharp scent of cleaning chemicals tainted the air of every room in the Scottsdale Sun-Up Inn, but Room 203-the one that had been reserved in her name-was rank with old cigarette smoke barely covered by some cheap room perfume that made her nose itch.

Arizona, last bastion of smokers and gunmen, she thought with a grimace.

She glanced around the room. Empty. It had been turned over, with fresh sheets and towels and a quick vacuum, but it was still a tired, threadbare motel room that had been inhabited by years of smokers.

“Joe?” she called out.

No one answered.

Lane was in the second room, nose deep in a textbook. She closed the door behind her, crossed the room, and headed for yet another interior door. When she opened it on her side, she came face-to-face with Faroe. He put his hand around her neck and kissed her thoroughly.

“I hope you aren’t planning an assignation,” she said, leaning her stomach against him, “because cheap motels and oily bureaucrats don’t put me in the mood.”

Lane snickered. “La la la, I’m not listening, la la la, I’m not-”

“No luck on the lockdown warrant?” Faroe asked.

“I didn’t realize a judge’s birthday was a sacred holiday,” she said curtly.

“Only to oily bureaucrats.” He rubbed her stomach, felt the baby doing backflips, and said, “C’mon. Rand and Kayla just got here.”

“Lunch?” Lane asked without looking up.

“I gave you my last candy bar,” Faroe said.

“I ate it.”

“Then you’ll survive for a few more minutes.”

Faroe led Grace out of the second motel room and through the unlocked companionway door to a third room. Drawn drapes contributed to the gloom. Officially, this room hadn’t been rented. The desk monkey had a fifty-dollar bill and a promise of two more if it stayed that way.

Nobody spoke until Faroe closed and locked the door. “Did the feds tail you?” he asked Rand.

“If they did, I didn’t spot them.”

“Then they probably didn’t follow you.”

“Good.” Grace went to a chair, lowered herself into it, and sighed. “We left the camera crew at the compound to keep most of the surveillance teams anchored.” She stretched her legs out on the cigarette-scarred coffee table. “Explain to me again why we need three rooms?”

“It’s a cheap way of confusing the guys with the eyeballs,” Faroe said. He slipped off her shoes, sat on the floor, and began rubbing her feet. “They saw you come in two-oh-three, so they’ll probably camp all day on two-oh-three, waiting to ID whoever you meet there. Meanwhile, we’ll come and go from two-oh-seven all day long, and they’ll never figure it out. I hope.”

“Hope is good.” Grace yawned. “It’s all that’s keeping me from grabbing someone and squeezing his balls until his eyes cross.”

“Oily bureaucrats don’t have balls,” Faroe said.

“Quiet, you’re ruining my fantasy.” She looked at Rand. “Joe has already filled me in on your meeting with Foley. Anything to add?”

“Bottom line hasn’t changed,” Rand said. “Bertone is trying like a dirty beggar to move that money, but so long as the account is protected by Kayla’s password, that money is as secure as it would be under a temporary restraining order.”

Kayla touched the back of Rand’s hand and said, “Not quite. It’s secure from the remote access program, but if Steve Foley goes back to the office, he could override my password with his own. If he thinks of it.”

“Will he?” Grace asked sharply.

“He’s a doofus on the computer, but he’s under a lot of pressure right now.” Kayla turned her hands palms-up. “He could figure it out, or he could get some computer-literate underling to talk him through it.”

“Not good,” Faroe said.

“No shit,” Rand muttered.

Grace started to push herself to her feet. “I’m going to start chewing a personal underling’s ass. We’ve got to get that warrant now.”

Faroe gave her a hand. He knew as well as she did that the chance of getting the warrant in time was melting away like ice on a hot griddle.

“Would St. Kilda get all upset if I moved the money in Bertone’s account to one of mine?” Kayla asked.

“Forget it,” Rand said instantly. “It’s called theft, and you’d do hard time when it’s discovered.”

She looked at Faroe, then at Grace. “Is that St. Kilda Consulting’s official answer?”

“Officially, St. Kilda hasn’t heard a word of this,” Faroe said. He looked at his wife. “Right?”

“Heard what?” Grace said automatically, but she was frowning as she settled back into the furniture. “Just for the sake of having a Plan B, no matter how unlikely it is to be used, tell me more about steal-moving Bertone’s money to an account he can’t touch.”

“If I-um, whoever wanted to do that would have to go to my office.”

“Too dangerous,” Rand said flatly. “By now Bertone has probably speed-dialed every hit man in Phoenix.”

“Why your office?” Grace asked, ignoring Rand.

“I don’t have any kind of remote access,” Kayla said. “I have to be at my office computer to, um, work with the account.”

“Assuming someone got into your office and had the password,” Grace said, “what would happen next?”

“I-someone would transfer the entire proceeds of the Bertone correspondent account to a personal trust fund.”

“Can you really move almost two hundred million dollars into your own account?” Faroe asked, astonished.

“Sure. Moving money is what I do all day.”

“How long would it take?” Grace asked.

“About three keystrokes,” Kayla said.

“Followed by fifty years to life,” Rand said roughly.

“But-” Kayla began.

“It’s called grand theft,” Rand said over her.

Grace sighed. “St. Kilda may push the frontier of law, but we usually leave ourselves a legal defense.”

“Or no witnesses,” Faroe said.

Grace ignored him. “Among other things, my job is to make sure we run as little risk of prison as possible.”

Kayla tried to measure the risk rationally, but she kept seeing images from the DVD, tragedies and deaths that could have been avoided.

Should have been.

“I’ll take the risk,” she said.

“When you’re one-hundred-percent certain of being caught, it’s not called risk,” Rand snarled.

“If the bank catches me-”

“-when they catch you,” Rand cut in.

“Fine. When they catch me.” She turned to Rand. “I’m not stupid.”

“Can’t prove it by Plan B.”

She gave up and faced Grace. “The bank is superconscious of its public image. If St. Kilda Consulting and The World in One Hour spread muck all over Andre Bertone, I could end up looking like a brave little bank gofer who averted a tragic and illegal war.”

“And if no one can spread enough muck on Bertone?” Rand asked.

“Then I gambled and lost,” she said without looking at him. “Shit happens. This is the cleanest way to destroy Andre Bertone.”

“No.”

Kayla said distinctly, “It’s a lot better than your Plan C, which is dumping Bertone in cold blood. You’re not that kind of killer.”

Faroe looked at Rand. “Plan C?”

Rand didn’t say a word.

“Tear up my employment contract with St. Kilda,” Kayla said to Faroe. “If I get caught, I don’t want to take everyone down with me.”

“Then you better tear up my contract while you’re at it,” Rand said to Faroe. “I’m going with her.”

“You can’t,” she said.

“Watch me.”

“I’ll watch you as far as the front door of American Southwest Bank. After that, the security department will watch you waiting in the parking lot. No one-repeat no one-who isn’t preauthorized gets into the operations area. It’s basic security against kidnap and extortion.”

Rand let out a long breath and tightened the leash on his temper. Nothing was turning out the way he wanted it to.

Kayla would be at risk.

And he couldn’t stop her.

Rand stared at her for a long time, then said, “If anything jumps the wrong way, at any time, I’m going back to Plan C.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Faroe said. “When finesse doesn’t get the job done, there’s always brute force.”

Phoenix

Sunday

1:15 P.M. MST

With a grim kind of pleasure, Kayla pulled into the parking space marked “Employee of the Month” and shut down the engine of the new rental car. Faroe and Rand had both insisted that she drive a “neutral” vehicle. In Phoenix, it didn’t get much more neutral than a white SUV.

At the head of the parking lot, a bush covered with red flowers just made for a hummingbird’s beak was an explosion of color.

“Enjoy the view,” she said to Rand. “Come tomorrow, I bet they revoke my parking privileges.”

“Embezzlement,” Rand said.

She rolled her eyes.

“That’s the word I’ve been trying to remember,” he said. “It’s when an employee diverts an employer’s money. Losing your gold-star parking space is going to be the least of the fallout.”

She reached over and kissed him on the corner of his unsmiling mouth. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Good,” he shot back. “Then maybe you can explain it to me.”

“It’s really simple,” she said, spacing each word, speaking slowly. “I’m going to shift the money in Bertone’s correspondent account into an account at the United Arizona Bank. The account was my grandmother’s. I’ve kept it open, a kind of safety valve. I put my travel funds there.”

“Kiss it good-bye.”