Elizabeth Lowell - Innocent as Sin

“Where are you going with this?”

“Kayla told me that she’s been having trouble with a bank employee, a supervisor. She hasn’t complained to Human Resources because she didn’t want to get the grabby dude in trouble. Frankly, I’m worried that he might be up there right now, stalking her.”

“What’s the man’s name?”

“Foley.”

The guard shook his head. “Wrong name.”

“Is it? Or did he give you a bogus one?”

The guard reached for a spiral-bound book on the desk in front of him and thumbed through the roster of employees. He found H, examined every name, and looked up. “The son of a bitch lied to me.”

Rand started for the elevators.

The guard blocked the way. His hand was on the butt of his pistol. “Ease back, mister. For all I know, you and Kayla and this other dude are running some kind of scam.”

Rand fought an urgent need to dump the guard on his ass. “Call her office. If she answers, tell her to lock the door until you get there and not let anybody in.”

The guard took Kayla’s extension from the registration log. He listened to it ring five times.

“She’s not answering, but that doesn’t mean she’s in trouble,” the guard said, meeting Rand’s hard eyes. “Right now, mister, I want you to go back outside while I get some help in here.”

“Use me.”

“Can’t. Against the rules. Move it. Longer you stand here, the longer it’ll take me to sort this out.”

With a silent curse, Rand spun and strode toward the front door. As he opened the heavy glass panel, a Mini Cooper convertible darted into the parking space beside Kayla’s car.

Rand jogged down to the car as Faroe stood in the driver’s seat and stepped out without opening the door.

“She’s inside,” Rand said. “So is somebody who logged in through a card lock.”

“Bertone?” Faroe asked immediately.

“More likely Foley. I’m assuming he’s armed.”

“Given what we’ve found out about him, that’s a good assumption,” Faroe said. “He’s got a thing for guns.”

Beside the Mini, another St. Kilda vehicle braked to a halt. Two streetwise operators in T-shirts and shorts piled out. Each wore a belly pack big enough to carry a pistol.

“The lobby guard won’t let us in, but we can block all the exits,” Rand said. “You two guys get around the corner. Foley came in through the executive garage. Likely he’ll go out that way.”

“He drives a black Range Rover,” Faroe said.

“I’ll do a walk-through of the garage,” one of the operators said. He pulled a worn dog leash out of his belly pack. “You know, ‘Here, Muffin, come to Daddy, you wretched little shit.’”

“Good,” Rand said. “But don’t crowd the security guys. I told the lobby guard that Kayla was being stalked. He’s off-duty Phoenix PD. I wouldn’t be surprised if he calls in real badges. He looked worried enough.”

The two operators nodded and set off toward the garage at a lope.

“I’ll take the other direction,” Faroe said. “There can’t be more than two or three exits on the south and west sides. I’ve got another crew coming in from Scottsdale north. So relax, Rand. We’ve got her covered.”

“If it was Grace at risk?”

Faroe didn’t answer. He just set off at a run to cover the exits opposite the garage.

Phoenix

Sunday

1:41 P.M. MST

The corridor was empty. Foley crowded Kayla down the hallway to his own office, keyed in, and locked behind him. It took less than twenty seconds. She hoped the guard had seen her on the corridor camera, but she wasn’t counting on it.

Foley shoved her into a chair.

“Move and I’ll feed you this gun,” he said.

Kayla didn’t move. She was still tasting metal and gun oil in her mouth, and her throat was raw from being raked by the end of the pistol. She watched him go to his desk, unlock a file drawer, and pull out a stack of manila folders.

A grim smile changed his tan, closely shaved face into a death mask. He tapped the files on the desk, then slid them into his briefcase.

KYC files.

Kayla’s stomach flipped. Obviously Foley didn’t expect to come back. Those kind of files weren’t supposed to leave the bank. Ever.

He looked at her. “Bet you wish you’d thought to take the bank references and corporate documents of every suspect private banking client with you.”

“I don’t have any suspect private clients. I turned down their business or bucked them up to you for refusal.”

“Have I thanked you for those referrals? Profitable for the bank. Very profitable for me. I’m especially pleased with Jesus Del Santos and Ramon Herrera Parra. Did you know who they were when you bounced them up to me?”

“No.”

“Del Santos was the lieutenant governor of Jalisco, and Herrera was chief of the federales in northwest Mexico. They both have eight-figure accounts in our bank now.”

“How did you wash the blood off their money?”

“Power, babe, power and politics. Don’t cry to me if you weren’t smart enough to get them on your books.”

Foley unlocked another file and pulled out a flat aluminum case that could have held cameras. He was undoing the catches on the lid when the phone on his desk began to ring. He glanced at the console.

“It’s your line,” he said. “Your boyfriend?”

Kayla stared blankly at Foley.

Foley glanced at his watch, then cocked his head, listening.

“They’re going to start looking pretty soon,” he said, more to himself than to her.

The phone rang.

He opened the case.

Kayla saw that it was lined with plastic foam that had been cut out to hold certain shapes.

The phone rang.

The pistol on the desk would have fit one of the empty cutouts. Next to it lay a black metal cylinder that she guessed was a silencer.

The phone rang.

Black on silver is out this season, she thought. But she didn’t say it out loud. She didn’t trust her voice.

The phone rang.

Foley fit the cylinder to the end of his pistol and spun it into place.

The phone rang.

He picked up a loaded magazine from the case and dropped it into the pocket of the dark wind shell he wore over his white silk T-shirt.

The phone rang.

Methodically he closed and relocked the drawers.

The phone didn’t ring.

“You have got two choices,” Foley said. He forced the cold bulb of the silencer between her lips. “You can come with me and keep your mouth shut or you can die here.”

His expression told her that he meant it. He was coming apart in front of her eyes. There was only one thing he cared about right now.

Getting out.

“I’ll go with you,” she managed around the silencer.

Finger on the trigger, he stared at her for several long breaths. Then he shoved her away.

“We’ll take the elevator. If we run into anybody-your boyfriend or a security guard or a maid-I’ll kill them.”

Kayla believed it. She could wait to make a break for it until he got her to the garage. Rand would be there. She was certain of it.

And he was no innocent bystander.

“Be quiet or their blood will be on your hands no matter who pulls the trigger,” Foley said. “Got that?”

She nodded.

He picked up the briefcase and shoved her toward the door.

They walked swiftly down the long corridor, past the employee elevators. They turned the corner, heading for the executive elevator that served the parking structure. He reached for the button to call the elevator.

Around the corner behind them, the employee elevator chimed, announcing a car’s arrival.

Foley slammed Kayla against the elevator door and held her there with the weight of his body and the silencer digging into her throat. They listened to the metallic jingle of a guard’s key ring and the faint tread of shoes on the hallway floor. The guard knocked loudly on a door.

“Kayla! Kayla Shaw!” The guard’s voice was achingly clear.

So close.

“You first,” Foley whispered. “Then him.”

So far away.

She heard the guard open the door to her office, enter, and call her name again. Then he came back in the hallway, shutting the door behind him. A radio crackled.

“Desk, this is Wapner. She’s not in her office. No sign of trouble. Nobody in Foley’s office, either. You want me to start going office-to-office here?”

There was a pop of static, then a voice came back over the guard’s handheld radio.

“Negative. Check the Operations floor and secure it. We still don’t know if this is a diversion or a genuine incident. When backup gets here, we’ll clear the building floor by floor.”

“Affirm,” Wapner said.

Foley and Kayla listened to the guard’s jingling progress down the hallway. The elevator was waiting for him. Its doors closed with a sigh very like the one Kayla let out as the crisis passed.

As Foley pressed the executive elevator button, for the first time he realized how good she felt squeezed between the metal door and his body. He smiled and slid the pistol down between her breasts, circled one nipple with the silencer.

“Too bad you never let me in your pants,” he said.

She swallowed against the vomit rising in her throat.

The door opened. She staggered backward, free for an instant.

He laughed and punched a floor button.

She couldn’t stop a sound of dismay. He hadn’t punched the button for the garage.

He was going to the roof.

She wasn’t going to get away.

Be safe, Rand.

Whatever you do, be safe.

Kayla no longer believed that safety was a possibility for her. Compared to Foley’s sweaty finger on the trigger, doing federal time was looking like paradise.

At least she would be alive.

Phoenix

Sunday

1:45 P.M. MST

When Rand came through the front door, the lobby guard was on the phone and the radio at the same time.

“I told you to stay the hell out of the way,” the guard growled. “No, not you,” he said to the phone, then held the receiver against his shoulder.

“Some friends of mine are outside,” Rand said quickly. “Two of them are in shorts and T-shirts checking the executive parking structure. Another man is keeping an eye on the opposite exits. Some more friends are on the way. Don’t shoot them by mistake.”

The guard squinted at Rand for a few seconds. “Are you some kind of badge?”

“We’re private. Kayla hired us to protect her.”

“Looks like you fucked up.”

“Let me upstairs.”

The guard shook his head. “I don’t care if you’re a friggin’ FBI undercover. Nobody goes inside. My boss chewed hard when he found out I’d called in the local police. Then I told him a girl was missing.”

“She is.”

“You’d better not be screwing me here, or I’ll have your ass for kicking practice.”

Rand grabbed what was left of his temper and held on. “We’re staying on public property, but if we see Kayla in trouble, we’re going to trespass the hell all over your shiny shoes. You don’t like that, find her before we do!”

The guard pointed at the door with a long index finger. “We’ll do a floor-by-floor as soon as the PD arrives. Now get the hell out of my face.”

Rand glanced again at the elevators, but knew the guard was just looking for an excuse to take him down. With a ripe curse, Rand strode across the lobby and out the front door before he or the guard lost it. The front door opened.

Sunlight poured over Rand like fire.

A fourth car had arrived. The woman trotting toward him was trim and lithe, carrying two radios. She gave one to Rand.

“Jeff and Barney are in the garage,” she said. “They found a Range Rover that comes back to your brunch date, Foley.”

“Tell them to sit on it. Don’t let it move.”

“Already done. Faroe has the back covered. We’ll find the woman.”

“What we’ll find is a hostage situation and a bunch of cops who will take five hours to get organized.”

He spun and glared up at the shiny glass skin of the building, looking from pane to pane, hoping to see something better than his fear. The woman answered the radio phone. Faroe reported that the back side of the building was secure.

No one had seen Kayla.