With a violent shudder she flung the gun away and turned her back on the twitching Bertone. She had taken all she could, and then she had taken more.

She was done.

Distantly she heard sirens screaming and Rand talking to her. His arms held her.

“Easy, love, easy,” he said. “It’s over.”

She closed her eyes and sagged against him. “You sure?”

He looked at what had once been Andre Bertone. “Yeah, I’m sure. Body armor only protects what it covers.”

Leaning on each other, they walked slowly out of the bloody shooting house, toward the sound of sirens pouring in through the shattered front doors.

80

Phoenix

May

Kayla stood close to Rand and watched a lone hummingbird dip and drink, dip and drink, a tiny feathered pump sucking nectar from a feeder dangling above her apartment balcony. When the bird leaped back, hovered, and darted off into the velvet dusk, Kayla sighed and straightened.

“Okay,” she said, “I’m ready now.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I need to.”

He didn’t argue. He knew what some of her dreams were like. He’d held her through them.

She’d held him through his.

He shut the patio door, threaded his way through the painting gear that had taken over the living room, and went to the TV. An unmarked DVD stuck out like a silver tongue from the slot.

As he bent to shove the disc into place, she asked automatically, “How are your ribs?”

“Ask me next week, when we get to the cold, wet Pacific Northwest.”

“Do you want to stay here?”

“Not unless you do.”

She shook her head. “I’ve always wanted to see Washington’s San Juan Islands.”

He picked up the controller and sat next to her on the couch. “If you’d kept your grandmother’s bank account, you could own those islands.”

“I didn’t even like taking the St. Kilda bonus.”

“It didn’t come from Bertone’s money,” Rand said. Not directly. Hell, in today’s world, clean money is a joke. “And you earned every last penny of your percentage. Did I say thank you for saving my life?”

“Same back at you, and yes, every time you look at me and smile.”

Smiling, he ran his fingertips down her face. She had a faint scar from Foley’s ring. There were other marks, high on her legs. At first seeing the scars had enraged Rand. Then he’d accepted them for what they were-a warrior’s mark of courage, more beautiful than perfection would have been.

Just as he had finally accepted that he had lived and Reed hadn’t.

He pushed the button on the controller. Brent Thomas’s handsome face smiled out at them from the screen. The backdrop was a Camgerian village.

“Thank you for joining me. I’m in Camgeria, Africa. Many of you will remember our March show, which featured the rise and fall of international gunrunner Andre Bertone. Much of the graphic footage of starvation and disease in that hour was filmed in the village behind me.”

Kayla wanted to look away as the camera reprised the village’s brutal past, but she didn’t. She had learned the hard way the truth that lay at St. Kilda Consulting’s core: when civilized people were too sensitive to face evil, then evil would bring down civilization.

“Today, I have the rare pleasure of sharing with you a miracle of rebirth. Villages all over Camgeria are being transformed, thanks to the outpouring of viewers like you.”

“Plus St. Kilda’s gift of two hundred million and change,” Rand said, taking her hand. “And the courage of a certain unnamed banker lady.”

“Don’t forget the unlikely artist.”

“Who?”

“You.”

“What’s unlikely about-”

“Shhh. I can’t hear,” Kayla interrupted.

“-clinic opened today. There will be free exams and treatments for everyone in the village. Thanks to our viewers’ generosity, the school has more supplies than they can use, so staff from The World in One Hour has been supplying schools in neighboring villages. The biggest blessing is the village well. With it, the waterborne diseases that have plagued these people in the past will be eradicated.”

The view shifted to laughing children playing a local version of tag while their mothers lined up with buckets for a turn at the astonishing, ever-flowing silver water.

The scene shifted again, more angles on the difference a few hundred thousand dollars had made in a village that had known only poverty, violence, and despair.

When Thomas signed off, Kayla took the controller and killed the TV. “Amazing what one little old television program can do all by its little old self.”

“Hey, Okay Martin begged you to-”

“Sell my soul for a few minutes of fame before the bruises healed,” she cut in. “No thanks. I understand why St. Kilda shuns the spotlight.”

“Public theater is necessary for society.”

“So are public sewers.”

Rand gave up, laughed, and pulled her into his lap. “Speaking of things that float, do you suppose Elena watched the show?”

“I doubt it was televised in Brazil.”

He nuzzled against her hair. After all of it, she still smelled like cinnamon and vanilla. “Last time I talked to Joe, he was still wondering how you conned Grace and Steele into letting Elena get a slice of Bertone’s pie.”

“It was a very small slice. Microscopic, actually.”

“It was a big pie.”

“Her kids no more deserved poverty and privation than the kids in Camgeria. And there was no way to punish Elena without punishing them.”

Kayla leaned against Rand, remembered his injury, and straightened.

He pulled her back against his chest.

“Your ribs-”

“Are healed,” he said. “Cracked, not smashed, thanks to Joe’s body armor. I owe him a new set.”

Kayla savored the warmth of being close to Rand. After a few minutes she stirred and kissed his neck. “Are you going to do it?”

“Buy Joe body armor?”

“Keep working for St. Kilda.”

“I don’t know. But whatever happens, I’ve got a lot of painting to do for me. And for Reed.”

“I wish I’d known him,” Kayla said.

“He’d have loved you the same as I do.”

“We talking three-in-one-bed kind of love?”

“Hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, don’t. One of you is all I can take.”

He laughed and held her while they watched twilight deepen into night.

“Rand?”

“Hmm?”

“If we have a boy, I want to call him Reed.”

Rand went still, then held her even closer. “We’d like that.”