Elizabeth Lowell - Innocent as Sin

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.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just take it and run.” She nuzzled his chin and fanned her eyelashes outrageously. “Would you come with me?”

Rand stared at her for a moment, then gave up and laughed. “Hell, why not? Anywhere but Camgeria. The San Juan Islands in Washington would be good. The worst of winter is over. Maybe the FBI won’t look for you on a nameless islet with no electricity.”

“Do you mean that?”

He pulled her close for a hard kiss.

When he finally released her, she blew out a deep breath. “Hoo-yah. You mean it.”

“Sure do. You?”

“Oh, yeah.” She reached for her purse on the backseat.

“What in hell-?” he said suddenly.

She turned and looked out the windshield. A dark, strikingly large hummingbird was hovering around the bush directly in front of the car. As the bird turned in the sunlight, its vivid green gorget flashed, setting off the distinct white spot behind its eye.

“Magnificent,” she said. “Wow.”

“Pretty, too.”

“No, that’s its name, the magnificent hummingbird. They’re one of the biggest and rarest, but we see them regularly in Arizona.”

“I wish I could bug him,” Rand said.

“What?”

“It’d be easier to keep an eye on you.”

The bird zoomed off, returned, hovered, zoomed, and vanished.

Rand focused on the glass wall of the ten-story bank building. “Which one is your office?”

“Third floor, third from the corner,” she said, pointing it out. “Foley’s is the corner. Other private bankers are between.”

“No lights on.”

“Bankers’ hours. Gotta love ’em. No weekends, no holidays.”

“Turn your lights on as soon as you get to the office,” he said. “Turn them off when you leave. You get five minutes coming, five minutes in the office, and five minutes to get back here. Any longer and I’m kicking over a beehive. Got it?”

“Um, yeah. Five minutes up. Lights on. Five minutes with computer. Lights off. Five minutes back. Or you go postal.”

“Believe it.”

She looked at him and believed. “Start counting.”

He reached for his door at the same time she reached for hers.

“No,” she said urgently. “The weekend guards are off-duty Phoenix PD. They’re authorized to carry live ammunition. They don’t cut slack for anyone, not even sweet young things like me.”

He looked at her across the console. “What’s my cell number?”

“It’s number one on the speed dial Faroe gave me along with the car.”

Rand closed his eyes and saw his brother’s blood.

Everywhere.

“Come back to me, Kayla.”

She brushed her hand over his cheek, his lips. Then she grabbed her purse and walked quickly to the bank entrance.

This will work.

It has to.

Phoenix

Sunday

1:22 P.M. MST

Kayla slid her employee ID card through the card reader. The latch on the glass door released.

One down.

How many to go?

The guard looked up from his Guns and Ammo magazine. He was a Latino with a buzz cut and a gentle leer.

Kayla didn’t recognize him.

“What’s a pretty thing like you doing working on Sunday?” he asked, laying the magazine aside and reaching for the entry log.

“I’m here to rob the bank,” she said cheerfully. “Sunday seemed like a good day.”

The guard spun the log and offered a pen so she could sign in. “Need any help?”

“If the bags are too heavy, I’ll holler.”

“Bet there’s a handcart in the janitor’s closet,” he said, watching her write. “Just let me know.”

As Kayla signed in, she saw that she was the first employee to log in since Saturday. She had the run of the place.

Time’s a-wasting.

She turned toward the elevator.

“Uh-hummm.” The guard cleared his throat.

“Is there something else?” Kayla asked, hesitating.

“You don’t know the drill, do you? I need to verify your ID.”

She handed over her ID card. “I keep my weekends to myself. But this time…” She shrugged. “No help for it.”

“I guess it’s only executives who put in the long hours.”

“Yeah.” On the golf course.

Something bankers and judges apparently had in common.

The guard compared Kayla’s signature to the name on the badge, then consulted an employee directory.

“Private bank. Third floor, right?” he said, handing the badge back.

Kayla nodded.

“Don’t go anywhere else.”

She blinked. “What?”

“The security chief has issued new regs. He doesn’t want anyone wandering after hours. You want to use a bathroom, come back to the lobby.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. What I have to do will only take a few minutes.”

“Whatever,” the guard said, glancing over his shoulder at the elevator status board on the wall behind him. “I can check every floor from here to the roof with closed-circuit television monitors, so just go right to your office and come right back.”

“Closed-circuit TV? That must make for some interesting videotapes.”

The guard grinned. “I caught one of the vice presidents last weekend. He was polishing the wall of the elevator with his secretary’s panties. She was still wearing them.”

“Too much information. Way too much information.”

“It’s just for your protection, chica, so I can keep an eye on you.”

“I feel safer already.”

She headed for the elevator.

Forty seconds later, the doors slid open. As she walked into the third-floor corridor, she waved at the television camera mounted in a bracket just below the ceiling. Then she went directly to her office, turned on the lights, and looked down at the parking lot.

Rand was leaning against the SUV’s front grille and staring up at her window. She waved. He waved back, then made a “spoolup” motion with his right index finger, telling her to hurry.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” she muttered.

She dropped her purse on the desk, sat down at her chair, and booted up her computer.

It took forever.

The machine labored over the start-up page, then whirled and whirled before processing her log-in to the operations server.

Password Invalid

Her heart slammed.

Is there a special weekend access code?

She took a deep breath and logged in again. The computer accepted her with a welcoming bong.

Ten keystrokes later she was inside the Bertone account.

Holy holy hell!

Two hundred and fifty million dollars.

Her fingers shook over the keyboard. Numbers, that’s all. Just numbers in a column. Put it here. Put it there.

No big deal.

Hell, the bank has deposits of more than twenty billion-that’s bee-boy-billion-dollars.

Next to that number, Bertone’s working fortune was lite beer.

But it could buy a lot of misery just the same. It could take apart a weak African nation, murder every citizen who objected, rape every natural resource, and leave behind starvation, disease, and ruin.

Her fingers were poised over the keys.

Trembling.

Here goes nothing. Well, not quite nothing. More like a quarter of a billion dollars.

She keyed in instructions that shifted the contents of the Bertone account to a Bank of America account in Tucson, punched enter, and waited. Seconds later, the screen confirmed that the money was now in her late grandmother’s account a hundred miles away.

Grinning, she pushed back from her workstation and stood up, turning toward the door.

And right into Steve Foley’s silver-plated pistol.

Phoenix

Sunday

1:25 P.M. MST

What are you doing here?” Foley demanded.

Kayla stared at the shiny pistol and thought of the trophies he had in glass cases in his office.

Games, that’s all. Paper targets or tin cans or bowling pins.