Innocent as Sin (15 page)

Royal Palms
Saturday
10:40
P.M. MST

K
ayla shook her head sharply.

How did I get myself into this?

Just when she thought her life couldn’t get any more bizarre, she found herself getting dusted with face powder for an interview with a famous name she’d seen only on the news. He’d be the handsome star in suit and tie.

She’d be the talking silhouette.

A well-powdered one.

And her voice would be disguised.

Probably sounds like a frog on speed.

Ted Martin, who had been introduced to her as the field producer for the show, came over just as the woman called Freddie switched from powder to comb and scissors.

“Don’t waste your time,” Ted said to the woman. “She’ll be backlit and shadowed.”

“So was the dude,” Freddie said without backing up. “If I hadn’t trimmed him up, he’d have looked like a gorilla in silhouette.”

Kayla wondered who “the dude” was. Then she glanced at Rand. He had a freshly barbered look.

“Him?” she asked Freddie, pointing toward Rand with her chin.

“Him. I took off about a foot of fur.”

Kayla snickered.

“You have good hair,” Freddie said. “Just need a brush and some gel so that nothing sticks out. If you weren’t going in stealth mode, I’d put some more cold packs on your eyes. Crying is hell on ’em.”

Martin made an impatient sound. “We’re ready.”

“I’m not,” Freddie said. “And tell Mr. Gorgeous his nose is shiny.”

“Do you know what overtime costs?”

“I know what I’m charging and I know what I’m doing. Get out of my face and let me work.”

“How long?”

“Long enough for you to go over it once more with her.”

Martin gave in and turned to Kayla. “Okay, no need to be nervous. This is only a fast interview so we have something for the files if the story breaks early. We can cut and paste and retake, redo the whole thing, whatever we need to so that you look good. Okay?”

Kayla didn’t nod—Freddie was waving her scissors again.

“We’ll feed you questions about Bertone, you answer, you get fed more, you answer more. Don’t worry if you show that you’re upset by what’s happened to you,” Martin added. “The more emotion, the better. Okay?”

“Not for her eyes,” Freddie muttered as she worked gel into Kayla’s hair.

“Get their hearts and their minds will follow,” Martin shot back.

“Cry for the cameras?” Kayla asked.

“Okay, that’d be good.”

“I’m not an actress.”

“Yeah, I figured that out real fast,” Martin said. Then to Freddie, “Two minutes or we’ll start with you in the picture.”

“I’ll paint a happy face on my butt and moon you.” Freddie winked at Kayla.

Martin walked over to where Faroe and Rand stood talking.

“Okay,” Martin said. “What do you have new?”

“It’s only been an hour since we briefed you,” Faroe said. “You’ll be the second to know if more comes in.”

“I’d rather be the first.”

Faroe wanted to roll his eyes like a girl.

Rand coughed instead of laughing. Then he looked at Kayla—and looked again. Something Freddie had done had transformed Kayla’s hair from a sleek professional ’do to a wind-blown innocence that made her look about seventeen.

“You’re good,” he said to Freddie. “Too bad it will be wasted in silhouette.”

“The hair won’t be,” Freddie said. “You watch.”

Rand watched.

And learned.

He’d always known that news shows were as much staging—emotion—as news, but he hadn’t really
known
until he saw the result when Kayla was put into the chair and backlit just enough to show her slender silhouette.

The innocent hair came through like a halo.

“Really good,” Rand said, saluting Freddie.

“Quiet,” Martin snapped.

Rand listened while Thomas joked Kayla out of her nerves, made her forget the camera, and led her through the small steps that had taken her right off the cliff of complicity.

“Oh, yes,” Kayla said, “I was very pleased when my boss gave me the Bertones as my special clients.”

“Special?” Martin asked. “How so?”

“I was their interface with the private banking arm of American Southwest. I kept their various accounts—personal and professional—moved money between accounts, that sort of thing. If they wanted anything that had to do with their money, they called me.”

“And you found nothing unusual in those accounts?”

“No. They spent more than an average household, of course, but they earned far more than average.”

“Didn’t you wish you had that kind of money?” Thomas asked, his voice deep, sincere. “I would.”

Kayla’s teeth gleamed in a brief smile that shone through the shadows veiling her. “Nope. It’s hard for people outside the banking business to understand, but when I handle a client’s money, it’s not real money, like the kind I pay my bills with. A client’s money is just numbers I move from one account to another. Numbers, not dollars.”

“So you didn’t wish you had some of the Bertones’ wealth?”

Slowly Kayla shook her head. “I have some money saved for a vacation, some money for retirement, I pay down my credit cards, that sort of thing. Real money. Real life.”

Rand almost clapped.

Faroe leaned over and breathed into his ear, “She’s good.”

Shaking his head, Rand said very softly, “She’s real. Thomas is good.”

Martin glared at them.

Something in Faroe’s jeans vibrated. He patted the pocket and headed back to his bungalow.

Rand wondered what had come unstuck, and where, but he stayed with Kayla even though she didn’t need the moral support.
He needed to give it. So he listened while Kayla’s story and her life unraveled for the education and titillation of news groupies across America.

He barely looked up when Faroe let himself back into the bungalow that had become a stage set for
The World in One Hour.
Faroe went straight to Martin. Papers rustled as Faroe handed them over.

Martin started to complain.

And then he started to read. A minute later his head snapped up. “Okaaaay! Is this solid?”

“Like a rock,” Faroe said.

“Christ.” Grinning, Martin called over his shoulder. “Cut!”

Lights came on or went off. Everyone in the room looked over at Martin or began talking.

“What’s up?” Thomas called over the noise.

“A wet dream come true.” Martin walked over and shoved papers into the reporter’s hands. “Read this.”

Thomas read, then read again. “Is this—”

“Yes,” Martin interrupted. “Use it.”

Kayla shifted in the uncomfortable chair.

“Don’t move,” Martin said. “We’re just getting to the good stuff.”

“I’ll take it from the sale of her childhood ranch,” Thomas said.

Kayla flinched. She really didn’t want to go through it again—the bittersweet, the simply sad, all the childhood memories tangled with adult necessities.

Rand saw the emotions crossing Kayla’s expressive face and wanted to interfere. She’d been through the wringer enough. She needed a break before she broke.

“No,” Faroe said softly, closing his hand over Rand’s arm, holding him.

“Why not?”

“News is emotional, not rational. You know that as well as I do.”

“She needs—shit,” Rand hissed.

“Shit indeed. We can’t change human nature, but we damn well can use it to our advantage.”

“I’m sure that comforts Kayla no end.”

“Grace made certain Kayla had the bathroom with the big Jacuzzi.”

“Oh, well, that makes all the difference,” Rand said sarcastically.

“Better than a kick in the ass with a frozen boot.”

Martin began snapping out the commands that would once again make the bungalow a TV set. Lights dimmed. Others brightened.

Silence.

Then the sound of Thomas asking how Kayla had felt about selling her childhood home.

Then he asked about how she felt when she had that last breakfast with the Bertones.

How she felt when her boss told her to set up that account.

Emotions,
Rand thought bitterly.
Screw the facts. How did you
feel?

And it was working. Kayla’s voice was more hesitant, more husky, the voice of a woman fighting tears, fighting fear.

Thomas was sympathetic, relentless.

Brilliant.

Eat your heart out, Oprah,
Rand thought.
That white boy can pluck heartstrings with the best of them.

“Were you aware of the source of the money that was deposited in the Aruba account you set up?” Thomas asked.

“When I verified that the funds existed to be transferred to
the correspondent account, I spoke to a young woman with a Jamaican kind of accent. She put me through to the president of the bank. His name was Mr. Thronged. He sounded Dutch and was very efficient.”

“Mr. Thronged,” Thomas said, glancing through the papers Martin had given him. “Did you know that the helpful woman with the lilting accent runs a small store at the north end of the island of Aruba? She makes a hundred dollars a week answering overseas phone calls like yours and putting them through to a retired Dutch banker—a Mr. Thronged—who conducts most of the Bank of Aruba, Sugar Sand branch, business from a phone and fax machine under the bar in his seaside tavern. The capital stock of the bank is all owned by Andre Bertone.”

“I—are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I can see that you’re shocked.”

Kayla fought the urge to put her face in her hands and wail. “All I was told was that knowing the source of the funds Bertone was transferring wasn’t my problem—that is, my bank’s problem. It was the problem of the bank in Aruba.”

“Then you weren’t aware that Andre Bertone emptied accounts that John Neto had located in Basel and in Liechtenstein, as well as a seventy-million-dollar account at the Bank of Sark in the Channel Islands?”

“No,” Kayla said.

And even she wasn’t sure whether she was answering a question or simply denying that she could have been so badly fooled.

Thomas tapped his finger on the papers Martin had handed him. “All told, Mr. Neto has traced more than two hundred and thirty million dollars that were wire-transferred into the Caribbean Basin.”

“I—no,” Kayla said huskily. “My God, no.”

“The funds went to a variety of offshore accounts, all of
which were shielded by bank secrecy acts in their various jurisdictions. Could Bertone be moving the funds through those secret accounts, then consolidating them in the branch bank of Sugar Sands, in order to funnel them here, into the United States?”

“A quarter of a billion—” Kayla’s voice broke. “No. I haven’t seen that kind of money.”

“You’ve seen some of it,” Martin said gently. “Haven’t you?”

“I—”

“The money from arms trafficking, oil-for-food corruption, blood diamonds, ravaged hardwood forests, children starving, children maimed, children raped and dying, you’ve seen some of that money,” Thomas said, his voice a sympathetic rapier slicing down into Kayla’s soul. “Haven’t you?”

The tears shining on Kayla’s shadowed cheeks were her only answer.

“The master correspondent account you set up is nothing but a conduit for dirty money, isn’t it?” Thomas asked sadly. “A conduit greased by hush money, bribes, and corrupt employees.”

“I’m not one of them,” she said hoarsely, her voice breaking. “I’m being set up by Andre Bertone. I didn’t know where the money came from, someone tried to kidnap me, and all I did was try to follow the rules.” She put her face in her hands. “My God, who will believe me now?”

Thomas let the silence stretch…and stretch…until the sound technician got the hint and turned up Kayla’s mike. Soft, muffled sounds came from behind her hands.

“Cut,” Martin said. “First-class work, Brent. That’s it for tonight. Okaaay, who’s ready for a beer?”

Faroe’s grip shifted from Rand’s wrist down to the fist he had made.

“Don’t clock Martin,” Faroe said. “He’s on our side.”

Royal Palms
Saturday
11:55
P.M. MST

F
ragrant steam swirled around Kayla’s head, making her feel even more like she’d been cut loose from reality and was spinning off into an alternate universe.

Nice try. Doesn’t fly. There’s only one reality, and I’m stuck up to my lips in it.

Bertone, dirty money, knives, and all the rest.

She nudged the controls. The jets shut off. The water slowly stilled. Fragrant steam still rose around Kayla’s head.

Okay, some of my reality isn’t bad.

Without meaning to, her thoughts went straight to Rand. When she’d looked up from her televised pity party, he’d been watching her with feral green eyes. The muscles on Faroe’s arms had been rigid, as was Rand’s fist in the other man’s grip. After a few moments Rand had jerked himself free, gone to Kayla, and pulled her into his arms.

Normally she would have resented a man’s protective hug, but not that time. She’d hung on to him like the safety line he was.

A very polite safety line.

He’d brought her to the luxurious two-suite bungalow, pointed out the Jacuzzi, and closed the door separating her suite from the shared living area. The door had made a soft, final click as it shut.

Followed by the sound of him going out the front door of the shared area and locking it behind him.

A gentleman.

Both of them knew her defenses were gone. If he’d wanted to make a pass, she’d have jumped to catch it. She was scared, ashamed, wrung out, and in need of comfort.

Well, the Jacuzzi is pretty damned comforting. And it doesn’t need to be complimented on its performance.

So she lay there with relaxed muscles and her mind racing like a squirrel on speed.

Screw this. Any more hot water and they’ll have to iron me before they put me on camera again.

She fiddled the stopper out with her foot, stood, and wrapped herself in a cushy robe that fell to the top of her toes and fingertips. The living area that separated the two suites was empty.

Kayla told herself she wasn’t disappointed.

She went to the built-in bar and decided that whoever had researched her background was thorough—a bottle of Grand Marnier awaited her.

“Now I’m scared. Or I ought to be.”

Mostly she was grateful.

She took a few cubes of ice from the bucket, dumped them in a squat whiskey glass, added a little water, and poured a splash of liqueur in on top. Sipping it, she fought the need to pace, to think.

To scream.

None of that will do me any good.

Take Rand’s advice.

Relax, damn it!

She turned off the lights, closed the door of her suite behind her, and went to the bungalow’s private, walled-in patio, which opened off the shared area. The flagstones underfoot were heated. The air was cool shading into cold. The water dancing in the triple fountains shut out other noises. As her eyes adjusted to darkness, she enjoyed the subtle flash and shift of moonlight over the fountains placed at intervals along the walls.

The front door opened, but the lights stayed off. Her heart hammered, then settled when she recognized Rand’s wide-shouldered silhouette walking across the shared living area. She waited for him to knock on her suite door. Instead he bent and started to slide an envelope under the door.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He straightened and spun toward her so quickly that she flinched. She didn’t feel any better when moonlight flashed off the gun in his hand. Before she could blink, he holstered the gun at the small of his back and walked toward the patio.

“You scared the crap out of me,” he said.

“Same here. Anyone ever mention that you have fast hands?”

“Once or twice.” His smile gleamed. “What are you doing out here in the dark?”

“Trying to relax.”

“How’s that working for you?”

“Lousy.” Ice clinked as she lifted the whiskey glass to her lips.

“I see you found the Grand Marnier.”

She saluted him with the glass. “Who do I thank for it?”

“Grace, probably. She’s the one who made sure you had the suite with the Jacuzzi.”
And the fountains turned on hard enough to thwart eavesdroppers. But still…

“I’ll share.”

“The Jacuzzi?” he asked, startled and intrigued.

“That, too. But I meant the liqueur.” She took another sip. “What’s in the envelope?”

“Walking-around money.”

She blinked slowly. “Excuse me?”

“Come inside, where we can talk.”

Reluctantly she went back inside and slid the patio door shut behind her.

Rand checked the electronic device Faroe had fastened to the door, saw the green status light, locked the door, and went to Kayla.

“Take it,” he said, holding out the envelope. “So you don’t have to use your credit cards or bank account.”

She took the envelope, surprised by its thickness. “Thanks.”

“All part of the St. Kilda service. You’d better count it. There should be five grand.”

“Five thousand dollars? Are you kidding?”

“No.” He reached for the whiskey glass she was waving around. “I’ll get you some more.”

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Drink it.”

“The money,” she shot back. “Five thousand dollars!”

“It’s the standard St. Kilda Consulting advance for an agent in the field. You run out before next week, you have to submit a requisition detailing why you need extra cash.”

Usually for bribes, but I don’t think she wants to hear about that right now.

“Room and board comes out of this?” Kayla asked.

“Not if you stay here.” He headed for the bar.

She hefted the envelope in her hand. “First Bertone buys my land for too much money. Now St. Kilda is giving me a five-thousand-dollar gift, with more to come next week. Gee, I’m beginning to feel…”

“Special?”

“Hunted.”

“I always knew you were smart.” Ice clinked, followed by the soft splash of liqueur. “It’s not a bribe, Kayla. Money is a tool. St. Kilda doesn’t want an agent to screw up because he or she didn’t have the cash for a plane ticket on the run.”

“Um,” was all she said.

Rand appeared in front of her, holding out the cut-crystal glass. It was half full.

“If I drink all that, I’ll crash,” she said, eyeing the glass.

“I’ll help you.”

“Crash?”

“Drink.”

“Good idea.” She took a healthy sip, cleared her throat twice, and looked at him from beneath dark eyelashes. “Whew. I usually add water.”

“Ice melts. Same thing.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

He took the glass from her fingers, sipped, and said, “Sweet. With a bite.”

“Better than beer—sour with a bite.”

He laughed softly and told himself to turn around and go to his suite and stop thinking about what he shouldn’t be thinking about.

Kayla, naked.

“How do you feel about single malt?” he asked.

“Scotch?”

“Yeah.”

“Smells better than it tastes.”

He laughed. “I had a buddy once who said he wanted to die of Glenmorangie.”

“Did he?”

“Still working on it, last I heard.”

“You sound like you envy him,” Kayla said.

When Rand didn’t answer immediately, she realized that he was watching her. Or to be precise, watching the triangle of skin revealed by the robe. Heat that had nothing to do with her recent bath flushed her skin. She shrugged the robe more closely around her.

“I might have envied him, once,” Rand said. “I’m older now.”
A lot older. Too old to be thinking with my dick.

But there it was, ready, willing, and begging to think for him.

He turned and headed back to the bar.

“Now what?” she asked, settling into a chair.

“I want more bite.”

She was about to offer her teeth on his skin when she heard him crack the seal on a whiskey bottle and pour it into the glass. No ice followed.

Knowing St. Kilda, she bet the brand was single malt, Glenmorangie.

“No ice?” she said. “No water?”

“Neat.”

The pungent scent of the single malt rose to her nostrils as he settled in a chair near her.

Rand raised his glass, then looked at her. “What shall we drink to?”

“After today, let’s drink to innocence. The few shreds of it left in the world ought to be celebrated.”

“To innocence,” he said, clinking his glass lightly against hers. “Honored in the absence.”

“How did you lose yours?” she asked, sipping.

“The usual way. Backseat of a car.”

She choked, let him whack her on the back, and then waved him off. “I wasn’t talking about sexual innocence,” she said.

“I’m not sure I ever was
that
innocent. I was raised by a half-Tlingit grandmother whose own mother had been stolen as a slave. My father was a commercial salmon fisherman in the San Juans and in Alaska. He was gone half the year. My mother was an artist from Seattle who was gone as much as she was home. From what I saw, it was an open marriage. That’s what they’re calling it now, right? Not infidelity, or adultery, or cheating, just mutual understanding of needs and being sure not to bring anything home but memories.”

The coolness in his voice made Kayla flinch. “That’s a fair load of sophistication, or something, for a kid to be exposed to.”

“It was home.”
And Reed was always there, ready to laugh or fight or hide, whatever was needed.

Rand sipped his whiskey, letting the smoky fire spread across his tongue. Every nerve in his body was on alert. Every sense honed to a fighting edge. Or fucking. He’d take either right now. Anything to push back the intimacy stealing over him, the scent of the woman next to him, her voice soft in the darkness, her skin pale, inviting.

“Any sibs?” she asked.

“Younger brother. By twelve minutes.”

“Identical?”

“Like peas in a pod. Reed always said he was better looking. People always said I was smarter.”
They were wrong.

He let the hot, snarling kiss of scotch spread over his tongue, swallowed, sipped some more. He knew it wouldn’t stop the memories, but it might just blunt the sharpest edges.

“Identical twins,” Kayla said, grinning. “That must be great.”

“It was.” Rand let more whiskey bite his tongue, spread fire.

“You don’t get along?”

“He’s dead.”

The fountains laughed liquidly in the silence.

“I’m sorry,” Kayla said. “I can’t imagine—”

“You don’t want to.”

She closed her eyes. The neutrality of his voice told her more than any words; his twin’s loss was still an open wound on his soul.

Silently Rand watched a feral cat slide from shadow to shadow, hunting rodents in the exclusive resort’s carefully tended gardens.

Good hunting, buddy. The world needs less rats.

Kayla knew she should let the subject go. And she knew she wouldn’t. Rand interested her in too many ways, on too many levels.

“When?” she asked simply.

“Five years ago. In Africa.”

She remembered scraps of information that Faroe had given her. Goose bumps rose along her arms. “The man in the bwana suit?”

“Yeah. Only we knew him as the Siberian. I was the photographer. Reed was the rifle. One of us gave away our position. The Siberian shot Reed, then sent the army after us. I survived. Reed didn’t.”

He sipped the drink again and was surprised to find it half gone.
Slow down
,
fool.
He set the drink on a small glass end table and shifted his shoulders. At least the knots were looser. A little.

“That’s how St. Kilda got to you,” Kayla said. “They dangled a chance to get Bertone.”

“Pretty much.”

“So St. Kilda hires assassins?”

“No. They want Bertone alive. Dead broke, but not dead.”

“What about you?”

“Dead. Period.”