St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

professional painting gear you’ll need if you go to the Fast Draw in Phoenix.”
    “Big if.”
    “Humor me.”
    “The last time I did, Reed died.”
    “Wrong,” Faroe said calmly. “I humored Reed and let him follow you around Africa with a rifle. You never had a sense of humor worth mentioning.”
    Rand almost snarled, almost smiled. “I’ll need dossiers on this Elena, whoever she is.”
    “Bertone’s wife.”
    “And the ASB banker, whatever he, she, or it is.”
    “She. Kayla Shaw. My computer’s on the helo. You can read dossiers while we fly to Victoria. Get a move on. The film crew will be getting restless.”
    Rand blinked. “Film crew? Are they part of the Fast Draw contest?”
    “Hell of an idea. I’ll work on it.”
    “What does painting have to do with Bertone?”
    “It’s all on my computer.”
    “Which is on the helo, which is heading for B.C.”
    Faroe punched Rand’s shoulder lightly. “You listen good.”
    “Too bad I don’t obey worth a damn.”
    “We’ll work on that.”

12
    Phoenix
Friday
12:12 P.M. MST
    K ayla was tempted to drive past the freeway turnoff again, but she made herself go to American Southwest Bank instead. More than an hour of roaming Phoenix’s ninety-mile-an-hour freeways was all the time she could afford to work off her anger and fear. She pulled into the employee-of-the-month parking space in front of the glistening steel and copper-colored glass building that housed American Southwest.
    “What bullshit,” she said, turning off the engine. “What complete and utter bullshit.”
    For the past three weeks she’d enjoyed using the parking space. It wasn’t the gold star in her file that she cared about, it was the chance to walk a quarter mile less in the heels all women employees were required to wear.
    And that’s bullshit, too. If heels are so necessary, why don’t men wear the damn things?
    She’d take a suit and tie over pantyhose and heels any day.
    “No worries,” she told herself as she got out of the car. “AfterI talk with Steve Foley, I won’t have to rub up against American Southwest dress codes.”
    Or any other business kind.
    Wonder how I’ll look in prison orange.
    She slammed the car door. The explosive sound was so satisfying she opened the door and slammed it again. Harder.
    Okay, tantrum over.
    Now think.
    Because thinking is the only thing that will keep me out of bright orange. And I look really lame in orange.
    She’d always assumed that people who went to prison had it coming. What really burned her was that she hadn’t done anything wrong. Her real estate deal was entirely legal. Any other landowner would have been blameless.
    But she was an employee of American Southwest Bank who had, at best, engaged in an unusual private transaction with a very important client. That was a firing offense.
    She could live with that.
    It was the idea of going to prison for laundering money that spiked her blood pressure.
    Automatically she went through the discreet metal detectors, nodded to the guard, and used her electronic passkey on the elevator. Her office wasn’t on the top floor, but Steve Foley’s was. If neckties and ever-shining shoes bothered him, he didn’t show it. He dressed for success, talked for it, breathed for it.
    He was the youngest vice president in the bank’s history. He’d been at the bank a year less than Kayla, decades less than many of the other women in her department, yet he’d leapfrogged over them and into the corner office with the ease of a handsome, charming young executive bound for greatness.
    It hadn’t hurt that his father was a member of the bank’s board of directors.
    Kayla still wasn’t sure if she was more annoyed by the implicit sexism or the explicit nepotism in his rapid promotions. She was sure that she’d never cared for Foley, had passed up his offers for a social relationship with bland professional smiles, and had worked hard for every tiny raise she got.
    Now she had to tell him she’d screwed up. She wondered if he’d be sympathetic or happy to see her on her knees. Her gut said that sympathy was a long shot.
    She found Foley behind a clean walnut desk that was decorated with a seldom-used pen set, a never-used baseball autographed by a Diamondbacks reliever who had since been traded to Kansas City, and a booster’s award plaque from the National Rifle Association. Pretty typical of an Arizona executive. He glanced in her direction as she entered and closed the