St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

fears. I used to get them myself.”
    The girl drew a ragged breath. “R-really?”
    “Of course. It’s all part of growing up.”
    “Oh.” Miranda snuggled against her mother and slowly relaxed. “You smell good. The monsters don’t like things that smell good.”
    “Then we shall be certain you wear my perfume when you go to bed.”
    The girl smiled.
    And stayed wrapped around her mother.
    Elena soothed Miranda and mentally rearranged her schedule so that she could fire the useless nanny. Then she had to begin the tiresome process of hiring someone who understood children’s needs.
    “Where is my angel?” asked Bertone’s voice from the bedroom.
    “You have two angels now.” Elena walked back into the bedroom, carrying the daughter who would soon be too big for her mother to lift.
    Irritation flashed across Bertone’s face, followed quickly by resignation. His plans for morning sex had dissolved in Miranda’s tears.
    The last thing he’d expected when he married the gorgeous Elena was to find the heart of a good mother beating inside the sex-goddess body. Watching Elena with their children had at first been baffling, then amusing.
    Now he was charmed.
    “It’s time for angels to be in bed,” he said, lifting the covers.
    Elena and Miranda came to bed as a unit.
    Smiling, Bertone stroked Miranda’s fine hair and wondered when his contacts in the government would find Kayla Shaw. She was an annoyance. A dangerous one.
    And soon, a dead one.

41
    Royal Palms
Sunday
7:00 A.M. MST
    O kay!” Ted Martin clapped his hands together and laughed.
    “Okay, that’s really fine!”
    Rand didn’t bother to look at the TV, which had been playing and replaying “film” since the agents left. DVDs didn’t wear out, which was a good thing. But Martin had cloned this one, just in case.
    “Pregnant woman stands off raiding party.” Martin hooted. “Okay! At this rate we’re going to get the whole hour, girls and boys. The whole mother-hugging hour!”
    “Sound quality is spotty,” Thomas said.
    “All the better,” Martin shot back. “We’ll do print at the bottom of the screen, leave the off-center shots, the jigging camera, make the viewer feel like he’s right there, watching it go down. Great stuff! Gotta love that red silk robe.”
    Faroe and Rand exchanged looks and said nothing.
    “You going to blank out her face?” Thomas asked.
    Martin looked uneasily at Faroe. “I hope not.”
    “Jury is still out on that,” Faroe said.
    Martin wanted to argue. He didn’t. When Faroe’s eyes went narrow, smart people backed off.
    “Okay, play it again, Sam,” Martin said.
    Thomas stared at his producer. “You didn’t really say that.”
    “Just play it, okay?” Martin snapped.
    “Right,” Thomas said. “You want me to do a voice-over in the background?”
    “I’ll think about it.”
    Somebody knocked on the door.
    Faroe shot a look at the cameraman, who’d immediately grabbed his small, shoulder-held video camera. “Not unless I give the signal. Got it?”
    The man swallowed and set aside the camera. “Got it.”
    “It’s the deliveryman,” called a voice from the other side of the door.
    Rand went to one of the heavily curtained windows and lifted the cloth just enough to see a slice of the front porch. There was a small electronic device on the window. It put out vibrations that disturbed any attempt at long-distance sound surveillance. There was one such device on every window in all three bungalows. It was doubtful that the feds had put that kind of high-tech equipment in place before they were routed, but Faroe was a paranoid bastard.
    It was one of the things Rand really liked about him.
    Faroe went to the spy hole. He saw a distorted, barely recognizable Jimmy Hamm, complete with face-shielding sombrero and wraparound sunglasses.
    “He’s alone,” Rand said to Faroe. “Hands full of packages. Where’d he get that hat—Central Casting?”
    “He mugged a burro.”
    Faroe unlocked the door, opened it just enough to let Hamm in, and locked it tight again.
    “Should I take Kayla’s clothes over to her?” Hamm asked.
    “No. There’s a blind spot between the two bungalows. She’s in here with Grace.”
    “Blind spot?”
    “As in can’t be covered by long-distance surveillance,” Rand said. “I’ll take these to Kayla.”
    Reluctantly Hamm passed over the purchases he’d made in the gift store—after he woke up the management. “You got a thing going with