St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

her?”
    Rand gave him a look Faroe would have been proud of.
    “Well, dang,” Hamm said. “All the interesting ones are taken.”
    “As long as you remember that, your pretty face will stay intact,” Faroe said.
    He went to the bedroom door, opened it, and stuck his head in. “If you and Lane are finished trading acronyms about the Krebs cycle, we need you out here.”
    Kayla glanced up from a textbook thicker than her wrist. “This is hip, highly colored, diagrammed-up-the-wazoo gibberish. They had better texts when I was in school, which was shortly after the dinosaurs went extinct.”
    “That book was personally approved by every politician in the state of California,” Faroe said. “What can I say?”
    “A camel is a horse made by a committee,” Kayla said, setting aside the book.
    “Amen.”
    Grace came out of the bathroom wearing maternity jeans and a T-shirt advertising the joys of exercising your constitutional right to silence. When she saw Faroe, she said, “I’ve been thinking.”
    “Uh-oh,” Lane said. “Am I old enough to hear this?”
    “No, which is why you’re studying in here and we’re all goingout there.” Grace swiped her son’s thick hair off his forehead and peered into his eyes. “Maybe the book would make more sense if you could see it.”
    He rolled his eyes.
    “Just a thought.” She smiled and let the hair flop back in place. “I can’t wait for international soccer stars to cut their hair.”
    Lane ignored her, but his grin gave him away.
    For a moment Kayla wanted to be a student again, with no more worries than the next paper, the next test, the next party. But reality was what it was, and her reality right now was a roomful of relative strangers and a man with sage-green eyes she felt she’d always known.
    Don’t forget the guy who would like to kill you. He’s way too real.
    With a shudder, Kayla went to the bungalow’s main room. As soon as the door shut behind her, Grace turned to the younger woman.
    “Can you monitor Bertone’s correspondence account from outside the bank?” Grace asked.
    “I’m not authorized for remote access,” Kayla said. “That’s only for the brass, people at Steve Foley’s level and above. Why?”
    “If Bertone gets wind of you being with St. Kilda Consulting, he’ll pull the deposits out of the account you set up before I can persuade a judge to freeze everything.”
    “Then we’ll have to chase that money all over hell again,” Faroe added.
    “We don’t have time,” Martin said, panicked. “That can’t happen, okay?”
    “Good-bye,” Faroe said to the TV crew. “We’ll call you if we get anything new.”
    Martin started to object, looked at Faroe’s eyes, and made a round-them-up-and-head-them-out gesture with his hand. Veryquickly the bungalow’s living area was empty of all but St. Kilda employees.
    “Can you freeze the funds in Bertone’s account?” Kayla asked.
    “We’ve been working on a judge since we debriefed you,” Grace said.
    “Problem is, Bertone is real well connected,” Faroe said, heading for the little kitchen. “Sit down, amada, it’s going to be a long day.”
    Grace slanted him a dark-eyed look, but sat down. He was right. Any day that began with a dawn raid was bound to be a long one.
    Kayla frowned. “Bertone mentioned moving a lot of money into the account. Last I heard, it was only at forty million and change. If you freeze the account…”
    “That’s the heart of the problem,” Rand said. “St. Kilda is playing high-stakes poker with Bertone. They want him to move all his money into the account before they freeze it. If they freeze it too soon, a lot of money goes missing. Freeze it too late, and it all goes missing. Timing is everything.”
    “According to the intel I’ve been getting from Brazil,” Faroe said, returning with a cup of coffee, “we have until bank opening Monday morning. After that, Camgeria goes in the shitter.”
    Kayla closed her eyes briefly and tried not to see snapshots of bloody children. “When you get a temporary restraining order, the bank won’t have any choice but to hold all transactions, no matter how many complicit bankers Bertone might have in his pocket.”
    “Then it becomes a legal battle,” Faroe said. “But thanks to Grace, it’s a battle we have a chance of winning.”
    “So you want me to figure out a way to monitor the account so you can freeze the money when it’s all in and before it’s paid out?” Kayla