St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

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.

58
    Phoenix
Sunday
1:25 P.M. MST
    W hat 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.
    “Answer me!”
    Fear slammed through Kayla. Fight or flee, and she couldn’t flee. Her inner bitch rose up and snarled. “It’s my office. What are you doing here?”
    “Listen, bitch—” he began.
    “Watch the sexist stuff,” she cut in, forcing her voice not to tremble. “The company manual is real clear on that.”
    “Shut up or I’ll shoot you where you stand. What are you doing here?”
    “Looking at you.”
    His knuckles whitened on his pistol hand. “If Andre didn’t want you alive…”
    “But he does,” Kayla said. And she sure hoped he didn’t changehis mind before St. Kilda found her. “So don’t do anything stupid.”
    “Killing you wouldn’t be stupid. It’s your fingerprints all over Bertone’s account. You’re alone in the world. I could bury you in the desert and play dumb. The bank and the FBI would look for a long time and finally decide you’re living in Venezuela or Brazil.”
    Carefully Kayla raised her trembling hands and backed around her desk, away from Foley.
    Toward the window.
    “Stop!” Foley said.
    She looked