“Are you telling me that Bertone can get federal agents to do his dirty work for him?” Kayla asked in disbelief.
“You need to understand something about investigators,” Faroe said calmly. “The dudes Grace just ran off-and even the FBI agents I’ll bet are hiding in the bushes out there-are feeding their findings back to some faceless desk officer in Washington, who is briefing some nameless senior official in the White House or at Langley or wherever.”
Faroe took a sip of coffee.
Kayla kept her mouth shut and waited.
“That nameless senior official has an interface with Bertone,” Faroe continued. “Maybe Bertone is a major political contributor. Maybe he’s become so successful in the oil brokerage business that he can call in favors from somebody in the Energy Department. Maybe Bertone is playing the old boy network left over from his days as a spook. Doesn’t matter how he does it. The point is that he can.”
“The point is,” Grace said to Kayla, “that we have to keep you under wraps in order to keep our assignment viable and you intact.”
“Right now,” Faroe said, “Bertone’s working like a dirty bastard to find you. If he links you to us, he’ll have no choice but to eliminate you and St. Kilda Consulting-man, woman, and child.”
Kayla looked as horrified as she felt.
“The really bad thing,” Faroe added, “is that Bertone’s rich enough, powerful enough, and smart enough to get away with it.”
Kayla wanted to argue.
She couldn’t.
Faroe looked at Rand. “Come with me to the bedroom. I’m loaning you something. The last time I left home without it, I ended up in the hospital.”
Royal Palms
Sunday
Just as Rand finished buttoning up his shirt, Kayla walked out of the bathroom and stalked to the living area of the St. Kilda bungalow. She was covered head to socks, face to fingertips. The sun-protective clothing and very wide-brimmed hat were stylish, colorful, cool on her skin, and concealed her identity quite thoroughly. The wide wraparound sunglasses added a final anonymous touch.
“This is so not me,” Kayla said, flicking her fingers against the hat. “Do you have anything in the Stetson line?”
“If I can shave”-and wear Faroe’s body armor-“you can sport a silly hat,” Rand said, cinching the hat under her chin. “Wear it until we lose our tail. Then you can strip and go as naked as my cheeks.” He grinned. “I’ll look forward to it.”
Snickers came from the direction of the kitchen, where Faroe and Grace were eating breakfast.
Kayla rolled her eyes. “This outfit is the kind of thing Elena Bertone would wear to protect her flawless complexion. Mine, in case you hadn’t noticed, is already desert leather.”
Rand finished zipping her backpack and threw one strap over his shoulder. Then he ducked in under her hat brim and brushed his lips across hers. “I think your skin feels just fine,” he said in a low voice. “Now get a move on. You’re distracting me.”
“Huh.” She ran both palms over his face. “All that smooth skin on your face is distracting me. Thank God Freddie left enough hair up top for me to get my fingers into.”
Rand gave Kayla a kiss that really distracted her, then dragged her out a patio door.
Kayla wasn’t sure what kind of escape vehicle she expected, but what she got wasn’t it. She stared.
“Are you kidding?” she asked.
“Think of it as a souped-up golf cart. Gas, not electric. It’s an ATV in disguise.”
“That’s your story and you’re stuck with it.”
Smiling, Rand tossed her backpack onto the shelf behind the seat where his stuff was, slid onto the bench, and checked the controls. Then he grabbed the Stetson Faroe had stashed on the floorboards and jammed it on his head.
“Get aboard,” he said. “Faroe’s diversion won’t last long.”
“He’s paranoid,” she muttered.
But she got in.
“He’s smart. There are probably a dozen feds out in the parking lot, with a dozen surveillance vehicles ready to roll out on our tail. Some will follow Faroe. Some won’t. But we’ve got the fastest ATV on the track.”
Or he hoped they did. Faroe was betting the feds didn’t have anything better than an electric golf cart out on the course.
“Doesn’t this thing have a lap belt?” she asked.
“Use that,” Rand said, pointing to a handle firmly bolted to the dashboard in front of the passenger.
“What is it?”
“I’ve heard it called a lot of things.” He grinned and began rolling forward. “My favorites are ‘Jesus Bar’ and ‘Oh Shit Bar.’”
“Why?”
Rand twisted the throttle. The ATV leaped forward, slamming Kayla back into the seat.
“What are you-Oh shit!” Kayla said, grabbing for the bar.
“There you go.”
Grinning, Rand cut the wheel hard to the right, shot through a gap in the oleander hedge, and burst into the sunlight on the tenth fairway of the resort’s golf course.
The ATV four-wheeler moved so fast that she had to pull the wide brim of the sun hat around her face to keep from strangling on the chin strap. She was completely hidden when a mid-thirties white man dressed in resort clothes stepped out of a stand of bamboo near a water hazard. He carried a camera that was dwarfed by a long telephoto lens. Swearing, the cameraman started banging off pictures as the ATV sped past.
Rand gave him the back of his head and the universal sign of friendship.
“Are you trying to piss them off?” Kayla asked.
“Hey, if the feds are going to stand in the sun and shoot surveillance photos, they should be rewarded. Federal cops are way too used to having things go their way.”
“Do all St. Kildans have a bad attitude about authority?” Kayla asked.
“Most of us have had enough authority in our lives to know its limitations. Federal cops still have to learn.”
“And you live to teach them,” she muttered.
“It’s a dirty job-” he began.
“And you love doing it,” she interrupted.
“Oh, yeah.”
Clenching her teeth, she hung on to the dashboard bar while Rand swerved around a sand trap and shot up over a dune at the far side of the fairway. When she risked a peek over her shoulder through the folds of her hat, she saw that a second man in casual clothes had joined the first fed. He, too, had a fancy camera. He was talking on a cell phone or a radio.
“They aren’t chasing us,” she said.
“Surveillance teams don’t pursue. They radio ahead. Now we pray they don’t have anyone positioned on the far side of the golf course.”
Rand cut across another fairway before he hit open rolling desert at the eastern edge of Scottsdale. A mile ahead of them lay the concrete piers of the 101 Loop Freeway and a scattering of multistory buildings in new industrial and office parks.
Kayla braced herself and kept a stranglehold on the bar. The ATV was well suited for cross-country desert travel, but it wasn’t always comfortable. The wheels raised a thin cloud of grit as Rand slewed around creosote bushes and dodged patches of prickly pear.
“There it is,” Rand said, barely missing a rock.
Kayla squinted through her glasses as he skidded onto a narrow dirt track that headed toward civilization again. He twisted the throttle on the ATV. Suddenly they were rushing along at more than thirty miles per hour on a road just bumpy enough to make the ride interesting.
Kayla felt like laughing out loud. When she’d sold the ranch, she hadn’t expected to be on an ATV anytime soon. Even though she was used to being the driver, she trusted the man beside her. He had the lanky yet powerful build of a bronc rider. The Stetson added to the aura.
Too bad the ranch is gone. Rand would have looked right at home on it.