Kayla touched the back of Rand’s hand and said, “Not quite. It’s secure from the remote access program, but if Steve Foley goes back to the office, he could override my password with his own. If he thinks of it.”
“Will he?” Grace asked sharply.
“He’s a doofus on the computer, but he’s under a lot of pressure right now.” Kayla turned her hands palms-up. “He could figure it out, or he could get some computer-literate underling to talk him through it.”
“Not good,” Faroe said.
“No shit,” Rand muttered.
Grace started to push herself to her feet. “I’m going to start chewing a personal underling’s ass. We’ve got to get that warrant now.”
Faroe gave her a hand. He knew as well as she did that the chance of getting the warrant in time was melting away like ice on a hot griddle.
“Would St. Kilda get all upset if I moved the money in Bertone’s account to one of mine?” Kayla asked.
“Forget it,” Rand said instantly. “It’s called theft, and you’d do hard time when it’s discovered.”
She looked at Faroe, then at Grace. “Is that St. Kilda Consulting’s official answer?”
“Officially, St. Kilda hasn’t heard a word of this,” Faroe said. He looked at his wife. “Right?”
“Heard what?” Grace said automatically, but she was frowning as she settled back into the furniture. “Just for the sake of having a Plan B, no matter how unlikely it is to be used, tell me more about steal-moving Bertone’s money to an account he can’t touch.”
“If I-um, whoever wanted to do that would have to go to my office.”
“Too dangerous,” Rand said flatly. “By now Bertone has probably speed-dialed every hit man in Phoenix.”
“Why your office?” Grace asked, ignoring Rand.
“I don’t have any kind of remote access,” Kayla said. “I have to be at my office computer to, um, work with the account.”
“Assuming someone got into your office and had the password,” Grace said, “what would happen next?”
“I-someone would transfer the entire proceeds of the Bertone correspondent account to a personal trust fund.”
“Can you really move almost two hundred million dollars into your own account?” Faroe asked, astonished.
“Sure. Moving money is what I do all day.”
“How long would it take?” Grace asked.
“About three keystrokes,” Kayla said.
“Followed by fifty years to life,” Rand said roughly.
“But-” Kayla began.
“It’s called grand theft,” Rand said over her.
Grace sighed. “St. Kilda may push the frontier of law, but we usually leave ourselves a legal defense.”
“Or no witnesses,” Faroe said.
Grace ignored him. “Among other things, my job is to make sure we run as little risk of prison as possible.”
Kayla tried to measure the risk rationally, but she kept seeing images from the DVD, tragedies and deaths that could have been avoided.
Should have been.
“I’ll take the risk,” she said.
“When you’re one-hundred-percent certain of being caught, it’s not called risk,” Rand snarled.
“If the bank catches me-”
“-when they catch you,” Rand cut in.
“Fine. When they catch me.” She turned to Rand. “I’m not stupid.”
“Can’t prove it by Plan B.”
She gave up and faced Grace. “The bank is superconscious of its public image. If St. Kilda Consulting and The World in One Hour spread muck all over Andre Bertone, I could end up looking like a brave little bank gofer who averted a tragic and illegal war.”
“And if no one can spread enough muck on Bertone?” Rand asked.
“Then I gambled and lost,” she said without looking at him. “Shit happens. This is the cleanest way to destroy Andre Bertone.”
“No.”
Kayla said distinctly, “It’s a lot better than your Plan C, which is dumping Bertone in cold blood. You’re not that kind of killer.”
Faroe looked at Rand. “Plan C?”
Rand didn’t say a word.
“Tear up my employment contract with St. Kilda,” Kayla said to Faroe. “If I get caught, I don’t want to take everyone down with me.”
“Then you better tear up my contract while you’re at it,” Rand said to Faroe. “I’m going with her.”
“You can’t,” she said.
“Watch me.”
“I’ll watch you as far as the front door of American Southwest Bank. After that, the security department will watch you waiting in the parking lot. No one-repeat no one-who isn’t preauthorized gets into the operations area. It’s basic security against kidnap and extortion.”
Rand let out a long breath and tightened the leash on his temper. Nothing was turning out the way he wanted it to.
Kayla would be at risk.
And he couldn’t stop her.
Rand stared at her for a long time, then said, “If anything jumps the wrong way, at any time, I’m going back to Plan C.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” Faroe said. “When finesse doesn’t get the job done, there’s always brute force.”
Phoenix
Sunday
With a grim kind of pleasure, Kayla pulled into the parking space marked “Employee of the Month” and shut down the engine of the new rental car. Faroe and Rand had both insisted that she drive a “neutral” vehicle. In Phoenix, it didn’t get much more neutral than a white SUV.
At the head of the parking lot, a bush covered with red flowers just made for a hummingbird’s beak was an explosion of color.
“Enjoy the view,” she said to Rand. “Come tomorrow, I bet they revoke my parking privileges.”
“Embezzlement,” Rand said.
She rolled her eyes.
“That’s the word I’ve been trying to remember,” he said. “It’s when an employee diverts an employer’s money. Losing your gold-star parking space is going to be the least of the fallout.”
She reached over and kissed him on the corner of his unsmiling mouth. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Good,” he shot back. “Then maybe you can explain it to me.”
“It’s really simple,” she said, spacing each word, speaking slowly. “I’m going to shift the money in Bertone’s correspondent account into an account at the United Arizona Bank. The account was my grandmother’s. I’ve kept it open, a kind of safety valve. I put my travel funds there.”
“Kiss it good-bye.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just take it and run.” She nuzzled his chin and fanned her eyelashes outrageously. “Would you come with me?”
Rand stared at her for a moment, then gave up and laughed. “Hell, why not? Anywhere but Camgeria. The San Juan Islands in Washington would be good. The worst of winter is over. Maybe the FBI won’t look for you on a nameless islet with no electricity.”
“Do you mean that?”
He pulled her close for a hard kiss.
When he finally released her, she blew out a deep breath. “Hoo-yah. You mean it.”
“Sure do. You?”
“Oh, yeah.” She reached for her purse on the backseat.
“What in hell-?” he said suddenly.
She turned and looked out the windshield. A dark, strikingly large hummingbird was hovering around the bush directly in front of the car. As the bird turned in the sunlight, its vivid green gorget flashed, setting off the distinct white spot behind its eye.
“Magnificent,” she said. “Wow.”
“Pretty, too.”
“No, that’s its name, the magnificent hummingbird. They’re one of the biggest and rarest, but we see them regularly in Arizona.”
“I wish I could bug him,” Rand said.
“What?”
“It’d be easier to keep an eye on you.”
The bird zoomed off, returned, hovered, zoomed, and vanished.
Rand focused on the glass wall of the ten-story bank building. “Which one is your office?”
“Third floor, third from the corner,” she said, pointing it out. “Foley’s is the corner. Other private bankers are between.”