Innocent as Sin

57

Phoenix

Sunday

Kayla slid her employee ID card through the card reader. The latch on the glass door released.

One down.

How many to go?

The guard looked up from his Guns and Ammo magazine. He was a Latino with a buzz cut and a gentle leer.

Kayla didn’t recognize him.

“What’s a pretty thing like you doing working on Sunday?” he asked, laying the magazine aside and reaching for the entry log.

“I’m here to rob the bank,” she said cheerfully. “Sunday seemed like a good day.”

The guard spun the log and offered a pen so she could sign in. “Need any help?”

“If the bags are too heavy, I’ll holler.”

“Bet there’s a handcart in the janitor’s closet,” he said, watching her write. “Just let me know.”

As Kayla signed in, she saw that she was the first employee to log in since Saturday. She had the run of the place.

Time’s a-wasting.

She turned toward the elevator.

“Uh-hummm.” The guard cleared his throat.

“Is there something else?” Kayla asked, hesitating.

“You don’t know the drill, do you? I need to verify your ID.”

She handed over her ID card. “I keep my weekends to myself. But this time…” She shrugged. “No help for it.”

“I guess it’s only executives who put in the long hours.”

“Yeah.” On the golf course.

Something bankers and judges apparently had in common.

The guard compared Kayla’s signature to the name on 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.