Innocent as Sin

67

Phoenix

Sunday

The gate guards had been changed. Bertone was obviously digging deep for people with no previous loyalties or ties-except to him. The man on duty looked Uzbek, was sweating like a turkey on a spit, and smelled like a crowded Paris bus in summer. His hand was on the butt of his pistol, a Tokarev that looked as tough and hard-used as the guard himself.

Rand rolled the window down.

“Your business?” the guard demanded in heavily accented English.

“I’m here at Mrs. Bertone’s invitation. I won the art contest last night. She said she wanted to talk to me about some other paintings.”

“Wait.”

The guard retreated, called the house, spoke, listened, and hung up. When he walked back to the car, his hands were at his side.

“You need appointment,” he said. “Mrs. Bertone too busy with the United States senator to talk some painter. Come tomorrow.”

“Huh.”

The guard stared at Rand blankly. “Leave.”

“Well, hell, could you just open up the gate so I can pull through and turn around?” Rand asked.

The guard narrowed his eyes. “Use road there.” He pointed to the curbed semicircle in front of the shack that would allow vehicles to reverse direction.

“Oh. Got it.”

Rand glanced across at the exit from the estate, which had no gate. It was protected by a strip of tire shredders. He reversed, keeping an eye on the guard, then started into the turnaround.

The guard walked back toward the shack to get out of the desert’s brutal sun.

Rand cramped the wheels hard right, hopped the curb, and accelerated quickly toward the tire shredders. At the last second he found a gap between two ranks of the shredders and swung the left-side tires into it. The tires on both right wheels blew out. The SUV lurched hard to the right. He yanked the steering wheel, fought the pull, and straightened out the vehicle.

With a grind of steel on pavement, he accelerated up the hill. As he rounded the first curve in the long driveway, he heard the hard metal slap of a bullet hitting the tailgate just below the SUV’s rear window.

Then he was out of range and out of sight.

At the garage he crammed the nose of the SUV into the passageway that led to the house. Inside the garage, a driver was leaning on a Cadillac with congressional plates, chatting with the man outside washing the limo. The big black Humvee Bertone loved to drive wasn’t there.

Both men stared when Rand bailed out of the rental SUV and raced toward the house.

Outside the servants’ entrance to the kitchen, he nearly knocked over a round-faced maid in a classic black dress and white apron. She was emptying trash.

“Mr. Bertone,” he said curtly. “Take me to him.”

The maid’s eyes got big. She was so startled she forgot to speak English. “No es aqui.”

Rand wanted to doubt her, but she was too off-balance, too frightened, to tell anything but the truth.

He’d settle for second best.

“Mrs. Bertone,” he said curtly. “Where is she?”

“En la casa.” She pointed toward the glass wall of the great room that looked out on Pleasure Valley and the Valley of the Sun. “Con Senator Rogers.”

Rand sprinted past her to the front door. Unlocked. He shoved it open, turned left in the atrium, and palmed his phone on the belt clip. Without looking he hit number one on the speed dial and came to a stop just outside the great room.

“Faroe here.”

“Send in the helo,” Rand said.

He punched out without waiting for confirmation. When he strode into the great room, Elena was facing toward the atrium. She looked puzzled for a moment before she recognized him. The handsome white-haired man sitting on the couch with her turned to see what had caught her attention. He looked more annoyed at the interruption than she was.

“Mr. McCree, I think it was,” Elena said, a touch of disdain in her voice.

Rand nodded.

“I was not expecting you,” she said. “The senator and I are in the midst of a tête-à-tête, a private conversation.”

“What I have to say to you tête-à-tête is more important to your children than whatever bullshit you’re trading with the politician.”

“Who is this man?” The senator stood up and faced the intruder as he walked farther into the room.

The politician would have been more impressive if he hadn’t been in shorts and a pink golf shirt.

Elena didn’t rise. “He’s a struggling artist who thinks winning a prize gives him the right to be rude to me. He will regret the impertinence.”

“How did he get past the guard?” the senator asked.

“I have no idea. I’ll call security and have him removed.” She reached for a white telephone on a table at her end of the couch.

The pulse beating in the open throat of her silk shirt put the lie to her cool voice. Some things even a good actress couldn’t hide.

“Don’t bother,” Rand said. “Your guards are scrambling right now.”

He stepped in front of the senator and looked out the tall glass wall toward the south. A brightly painted helicopter was closing in at high speed. Already he could see the camera blister on its nose.

“But,” Rand said, turning back with a feral smile, “you might tell your men to keep their guns out of sight. That kind of publicity will undercut all the social climbing you’ve done up to now.”

“Guns-my children-” She leaped to her feet.

“Your children are fine,” Rand said. “If you want them to stay that way, shut up and listen to me.”

White-faced, Elena sank back onto the couch.

“Now see here, young man,” the senator began.

“No, you see,” Rand said to the senator. “Her husband kidnapped my fiancée. If Elena wants her kids to avoid the shit storm that’s coming down, she’ll listen to me.”

“You’re nuts,” the politician said, reaching past Elena for the phone.

“How would you act if you were on camera, Senator?” Rand asked. “Think about it, because a news chopper is coming in right now. Elena can be gracious about it and help me, or she can look like a gangster’s moll on the six o’clock news.” He turned on Elena. “How would your children like that, Mrs. Bertone?”

She put a hand on her neck to cover the telltale hammering of her pulse. “Whatever you want. Just keep my children out of it.”

“That’s up to you,” Rand said.

The sound of a helicopter’s big blades beat through the windows. The craft was close enough that everyone could see the network logo on its red, yellow, and blue side. The pilot flared and took up station fifty yards off the pool, his camera aimed directly at the front of the house. Technically, he wasn’t violating anybody’s airspace.

Yet.

“I don’t understand,” she said in a strained voice.

“That’s a good story,” Rand said. “You stick with it when the reporters start screaming, asking what you think about the thousands of people who were slaughtered so that you could sit on your pampered ass in the sky castle you designed.”

Her eyes widened. She hugged herself and made a low sound.

Rand kept pushing. He didn’t like it, but it was the least of what he would do to get to Bertone while Kayla was still alive.

“It’s over,” he said flatly. “Your husband’s a gunrunner. The World in One Hour can prove it. Bertone is going down. Hard. Your only choice is whether you and the children go down with him.”

“What the hell is going on?” the senator demanded as he backed away from the windows like they were on fire.

Rand gave him a sideways look. “Senator, you better get the hell out of here. The good citizens of your district won’t like finding out how you were caught in a tête-à-tête with an international gunrunner’s arm candy. Blood, money, and sex make great headlines.”

“This is outrageous!” the senator said.

“No,” Rand shot back. “What’s outrageous is that Kayla Shaw was kidnapped by Andre Bertone, who will torture her to get the magic word that will unlock a quarter of a billion dollars and start a war to overthrow a duly elected government half a world away.”

“Elena?” the senator asked.

“Please go, Senator,” Elena said. “Please. It is not good for you to be…here, now.”

“All I’m doing here is talking about donations and campaign strategy.” The senator gave Rand a cold look. “And if you imply anything else to the media, I’ll have your balls.” He switched his glare to Elena. “Where is Andre? He’ll cut through this bullshit.”

Elena looked blankly at the senator. “Andre is not here.”

“Well, get him here.” The senator glared at the helicopter. “Get him on the phone!”

The chopper’s rotor wash whipped up waves on the lap pool. The engine roar made the panes of glass in the wall vibrate.

Suddenly Elena leaped up off the couch and dashed to the sliding glass door, throwing it open with such force that it nearly jumped the track.

A cameraman hung out the side door of the news chopper, baseball cap on backward, zooming his lens in on the angry woman in the doorway.

“Get out of here!” she screamed. “Get out! You have no right to be here. You are ruining everything. I will sue you. My husband will ki-” Abruptly she realized that she was truly on film.

She turned away and shut her mouth.

The senator had noticed the camera before Elena did. He made doubly sure he wasn’t in the camera’s sight before he pulled a cell phone out of his back pocket and hit a number. Without a glance at his hostess, he hurried out of the great room. His voice trailed away into the distance as he disappeared in the direction of the kitchen and the servants’ entrance. “Listen, we’ve got a huge problem. Get hold of our contacts inside the local TV network. Find out what the hell is…”

Rand was on his own cell phone, talking to Faroe. “Tell the helo to swing around and cover the parking area.”

“Somebody leaving?”

“Only the rats. One of them is a United States senator driving a big black Caddy SUV. They’ll love a shot of that back in Manhattan, home of unrapid transit.”

He closed the phone on Faroe’s hard laughter.

When the helicopter lifted up and over the house, Elena was still standing like an angry statue with her back to the glass doorway. The aircraft’s clatter and racket shook the roof, then faded slightly as it circled around to line up a shot of the car park.

Finally she looked at Rand.

He was waiting with the patience of a true predator.

“Why?” she asked.

“You were home. Decide, Elena. Now. Your kids or your husband. Which will it be?”