Innocent as Sin

51

Chandler Mall

Sunday

Just as Rand and Kayla passed Faroe’s table, he shoved to his feet, bumping against her. He grabbed her arm to steady her.

“Sorry,” Faroe said. “Didn’t see you.”

Then in a voice so soft Rand thought he imagined it, Faroe said in his ear, “Take her shopping. It’s going down now.”

Rand pulled Kayla close. “You okay, sweet thing?”

“Never better, stud.”

Faroe’s mouth twisted as he fought a smile.

“Remember that naughty little pink thingy you showed me?” Rand said. “I’ve decided I’m going to buy it for you right now.”

He hauled Kayla out the restaurant’s side door and onto an escalator headed for the second floor of the shopping mall. He made sure that he was standing between her and any view of the parking lot. He wasn’t going to expose her until he was sure Gabriel and the two Galils were out of the game.

“What was that all about?” Kayla asked under her breath.

“Faroe didn’t want us in the parking lot right now,” Rand said.

The escalator gave him a clear, gliding view of the parking lot in front. The place was alive with squad cars.

“Now that’s sweet,” Rand said, grinning.

“I can’t see.”

He leaned aside.

Kayla saw five white Chandler squad cars pulled up at odd angles around the tired-looking Chevrolet van she’d seen in Guadalupe. Officers swarmed around the van, which was parked with its rear cargo door pointed in the direction of the restaurant’s front door. Three officers had opened the cargo doors and were leaning in to examine the interior of the van.

Two men were facedown on the asphalt, their hands cuffed behind them.

“Is it-” she began.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, glancing around while he appeared to be nuzzling her hair. “Hell’s angel was flying too close to the ground. Crash and burn, you bastard.”

An officer emerged from the cargo area carrying a lethal-looking long gun with a sniper’s scope on it.

“One of the guys on the ground, the skinny one-” she began.

“Yeah,” Rand said. “Say buh-bye, darling. He’s going down, big-time.”

“Is that one of the guns we saw in Guadalupe?” Kayla asked very quietly.

“I’d bet on it.” Then, “End of the ride. Watch your step.”

She walked off the escalator, but all she could concentrate on was her memory of the parking lot with its silent show-and-tell. “You were right. About the gun slits.”

“Sure was.”

“Don’t sound so cheerful. I was the target, wasn’t I.”

It wasn’t a question.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Rand said. “But if it was Bertone on the other end of Foley’s wire, he must have been shitting green lizards.”

“Why?”

“Because you, you clever little banker lady, have the key to his millions. If he kills you, he kills himself. But he didn’t know that when he pointed his skinny death angel at you and told him to pull the trigger.”

Her mouth flattened. “Now what?”

“Tell me you didn’t forget Bertone’s password.”

“I didn’t.”

He let out a breath. “Good.”

“Just because my hips swing when I walk, I’m not stupid. And I sure don’t have a little black book of passwords.”

“Dang.” He smiled slowly. “Here I was getting all hard just thinking about it.”

She gave him a look as he hustled her past windows full of things with price tags and blank faces. “Are we going somewhere in particular?”

“No. We’re waiting for Bertone to get in touch with his inner password.”

“What about my naughty pink thingy?”

“I’ll get in touch with that.”