Elizabeth Lowell - Innocent as Sin

“Guess we won’t be walking around,” Rand said.

“Don’t have to. We have those local private investigators hanging in the neighborhood, passing themselves off as repo guys from a car dealer. They can work in close to Gabriel’s house. We’ll stay here and work at a distance.”

“Binoculars?” Kayla asked.

“Telephoto camera,” Hamm said, passing it over the seat. “Tourists like to hang out here on the weekend, watch the funny locals.”

He opened the glove box and dug out a Diamondback baseball cap that matched the one he was wearing. He tossed it to Rand, who ditched the Stetson, grumbled about being a Mariners fan, but put the cap on anyway.

Hamm’s cell phone rang discreetly, the sound of a cardinal chirping. He answered and listened.

“There’s something happening at the house,” Hamm said. “A van. Driver’s a white guy with red hair.” Then, into the phone, “Go ahead, slide in a little closer. Guadalupe is always crawling with repo guys in tow trucks.”

Hamm listened some more. Then he relayed more information. “The van says ‘Arizona Territorial Gun Club.’”

Kayla said something under her breath.

“What,” Rand demanded.

“Steve Foley is a redhead,” she said, “and he’s a member of that club.”

“What kind of place is it?” Rand asked. “Antique weapons and pistols at dawn?”

“More like Rambo’s wet dream,” Hamm said, flipping through his mental files. “High-tech all the way.”

“Steve likes to think of himself as a sports shooter,” Kayla said, “but here in Arizona, that could mean anything from a nervous grandmother to a Wyatt Earp wannabe.”

“You know where the club is?” Rand asked Hamm.

“At the edge of the desert, on tribal land.”

“No feds allowed?” Rand asked.

Hamm shrugged. “Every tribe’s treaty rights are different. I’ve never been invited, so I’ve never been inside the club. Just hearsay from those who have.”

“Steve is always talking about the club’s ‘Tire City’ and their close-quarters course, whatever they are.”

Hamm and Rand exchanged glances.

Tire City.

The term sent a chill through Rand. Modern urban warriors practiced close-quarters combat in open-roofed buildings with walls constructed of discarded auto tires filled with dirt. He had a mental image of the kind of place Kayla was describing, concrete block buildings, gravel canyons, and indoor labyrinths of movable shooting galleries with overhead observation platforms. Foley’s gun club was a fortress in the desert, remote and bristling with firearms.

“What does ‘Tire City’ mean?” Kayla asked.

“It’s slang for simulation bunkers,” Rand said. “Close-quarters courses are run-and-shoot ranges. Usually such places are reserved for advanced training in law enforcement or military counterterrorism units.” He smiled thinly. “Think of it as a kind of live-fire Disneyland for the well-armed adult.”

“That would be Steve,” Kayla said.

“Sweet,” Rand said.

She shrugged. “As far as gun laws are concerned, Arizona is the last wild frontier. We have an open-carry law.”

“Meaning?” Rand asked.

“You can still walk most of our streets with a sidearm, so long as you display it openly. I’ve seen guys in the Costco parking lot with pistols on their hips.”

“Really sweet.” Rand smiled grimly. “Hide behind the camera, Kayla.” Then, to Hamm, “Get closer to that club van. Go real slow, like a gringo looking for his drug dealer.”

Hamm started to object, then remembered Faroe’s orders: Rand was the boss.

“There are four males in the carport area,” Hamm said, slowly driving closer, “including the redhead from the van. My spotter says they’re moving something from the club van to the back of a beat-up, solid-sided blue panel truck.”

Hamm made a right and a left. The town square gave way to a tired little subdivision of one-story houses with satellite dishes and swamp coolers on the roof.

“Coming up.”

Kayla focused the camera on the sidewalk and made a startled sound.

“What?” Rand said.

“Where’s the Oh Shit Bar when I need it?” she said. “That’s Steve Foley. Next to him is Gabriel. I don’t recognize the other two.”

“Slouch down.” Rand enforced the command by pulling her facedown into his lap. “Hamm, eyes front when we go by.”

“Yessir.”

Whatever Kayla said was muffled by Rand’s lap.

Hamm passed the house slowly, seeming to pay no attention to it. Rand lounged with his shoulder against the door, largely shielding his face. But he managed a long sideways glance up the driveway and past the gleaming, lipstick-red club van, which was sitting stern to stern with a weary-looking blue Chevrolet delivery van. The Chevy’s rear cargo doors didn’t match. And one of them had some thin, rectangular patches on it.

“Did you see the weapons?” Hamm asked Rand after they were past.

“Yeah.”

“We done?”

“Yeah.”

Gradually Hamm picked up his speed.

Rand helped Kayla sit up again.

She swatted at him with her cap. “That’s for the mouthful of lap.”

He leaned closer and said softly, “You didn’t mind last night.”

She swatted him again.

“Did you see what they were unloading?” Hamm asked.

“Galil assault rifle,” Rand said.

“What?” Hamm asked, looking in the rearview mirror. “You sure?”

“Positive,” Rand said. “Bertone was the only one who could get Galils into Africa. I guess he still has good connections. Good enough that he could drop two Galils on Steve Foley to hand over to Gabriel.”

“Two?”

“I saw that many. Could be more.”

Hamm swore. “Then they just expanded their killing field by about a thousand yards.”

“There were what looked like gun slits in one van’s back doors,” Rand said. “Metal sliders.”

“Judas Priest,” Hamm muttered. “What next?”

Kayla’s cell phone rang, reminding her that she’d forgotten to turn it off. She dragged the phone out of the backpack and glanced at the caller ID window.

She flinched.

“Who is it?” Rand asked.

The cell phone rang again as she showed the ID window to Rand. “Steve Foley.”

“Ten to one he’s setting you up for Gabriel,” Rand said.

Nobody took the bet.

Guadalupe

Sunday

9:15 A.M. MST

Kayla stared at the cell phone in her lap. It wasn’t ringing any longer.

Foley hadn’t left a message.

Hamm closed his cell phone with a distinct click. “The Arizona Territorial Gun Club van is still in Gabriel’s driveway.”

Rand nodded and listened to Faroe on his own scrambled cell phone. Without taking his glance from Kayla’s pale face, Rand asked questions, listened to answers, and made his own requests. When he was certain everything would be in place, he hung up.

“Foley will call again,” Rand said. “Bertone has to smoke you out for Gabriel. We have two choices. Stay quiet or use this opportunity to take Gabriel off the board.”

And pray like dirty bastards that he doesn’t take Kayla out of the game instead.

All in all, Rand would rather have that skinny snake in a cage than loose on the streets with a Galil. He just didn’t want Kayla to be the bait. But no matter how he’d argued, Faroe hadn’t budged. If Rand revealed himself to Bertone as the one who could ID him with a planeload of arms in Africa, Bertone would get in the wind faster than St. Kilda could follow.

It was Kayla Bertone was looking for.

It was Kayla Bertone expected to find.

Kayla, who sat with her hands clenched around the Stetson he’d taken off. Her fingers had left creases in the hat’s creamy surface. She’d overheard enough of what he’d said to know that she was going to be an actress again.

She hated acting.

“Your choice, Kayla,” Rand said. “I mean it. If you don’t want to talk to Foley, you don’t talk. End of subject.”

Her cell phone rang again.

Rand waited.

Kayla listened to her gut instinct. Answer or not?

The phone rang.

She picked it up but didn’t open it.

“If you answer, put it on speakerphone,” Rand said quietly.

She changed the setting on the phone and looked at it without answering.

“Hamm, head for that mall we saw from the freeway.”

“Chandler Mall?” Hamm asked.

Her phone rang.

“Is it the closest?” Rand asked.

“Yes,” Kayla said. “Any final instructions before I answer?”

“Play hard-to-get before you invite him to the Cheesecake Factory at Chandler Mall. Don’t tell him about me.” Then, to Hamm, “Go.”

She opened the phone as the SUV accelerated away from Gabriel’s house.

“Hello,” she said tightly.

“Hey, Kayla, it’s Steve, how’s your Sunday going?” Foley’s voice was clear, friendly as a salesman.

“Just great,” she said, “but I’m breaking a personal rule, talking and driving eighty miles an hour on the 101 Loop. What’s up?”

Rand gave her a thumbs-up for the response.

“Well, look,” Foley said, “I hate to bother you on a weekend, but something has come up. I have to see you. Can we meet at your ranch?”

Simultaneously, Hamm and Rand gave her a negative head motion. She gave them a Well, duh eye roll.

“I’m really jammed up today,” she said. “Can’t we handle it by phone?”

“Sorry.” Foley’s voice said he wasn’t sorry at all. “It absolutely has to be done in person. That’s what being a personal banker is all about.”