Above Temptation

by Karin Kallmaker

  Which made her an alarmist. Now she’d revealed to Mercedes Houston that she had a tie to Tam, when if she’d let things alone, Tam would have sent the agents on their way, at least for a while. She expected Tam to arrive any minute, unless Mercedes had found a way to send a text or e-mail.

  One of the agents, the deep-voiced one who had been speaking less, asked if he could step into the other room to make a phone call. Mercedes agreed and a shadow crossed Kip’s line of vision.

  The faint beep of buttons was followed by a quiet, “Thompson, checking in. No, this is a mess.”

  Kip held her breath. It sounded like he was looking at the book titles on the case hiding her as he spoke.

  “We might have gotten somewhere, but some assistant called legal and now Hardwell is practically measuring his dick with the lawyers. This wasn’t my idea, remember?”

  There was a soft rustle as a book was pulled from the shelf.

  “I don’t care if Sterling used to be one of us. I know—makes more money now than we’ll ever see. It was too soon to demand an interview. We’ve got nothing. Oh yeah? Like what?”

  The book slid back into place. The agent probably turned away because his words were harder to make out.

  “What’s she doing moving that kind of money around? Yesterday? What about before that?”

  Kip stealthily got to her feet. He’d moved several feet away and his back was to her. She pressed her ear to the opening.

  “Nothing? Where did yesterday’s go? Oh.” His chuckle was mirthless. “Well that will get us a warrant. I don’t like it, though. Something’s hinky.”

  Kip’s pounding heart was making it harder and harder to hear.

  “Find a judge—good luck on getting quick action. Hey, I know she was, but have you ever worked with anyone here? If SFI builds a case against you your butt is busted. Judges aren’t going to jump through hoops to sign anything on some flimsy circumstantial evidence. We should pull back, get some real evidence and then move. And be prepared to be met with very clever resistance every step of the way from the staff here too.”

  He was pacing now, his voice low and intense. “This is your deal. I don’t know what Sterling ever did to you, but frankly I had other things to do this morning. That string of bank robberies in Oregon is trending this direction. Those guys use guns, so yeah, I think that’s a higher priority. No. No. Is that an order or your advice?”

  He listened a few moments more, then angrily stabbed at his phone. Whirling around to pace back to the bookshelf Kip finally saw his face—she may have met with him once or twice on a case. He hadn’t done anything memorable for her to recall. So an unknown, and therefore unlikely to be any kind of ally.

  “This is bullshit,” he muttered. He straightened his shoulders and returned to Mercedes’ office. Now his voice was unmistakable.

  “I don’t suppose you’d provide us with copies of the corporate filings for your Bahamas branch, now would you? A corporation your boss formed six weeks ago, and transferred one and a half million dollars in company funds to yesterday?”

  There was a brief silence, then one of the SFI lawyers said, “If you had a warrant I would act on your request.”

  There were a few more verbal parries, then the deep-voiced officer took charge of the other one with, “We’ll be back with a warrant. This is your notice that there is an official investigation pending.”

  “There wasn’t before this? This was a fishing expedition?” The lawyer’s tone was scathing. “So noted.”

  The door had closed behind the agents for ten seconds before Mercedes burst out with, “What was that all about?”

  The lawyer almost simultaneously said, “Do you know anything about this?”

  “I’m as confused as you are,” Mercedes said.

  “Wait.” That must have been one of the other lawyers. “The guy was in there a while. It might not be safe to talk here.”

  “Quite right. Let’s go into my office for a bit. Mercedes, lock the door.”

  “Okay. I need to lock Tam’s private files. I was working on them earlier.”

  Mercedes was at the bookcase in moments, gesturing her to come outside. She pushed the case closed and opened the door of a little cabinet on a middle shelf. It turned out to be hiding the keypad on the office side of the bookcase. She pressed the buttons quickly. Still saying nothing, she gave Kip a wide-eyed look of inquiry.

  Suspecting that Mercedes probably knew a lot more than she was saying, it welled up in her that there was only one thing to tell Mercedes—the most likely truth. Mercedes wouldn’t want to hear her doubts, and there was no time for them. She put her mouth close to Mercedes’ ear and whispered, “She’s being set up. Vernon Markoff maybe.”

  Mercedes pulled back to give her a steady look of comprehension before hurrying to join the people waiting in her office. A short minute later they were gone and the office door pinged as the keypad locked it.

  Great. She was out of the file area, moving up in the world, but locked in the office. It was a very nice office, but the locked door was a problem. She could, however, make a phone call.

  Tam answered on the second ring. “What’s up?”

  “I’m locked in your office.”

  “Just when I thought this morning couldn’t get any weirder. How did that happen?”

  Kip explained as succinctly as she could, but when she got to the agent’s phone call and that the investigation into Tam had reached official status, Tam interrupted.

  “An anonymous tip, and I moved a million and a half offshore the same day? Did I tie fireworks to it and take out an ad in the New York Post at the same time?” She gave an unamused, scorn-filled laugh. “Come on, Kip. Damn it, I have an account in the Maldives which nobody is ever going to find. I could have moved that money and made it look like I actually used it to pay my taxes and been living in Sao Paolo before anyone could prove that’s not what I did.”

  “Why do you have an account in the Maldives?”

  Tam muttered something at another driver and Kip realized she was in her car. “I should have known that’s what you’d focus on. I’ll tell you—do you have any aspirin? My head is splitting. Never mind. Here’s the thing. We’ve got two hackers-for-hire as potential perps and a connection to Markoff to discover. This guy is good, and if we don’t look now, pull records now, there won’t be records to pull. I waste time talking to the FBI today and I’m probably cooked. Cooked because one of my own best agents has all the building blocks of a pretty good case against me.”

  “I’m sorry.” What else could she say? “Tell me the truth—would you have respected any other course of action on my part?”

  There was a long silence.

  “I have such a headache,” Tam finally said. “Meet me at the juice place down the street in five, can you do that?”

  “I’m locked in your office.”

  Tam told her the keypad code. “Mercedes is one smart cookie. If you weren’t working with me you’d still be there when she got back. If you were, I’d get you out.”

  Kip tiptoed through Mercedes’ office to the door. “One last question?”

  “What?”

  “You’re a big deal executive. Why on earth don’t you have a private exit?”

  “I have Mercedes, smarter than I am in lots of ways and better than a pit bull.”

  Kip snickered. “Okay, I see your point. Five minutes at the juice place? Make it closer to ten.”

  She listened at the door, heard nothing, then keyed in the code. The hallway beyond was empty so she slipped out, keyed the code again and walked briskly toward the stairs. She hurried down two flights, keyed her way out of the stairwell and was quickly at her desk.

  Unlocking her file cabinet she squeezed all the papers she’d originally received from Tam into her satchel along with her laptop. She presented herself at Emilio’s door.

  He looked up from his e-mail with a puzzled expression. “I was starting to worry.”

  “I’m not
feeling well,” Kip said, aware that she was flushed, but otherwise didn’t look the least bit under the weather.

  “Have you seen your mail? There’s some kind of freak-out about agents and Tam—”

  “I’ve gone home sick,” Kip said.

  Emilio cocked his head. “I see.”

  She started to turn away, but he said her name.

  “You’re okay, right?”

  She prayed she was telling the truth. “I will be.”

  In the elevator she could only marvel at the trust everyone seemed to have for each other, trust that she couldn’t find. Emilio in her, Mercedes in Tam—even the agent on his phone had first turned to trust of past experience in the face of new, unsettling information. Though they were often quick to act and lacking in cybercrime subtleties, she could count on most FBI types to crave answers and justice as much as she did. It had been a welcome reminder, too, that whatever information they’d been fed by a tipster about Tamara Sterling, it didn’t command the kind of resources that would be devoted to armed bank robberies and other violent crime. At least that’s what she told herself, even as she expected an agent to intercept her at any moment as she exited the elevator on the main floor.

  She could trust in the patterns of FBI officers, or her colleagues. But Tam? Her heart trusted, clearly it did. She wouldn’t be carrying evidence out of the building if it didn’t. Her heart didn’t just trust, either. There was more, a very dangerous something more—an impossible something more. She wasn’t going to name it, because if she did it would think it had found a home.

  Don’t believe in the impossible, she warned herself. She hurried out of the building lobby, bursting into the sunlight of the bright autumn day. The canopy of sky was brilliantly blue. She loved the way the sun felt on her face. Her feet nearly flew down the street, her body feeling light, at complete odds with her heavy thoughts, and in spite of the thirty pounds of paperwork she was carrying.

  She saw Tam before Tam spotted her. Tam’s dark jacket seemed loose on her shoulders while her face was pale, all angles and sharp edges, Tam was scanning the street. Then their gazes locked and Tam grinned.

  Kip found herself grinning back. “I’ve decided you’re guilty,” she announced.

  Tam was clearly taken aback, but said only, “My car is this direction. Let’s get some place that feels a bit safer than this and confer.”

  She fell into step alongside her. “I will work as diligently as possible to prove you did it.”

  “Okay.” Tam gave her a sideways glance. “This is good news?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t much of a moment of clarity, but it was something. “My suspicion is an asset. I can think like Tamara Sterling, a rather inept embezzler, and possibly anticipate the next set of evidence against you. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if tickets to take you from here to Brazil turned up next.”

  “I might be able to trace back an air reservation.”

  “There’s lot of other work to do first—I’m just saying. You’re guilty and I’m here to prove it. That means I stick to you like glue.”

  Tam’s grin froze before it was fully formed. She gestured Kip into the next store.

  “What? Do you need incense? Patchouli?” Kip coughed at the other smells hanging in the air of the tiny crystals and herbals shop. Her mild allergy to sandalwood made her eyes water.

  “There’s a car behind my car that I think is official business.”

  “They can’t have a warrant yet.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I can’t be detained until they do, for any number of time-wasting reasons. Right now, time is what we don’t have. The tampering fingerprints are going to disappear. I was going to copy them last night but I got…distracted.”

  Kip wondered what that meant. “Well, the agent I overheard wasn’t looking to haul you in for questioning. I think they were just going to ask you a few questions but when Mercedes stonewalled them it got more about ego.”

  “I’m glad there’s somebody relatively calm involved, but I doubt he’s in that tan sedan.”

  “I had a blue sedan following me.” She tried to get an angle to look down the street past Tam’s car, but she wasn’t tall enough. Not like seeing the car mattered—white, tan and blue were standard issue.

  Tam took off her jacket and relieved Kip of her heavy satchel. “Put my jacket over yours. From the back we might look like different people than the ones who came in.”

  “The height…”

  “I know. Mutt and Jeff here. We have to leave separately. Me first.”

  Kip opened her mouth to protest, but Tam went on, “If they’re going to seize me I don’t want you taken in too on some trumped -up obstruction charge. And they can have all the evidence. I want them to have it. I just don’t want them to have me.”

  Tam now had all the reports Kip had independently collected. A suspicious person might think this was a ploy to dump it. For entirely unsuspicious reasons Kip said, “Don’t you dare try to ditch me.”

  The smile she got was lopsided. “Not yet.”

  As Tam left she muttered, “I’d like to see you try.”

  She ticked off thirty seconds on her watch. Hearing no alarm and seeing no blue-suited figures in nonchalant pursuit of Tam, she meandered out of the shop, paused to window-shop and slowly made her way down the street and around the corner. Her heart sank into her stomach until she spotted Tam sitting on a bench, face turned upward to the sun in the classic Seattle tan-while-you-can pose.

  “So what do we do now?”

  Tam opened one eye, still looking the picture of lunchtime relaxation. “I probably should ditch you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “This isn’t a movie, Kip.”

  “I know that.”

  Tam met her gaze. “This isn’t where you defy authority and save the planet and the audience gives you a standing ovation at the end, all crimes expunged.”

  “I know. And I’m not going anywhere. You’re my prime suspect. It’s my duty.”

  “You could go to the FBI and tell them what you know. Just put it out there. And walk away, because you haven’t done a single thing wrong.”

  “And I still haven’t. It’s perfectly lawful for me to go into the parking garage and get my car.”

  Tam’s eyes darkened to a steel-gray. “Will you promise me that if you’re challenged, you’ll cooperate? Give them every hunch and idea you’ve had?”

  Kip swung the heavy satchel over her shoulder. “Okay, we’ll let the FBI decide what I do next. But if I pull up in my car in the next five minutes, you’re getting in.”

  * * *

  Tam watched Kip’s trim figure, lopsided from her heavy load, walk briskly toward the parking garage and out of her sight. In spite of her promise, she seriously considered walking away. She could probably get just as far on her own, and not endanger Kip while she did it.

  She didn’t want to run so far that Kip couldn’t find her. Besides, she had no reason to run She was innocent. All she needed was a few more days, maybe forty-eight hours total. Just because Kip had overheard a threat of a warrant to arrest her didn’t mean that a warrant yet existed, or that one ever would exist. Leaving the area wasn’t a crime.

  But it would surely look guilty. Because she was an ex-agent, there would be those who would make her a priority—she knew how they felt about their own gone bad. They’d sift through her life. What if someone else finally stumbled over what Kip had and brought up her lack of proof of identity? Wanted to know where she’d spent her childhood? Fine, well, she hadn’t ever wanted it to be public information, but disclosure in the context of a criminal investigation was the last way she’d ever wanted her parentage to come to light. The court of public opinion took the flimsiest of suspicions and indicted a person’s entire life these days. It would only take one well-financed blogger with advertisers to please to do her in, like those slimy people at SLY. Witch hunts sold ads and drew site visitors and the pay-per-click income. Throw the word le
sbian in with those sorts of words and, oh, look at the Web hits pile up.

  When Kip’s car issued from the garage exit down the street and merged carefully over to the curb where she was waiting, her emotions were as chaotic as oceans meeting. When she felt like this she had always been able to calm herself, but that had backfired spectacularly last night. She would have to live with the cacophony. Pleasure wasn’t hard to handle, and it was undeniably pleasurable to see Kip. But there was worry and concern, too. Excitement? Was that because she was getting out in the field to actually tackle a puzzle herself? Or was it the sight of Kip’s smiling eyes?

  Chapter Eleven

  Kip’s pulse steadied once Tam was in the car. She had expected her not to be there. “Blue suit was waiting near the elevator—just one guy and I’m not sure he was looking for me instead of you. But it wasn’t on his radar that my car should stay where it was.”

  She glanced in her rearview mirror, noting the range of vehicles. There was at least one dark blue sedan, of course, and one black SUV, and several nondescript tan and white cars. Any of them could be official. She went four blocks in a straight line, then made a quick right turn. Several cars followed. She adroitly navigated the one-way avenue, made all right turns for three blocks, then pointed her nose toward the freeway.

  Tam was looking over her shoulder out the back window most of the time. “I think we’re clear.”

  “Me too.” She accelerated up the onramp, north as it turned out, toward Edmonds. Two exits later she whisked down a ramp and turned into a gas station, circled the pumps and pulled out to follow the frontage. No familiar cars at all. “Now I’m sure.”

  “We can’t use our credit cards,” Tam said. “Not until we want to be found.”

  “I know. At least, not after we leave the expected radius they’d attribute to Seattle.”

  “If we stop now, they will see it as a trajectory toward my house, and we’re not going there.”

  Kip nodded. “There’s a branch of my bank right over there. I can withdraw cash.”