The Heaven Trilogy (42 page)

The banking official at Banco de Mexico had indeed raised his brow when Kent visited under the name Matthew Brown. It was not the way Mr. Brown looked that had him jumping, it was the five-hundred-thousand-dollar cash withdrawal he'd executed. Of course the official had almost certainly reported the unusual amount—even banks that promise discretion keep a log of such transfers. But Kent hardly cared. The maze of accounts through which the money had traveled over the last two weeks would require pure fortune to unravel. If any man were able to track the funds back to either Kent Anthony or the fire in Denver, they deserved to see him fry.

But that just wasn't going to happen.

That first five hundred thousand dollars brought a thrill to Kent's bones that he had not felt for months. He'd popped the latches of the black case he'd purchased for just this occasion and dumped the cash onto the moth-eaten bedspread in the hotel room. Then he'd stripped the piles of their rubber bands and physically rolled through them, tossing the bills into the air and letting them float lazily to the floor while pumping his fists and hooting in victory. It was a wonder the neighbors did not come pounding on his door. Possibly because there were no neighbors foolish enough to pay five hundred pesos a night to sleep in the miserable dump. He touched every bill, he thought, counting and recounting them all in a hundred different configurations. Of course he'd had little else to do then besides monitor the computer—that was his reasoning. Then he'd discarded his reasoning and celebrated by drinking himself into a two-day stupor.

It was his first alcoholic binge.

He started his well-rehearsed withdrawal plan then, flying first to Jakarta, then to Cairo, then to Geneva, then to Hong Kong, and finally here, to the Turks and Caicos Islands. At each stop he'd traveled under false identification papers, withdrawn large sums of money, and departed quickly. After each visit to a bank he'd taken the liberty of waltzing into its system using ROOSTER and isolating the links to the closed account. Bottom line, even if the local banking officials wanted to know more about the strange man who'd emptied their daily cash reserves with his massive withdrawal, they would find nothing.

He'd arrived a week ago in the islands packing just over six million dollars. All of it in cash, every last dollar untraceable. He'd become Kevin Stillman then and bought the villa. Fourteen million dollars, give or take, still waited around the world, gathering interest.

Yes indeed, to say that he'd pulled it off might very well be the century's greatest understatement. He had
rocked!
A dead man had ripped off twenty million bucks right under the nose of the almighty United States banking system, and not a soul suspected it was even gone!

That had been phase one.

Phase two had started one week after the fire, two days after Kent had received his new face. And it was phase two that was responsible for these raging emotions of insecurity now charging in to disturb the peace.

Maybe he should have been satisfied to take the $20 million minus the $44,069 and call it even. But in reality the thought hardly even occurred to him. This was not simply a matter of his getting what was coming to him; it was also a matter of Borst and Bentley getting what was coming to
them
. Some would call it revenge. Kent thought of it as justice. Putting things back the way they were meant to be. Or at least one version of how they were meant to be.

It was why he had planted a copy of ROOSTER on both Borst's and Bentley's hard drives several nights before executing the theft. And it was why he had made that first visit to their computers one week after the fire.

They already had routine access to AFPS, of course, and now they had untraceable access as well without knowing it. Only it was Kent in there doing the accessing, using their computers from remote stations. And the stuff he was accessing was not the stuff he was supposed to be accessing. Or rather it was not the kind of stuff
they
should be accessing. Naughty, naughty.

Over the course of three weeks, Kent had helped them steal money on seven different occasions. Small amounts of money—between three and five hundred dollars per whack—just enough to establish a trail. That was his little contribution to their burgeoning wallets, although to look at their private balances they certainly needed no help from him. Their contributions had been to keep the money. So far anyway. Whether because they were exceedingly greedy or because they simply did not know, Kent neither knew nor cared.

He considered all of this, set his drink back on the silver tray, and pressed his fingers together contemplatively. It had gone so smoothly that it would slip through the most sensitive digestive system unnoticed.

So then why the jitters?

Because everything up to this point had been a warmup of sorts. And now the computer sat on his table, wanting him to push the final buttons.

Kent grunted and wiped the sweat from his palms. “Well, we didn't come all this way to weasel out in the end, did we?” Of course not. Although it would certainly not hurt. And it would certainly be the wisest course, all things considered. It would . . .

“Shut up!” he snarled at himself.

Kent leaned forward and worked quickly now. He brought up ROOSTER from Borst's hard drive and then entered AFPS. He was into the bank's records.

Now the excitement of the moment brought a quiver to his bones. He brought up Borst's personal account and scanned the dozens of transactions recorded over the last few weeks. All seven deposits accommodated by him were still present. Thank heaven for small favors! He grinned and scanned down.

There were a few other deposits there as well. Large deposits. Deposits that made Kent squint. The bank was obviously paying him for AFPS. Nothing else could possibly account for a two-hundred-thousand-dollar balance.

“Not so fast, Fat-Boy,” Kent muttered.

He selected
all
of the deposits with a single click of the mouse, ten in all including his own, and removed them from Borst's account to a holding account he'd built into ROOSTER. The account balance immediately dropped to an overdrawn status. Overdrawn by the $31,223 in checks Borst had written this month. He was spending his hard-earned money quickly. Well, this would give him pause.

And
this . . . will give you a hernia!

Kent broke into the bank's primary accounting system, selected the primary bank reserves, and transferred five hundred thousand dollars to Borst's account. Using ROOSTER of course. He didn't want the authorities to know what had happened to the money. Not yet.

He posted a flag on the federal account and retreated to Borst's account. In the morning some lucky operator at Niponbank's headquarters in Japan would bring his computer up to find a nasty flag announcing the overnight disappearance of a half-million dollars from the bank's main account. Bells would clang, horns would blow, nostrils would flare. But nobody would discover the fate of the money, because it was as of yet unfindable. That was the beauty of ROOSTER.

Kent squirmed in his chair. Borst's account now showed a very healthy balance of over four hundred thousand dollars. He stared at the figure and considered leaving it. The ultimate carrot for Mr. Borst. Go ahead. Spend it, baby.

He discarded the notion. A plan was a plan. Instead he transferred the money to the same hidden account he'd set up for the other deposits, returning Borst's account to an overdrawn status. The man was going to wake up to the shock of his life.

Kent smirked, exceedingly happy for the moment.

He retreated from Borst's account and ventured into Bentley's. There he repeated the same steps, placing all of the bank president's money into another hidden account prepared for the occasion.

The porky twins were now very, very broke.

It was time to get out. Kent pulled out of the system, broke his connection, and sat back in the lounger. Sweat ran down his chest in small rivulets, and his hands were shaking.

“See how it feels, you greedy pigs,” he sneered. And then he lifted his glass and threw back the remaining liquor.

Yes indeed. It was all going exactly as planned. And to this point, not a soul knew a thing.

Except Lacy, possibly. He'd said a bit much to her that night.

Or possibly that pinhead cop.

The emotion hit him then, full force, as if a lead weight had been neatly aimed from heaven and dropped on the half-naked man lounging on the deck so smugly down there. It felt as though a hole had been punched through his chest. A vacancy. The gnawing fear that it had all gone too smoothly. That in the end this dream facing him in the eyes would not be a dream at all but some kind of nightmare dressed up in sheep's clothing. That trying to live now, surrounded by his millions but without Gloria or Spencer . . . or Lacy . . .

He shook his head to clear the thought. On the other hand, there was no evidence at all that Lacy or the cop knew anything. And someday soon, perhaps, there would be another Gloria or another Lacy. Maybe. And another Spencer.

No, never another Spencer.

Kent rose, snatched the glass, and strode for the kitchen. It was time for another drink.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

TWO THOUSAND miles northwest that same evening Lacy Cartwright stood over her stove struggling to flip the massive omelet she'd concocted in the shallow frying pan. She had no idea how she was going to eat the beast, but its aroma was staging a full assault on her senses, and she swallowed her saliva.

Her mind drifted back to the party Jeff Duncan had insisted she attend. The affair had been far too telling. She'd left after an hour of the foolishness and had to fend off a dozen questions the next workday. In the end she had succumbed to a little white lie. She had gotten sick. Which was, after all, true in heart-matters. Because she was still sick over this whole robbery issue. She knew he had done it—knew it like she knew the weasel was sitting on some beach somewhere, soaking up the rays.

She ground her teeth, turned off the stove, and flopped the eight-inch egg patty on a plate. If the idiot was still alive, off living with his millions, she hated him for it. If he was dead, having attempted such a fool thing, she hated him even more. How could anybody be so insensitive?

Lacy sat at the dinette and forked her omelet. She had decided a week ago that she should go to the authorities, even though she had promised not to tell. Give the little information that she had to the lead investigator.
“Hey, FBI man, you ever consider that maybe it was Kent Anthony who was the real robber?”
That would set them on a new track. Problem was, she could not be absolutely certain, which relieved her of any obligation, she thought. So she might very well tell them, but if she did, she would take her time.

Meanwhile, she had to get back to a normal life. The last time she remembered feeling in any way similar to this was after Kent had severed their relationship the first time. For a week she had walked around with a hollow gut, trying to ignore the lump in her throat and furious all at once. This time it was going on three weeks, and that lump kept wanting to lodge itself in her windpipe.

She had loved him, Lacy thought, and lowered her lifted fork. She had actually fallen in love with the man. In fact, to get right down and honest about the matter, she had been crazy about him. Which was impossible because she really hated him.

“Oh, God, help me,” she muttered, rising and crossing to the ice box. “I'm losing my mind.”

She returned to her seat with a quart of milk and drank straight from the carton. Impossible habit, but seeing as there was no one to offend at the moment, she carried on anyway. Now if Kent were here—

Lacy slammed the carton on the table in a sudden fit of frustration. Milk cleared the spout a full six inches before splashing to the table. Good grief ! Enough with this Kent foolishness!

She jabbed at the omelet and stuffed a piece in her mouth, chewing deliberately. For that matter, enough with men, period. Lock 'em all in a bank somewhere and burn the whole thing to the ground. Now, that might be a bit harsh really, but then maybe not.

What in the world would Kent do with twenty million dollars? The sudden chirp of the doorbell startled her. Who could be visiting her tonight? Not so long ago it might have been Kent. Heavens.

Stop it, Lacy. Just stop it!

She walked for the door and pulled it open. A dark-haired man with slicked-back hair and wire-framed spectacles stood there, grinning widely. His eyes were very green.

“May I help you?”

He flipped a card out of his breast pocket. “Jeremy Lawson, seventh precinct,” he said. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

A cop? “Sure,” she muttered, and stepped aside.

The middle-aged man walked in and looked around the apartment, offering no reason for his being there.

Lacy shut the door. Something about the cop's appearance suggested familiarity, but she could not place him. “How can I help you?”

“Lacy, right? Lacy Cartwright?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I just want to make sure that I have the right person before I fire away, you know.” He was sill wearing the wide grin.

“Sure. Is there a problem?”

“Oh, I don't know really. I'm doing a little looking into a fire down in Denver. You hear about that blaze that burned down a bank about a month ago?”

Whether or not it showed Lacy did not know, but she felt as though her head swelled red at the question. “Yes. Yes, I did read about that. And what does it have to do with me?”

“Nothing, maybe. We're just talking to people who might have known the gentleman who was killed in the fire. Do you mind if we sit, Miss Cartwright?”

Kent! He was investigating Kent's death! “Sure.” She motioned to the sofa and took a seat in the armchair opposite. What was she to say?

Now that she looked at him carefully she saw why Kent had referred to him as a pinhead. His head seemed to slope to a point covered neatly in black shiny hair.