St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

walked slowly out of the bloody shooting house, toward the sound of sirens pouring in through the shattered front doors.

80
    Phoenix
May
    K ayla stood close to Rand and watched a lone hummingbird dip and drink, dip and drink, a tiny feathered pump sucking nectar from a feeder dangling above her apartment balcony. When the bird leaped back, hovered, and darted off into the velvet dusk, Kayla sighed and straightened.
    “Okay,” she said, “I’m ready now.”
    “You don’t have to.”
    “I need to.”
    He didn’t argue. He knew what some of her dreams were like. He’d held her through them.
    She’d held him through his.
    He shut the patio door, threaded his way through the painting gear that had taken over the living room, and went to the TV. An unmarked DVD stuck out like a silver tongue from the slot.
    As he bent to shove the disc into place, she asked automatically, “How are your ribs?”
    “Ask me next week, when we get to the cold, wet Pacific Northwest.”
    “Do you want to stay here?”
    “Not unless you do.”
    She shook her head. “I’ve always wanted to see Washington’s San Juan Islands.”
    He picked up the controller and sat next to her on the couch. “If you’d kept your grandmother’s bank account, you could own those islands.”
    “I didn’t even like taking the St. Kilda bonus.”
    “It didn’t come from Bertone’s money,” Rand said. Not directly. Hell, in today’s world, clean money is a joke. “And you earned every last penny of your percentage. Did I say thank you for saving my life?”
    “Same back at you, and yes, every time you look at me and smile.”
    Smiling, he ran his fingertips down her face. She had a faint scar from Foley’s ring. There were other marks, high on her legs. At first seeing the scars had enraged Rand. Then he’d accepted them for what they were—a warrior’s mark of courage, more beautiful than perfection would have been.
    Just as he had finally accepted that he had lived and Reed hadn’t.
    He pushed the button on the controller. Brent Thomas’s handsome face smiled out at them from the screen. The backdrop was a Camgerian village.
    “Thank you for joining me. I’m in Camgeria, Africa. Many of you will remember our March show, which featured the rise and fall of international gunrunner Andre Bertone. Much of the graphic footage of starvation and disease in that hour was filmed in the village behind me.”
    Kayla wanted to look away as the camera reprised the village’s brutal past, but she didn’t. She had learned the hard way the truth that lay at St. Kilda Consulting’s core: when civilizedpeople were too sensitive to face evil, then evil would bring down civilization.
    “Today, I have the rare pleasure of sharing with you a miracle of rebirth. Villages all over Camgeria are being transformed, thanks to the outpouring of viewers like you.”
    “Plus St. Kilda’s gift of two hundred million and change,” Rand said, taking her hand. “And the courage of a certain unnamed banker lady.”
    “Don’t forget the unlikely artist.”
    “Who?”
    “You.”
    “What’s unlikely about—”
    “Shhh. I can’t hear,” Kayla interrupted.
    “—clinic opened today. There will be free exams and treatments for everyone in the village. Thanks to our viewers’ generosity, the school has more supplies than they can use, so staff from The World in One Hour has been supplying schools in neighboring villages. The biggest blessing is the village well. With it, the waterborne diseases that have plagued these people in the past will be eradicated.”
    The view shifted to laughing children playing a local version of tag while their mothers lined up with buckets for a turn at the astonishing, ever-flowing silver water.
    The scene shifted again, more angles on the difference a few hundred thousand dollars had made in a village that had known only poverty, violence, and despair.
    When Thomas signed off, Kayla took the controller and killed the TV. “Amazing what one little old television program can do all by its little old self.”
    “Hey, Okay Martin begged you to—”
    “Sell my soul for a few minutes of fame before the bruises healed,” she cut in. “No thanks. I understand why St. Kilda shuns the spotlight.”
    “Public theater is necessary for society.”
    “So are public sewers.”
    Rand gave up, laughed, and pulled her into his lap. “Speaking of things that float, do you suppose Elena watched the show?”
    “I doubt it was