Ava Gray - Skin Game

Nobody would miss the guy.

Though it was cold at this altitude, Serrano stripped off his leather gloves. He’d incinerate them later. Calmly, he retraced his steps to the funicular station, and then chose a path at random. He would have a nice dinner up here, where everyone could see him. Then he’d head for home.

Later, he’d order room service for Sweet, enjoying a free week on the boss in St. Moritz. When the authorities checked things out, they would discover that Sweet had gone missing long after Serrano had returned to the States. It would be impossible for anyone to tie him to this, no matter what they suspected.

“Looks like a nice place,” he said aloud, and strolled into the lodge to dine.

Several hours later, replete with truffles, venison in po lenta, and caviar, he returned to his suite and powered up his laptop. It would be the middle of the night in Vegas, but Foster should be at work for another hour or two yet. The Silver Lady needed constant attention, and his chief of security would be extra careful in Serrano’s absence.

Foster took his sweet time answering the request for a video conference. By his watch, which never ran fast, it took fifteen full minutes. He tapped his fingers, gently impatient, until the call sprang to live feed.

“Took you long enough.”

From his side of the camera, the chief of security regarded him with cool blue eyes. “I have twice the workload with you on vacation, but the Silver Lady is doing well. How can I help you, sir?”

“Has your guy checked in this week?” He knew he didn’t need to elaborate. In fact, he wouldn’t. Never say anything on the phone that could be used against you.

“Not yet.” Foster frowned, just a flicker of twin lines between his well-groomed brows, and then the look vanished, but not before Serrano saw it.

“What does that mean?” he demanded. “Is there a problem? I need this finished.”

“He’s a pro. At this point, he’s trying to unearth the answer to your first pressing question, sir.” Such as where she’d hid his money. Serrano appreciated Foster’s discretion. “If you want to disregard that inquiry, we can step up the timetable.”

And put an end to the irritation named Kyra Marie Beckwith.

That was tempting. He’d like to forget this ever happened, but conceding the loss would send a lesser message to his competitors. At this point, he couldn’t afford weakness. He’d have to be patient a little longer.

“No,” he said finally. “Give him a little more rope. What do we know about this guy anyway?”

Foster had handled the hire. Serrano didn’t want certain details. As long as he didn’t, he could pass a polygraph if he had to. Being able to say, “I really don’t know” sometimes offered immeasurable value.

After a minute’s hesitation, Foster said, “I’ll send you the personnel data. You should have it in the morning. I think you’ll find his résumé fascinating.”

Foster would use a private, bonded Swiss courier. Documents like this should never be trusted to FedEx. He was breaking his policy of noninvolvement, guaranteeing him plausible deniability, but he needed to know what kind of contractor was handling his business. If the man was employing finesse, that was fine, but if he thought he could stretch this task, and add billable hours, Serrano would show him the error of his ways.

“That’ll do. I’ll let you know if I have further questions about our new hire. See you in a few days.”

It irked him that Foster rang off without another word, but like the best Germanic stock, the man was nothing if not efficient. With everything handled to his satisfaction, he straightened his tie, ran a hand through his dark hair, and headed for the bar downstairs. He needed to make sure people remembered seeing him tonight.

It wouldn’t be hard. Serrano hid a smile. If these people knew where he’d been born, they’d choke on their caviar. He nursed a drink, held on to his receipt. Within the hour, he had a glamorous redhead trying to convince him she could heal his broken heart.

Foster was proud of the file he’d sent Serrano just before leaving work the night before. There was nothing so useful as lying with the truth. It was chock-full of impressive—and true—information regarding the man they’d hired.

Reyes was an interesting man, a bundle of contradictions. Like most of his ilk, he worked under a pseudonym, but Foster wouldn’t have hired him if he hadn’t been able to dig up the truth, including his real name. They’d exchanged e-mail addresses initially, free anonymous accounts from which Reyes doubtless bounced his messages to other locations, maybe several of them, depending on his paranoia. By now, Serrano would be reading the information and congratulating himself on hiring top personnel to deal with his problems.

It was not quite 2:00 P.M., which meant he was operating on less than five hours sleep. Since it was Thursday, there was no help for that. He’d make it up tomorrow. Foster parked his car and leaned over, pulling a bottle of cologne from the glove box. After dabbing on a little, he got out, his long legs eating up the sidewalk.

Shortly, he came to a set of mirrored doors, set in a white, ultramodern building. Inside it was cool and quiet, tinted glass protecting the residents of this place from exposure to the desert sun. The nurse on duty raised her head as if to challenge him, and then she relaxed, offering him a warm smile. She was in her mid-thirties, and slightly interested in him, if he offered any encouragement.

Foster wouldn’t.

“I’ll sign you in,” she said. “Your mother’s waiting for you.”

He nodded and continued down the pale hallway. Here, the tile was not bile green or scarred by hundreds of feet. This was a costly private nursing facility, where people received the best care money could buy. Too bad it couldn’t buy hope or comfort as well.

Foster stood for a moment, gazing into the room. The old woman sat by the window, dressed in her best housecoat in honor of his visit. Her snowy hair had been styled, and someone had painted her thin mouth with bright red lipstick. The jar beside her bed that held her teeth was empty, which meant she’d put them in today.

Beulah Mae Finney was eighty-seven years old, and she wasn’t his mother. She thought she was, but her son had been incarcerated for the last five years, and hadn’t come to see her for four years before that. He’d initiated the visits to test his ability to mimic voices. If he could fool someone’s mother, he reasoned, his gift would stand up to any scrutiny. Since she suffered from cataracts, she was perfect for his purposes.

He’d slipped into the state-run hellhole where her natural son had dumped her, signed the register, and gone to see if he could imitate the street-rough cadences favored by James L. Finney, prison-bird esquire. He knew Jimmy Lee wouldn’t be back to interfere; he was doing hard time in Mississippi for messing with an underage girl.

They visited for months, and he took quite a liking to Beulah Mae. Once he’d established his ability to fool her, he didn’t have the heart to leave her languishing in a rundown nursing home that smelled of urine, decay, and morbidity, and it had been astonishingly easy to commandeer someone else’s mother. He supposed people were not crawling out of the woodwork, eager to foot the bill for aged and infirm seniors who didn’t belong to them, so there was no protocol in place.

Foster took a step then, knowing to the inch when he would get close enough for her to smell the cheap cologne Jimmy Lee had always worn. Her lined face brightened into a smile, showing a smear of lipstick on her porcelain teeth. He’d just bought her a new set of those, too.

“Jimmy Lee!” she exclaimed. “Right on time. I can set my clock by you these days. Have I told you lately how proud I am that you turned yourself around?”