The check clipped to the folder was hers-$246,407.

Exactly.

Without meaning to, she looked at the battered backpack stuffed into the passenger foot well.

I could go anywhere in the world.

Until the money ran out. Then I’d have nothing.

Grow up.

It was a good chunk of money, but Phoenix’s red-hot housing market would gobble it up and not even burp.

Looking away from the backpack, Kayla started the vehicle. She hoped her next real estate deal would be as clean and easy as this one had been. On the real estate agent’s advice, she’d offered the ranch at a high price, “looking for the market.”

She’d found it, at full price.

The buyer’s agent had handled the transaction with the dispatch of the lawyer he was. She’d gotten her price, subtracted the closing costs and rent for the next month, and driven to the ranch to begin packing.

Today she’d have her own money to deposit in her American Southwest account. It wasn’t the answer to all her problems, but it was a financial security she’d never had before.

Maybe that security would help her to deal with Elena Bertone, the most demanding client in the history of the demanding world of private banking.

Phoenix, Arizona

Thursday

8:40 A.M. MST

Andre Bertone shifted his weight, making the expensive leather chair creak. Few office chairs were built well enough to accommodate the barrel-chested bulk of a man who stood six foot three inches and weighed two hundred and eighty pounds, most of it muscle. The satellite phone he held to his ear looked almost dainty against his hand.