Heist Society (17 page)

In her dream, Kat heard the music. It was louder there, away from the garden, echoing off the glass walls and tiled floors. She looked for Hale, but he was gone, lost among the Henley’s crowd. She craned her neck, searching. But the sun streaming into the room was too bright; the music was too loud. And yet, no one was dancing.

“Hale!” Kat called. “Gabrielle!”

Something was wrong, Kat knew, but it was too late to stop it . . . to stop . . .
something
.

“Hale!” she called again, but his name was drowned out by the sound that echoed through the atrium: a roar like thunder, followed by a flash of lightning. But outside there was only sun—no clouds, no storm. And yet inside it was raining. A dark cloud formed, blocking out the light as people ran and cried and screamed. But Kat stood still beneath the pouring rain, staring through the parting crowd at a woman near the entrance in a bright red coat and patent leather shoes, staring back at her.

“Mom?” Kat’s voice was barely audible over the approaching police sirens, the museum’s blaring alarms. “Mom!” Kat cried again. She pushed against the sea of bodies, following the woman outside.

And just that quickly, the sun was gone. Night had fallen. The rain began to freeze, and her mother’s red coat stood out against the white blanket of snow that covered the city’s streets.

“Mom!” Kat called, but the woman didn’t turn. “Mom, wait for me!”

Kat ran faster, trying not to fall, but the snow was too deep; her hands grew cold. And in the distance the alarms were still ringing.

I should hide, she thought. I should run. But instead she followed in the woman’s footsteps, searching for the red door, the red coat.

“Mom!” The snow was coming faster now, covering the footprints. “Mom, come back!”

Snowflakes clung to her lashes, ran down her face like tears, while the sirens grew louder, closer, pulling Kat from a dream she didn’t want to leave. She reached out as if there were a way to hold on to the snow, to the night. But the noise was too loud. Kat opened her eyes—she knew her mother was gone and she could not follow.

She reached for her bedside table and turned off her alarm. She closed her eyes, hoping the dream wasn’t gone for good. But her room was already bathed in rare rays of British sunlight; her duvet was heavy and warm, tucked around her in the soft bed. Kat thought of the woman in the red coat, and knew why she hadn’t waited.

There are some places daughters aren’t supposed to follow.

So Kat rolled onto her back, stared at the ornate ceiling, then sighed and said, “Phase three.”

When Kat finally made her way downstairs, Marcus was standing at attention beside the open patio doors, a plate of toast in one hand, a walkie-talkie in the other. Simon sat at the center of a long table, surrounded by laptops and wires. But it was Nick who drew Kat’s attention as he sat at the head of the table, flanked on either side by Hale and Gabrielle.

“Don’t ever ask a question when the answer is no,” Hale told him.

“Don’t ever break character—not even for a second,” Gabrielle added.

“You should always be in control of the conversation,” Hale said.

“Your mark should always
think
he’s in control of the conversation,” Gabrielle said in turn.

Kat knew that speech. Kat had
given
that speech.

“And never, ever—” Hale started, but Nick had turned toward Kat, smiling.

“Good morning.” He seemed utterly at home, at ease. “Someone got her beauty sleep.”

Gabrielle looked at Kat’s wild hair and wrinkled pajamas. “That’s not exactly beauty.” She smirked at her cousin. “No offense.”

Before Kat could respond, spirals of dark smoke swirled up from behind the long stone fences that crisscrossed through the fields in the distance, and a scratchy voice boomed from Marcus’s hand.

“How was that?” Angus sounded entirely too pleased with himself.

Gabrielle gestured upward with her thumb, so Marcus pressed the talk button on the walkie-talkie and said, “Bigger.”

Nick glanced at Hale. “Don’t you have neighbors?” he asked.

Hale ignored him. Instead, he leaned closer to Kat. “He isn’t ready,” he told her. “
I
should do this.”

Kat shook her head. “Wainwright knows your voice.”

“I can do the accent.”

Kat smiled. “Like you did the accent in Hong Kong?”

Hale exhaled loudly. “I can do the accent
better
this time.”

“No.” Kat didn’t feel like arguing.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, love,” Nick said in the perfect accent of the native Londoner that he was.

She saw Hale start to speak, to challenge the new status quo, but then Simon said, “Showtime,” and turned an enormous laptop around for them to see.

Anyone could tell from the image on the screen that Gregory Wainwright was not a morning person.

His tie was entirely too crooked for a man of his station. His suit was rumpled. And as he lumbered toward his desk, he looked a great deal like a man who wanted nothing more than to return to his bed.

Hale looked at Nick. “You sure you’re up for this, newbie?”

“Oh,” Nick said with a laugh, “thanks for the concern, but I think I’ll be okay.”

“Yeah,” Hale scoffed. “Well,
okay
might be okay working short cons and street stuff, but this is . . .”

The walkie-talkie crackled to life again. “Excuse me, miss,” Marcus said a moment later. “The gentlemen would like to know if”—he cleared his throat—“that boom was as bloody brilliant as they thought it was.”

Kat hadn’t heard anything but the sound of the quiet war that was waging beside her, and so it fell to Gabrielle to lean toward the butler and say, “More smoke. Less boom.”

Marcus dutifully relayed the message.

“Guys,” Simon warned, turning down the sound and pointing to the man on the screen, who was now talking to his assistant. “It’s
showtime
,” he said again. But neither Nick nor Hale seemed to notice or care as they stared at each other across the table.

In the distance, Angus was chasing Hamish across the dewy grounds toward the rising, spiraling smoke, and Kat found herself whispering, “Two boys running . . .”

Hale looked up. Only he seemed to have heard her, and with that, he slid the phone across the table to Nick. “Make the call.”

They saw Wainwright pick up the phone. They heard Nick say, “Yes, Mr. Wainwright, Edward Wallace from Binder and Sloan here calling to assure you personally that this nasty business with our Windsor Elite furnace model is not as bad as you might have heard. Why, the fire marshal has assured us that—”

On screen, they saw Wainwright speak, but only Nick could hear him.

“Oh dear,” Nick said with a wink in Kat’s direction. “That
is
disturbing. Well, not to fear, Mr. Wainwright. I’ll tell you what I told Her Majesty’s personal valet this morning: We at Binder and Sloan have been entrusted with the safety and comfort of some of the United Kingdom’s most beloved buildings, and we will not rest until every faulty furnace has been repaired.”

Wainwright stood to examine the small vents in the floor of his office as if he expected flames to come shooting out at any minute.

“Yes, sir,” Nick said. “Now, I see that we can have a team come out to do these repairs two weeks from next Tuesday— Not quick enough? Of course, sir. It is a high priority, yes sir. Of course. Yes. First thing Monday it is.”

Walkie-talkie static filled the air again, and Marcus said, “Excuse me, miss, but the young gentlemen say that you cannot get smoke without the boom, and they would like your advice on how to proceed.”

But Kat’s mind was still lost in a dream, clouded with smoke and fire.

“Excuse me,” Marcus whispered. “Miss, the gentlemen—”

“Are morons,” Gabrielle said, taking the walkie-talkie from his hand. Kat watched her cousin storm off with an exasperated sigh of, “I guess I have to do everything myself.”

Kat, Hale, and Nick watched her go. Another roar bellowed in the distance as Kat found Hale’s gaze and whispered, “Bigger.”

Sometimes Katarina Bishop couldn’t help but wonder if she had been the victim of some colossal, genetic mistake. After all, she almost always preferred black to pink, flats to heels, and as she stood perfectly still atop one of the silk upholstered chairs in Hale’s great-great-grandmother’s dressing room, all she could think was maybe she wasn’t even female— at least when compared to Gabrielle.

She glanced down at her cousin, who sat on her knees beside the chair, a pincushion in one hand and a cell phone in the other.

“Of course I want to come to your engagement party,” Gabrielle said with a sigh into the phone. “Those are always fun, but you know how Switzerland is this time of year.” She darted her eyes toward her cousin. “No, Mother, I haven’t seen Kat in ages—you know we’re not exactly
close
.”

Gabrielle winked.

“It’s too short,” Kat whispered at the exact moment Gabrielle chose to mouth, “
I think it’s too long
.”

“Sure, I think you should call Uncle Eddie,” Gabrielle said into the phone, but stared up, straight into her cousin’s eyes. “Whoever ratted out Kat’s dad should totally pay.”

Kat cut her a look. Gabrielle gestured and mouthed the word “
Turn
.”

Kat did as she was told. She could feel her hemline rising as her cousin worked, but she didn’t protest. After all, Kat was a natural grease man, wheel man, and inside man. Gabrielle was a natural girl. So Kat stayed still and quiet on her chair, staring through the bay windows, looking out onto the garden and the statue, trying to remember which parts of the night before had been a dream.

“So . . .” Gabrielle said slowly. The cell phone was gone. The skirt was nearly finished. And there was no disguising the thrill in her voice as she said, “Where’d you and Hale disappear to last night?”

“Nowhere,” Kat said.

“Turn,” Gabrielle instructed. Kat moved a half step, but her gaze never left the garden. “Remind me . . . didn’t you used to be a better liar?”

Kat sighed. “Probably.”

Even with a straight pin between her teeth, Gabrielle managed to nod and say, “Thought so.” She gripped the skirt’s hem, then cried, “Ouch!”

Kat glanced down in time to see Gabrielle pulling a stray pin from her finger.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Kat said. “Marcus is working on the costumes.”

“The last time Marcus made our costumes, you looked like a nun.”

“I
was
a nun.”

Gabrielle shrugged as if that were utterly beside the point. “Besides”—Kat heard the teasing tone in her cousin’s voice again—“you’ve got legs.”

“Thanks,” Kat said flatly.

“What’s wrong? Are you afraid your men might notice?”

“What men?”

“You know…” Gabrielle teased. “Your
boyfriends
. . . Hale and the new kid.”

“Hale’s not my boyfriend,” Kat blurted.

“Of course not.” Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “Hale is definitely
not
your boyfriend.”

“But you just said—”

“Let’s face it, Kitty Kat. Of all the men you’ve known in your life, Hale’s the first guy who
could
be your boyfriend.” Kat started to protest, but Gabrielle silenced her with a hand. “And a tiny little part of that great big mind of yours has always thought that someday he
would
be your boyfriend.”

Kat wanted to deny it, but she’d forgotten how to speak.

“Turn,” Gabrielle commanded, but Kat didn’t move. She just watched her cousin finish. “And Nick . . . well, Nick’s the new Hale.”

“No”—Kat’s voice was as sharp as the pins in Gabrielle’s hand—“he’s not.”

Gabrielle raised her eyebrows. “Well then, maybe you should make sure the old Hale knows that.” Kat stood perfectly still for a long time, thinking about the guys in her life: the ones she could trust and the ones she could con, wondering if she really knew the difference—wondering if, in that respect, she’d ever be as wise as Gabrielle.

“Do you like Nick?” Kat asked timidly. “I mean . . . do you trust him?”

Kat felt her cousin’s hands fall away from the skirt. “Those, Kat my dear, are two very different questions. Why do you want to know?”

“Do you remember that day I was late coming back from the Henley—the day before I met Nick? I saw Taccone that afternoon. He gave me these—”

“Excuse me, miss?”

Kat turned to see Marcus in the doorway of the dressing room, holding a massive bouquet of roses and lilies and orchids so rare that Kat imagined they must have been stolen from nature itself.

Gabrielle squealed and ran toward them. “Oooh! Sven!” she cried, reaching for the card. But then she stopped. A shadow seemed to fall across her face. “They’re for you.”

Her cousin tried to hand her the card, but Kat stood back, staring. Something told her that nothing that beautiful ever came without some kind of string attached, so she didn’t reach for the flowers. She didn’t want to listen as Gabrielle started to read.

“‘I was sorry to hear that your father is currently unavailable. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to seeing you very soon. Yours, A. Taccone.’”

The room was suddenly cold, the smell of the flowers overpowering. Gabrielle seemed like the wisest person in the world as she sighed and said, “Sometimes I really hate boys.”