Uncommon Criminals (3 page)

I
t didn’t matter that it was raining when Kat and Hale left the diner—they waved Marcus and the long black car away. It felt good, somehow, to walk in the cold wind with their collars turned up, shivering against the dreary mist. Their thoughts, after all, were on Egypt and sand.

And curses.

“They were nice.” Hale kept his hands in his pockets but raised his face to the sky, water pebbling on his skin.

“Yes” was Kat’s reply.

“Nice is…refreshing.”

Kat laughed and turned automatically onto a narrow street. “Yeah.”

“And risky.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And they seem like the sort of people who could really use help.”

“From someone good,” Kat offered.

“From someone stupid.” Hale stopped so suddenly that Kat walked past him. She had to turn to see him say, “But we’re not stupid, are we, Kat?”

“No. Of course—”

“So under no circumstances are we going to take this job?”

“Of course not,” Kat said just as the rain turned to sheets, hard and cold. Hale gripped her hand and pulled her onto a familiar stoop, under the shallow overhang of the roof above. She shivered, the wooden door at her back, while Hale leaned close, sheltering her, searching her eyes.

The windows of the brownstone were black, and the street was empty. There were no cars, no nannies pushing strollers or pedestrians jogging home. It felt to Kat as if she and Hale were the only two people in New York City. They could steal anything they wanted.

But I don’t steal anymore
, Kat told herself.
Don’t steal anything at all.

“No one’s home,” she told him.

Water clung to the corners of his mouth. “We could pick a lock. Jimmy open a window.”

“You know, I bet there’s a hide-a-key around here somewhere,” she tried to tease, but Hale had moved even closer. She couldn’t see the street. She couldn’t feel the rain. Her passport was in her pocket, and when he pressed against her, she could almost feel the stamps burning, telling the world that she’d been away from home a long time.

Hale’s hands were on her neck—warm and big and comforting. Strange and new and different.

Kat feared she hadn’t been gone long enough.

“Kat,” Hale whispered. His breath felt warm against her skin. “When you take this job, don’t even think about stealing that emerald without me.”

Kat tried to pull away, but the door was there, pressing against her back. “I’m not going to—”

But then she couldn’t finish because
nothing
was against her back. Kat found herself falling, reaching for Hale, but her hands grasped only air until she was flat on her back in the doorway.

“Hello, Kitty Kat.” Kat stared up at a familiar pair of long legs and a short skirt. Her cousin Gabrielle crossed her arms and stared down. “Welcome home.”

Kat hadn’t realized how cold she was until she found herself lying on the floor of the old brownstone. There was no fire in the fireplace, no lights in the parlor or on the stairs. For a second, it felt almost like a job, as if she shouldn’t be there. And maybe, she realized, she shouldn’t be.

“We didn’t know anyone was home,” Kat said.

Gabrielle laughed. “I could tell.”

Even in the darkness, Kat could see a glimmer in her cousin’s eyes. A glimmer of what, however, she didn’t dare to ask. She just watched Gabrielle turn and saunter down the long hall, moving through the shadows, weightless as a ghost.

When Kat climbed to her feet and followed, Hale at her back, she heard the squeaky floorboards, the moaning of the old house in the storm. It seemed too big. Too dark. Too empty.

“Wow. He really left,” Hale said, dismayed.

“Yeah.” Gabrielle reached the doorway to the kitchen and exhaled a short quick laugh. “I don’t think Uncle Bobby was too happy about it, either—no one thought Eddie would actually go all the way to Paraguay. But you’ve probably heard all about that.” She studied her cousin through the dim light. “You
have
talked to your dad, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have,” Kat said, reaching for the light switch.

When the lights flickered to life, Kat had to squint against the glare. She half expected her uncle to mysteriously appear, spoon in hand, complaining that she was late and the soup was cold.

“How is Paraguay?” Hale asked, oblivious to the ghost that Kat was sensing, squeezing past her and into the kitchen as if he’d been at home there his whole life.

“Okay, I guess,” Gabrielle said with a shrug. “Or as okay as a job this big ever goes. All hands on deck.” She sat down, threw her feet onto the table, and eyed her cousin. “Well…
almost
all hands.” She pulled a knife from her boot and an apple from a bowl and began to peel it in one long steady spiral. “So, are you guys gonna tell me what the big secret is?” She glanced from Kat to Hale then back again. “Because it looked like you were getting fairly cozy out there, talking about something. Or maybe you
weren’t
talking.…”

Kat felt herself start to blush, but before she could say a thing, Hale opened the refrigerator and announced, “Kat’s going to steal the Cleopatra Emerald.”

“That’s funny,” Gabrielle said. It took a moment for her knife hand to pause in midair. “It
is
funny, isn’t it?”

Kat’s gaze was burning into Hale. “I never said I was going to do it,” she told him. “I never said—”

“Of course you’re going to do it.” The refrigerator door slammed, and Hale turned. “I mean, it’s what you do now, isn’t it? Travel the world, righting wrongs. A one-woman recovery crew.”

Kat wanted to reply, but Gabrielle’s feet were already off the table, and she was leaning closer to Kat, knife in hand.

“Tell me he’s joking, Kat.…Tell me you are
not
seriously thinking about stealing the Cleopatra Emerald.”

“No,” Kat said. “I mean…well…we just met this woman who says the emerald was really discovered by her parents—”

“Constance Miller,” Gabrielle filled in.

“You know her?” Kat said.

“I know everything there is to know about the most valuable emerald in the world, Kat.
I’m a thief
.”

“So am I,” Kat shot back, but her cousin just talked on.

“I’m serious. The Cleopatra Emerald is ninety-seven karats of crazy!”

“I know.”

Behind her, Kat heard Hale throwing open cabinet doors. “Where’s the microwave?”

“Uncle Eddie doesn’t
have
a microwave!” the cousins snapped in unison, but neither of them smiled. Neither girl joked. They kept staring at each other across the scarred wooden table that had seen the rise and fall of almost every major heist their family had ever done.

It seemed as fitting a place as any for Gabrielle to say, “You don’t want to do this, Kat. You do not want to forget that the Cleopatra Emerald is the most heavily guarded gem on the planet. It hasn’t even seen the light of day in thirty years.”

“I know,” Kat told her.

“Anybody with any sense would know that Constance Miller is an old recluse who’s almost out of money.” Gabrielle looked her shorter, paler cousin up and down. “And she must be especially desperate if she’s coming to you.”

“Thanks,” Kat said.

“And, most of all,” Gabrielle went on, “we
real
thieves know that the Cleopatra Emerald has been cursed ever since Cleopatra took the biggest emerald in the world and, in all her wisdom, decided to split it down the middle and give half to Marc Antony. Then he went off to battle the Romans—”

“And died,” Hale chimed in from behind them.

“Cleopatra kept the other half,” Gabrielle went on.

“And died,” Hale said again.

“And until the two stones are together again, they will bring nothing but death and destruction to whoever holds either one,” Gabrielle finished. She stood and stepped closer to her cousin. “So any good thief would know it’s cursed, Kat.”

“There’s no such thing as curses,” Kat tried to retort, but the taller girl was already crossing her arms and looking down in a way that made Kat feel especially small.

“Then how do you explain what happened when Uncle Nester went after it in ’79?”

“Lasers burn things, Gabrielle. It’s not the emerald’s fault Uncle Nester was sloppy with his fingers.”

“And what about the Garner Brothers in 1981?”

“Hey, anyone who thinks a non-military–grade rappelling cable can support the weight of two grown men
and
a miniature donkey deserves to fall off a cliff.”

“And that Japanese team in 2000?”

“You should always take a backup defibrillator if you’re gonna try the Sleeping Beauty. Everybody knows that. Besides, Uncle Eddie didn’t care when he went after it in ’67,” Kat tried.

Gabrielle’s glare turned icy. “He cares now.”

“What happened in ’67?” Hale asked, but neither girl seemed to hear nor care.

Gabrielle eased forward, silent and deadly as a snake. “The most important thing I know, Kitty Kat, is that Uncle Eddie—arguably the world’s greatest living thief—says that the Cleopatra Emerald is
not
to be stolen. I know that whatever happened in ’67 was enough to scare
Uncle Eddie
, so I believe him when he says that Cleopatra jobs end badly. Kat, they always end badly.” She dropped into her chair and crossed her long legs. “I don’t know what sob story Constance Miller gave you, or how a woman who supposedly hasn’t left her house in years managed to find you, or why—”

“Visily Romani,” Kat heard herself whisper, and she watched Gabrielle’s eyes go wide. “They knew the name Romani. They said Visily Romani sent them.”

It was easy to forget that there were some things with more history than Uncle Eddie’s kitchen table, but at the sound of the ancient name, Gabrielle’s hands went to the scarred wood, and two words filled Kat’s mind:
Chelovek Pseudonima
.

Alias Man
, Uncle Eddie had translated for her once, and so Kat sat there thinking about the old names, the sacred names. Names used for hundreds of years, but only by the best thieves, and for only the most worthy causes. Kat trembled, knowing those causes now included the Cleopatra Emerald.

“He’s still out there,” Kat said. “This man who calls himself Romani—whoever he is—he’s still out there, and he sent me these people because I can help them. He thinks I can do this. I can—”

“Not you, Kat. We.” Hale dropped into a seat at the head of the table. He didn’t look at her. “If
you
do this, then
we
do this.”

“Of course. Yeah.
We
. But it’s not like it matters anyway,” Kat told them with a shake of her head. “The Cleopatra is supposed to be locked up somewhere in Switzerland. And even if we could find it…What? What are you staring at?”

Gabrielle looked at Hale, who shook his head, leaving Gabrielle to shuffle through the stack of mail that sat unopened on the end of the table.

“You’ve been gone, Kitty Kat.” Gabrielle slid the newspaper across the table, the headline blaring out for all to see that the Kelly Corporation was finally going to bring its most prized possession home.

Home.

New York.

Kat felt her heart beat faster as she looked first at Gabrielle and then at Hale.

“So…what?” Hale asked slowly. “I guess now we steal an emerald?”

There was a room at the top of the stairs that had white eyelet curtains and two twin beds with matching quilts. There was a small dresser, a wicker hamper, and a bookshelf full of dusty, fraying Nancy Drews. That room had never belonged with the rest of the house, Kat had always thought. Stepping inside was like walking into another world—one with a pink rotary telephone and a music box. A tiny alcove in a man’s world, a place made entirely for girls.

Someone, sometime had embroidered the name
Nadia
on a pillow, and Kat held it in her arms as she lay, staring up at the ceiling but not sleeping. She felt too small, lying on her mother’s bed, still trying to fit inside her footsteps.

“So
, Hale
…”

Kat turned and saw Gabrielle silhouetted in the door, watched her walk to the other bed and lie down atop a pillow with the willowy script that spelled the name
Irina
.

“What about him?”

“What’s going on with you two?”

“Nothing,” Kat said, a little too quickly.

“Yeah, and why is that exactly? I thought you two were getting all relationship
y
. But now you’re gone half of the time and he’s…
angry
.”

“No, he’s not.”

“Yes, he is.” Gabrielle gave a short laugh. “He doesn’t like you going off, doing these jobs on your own.” Kat drew a breath to protest, but not before her cousin lowered her voice and added, “
And he’s not the only one
.”

Kat honestly didn’t know what to say, so she turned onto her side and closed her eyes. She didn’t even know that Gabrielle had crossed the room until she felt her cousin’s weight plop down on the mattress beside her. “So why are you doing it?”

“I…” Kat stumbled, looking for the words in the dark. “They’re easy jobs, Gabrielle.”

“Maybe in the beginning, but Rio wasn’t easy.”

“How do you know about Rio?”

“Everyone knows about Rio. Everyone would have helped.”

Kat’s throat was suddenly too dry. “I didn’t need any help.”

“And what about Moscow?” her cousin went on. “Maybe you didn’t
need
help, but whenever you start going up against the KGB, you should probably get some—just in case. So the question is…why didn’t you?” Gabrielle rested her elbows on her knees and tapped her chin, thinking.

“Gabrielle, I’m—”

“Drunk!” Gabrielle exclaimed, bolting upright with the realization.

“I’ve never been drunk in my life,” Kat shot back, but her cousin only laughed.

“Oh, you’re heist-drunk, Kitty Kat. And you have been since the Henley.”

Kat tried to push herself up and out of the bed, but Gabrielle was perched atop the covers, pinning her in.

“Tell me you didn’t feel a rush when we carried those paintings out of the museum’s front door.…Tell me there wasn’t a high when you swiped a Cézanne under the noses of half the KGB.…No wonder you aren’t taking Hale with you.” She shook her head. “Sometimes boys are far easier to deal with when they’re on the other side of the world.”