They did a job in Germany.
They did a job without me.
She looked at Hale, watched the way he licked his spoon and helped himself to a second bowl of soup, at home in her uncle’s kitchen. She looked at her uncle, who hadn’t even smiled at her. And when she turned to the Bagshaw boys, Kat couldn’t meet their gaze. Instead she focused on the mangy mutt between them and whispered, “Dog in a bar.”
“Hey, you guys want in?” Angus asked, beaming.
“Boys,” Uncle Eddie warned, as if saving Kat from the shame of admitting that even classic cons were beyond her now.
“Sorry, Uncle Eddie,” the brothers mumbled in unison. They eased quietly out of the kitchen, taking the mutt back into the night without another word. Then Uncle Eddie took his place at the head of the table.
“You have to ask the question, Katarina, in order for this old man to answer.”
The last time Kat had been in this room, it had been August. The air outside had felt like the air in the kitchen was then—sticky and thick. At the time, Kat had thought she would never again be so uncomfortable at her uncle’s table. Sure, this was where her father had planned the De Beers diamond heist when she was three. It was the very room where her uncle had orchestrated the hijacking of eighty percent of the world’s caviar when she was seven. But nothing had ever felt as criminal as sitting there, announcing to her uncle that her greatest con had worked and she was walking away from her family’s kitchen in order to steal an education from one of the best schools in the world.
Turns out, that was nothing compared to walking back in and saying, “Uncle Eddie, we need your help.” She lowered her eyes, studied a century’s worth of scuffs and scars in the wood beneath her hands. “I need your help.”
Uncle Eddie walked over to the oven and pulled out a loaf of fresh bread. Kat closed her eyes and thought of warm croissants and cobblestone streets. “He didn’t do it, Uncle Eddie. I flew to Paris and talked to Dad. He has an alibi, but . . .”
“Arturo Taccone paid Kat a visit,” Hale finished for her.
Kat could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen her great-uncle genuinely surprised; this was not one of them. She knew it the moment he turned from the stove and looked at Hale with knowing eyes. “Your job was to deliver a message.”
“Yes, sir,” Hale told him. “I did that.”
“Nineteen fifty-eight was a good year for cars, young man.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Arturo Taccone is not the sort of man I would like visiting my great-niece.”
“She left in the middle of the night. She does that.” Hale glanced away then added a quick, “Sir.”
It felt, in that moment, as if her going to school was all the excuse anyone had ever needed to start treating Kat like a child. “She is sitting right here!” Kat didn’t realize she was yelling until her uncle looked at her in the manner of a man who has not been yelled at in a very long time.
“I’m here,” Kat said in a softer voice.
She didn’t say, I can hear you.
She didn’t tell him, I came home.
She didn’t promise, I’m not going anywhere.
There were at least a dozen things that she might have said to reclaim her place at the table, but there was only one that really mattered. “Taccone wants his paintings back.”
Uncle Eddie studied her. “Of course he does.”
“But Dad doesn’t have them.”
“Your father isn’t one to ask for help, Katarina, especially not from me.”
“Uncle Eddie, I need your help.”
She watched her uncle take a long serrated knife from a block by the stove and slice three pieces of warm bread. “What can I do?” Uncle Eddie asked in his I’m just an old man tone.
“I need to know who did the Taccone job,” Kat told him.
He rolled back to the table, handed her a piece of bread and a plate of butter. “And why would you need to know that?” he asked. But it wasn’t a question—it was a test. Of knowledge. Of loyalty. Of how far Kat was willing to crawl to get back to where she’d been last summer.