Kat studied her cousin and wondered how it was possible that she was only a year older—not even that. Nine months. And yet she looked nine years more mature. She was taller, curvier, and just in general more. As she pressed against Hale, she held his arm tightly, leaving Kat to walk beside them like a third wheel down streets that were barely wide enough for two.
“So, where’s Alfred?” Gabrielle asked.
“You mean Marcus?” Hale corrected.
“Whatever.” The girl dismissed her mistake with a wave, and Kat thought it was too bad that her head hadn’t filled out quite as completely as her bra. But then her cousin said, “Happy birthday,” and a package of photos suddenly vanished from her hand and appeared in Hale’s jacket pocket.
The pass was smooth. Effortless. The practiced move of a seasoned pro, a member of the family.
“How’s your mom?” Kat asked her.
“Engaged.” Gabrielle gave an exasperated sigh. “Again.”
“Oh,” Hale said. “Congratulations.”
“You could say that. He’s a count. I think. Or maybe a duke.” She turned to Hale. “Which one’s better?”
Before he could answer, they came to a low stone wall. Beyond it, vineyards stretched out across the Sabina Valley. A river sliced through the fertile land while sheep grazed on a distant hill. Italy was one of the most beautiful places on earth, and yet Kat was unable to tear her eyes away from the photos in Hale’s hands. Images of a massive compound near a beautiful lake. Hale leaned against the wall, flipping through the photos that zoomed in closer and closer to the compound. Soon Kat was staring at the walls and lines that, until then, she’d only seen modeled in blueprints.
“This is as close as you got to the house?” Hale asked Gabrielle.
She chomped her gum. “You mean to the fortress? Seriously nice picking, guys.”
“We didn’t pick it,” Kat reminded her.
“Whatever. The place has a fifteen-foot stone wall.”
“We know,” Kat told her.
“Four perimeter towers. With guards.”
“We know.” Kat rolled her eyes.
“And a moat. Did you know that, Miss Smarty-pants? Did you know there’s an actual moat? Like with things under the water?” Gabrielle gave a whole-body shiver (and parts of her shivered a bit more than others), but the point was clear.
Hale put the pictures back into his pocket and turned, placed his elbows on top of the wall, leaning there.
“Fine,” Kat said. “What about the police report?” she asked, but Gabrielle just laughed. “You didn’t check with the police . . . at all? You didn’t ask them about . . . anything?” Kat asked over the sound of laughter that echoed on the cobblestones. Even Hale was smiling. But Kat just stood there, amazed that someone who shared Uncle Eddie’s blood might not know that very few jobs in history have ever stayed off the police’s radar entirely.
After all, people tended to notice if, at 8:02 p.m., every car alarm in the city went off for twenty minutes. Or if fifteen traffic lights went out between the hours of nine and ten. Or if a patrol car found an unmarked van abandoned by the side of the road—full of duct tape and hummingbirds.
These are the footprints of people who are very careful where they step. But they’re footprints nonetheless.
“Men like Arturo Taccone don’t call the police, Kat.” Gabrielle spoke slowly, as if Kat had gotten amazingly stupid while she was away. “Those of us who don’t abandon our families are able to learn these things.”
“Geez, I left for a few—”
“You left.” Gabrielle’s voice was colder than the wind. “And you’d still be behind your ivy-covered walls if we hadn’t . . . You’d still be there.”
Authenticity is a strange thing, Kat knew. Someone carves an image out of stone. A machine prints a dead president on a bill. An artist puts paint on a canvas. Does it really matter who the painter is? Is a forged Picasso any less beautiful than a real one? Maybe it was just her, but Kat didn’t think so. And still, as she looked between her cousin and Hale, she thought she smelled a fake.
“Gabrielle,” Kat said slowly, “how’d you know there was ivy at Colgan?”
Kat heard her cousin scoff and make up some line about a lucky guess. But an image was already flashing through Kat’s mind: a grainy surveillance video. Someone in a hooded sweatshirt running across the quad. She turned to Hale and realized that he was too tall, too broad. The person on the screen had been close enough to Kat’s size to fool the Colgan School Honor Board, but what really bothered Kat was that she had been tricked too.
“Gabrielle, Hale?” Kat smacked his shoulder. “It wasn’t bad enough that you got me kicked out of school, but you had to use her to help you? Gabrielle!”
“I can hear you,” her cousin sang beside her.