“It’s not my dad!’
“I was gonna say, is that a Degas?”
“Oh, yes,” she said slowly. She thought of Mr. Stein. “There were five paintings in all. Old Masters.”
“Who is this bloke?” Hamish asked.
“Does it matter?” Hale asked. Hamish shrugged, but every eye in the room was on Kat.
This was the time, of course, to tell them the whole story. It was also the time to lie. Kat asked herself what her father would do—what Uncle Eddie might say.
So Kat settled on the lie she knew was truest: “That guy is Visily Romani.”
Kat wasn’t surprised to hear their silence.
Simon was the only one who moved. “The Visily Romani who robbed five Swiss banks in one night in 1932? The Visily Romani who made off with half the crown jewels of Russia in 1960?” Sweat gathered on Simon’s brow. “The Visily Romani?”
Hale leaned back and crossed his legs. “Don’t worry, Simon.” He popped another sandwich into his mouth. “It’s way worse than you think.”
Kat could practically feel the Bagshaws’ excitement.
Hamish rubbed his hands across the tops of his thighs, warming them, getting ready for something—anything.
Angus seemed to be calculating something in his head. “If he did a job in thirty-two, doesn’t that make him kind of . . . old?”
“Visily Romani is one of the Pseudonimas—the sacred names,” Kat explained.
“So this guy . . .” Angus trailed off, but pointed to the man on the screen.
“He could be anyone,” Simon finished.
Kat turned and stared out the window at the gardens and the grounds, the trappings of Hale’s world, as she thought about the laws of hers. “He could be anywhere.”
Simon was rising and starting to pace. “So we’re all here because we’ve got to . . .” he stammered, pointing to the screen. “You mean this is a . . .” He stopped and put his hands on his hips. His shirt was peeking out from underneath his sweater vest. His face was growing redder by the second. “I was under the impression that Pseudonimas are slightly . . .”
“Not to be messed with?” Gabrielle answered for him. Then she smiled. “Oh, they’re not. Or, well, they weren’t.”
“You can walk away right now. All of you,” Kat reminded them. “Uncle Eddie has already said it can’t—or maybe that it shouldn’t—be done.” She drew a deep breath, wondering for a moment if there was a difference. “I won’t blame any of you if you turn and leave right—”
“You kidding?” Hamish asked. “There’s a few hundred million Euros on those walls. Easy.” He glanced at his brother. “We’re in.”
“Yeah,” Kat said slowly. “Well, like I said, it’s not a typical job.” Kat didn’t know what was harder—what she had to say, or the way everyone looked at her while she said it. “Mr. Taccone has”—Kat considered her words carefully—“asked for our assistance retrieving the paintings.”
“So . . . what? There’s some kind of finder’s fee?” Angus asked.
“It’s not quite like that,” Kat admitted.
“More like a promise that Taccone won’t drown Uncle Bobby in his moat,” Gabrielle said simply.
Kat gave a weak smile as she looked at everyone. “And I’ll owe you.”
Kat expected her friends to need a moment to think. They should have taken a walk around the grounds to clear their heads, put their thoughts in order. Kat expected half of them to do her family proud and slip away noiselessly into the night, but amazingly, that didn’t happen.
Instead, Hamish slapped his brother on the back and said, “We’re in. Whatever you need, Kat.”
Simon held his hand to his mouth, biting his nails as he stared into space. Calculating. “Is Uncle Eddie going to find out about this?”
“Come on, Simon,” Hale answered. “What are the odds he already knows?”