“Guys.” Kat felt her patience wane. “What happened ?”
“You see, Kat, it wasn’t so much what . . .” Angus let the word linger.
“As who,” his brother finished.
Angus pulled away, then studied her. “You really haven’t heard?” As Kat shook her head, his gaze fell to the floor. “Wow, Kat, you really were gone, weren’t you?”
More than the feeling of walking back into Uncle Eddie’s kitchen, the look on the two brothers’ faces told her that it was true—she had done it. Katarina Bishop had really left the life. Once. For a little while. It hadn’t been a dream.
“What happened?” Kat asked.
“It’s not that bad, really,” Hamish said. “We shouldn’t have—”
“Am I going to have to call Uncle Eddie?” she threatened.
“We didn’t know they were nuns!”
There is a rule older than the Chelovek Pseudonima—a truth not even the greatest liar can deny: You cannot con an honest man. But if you do . . .
You’ll regret it.
“We’re blacklisted, Kat,” Angus admitted with a guilty glance at his brother. “Uncle Eddie says we can’t work for a while, but your dad’s always been good to us, so if you say leave, we leave. If you say we’re in . . .”
Kat stood there looking at the very boys who had stolen the first tooth she had ever lost and tried to ransom it to the tooth fairy; the two young men who had once stolen a Tyrannosaurus rex from the Museum of Natural History—one bone at a time.
“Guys, Uncle Eddie doesn’t want anyone doing this job.” Kat turned and started through the big sprawling house, calling behind her, “You’re in!”
Walking into the library a moment later, Kat knew something was wrong.
For starters, Simon was even paler than usual. Gabrielle lay on the sofa, her feet propped up, a damp rag on her forehead; her hair was significantly frizzier, and as Angus placed the bowl of ice beside her, neither Bagshaw even tried to look down her shirt.
“Welcome back.” She noticed Hale leaning against a window seat on the far side of the room, not quite sitting and not quite standing. He pushed away from the wall. “So glad you could join us.”
Kat felt the envelope slide against her stomach. She could have sworn she heard it scrape against the denim, as loud as a scream in the quiet room. But it was her ears playing tricks on her. Her mind. Maybe her cool was one more thing she’d lost at Colgan.
“Oh, I’m fine, Kat,” Gabrielle replied to the unasked question with a dramatic wave of her good hand. “I’m sure the burns on my feet are going to heal in no time.”
But no one else said anything. They all just looked at Kat, none of them wanting to be the bearer of bad news.
“What?” Kat asked, looking around the room.
“Simon,” Hale said, dropping onto one of the leather couches and propping his feet up. He gestured for the boy to begin.
“The paramedics were quite sure the dizziness would subside eventually,” Gabrielle offered from the couch. Everyone ignored her.
“Well,” Simon said slowly. Three different laptops were spread out before him. The small device he’d carried through the Henley was plugged into one, and a three-dimensional schematic flashed across the screens. “It’s”—Simon looked as if he were trying to recall the right technical term—“complicated.”
“They gave me this wonderful ointment for the scalded tips of my fingers,” Gabrielle added. No one heard.
“Do you want the bad news or the good news?” Simon asked.
“Good,” Kat and Hale said at the same time.
“The Henley has spent the last six months updating all of its security features—which were already good. I mean Henley good—so the new stuff is—”
“I thought you said this was the good news,” Hale said.
Simon nodded. “A change like this doesn’t happen overnight, so they’re doing it exhibit by exhibit, starting with the most valuable rooms, and . . .”