“Seriously, Kat,” Simon said, inching closer, “when did you get boobs?”
Hamish looked at Hale. “The boobs are new,” he said as if that point hadn’t already been thoroughly made.
“Is that padded?” Simon held out his hand as if to cop an oh-so-scientific feel.
“Hey!” Kat said, slapping his hand away.
“Her dad’s gonna get out of prison one of these days, boys,” Hale added. Kat thought she saw the faintest smile on his face as he said it, but then again, it was early. And she was stressed. And there were obviously other things on her mind, especially when the kitchen door swung open and Nick walked in, fresh from the shower and completely unfazed by the scene before him.
He didn’t stare at Kat. His hands didn’t tremble. He didn’t fidget or sweat. There was nothing at all about him that looked as if it were anything other than a normal day.
He walked toward her. “Are you ready?” he asked. Was she ready for the biggest job of her life? Was she ready for it to be over? Was she fully prepared to be the only thief in history to ever successfully remove something from the Henley without permission? “You’ve got everything?”
She nodded, grabbed a scone from the tray in Marcus’s hand, and started for the door.
“Kat,” Hale called after her.
Hamish whispered something that sounded suspiciously like, “What do you think? C-cup?”
Hale pushed into the foyer and caught Kat by the arm, stopping her. “Kat . . .” he started, but when Nick appeared in the hall behind him, he turned. “You mind?” he said in a tone Kat had never heard him use—not playful but not threatened, and Kat didn’t know how to read him.
Nick looked at Kat, who nodded. “Just give me a second.”
She heard Nick walk a few feet down the hallway, but her gaze never wavered from Hale’s. The Henley and the crew and her father felt a million miles away.
“Kat.” He stole a quick glance at Nick, then put his right palm on the wall behind her. She felt the warmth of it on her shoulder as he leaned even closer and whispered, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“It’s a little late to stop now, Hale. As you can see, I’ve already broken out my boobs for the occasion, so—”
“I’m serious, Kat. I don’t trust him.”
Kat studied the way he looked at her. She found herself reaching out, the tips of her fingers skimming the sides of his starched white shirt.
“Trust me.” And with that, Kat slipped away and went outside, felt Nick fall into step beside her. But something made her stop and turn and call, “Ten thirty.” Hale nodded but stayed silent, and Kat’s heart kept pounding in her chest, loud. Too loud. “I’ll see you at ten thirty,” she said again.
Hale smiled. “Oh, I’ll be there.”
Chapter 31
That Monday morning began as Monday mornings at the Henley almost always did. The person responsible for making the coffee made coffee. The person who kept track of birthdays brought cake. The staff briefing ran long as Gregory Wainwright talked about rising attendance levels and falling donations. But on that Monday morning, it seemed that fewer people whispered about Visily Romani than they had the week before. All in all, everyone concluded, it had been a most spectacular November.
Outside, the snow was nothing more than a light powdering, and guards and tourists alike watched it blow across the grounds like chalk dust. Or perhaps it was just the rows and rows of school buses lined up outside the main doors that brought this particular image to mind.
“Field trip season,” one of the guards told another.
“Blasted kids,” an old man complained.
No one would have ever guessed that seven of the world’s most talented teenagers were coming to the Henley that day for an entirely different sort of lesson.
“What’s wrong?” Katarina Bishop asked her dark-haired companion.
Nick stopped and let another long row of school kids pass, while a nearby docent lectured on the importance of light to the great Dutch artists of the eighteenth century.
“Nothing,” he said.
He didn’t look like the boy who had stood calmly in the kitchen that morning, the con artist who had picked her pocket on a Paris street. Nick seemed different as they walked down the main corridor. Scared? Kat wondered. Nervous? She wasn’t sure. But different he was, and as she stopped midstride in the center of the wide atrium, Hale’s warning echoed in her ears.
“If you want out, Nick—”