“There might be another will in London. Maybe.” Gabrielle gave a shrug.
“You will try to retrieve it?” Eddie looked directly at Kat, but she felt anything but certain.
A thousand doubts swarmed inside her mind. What if Hale found out? What if Marianne was wrong? And, worse, what if Marianne was right? And what if Hale never forgave her for proving it?
So Kat twisted her hands and told her uncle, “It might be a wild-goose chase.”
“I’ve chased more for less,” her uncle said.
“Marcus could be wrong about everything.”
“He is not the sort of man who makes mistakes.”
“But—”
Her uncle’s hand came down, cutting her off, as he asked, “You do a great many things for strangers, Katarina. What are you willing to do for your friends?”
Chapter 10
The best-kept secret in London had to be City Airport, Kat had always thought. Smaller than Heathrow and more central than Gatwick, it was like flying into a small town until you looked out the window and saw Big Ben and the Tower of London below. It was as good a place as any for a teenage thief to go through customs and descend into the very place where she’d pulled off the biggest job of her career only a few months before.
But that didn’t mean Kat had to like it.
Stepping through the airport’s sliding doors and out into the dreary London day, Kat sensed a nagging doubt in the back of her head, a tiny voice that kept telling her something wasn’t quite right. Or maybe it was just Gabrielle.
“Commercial, Kitty?” Gabrielle asked, annoyed. “Really? We just had to fly commercial.…” Gabrielle shifted on the tall boots that descended from beneath a very short skirt printed with the Union Jack, and moved her head from side to side, popping her neck—the universal gesture for long flight. “For the girlfriend of a gazillionaire, you really don’t know how to travel.”
“We weren’t exactly traveling on official gazillionaire business.”
“We could have been,” Gabrielle said, “if we’d told Hale where we were going. And why.”
“Don’t start, Gabs,” Kat said.
“What?” Her cousin gave an innocent shrug, slid her dark glasses on, and walked toward a waiting cab. “Come on. This is our ride.” Gabrielle opened the door and crawled into the black car. Kat followed. She sat her bag at her feet and spoke to the driver.
“Hi, we’re going to—”
But before she could finish, the car zoomed off, throwing her against the seat back. Her suitcase toppled over, smashing against her foot.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry about that, Kitty,” the driver said.
“Hamish?” Kat cried.
“Should have warned you to… Hold on!” said Angus, Hamish’s brother, from the passenger seat as Hamish spun the wheel and sent the cab careening into traffic.
Kat sat breathless while the car swerved around big red double-decker buses and in front of men in suits riding bicycles with briefcases tied to handlebars. Outside, it started to rain, and Kat heard the water pelting against the car as Hamish turned down a narrow cobblestone alley—entirely too fast, in Kat’s opinion.
“So, guys,” she said, leery and glaring at Gabrielle, “I wasn’t expecting to see you on this trip.”
“What?” Gabrielle asked. “I can’t make an executive decision? Besides, everything is better with Bagshaws.”
Kat was beginning to seriously question her cousin’s definition of “better” when Angus looked over the front seat. “So, between you and me…”
“And me,” Hamish added.
“How rich is ol’ Hale these days?” Angus finished.