Why would he jeopardize her safety and their job?
Why would Hale, the boy who had been willing to do almost anything to be a part of her world for over two years, suddenly flee without a single clue as to where he might be going?
Somewhere in the house, a door slammed. The floor creaked. On the stove, the contents of the Dutch ovens began to boil. And Kat’s cousin raised an eyebrow.
“Are you going to tell him?” Gabrielle asked. “Or should I?”
“Tell me what?” the old man said, but he didn’t really stop for an answer. “Do not stir my goulash, Gabrielle.”
He moved to the stove slowly, like he’d been dozing in his easy chair and his legs weren’t quite working yet. But even with his gray hair and ratty, moth-eaten cardigan, there was something in Kat’s great-uncle’s eyes—a gravity that could make even a great thief tremble.
“So,” he asked again, “tell me what?”
“It’s good to see you too, Edward,” Gabrielle said in her uncle’s native tongue. Then she pulled a noodle out of one of the pots, plopped it into her mouth, and took her seat at the table.
“So, Katarina, what is wrong?” Uncle Eddie sprinkled some oregano into a pot and stirred, but didn’t look back. “Was it the access? High-rises can be tricky.”
“Access was fine, Uncle Eddie,” Kat said.
“The exit, then,” he said.
“The exit wasn’t a problem.” Kat ran her fingers along the rough pine of the crate, and didn’t bother asking how her uncle had known the details of the job in Buenos Aires. Uncle Eddie knew everything.
He eyed the crate on the table. Kat could see him calculating the value of the painting that lay inside when he asked, “And so you bring me a box I cannot have, and a problem I cannot solve, is that it?”
“The job was fine, Uncle Eddie,” Kat said. “It’s just that—”
“Hale ran off in the middle of it.”
“Gabrielle,” Kat snapped.
“What?” Gabrielle said. “It’s the truth. I’m sure Uncle Eddie won’t kill him. He’ll probably just maim him a little.”
“No,” Eddie said. “I won’t.”
“Okay,” Gabrielle said. “So he’ll maim him a lot. But Hale can take it. I’m sure between Eddie and your dad, Hale’s just looking at a few broken—”
“No, Gabrielle.” Eddie’s voice was stern. “I will do nothing of the kind.”
“But…” Gabrielle gave her uncle a confused glance.
“I value a young man who values family.”
“We are Hale’s family,” Gabrielle said.
“No.” Eddie picked up the newspaper that lay beside the stove and tossed it onto the kitchen table. “We’re not.”
Kat didn’t reach for it. She didn’t have to. The headline was big and bold and looming in black and white: WORLD’S SIXTH WEALTHIEST WOMAN COMATOSE IN MANHATTAN HOME.
“Is this…?” Kat couldn’t pull her eyes away from the photo that accompanied the words. The woman wore her white hair in an elegant updo, a diamond broach at the base of her neck, as she sat beneath a Monet that, if Kat were to guess, was most definitely the real one.
“That, my dear, is Hazel Hale,” Uncle Eddie said. “She is your young man’s grandmother.”
“She’s in a coma?” Gabrielle asked, turning the paper to get a better view.
“She was,” Eddie said. “At six o’clock this morning she died.”
Kat craned her neck and looked straight up at the building, utterly uncertain what to do. The height would not be a problem, of course, but there was something about the penthouse apartment that loomed over the east side of Central Park that left Kat feeling exposed and fragile. So she shivered, staring up, completely unsure how to find her way inside.