“No crazy chances,” Kat said, and started throwing open drawers. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she moved like lightning, scouring files for any mention of jewel heists, con artists, or particularly conniving older women who might know enough to call upon the name Romani.
“Okay,” Gabrielle said, “it looks like the security head is fighting with the bomb guys. We’ve got to go.”
“Already on my way,” Hale said, and Kat slammed another drawer.
She turned, her gaze sweeping along the filing cabinets to her right, then sliding across the tall metal shelves on her left. She stood there, knowing she could never search it all, fearing the truth might be there, rotting away with the rest of the dead files.
And that was when she saw it—a file box on a dusty shelf just above her head. There was an old photo taped to the label. The picture itself was black-and-white—no color of any kind—but Kat knew the stone in the picture was a vivid, vibrant green. She knew because just a week before she’d held it in her hand.
“Kat!” Hale’s voice echoed through her ear.
“Coming!” Kat yelled, and pulled the box from the shelf. She was already racing back through the stacks and rows when her phone began to ring, the sound as loud as a siren in the massive echoing space.
She dropped the heavy box onto a small wooden table and began rifling through the pockets of her bomb squad suit, looking for the phone. But it had stopped ringing, and suddenly Kat found herself looking down at a mountain of old logbooks and dusty folders. On top of it all lay a yellow legal pad, hasty scribbles covering the page. Arrows pointed from every corner, linking every thought to a single name.
Romani.
“Kat, we’re almost to the rendezvous point. I don’t see you.” Hale’s voice echoed in her ear, but the pile of folders kept pulling her closer.
“Kat!” Hale snapped, but the files were right there, full of secrets that only a handful of people in the world had ever known.
They were right there.
She could wait. She could look. She could—
“Kat,” Hale said again, “are you coming?”
“Just one minute.”
“I don’t think we have a minute,” Hale said just as, three floors away, the sirens began to wail. The basement lights flickered. And Kat knew she had no choice but to turn away from the table and say, “I’ll be there soon.”
She’d just picked up the box and started to run when something made her stop dead in her tracks.
“I know, sir,” a voice said behind Kat, hidden deep within the maze of shelves. “Well, the alarms don’t sound in the subbasement, do they? I’m sorry, I must have missed them.” There was a long pause with nothing but the sound of high heels on the concrete floor.
That voice, Kat thought. Those heels. She looked at the worktable once again, the careful circles and pile of files all bearing the name Romani, and Kat knew exactly who was heading her way.
“Yes,” Amelia said. “Of course I’m going to the emergency exit right now,” she lied. Kat heard the woman turn the corner through the stacks, so she shoved the box under a nearby desk and followed it, realizing too late that someone else was already under the table.
“Kat?” an all-too familiar voice said. “Is that you?”
Kat felt her phone vibrate, and she jerked it from her pocket before it could ring again, cursing her own carelessness and…well…curses.
“Kat, are you there?” her father echoed over the phone.
But Kat…Kat sat staring into the eyes she hadn’t seen in months and said, “Dad, I better call you back.”
In the thief’s lexicon, there are many different words for busted. Made. Blown. They all applied right then, of course, but those were not the words that came to Kat’s mind.
“Nick?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. “What are you doing—”
“Shh.” He pulled her tightly to him, and in the silence, Kat heard the woman walking closer.
“So…” Kat whispered when the woman had turned down another aisle, “your mom got transferred. I guess finding four priceless paintings and getting an international criminal off the streets does wonders for a woman’s career.”
“Not as much as having your son locked in a room at the Henley will do.”
Kat shrugged. “Sorry about that.”