“London Bridge?” she guessed, but Kat said nothing. “A Jack and Jill?”
“Well, it is one of Hale’s favorites,” Kat managed to quip. “He makes an excellent Jill.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Kat felt a little dizzy, watching her options fall away like the shattered panes of a broken window. She feared she might get cut.
“So what is your play, Katarina?” Maggie poured herself another drink and sipped, her lips pursed against the crystal rim. “What is the master plan of the master thief who robbed the Henley?”
Kat prayed that her silence would read as strength instead of weakness, wisdom instead of foolishness. Most of all, she wished she knew the answer to that very question. But she didn’t. So instead she just said, “You shouldn’t have gone after the Cleopatra. You shouldn’t have used me to do it. But your biggest mistake was using the name Romani. When this is over, you’ll know that was where you blew it.”
“You’re good, Katarina. You really are. A bit reckless, though. And entirely too gullible. It’s a shame there is so much your family has failed to teach you. There’s so much I could teach you.”
“The thing you’re forgetting, Mags, is even if we can’t steal the Cleopatra back, that doesn’t mean you can sell it—not before I call New York and suggest that the Kelly Corporation run a few tests on the stone they’ve got under glass.”
“You won’t do that, Katarina.”
“Oh, believe me, Maggie. I would.”
Kat didn’t smile because she was gloating. It was simply the smile of someone who has made her peace with her mistakes and is prepared to live with consequences. But then Maggie joined her, a phone in her hand.
“I do love the new technologies,” she said, smiling down at the device. “They’ve made certain elements of our profession much more challenging, don’t get me wrong, but some things…” Her voice trailed off as she pressed a button. The tiny screen was instantly filled with a small but perfectly clear picture: Marcus and Hale outside the Kelly Corporation. Then the image changed, and Kat saw Hale and Gabrielle walking into the corporate headquarters in full dress and mid-con.
There were at least a half dozen images, but it was the final one that caused Kat’s heart to stop.
A small park. A quiet day. Maggie brought one heavily jeweled finger to the screen and said, “That’s me. That’s you.” Finally the fingernail came to rest on the envelope in the center of the screen, passing between the two of them. “And that is you giving me the Cleopatra Emerald.”
Maggie walked to the door and turned the key, then glanced back to the girl by the window.
“Do think about what I said, Katarina. I’d be most happy to teach you all I know.”
CHAPTER 23
The tide was low off the coast of Monaco that Friday evening when the W. W. Hale pulled away from the long row of yachts that were an almost permanent part of the shore. The moon was only a tiny sliver as it rose in the distance over Italy. Everything, it seemed, was at its lowest as Kat stood in the doorway of the ship’s galley kitchen and said, “It’s over.”
The big door on the Sub-Zero refrigerator slammed closed, and Hale turned to Kat, a look on his face that was somewhere between rage and relief. Gabrielle had a new scrape on the side of her face and ice on her knee. The Bagshaws stood together beside Simon, who was still slowly sorting through Interpol’s files—face by face, job by job.
Kat smiled despite herself at the sight of them. “So…the gang’s all here.”
“Hey, Kitty,” Angus said.
“Sorry for getting in the way, Kat.” Hamish eased closer. He seemed even taller and significantly wider. She wondered for a second what he’d been eating to grow so big. “If we’d known you guys were pulling a job, we never would have blown into town unannounced and—”
“It’s okay, guys. Really.” Kat climbed onto one of the stools that lined the granite-covered bar. It felt harder than it should have to pull herself up. “It’s over. It’s fine. I’m assuming they filled you in?”
The Bagshaws had never been ones for overthinking, and Kat highly doubted they were going to start then.
“Sure did, Kitty!” Hamish threw his arm around her. Angus joined from the other side, squeezing until she hurt.
“We heard you were in Edinburgh in January,” Angus said. “But you didn’t call.”
“You didn’t write,” his brother added.
“Don’t feel bad, boys,” Hale said from across the galley. “She doesn’t call anyone anymore.”
Part of being a great thief means seeing what isn’t there—the hidden sensor or invisible grid, the lie a guard really, really wants to believe. So Kat knew what Hale was saying; she’d heard it on an escalator and in the backseat of a chauffeured car, on the brownstone stairs, and now, half a world away.
“Don’t be mad, Hale.”