“Guards?”
“At least twenty on the floor. Four on the emerald.”
“No.” Nick was shaking his head. “Not even you can rob a casino, Kat.”
“We’re not robbing a casino, new boy.” Hale pushed Nick aside.
“We’re robbing at a casino,” Gabrielle said with a smug smile. “There’s a difference.”
“Guys,” Kat snapped, needing everyone to stop and think. “You’re not listening. We can get the stone at the casino. But we can’t get it out. Not without an inside man.”
“I thought that was my job,” Nick said.
Hale scoffed. “We need someone inside we can trust.”
“Yeah”—Nick nodded—“because I came all this way for revenge.”
But Kat was already shaking her head. “We need someone she will trust.”
“I can make her trust me,” Nick countered.
Kat thought about Maggie—a woman who had been on the grift and on her own for nearly half a century. “I don’t think she’s trusted anyone in a very long time.”
“But you just said…” Nick started.
“I’m sorry, Nick. But you’re the inside boy.” Gabrielle’s smile softened the blow. “I think what Kat’s saying is we need the inside man.” She turned back to her cousin. “Or at least I think that’s what she’s saying, since she hasn’t even told us her plan.”
“It’s not my plan, Gabrielle,” Kat said. “Or it isn’t anymore, since it won’t work with who we’ve got.”
Gabrielle crossed her arms. “Let us be the judge of that.”
Kat felt everyone looking at her, staring, really. She felt her options dwindling down to one: tell them everything.
“Simon,” she said, rolling up her sleeves, “we’re gonna need those casino blueprints.…”
CHAPTER 31
Kat didn’t mean to oversleep—she really didn’t. But neither did she set an alarm or give Marcus a time to wake her. She didn’t bother to open the shades so that the sun would streak across her bed, and even when Gabrielle left the next morning, Kat didn’t stir. When she heard the Bagshaws hitting golf balls into the sea, she didn’t shush them. All she managed to do was toss and turn, one thought lapping against her subconscious over and over like a wave.
You cannot con an honest man.
So how did Maggie con me?
“Get up!”
“Hale,” Kat said and rolled away. She heard him throw the curtains aside, saw bright light flooding the room. “I’m sleeping!” she yelled, and pulled the covers over her head.
“Get dressed.” He jerked the blankets off the bed. Kat felt her short hair stand on end from the static, but Hale made no jokes, no quips. He just scavenged the floor for clothes.
“Here,” he said, tossing an old sock and dirty T-shirt in her direction.
“Hale, I’m not—Ow!” she said, and rubbed the spot where a shoe ricocheted off her shoulder and hit her in the side of the head. But Hale hardly noticed because in the next second a leather miniskirt was flying toward her. “That’s Gabrielle’s,” she told him.
“I don’t care,” he said, and started for the door. “You’ve got ten minutes.”
“No, Hale. I can’t…think…anymore.” Without realizing it, Kat had risen to her knees. Beyond the windows, the Mediterranean stretched as far as the eye could see, but Kat felt trapped there. “I used to be able to see things. But now…I don’t know how to do this, Hale. I don’t. I can’t get anyone caught or hurt or…
“I don’t know how to do this,” she repeated slowly.