“Charlie?” Gabrielle asked, and his head snapped back. “How does it sound?”
“Fine.” He rubbed his hands on the tops of his thighs, warming them. “Fine. Fine. It’s been a while, that’s all.”
“You’ll do great,” Hale said in the easy confident way that all great inside men are born with.
Charlie must have heard it too, because he raised his eyebrows and said, “Don’t con a conner.”
Hale laughed. “Point taken.” His voice was kind and soft and patient. “You’re not going to have much time to do your job. But that’s not a problem for you. You can do it. And when you do your job…”
“We can do our job and still get out of there alive,” Gabrielle finished.
“You look just like…”
“Hamish!” Kat warned, stopping him just before he poked the old man in the side as if to see if he were real. “Perhaps we should give Uncle Charlie some space,” she warned, watching the way her uncle leaned closer to the rail, preferring the company of the sea and a hundred miles of empty water.
The Bagshaws nodded slowly. “Sorry. It’s just…it’s an honor to finally meet you,” Angus said.
“Yeah,” Simon agreed.
Kat knew why they were staring. It was hard not to, to tell the truth. Charlie was part legend, part ghost, and sitting there in the warm sunshine with his hair trimmed and his face freshly shaved, he seemed a long, long way from his cold mountain.
No, Kat thought. He seemed like Uncle Eddie.
“You got the varnish off,” Kat said.
“What?” he asked, jerking his head as if, for a second, he’d mentally escaped back to the safety of his cabin.
“Your hands—you got them clean.” Kat reached to hold one, but Charlie pulled back, placed the hand in his pocket, and hissed, “I hope you kids know what you’re doing.”
“Don’t worry, Charlie my boy.” Hamish gave an uncomfortable pat on the old man’s back. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, but a few months back ol’ Kitty here put together a crew that—”
“This is no painting!” the man snapped, and pointed to the distant shore. “And that is no museum!” The eyes were so dark and the words so sharp, that for a second, Kat could have sworn she was looking at Uncle Eddie. Then the hands began to shake. The voice cracked. “And she is no mark.”
“I know,” Kat said, but her uncle talked on.
“The Cleopatra Emerald is—”
“Cursed—we know,” Gabrielle said, touching the bruise on her shin.
“No.” Her uncle shook his head. “It’s not cursed. It just makes people stupid.”
That was it, Kat realized. All the guilt and the shame boiled down to that. She’d been stupid. And that was something someone in her line of business could never afford to be.
“Forgive me, Katarina.” Charlie rubbed a hand over his face, as if feeling for the beard—the man—he’d left behind in the snow. “It’s just harder than I thought to watch history repeat itself.”
“It won’t be like last time, Charlie,” Hale told him. “Maggie or Margaret or whatever her name is…we’re out ahead of her this time.”
“No one’s ever been ahead of her,” he said to the sea.
“I know,” Kat told him. “But with your help, we will be. Now that we have you, we can—”
Charlie rose, cutting her off. “Don’t let two men fall in love with you, girls. It’s not the sort of thing that ends well.”
He walked toward Marcus and the small boat and the shore. And all Kat could do was sit there, her faith and hopes riding on his shoulders, and let him go.
Even after Charlie was gone, the ghost of the man still walked among them. A shadow on the floor. The wind across the deck. Night came and carried with it the promise of a new day, but no one slept. Kat walked through the halls but stopped short when she saw the play of light across the threshold of a partially cracked door. She crept toward it, peered inside at Nick, who sat straddling a cane chair, holding a deck of cards.
She knew the routine, had done it herself a million times, and still she stayed quiet, watching as he pulled the queen of spades from the deck with his right hand, held it tenderly on his palm, and tapped it once with his left. The card was there, the gesture said. His hands flashed, a blur. The card was gone.