“You ready?”
To his credit, Nick didn’t jump at the sound of her voice. “I will be.” He looked up at her, then, as if from nowhere, he flashed the card again. “You?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
Kat still didn’t like the water, but the solitude of the sea was something she could get used to. She stepped onto the deck, felt it when Nick followed, and savored the sound of nothingness that surrounded them. The yacht drifted, motor silent. The crew was sound asleep. Even the waves seemed to be taking the night off, resting. Saving up their strength for the long day that lay ahead.
“So are you going to tell me how it happened?” Nick asked. “Exactly how did Katarina Bishop get conned into stealing the Cleopatra Emerald?”
“That depends,” Kat answered. “Are you going to tell me why you really followed me here?”
He smiled. “You first.”
Kat took a deep breath and looked up at the moon. It seemed bigger than it should have, closer. It was the kind of night where anything was almost possible, so she drew a deep breath and said, “Maggie or Constance or Margaret—whatever her name is—she said Romani sent her. She said it was rightfully hers and—”
“You believed her,” Nick said, filling in the rest. He gave a long sigh. “You don’t have to right all the wrongs of the world yourself, you know. I can put you in touch with people who do that for a living.…”
“Somehow I don’t think Interpol would be fooled by my fake ID.” Kat thought about her trip to the Paris field office last fall, then added, “Again.”
“You don’t have to do this, Kat.”
“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.”
“He’s right.”
“I didn’t say who had said it,” she countered.
“You didn’t exactly have to.” He looked out at the water. “You two are good together.”
“We’re not together,” Kat said automatically.
“Sure you are. You just don’t know it yet.” He leaned against the rail. “And I’m just the guy who could really use a friend. So you can tell me—Why did you do it?”
She looked at him, his face lit only by the moon, and Kat realized she couldn’t lie, couldn’t con. It felt good somehow to finally say, “Because I could.”
When Nick eased away, his hands moved again with a steady, even purpose, flipping through the cards, his fingers like the lightning that flickered in the distance, striking at some foreign shore.
“Your turn,” she told him. “I thought you wanted to be one of the good guys.”
His fingers stopped; the cards stayed still. “Yeah, well, being an accessory to the art heist of the century has a tendency to change that—even if your mom can keep you from being formally charged with anything.”
“So the move to headquarters…” Kat started.
“Not exactly a promotion,” he told her. “Now she’s stuck there until she can get a big catch and jump-start her career again. And I’m stuck being Disappointing Child of the Year until…well…who knows how long.” He tapped the deck, splayed the cards out and back again. “So I came here. I figured that if I’m going to get the blame, I might as well get to have some of the fun.”
“It’s not fun,” Kat told him.
He looked around at the yacht and the stars. “Yeah. Obviously, this is torture.”
“No, Nick. It’s dangerous and crazy and people get hurt. I get people hurt.”
“You’ve changed, Kat,” Nick told her, and Kat started to protest, but knew, somehow, to save her breath. Nick eased onto one of the lounge chairs, his eyes still staring at the cards. “I knew it the second I saw you in Lyon, running through the basement like—”
“You saw him in Lyon?”
Kat wanted to think the lightning had come—that the storm was closer—but it wasn’t the rumble of thunder. She knew that even before she turned and saw Hale framed in the light of the door.
“Answer me, Kat. Did you see him in Lyon?”