Hale eyed the curvy road. “Maybe I’ll come race in the Grand Prix next year.…You know I’m an excellent driver.”
“By ‘you,’ you mean Marcus, right?” Gabrielle asked.
Hale smirked. “Of course.”
“Simon!” Kat yelled this time, and the boy sat upright on the blanket and pulled the headphones off his ears.
“What?” he said, his mouth full of baguette and brie.
“What have they changed?” Hale asked for her.
“Oh.” Simon chewed and swallowed. “Kelly is bringing his own guards for his emerald, so…double what we had down for that.”
Kat nodded. “Okay.”
“And he’s asked for thermal-imaging cameras to be trained on the cases.”
Hale cut his eyes at Kat, who waved the worry away.
“What about the platform?” she asked.
“You mean the platform with the pressure-sensitive floor sensors that will surround the bulletproof and heavily guarded cases for five feet in any direction?” Hamish asked.
Kat looked at him. “Yes, that floor. Does it still rotate?”
“Yes.” Simon shrugged. “I guess that was good enough for Kelly. From what LaFont’s been saying all day, there’s no change to the floor or the platform itself, just…”
“Doubling everything,” Hale finished for him.
“Uh-huh.” Simon swallowed hard again, this time for an entirely different reason. “Cases, cameras, guards…this thing just got…bigger.”
Kat raised the binoculars to her eyes. When security officers began to roll two massive cases toward the service entrance, Kat knew exactly what she was seeing: four inches of shatterproof, bulletproof, drill-proof glass with a lock made from pure titanium by the best master craftsmen in Switzerland (and everyone knows that when it comes to locks, nobody beats the Swiss).
Kat had known those facts for days, of course, but seeing and knowing can be two very different things, so that’s why she stared down at the scene below as if the reality might be in some way different, as if the picture in 3-D and moving color might show some hole, some contrast, some gap that might go unnoticed on blueprints made of paper in black-andwhite.
“Kelly is bringing the emerald personally?” Kat asked, with a worried look at Hale.
“Oh yeah,” Simon answered. “And LaFont doesn’t sound too happy about that.”
“I bet he doesn’t,” Gabrielle said. “I hate that Kelly guy. I’d love to see him get his.”
“One job at a time, Gabs,” Hale told her. “One job at a time.” When they turned to walk away, Hale reached out for Kat and caught her arm. “You sure about this?” he asked.
“If it works, it works,” Kat told him.
“And if it doesn’t?” he asked.
She looked at him. “If it doesn’t, then I’ve heard Monaco has the nicest prisons in all of Europe.”
“It does,” both Hamish and Angus said in unison.
And with that, it was decided.
CHAPTER 34
For having such an impractical profession, Pierre LaFont had always been a very practical man. Protocols were meant to be followed, he always said. Rules were meant to be adhered to, and guidelines were not suggestions. So that was why the guards at the doors had such strict orders that no one was to enter without an invitation. It was why he was so incredibly annoyed when the young woman in charge of entertainment told him that the spotlights would be at sixty-degree angles instead of seventy, that the violinist had called in sick and her role would be filled by a viola player instead.
As he examined the casino floor twenty minutes before the ball was to begin, everything looked perfect. But the devil was in the details, LaFont had always said. And on that night—that night, the devil…was Maggie.