Heist Society (Heist Society #1)

Heist Society (Heist Society #1) Page 22

“And so we had to get new living room furniture, which, unfortunately, does not go with the Monet.”

Kat stood for a moment, staring into that small window of the world where someone would tire of a Monet simply because it clashed with the couch.

But perhaps the strangest part was that, to Gregory Wainwright, and indeed to Hale himself, the story didn’t ring strange at all. Kat thought about Hale’s mother’s empty room and empty house—all the valuable things in her life that the woman never thought to miss.

“He is good.” Nick looked at Kat, who couldn’t help but smile. “How long have you two been together?” Nick asked, and just that quickly, Kat wasn’t smiling anymore.

“We’re not together,” Kat blurted. Instantly, she wished she’d said something different. Something coy. Something clever. But it was too late, and she was stuck sounding like a silly girl and a very bad liar—two things she had never been before.

“I meant, how long have you been working together?” he corrected. Then he smiled his slightly goofy smile. “But that’s good to know, too.”

Before she could even ponder that statement, footsteps began to echo in the hallway that led to the director’s private office.

“Simon?” Kat questioned, but before the boy had even finished his “Just one more minute!” something happened that Kat had never experienced on any job of any kind.

The director and Hale were fast approaching, and to Kat’s surprise, so was Nick.

“Stall,” she whispered, starting to turn, to think, to work.

But just as quickly, Nick was grasping her arm, pulling him back to her with a quiet, “Okay.” And before a single diversionary tactic could come to mind, she was in Nick’s arms, and he was kissing her right there in the middle of the Henley’s hallway.

Right there in front of Gregory Wainwright and Hale.

She was aware, faintly, of the two of them skidding to a stop before they could turn the corner—and catch Simon in the act. She was certain she heard the director mutter something that sounded a great deal like “Children kissing in my halls . . .”

Through her earpiece, she heard Angus say, “We’re clear.” But the voice Kat most wanted to hear was Hale’s.

She pulled away from Nick right as Hale said, perfectly casual, completely unfazed, “To tell you the truth, Mr. Wainwright, before I can promise you anything, I would really like to hear from you that there’s nothing to fear from this man”—he snapped his fingers as if trying to remember the name—“Visily Romani.”

Chapter 25

Despite rumors to the contrary, Mrs. W. W. Hale III had not added a large solarium to the Hale family’s English estate because it was fashionable at the time, or to keep up with Mrs. Winthrop Covington II, who had built a similar addition to her manor house three miles away. No, Hale’s grandmother had ordered the construction of that particular room for two primary reasons: One, she hated to be cold. And two, she dearly loved the Henley’s massive glass-covered foyer.

As Kat sat with her crew in the glass-enclosed space that evening, eating soup and sandwiches, discussing all they’d learned, Kat wondered if anyone besides her was impressed with the irony. Probably not, she decided.

“How’s it coming, Simon?” Gabrielle asked.

Simon, completely enthralled by the small electronic gizmos and wires that covered the table, took a moment to answer.

“We have eyes.” He turned the computer around, and there, in living color and from a quite unflattering angle, was Gregory Wainwright.

“Mr. Wainwright?” a high, female voice cut through the air. Simon beamed.

“And ears.”

“Nice work, Simon,” Gabrielle said with a kiss on his cheek.

“I helped,” Hamish reminded her, moving his cheek in her direction, but Gabrielle wasn’t feeling quite that liberal with her affection.

“Mr. Wainwright?” The secretary’s voice came through the intercom, and the man on the screen moved. Lurched, really.

“He’s napping,” Gabrielle said with a laugh.

“So what do we need to know about him, Hale?” Kat said. “Besides the fact that he likes to doze off in his office.”

“He’s a suit. He’s concerned with typical suit stuff,” Hale said, clearly an expert on the subject. “Donations, revenue streams”—Hale paused, and even the Bagshaw boys stopped to listen—“publicity.”

Glass surrounded them on three sides. Perfectly tended plants sprawled throughout the space, and Kat felt the high that comes from too much oxygen and possibility.

“Our friend Romani has made life for Mr. Wainwright very, very difficult,” Hale said with a smile. He leaned back in a wrought-iron chair, which Kat guessed was as old as the glass dome around them. “The official party line is what we’ve already heard—a prank, a mistake by the janitorial staff—the usual stuff.”

“But unofficially?” Angus asked.

Hale nodded. “The Henley is spooked.”

On the screen, the secretary was entering the office. She held a small pad of paper in her hands, was rattling off something about a black-tie fund-raiser, a faulty furnace, a new record for attendance, and the annual evaluation of the building’s fire codes. And through it all, Gregory Wainwright kept nodding impatiently, desperate to return to his nap.

“Scared . . .” Kat started. She stood. It felt very good to stretch, and as she walked, she asked herself how her father would rob the Henley. And then Uncle Eddie. And then, finally, her mother. But there was only one thief who had ever done what she was trying to undo, so in the end Kat tried to think like Visily Romani.

“We’re making it too hard,” Kat said, more for her own benefit than anyone else’s. “We’re not stealing from the Hen-ley. We’re stealing at the Henley.” She began to pace in long strides.

“They’re scared,” she said, stopping, turning to Hale. “Right?”

He nodded slowly and leaned forward, elbows on knees, and something in the gesture reminded Kat of her father. She pointed to the plans. “Then we give them reason to be terrified.”

An awed silence filled the room as five of the greatest junior thieves the world would ever know stared at her and uttered, “Smokey the Bear.”

“It could work,” Simon said, nodding slowly.

“It will work,” Gabrielle added.

Angus even raised his hand, as if Kat were a visiting professor. “Yeah, well that still doesn’t explain how we’re going to carry five paintings out of the most secure museum in the world—”

“Even if they aren’t their paintings,” Hamish reminded them again.

“Without getting noticed,” his brother finished.

Kat walked to the window. She tried to see out into the night, but the glass had become a mirror in the darkness. Kat stared at their reflections, studied them all in turn.

“So we get noticed.”

To call it a party would be a mistake. It wasn’t a celebration so much as an excuse to blow off steam. But when Hamish found an old phonograph and a collection of ragtime records in the corner of the solarium, there was no doubt the music changed things.

Maybe it was the scratchy sound of trumpets reverberating off the glass—maybe they were all a little drunk on the possibility (or perhaps the illusion) that this thing might actually work. But, eventually, Simon asked Gabrielle to dance, and proved he was surprisingly good. Angus challenged Hamish to balance a cricket bat on his chin for two minutes (which he did).

And, through it all, Kat sat on an old chaise lounge, watching the party. Hale sat on the other side of the room, watching her.

“So does he hate everyone, or am I special?” Kat didn’t have to turn. She could see Nick standing over her shoulder, reflected in the glass. He threw one leg over the chaise lounge and sank onto the cushion beside her. She felt suddenly conspicuous, as if there were entirely too much them and too little chair.

Hale looked away.

“You never did answer my question, you know,” Nick said. He took a sip from his drink. “This afternoon?” He cocked his head in Hale’s direction. “How long have you two been . . . together?”

Kat pulled her legs under her, farther from him. “Oh, a while,” she said, and then for reasons Kat would never know, she couldn’t stop herself from smiling at the memory.

There are stories thieves don’t tell—trade secrets, mostly. Or incriminating tales. Or mistakes too embarrassing to repeat. The story of Kat and Hale was none of those things, and yet it was one she never said aloud; at that moment she wondered why. She studied him across the room. He smiled back in a way that said, despite the music and distance, somehow he’d heard—somehow he was thinking the exact same thing.

Hamish’s right arm was around Angus’s waist as the two of them tangoed past.

“I still vote for Uncle Felix,” Hamish was saying.

“Did the man on that tape look like he had a bum leg to you?” Angus asked, his cheek pressed against his brother’s.

“Uncle Felix hurt his leg?” Kat asked, and Hamish shuddered.

“Alligators,” he said, stopping midstride. “Buggers are faster than they look.”

The Bagshaws both seemed to be studying her.

“Smile, Kat,” Angus told her. “It’s a good plan. Uncle Eddie couldn’t have done better.”

Hamish raised an imaginary glass. “To Uncle Eddie.”

Everyone echoed the toast, except for the boy beside her. “Who’s Uncle Eddie?”

Perhaps it was her imagination, but Kat could have sworn that the needle on the phonograph skipped. For a moment, everyone stopped dancing.

While the whole crew stared at Nick, Hale smirked at Kat, challenging her to describe the indescribable.

“Uncle Eddie is . . . my uncle.” Kat started like every good con starts, with a little bit of the truth.

Gabrielle added, “Our uncle.”

“Yes, Gabrielle,” Kat conceded. “Uncle Eddie is our grandfather’s brother. He is our great-uncle.” She gestured to herself and Gabrielle. “The real kind.”

“Way to rub it in, Kat,” Angus said with only a semi-mocking tone as he and his brother danced by. (Kat wasn’t sure who was leading.)

“The Bagshaws are sort of like . . .” Kat struggled with the words.

“Our grandfather worked with Eddie before he even moved to New York,” Angus explained.

“You ever hear of the Dublin Doxy Heist?” Hamish asked, eyes wide. “What about the time someone ransomed that little dog Queen Elizabeth was gonna breed all her other dogs with?”

“And then she got the wrong dog back?” his brother finished. Nick shook his head.

The brothers shrugged as if Nick were utterly beyond saving, and resumed their tango. Nick turned to Simon, unfazed. “How about you? How do you know this Uncle Eddie?”

Simon rubbed his hands together. “My dad had a sort of cash-flow problem when he was at MIT, and that’s how he met—”