by Ally Carter
It was, in a word, home, and yet Kat didn't dare say so.
Uncle Eddie shuffled down the narrow hallway, stopping only long enough to pull the slick man's wallet from his pocket and toss it onto a pile of nearly identical loot that sat unopened. Forgotten.
"You've been keeping busy." Kat chose one of the wallets and thumbed through the contents: one I.D., four credit cards, and nine hundred dollars in cash that hadn't been touched. "Uncle Eddie, there's a lot of money in--"
"Take off your shoes if you're coming in," her great-uncle barked as he continued down the narrow hall. Hale kicked off his Italian loafers, but Kat was already hurrying behind her uncle, trailing him into the heart of the house.
"You're picking pockets?" Kat asked once they reached the kitchen.
Her uncle stood quietly at the ancient stove that dominated the far wall.
"Tell me you're being careful," Kat went on. "It's not like the old days, Uncle Eddie. Now every street corner has an ATM, and every ATM has a camera, and--"
But she might as well have been speaking to a deaf man. Uncle Eddie pulled two porcelain bowls from the shelf above the stove and began ladling soup. He handed one bowl to Hale
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and one to Kat and pointed them toward a long wooden table surrounded by mismatched chairs. Hale sat and ate as if he hadn't had a decent meal in weeks, but Kat stayed standing.
"It's a different world, Uncle Eddie. I just don't want you to get into trouble."
Just then, Hale's spoon scraped the bottom of his bowl. There was no hiding the dismay in his voice as he asked, "Uncle Eddie, why is the seal of the British Royal Family on your dishes?"
Her uncle's voice was gruff, impatient. "Because that's who I was with when I stole them."
As Kat held the bowl in her hands, she couldn't help but realize it was hot--in a lot of ways. She couldn't help but see Uncle Eddie as Hale saw him--not as an old man, but as the old man.
"We practice a very old art, Katarina." Her uncle paused long enough to toss Hale's wallet toward him. "It is kept alive not by blood"--another pause as Uncle Eddie dropped Kat's passport onto the counter next to a loaf of day-old bread-- "but by practice."
The old man turned away from his speechless niece and the boy she had brought home. "I suppose you were absent the day they taught that at the Colgan School."
Kat's coat suddenly felt too heavy as she stood there, remembering that she couldn't take the heat and that was why she'd gotten out of the kitchen. She sat down at the table, knowing that now she was back in.
There were a lot of things that could have happened next. Uncle Eddie might have commented that the boy Kat had brought home dressed far better than the stray her mother had chosen. Hale might have worked up the courage to
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finally ask Uncle Eddie the story behind the fake Rembrandt that hung above the hearth. Kat might have admitted that the food services department at Colgan had nothing on her uncle's cooking. But when the back door slammed open, everyone's attention was on the two boys who hurried in, struggling to restrain the largest, shaggiest dog that Kat had ever seen.
"Uncle Eddie, we're back!" The smaller boy tightened his grip on the dog's collar. "They were out of Dalmatians, but we got a . . ." He looked up. "Hey, Kat's here! With Hale!" Hamish Bagshaw was slightly shorter and stockier than his older brother, but otherwise, the ruddy English boys could have passed for twins. The dog lurched, and Hamish hardly noticed. "Hey, Kat, I thought you were at. . ."
When he trailed off, Kat told herself it was the heat from the stove that was making her face red. She focused on breathing in the fresh air from the open door, and swore she didn't care what anyone thought. Still, she was relieved to hear Hale ask, "So, Angus, how's the bum?"
Her relief quickly faded when Angus started unbuttoning his pants. "Good as new. German docs fixed me right up. You wanna see the scar?"
"No!" Kat said, but what she thought was: They were in Germany?
They did a job in Germany.
They did a job without me.
She looked at Hale, watched the way he licked his spoon and helped himself to a second bowl of soup, at home in her uncle's kitchen. She looked at her uncle, who hadn't even smiled at her. And when she turned to the Bagshaw boys, Kat couldn't meet their gaze. Instead she focused on the mangy mutt between them and whispered, "Dog in a bar."
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"Hey, you guys want in?" Angus asked, beaming.
"Boys," Uncle Eddie warned, as if saving Kat from the shame of admitting that even classic cons were beyond her now.
"Sorry, Uncle Eddie," the brothers mumbled in unison. They eased quietly out of the kitchen, taking the mutt back into the night without another word. Then Uncle Eddie took his place at the head of the table.
"You have to ask the question, Katarina, in order for this old man to answer."
The last time Kat had been in this room, it had been August. The air outside had felt like the air in the kitchen was then--sticky and thick. At the time, Kat had thought she would never again be so uncomfortable at her uncle's table. Sure, this was where her father had planned the De Beers diamond heist when she was three. It was the very room where her uncle had orchestrated the hijacking of eighty percent of the world's caviar when she was seven. But nothing had ever felt as criminal as sitting there, announcing to her uncle that her greatest con had worked and she was walking away from her family's kitchen in order to steal an education from one of the best schools in the world.
Turns out, that was nothing compared to walking back in and saying, "Uncle Eddie, we need your help." She lowered her eyes, studied a century's worth of scuffs and scars in the wood beneath her hands. "I need your help."
Uncle Eddie walked over to the oven and pulled out a loaf of fresh bread. Kat closed her eyes and thought of warm croissants and cobblestone streets. "He didn't do it, Uncle Eddie. I flew to Paris and talked to Dad. He has an alibi, but..."
"Arturo Taccone paid Kat a visit," Hale finished for her.
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Kat could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen her great-uncle genuinely surprised; this was not one of them. She knew it the moment he turned from the stove and looked at Hale with knowing eyes. "Your job was to deliver a message."
"Yes, sir," Hale told him. "I did that."
"Nineteen fifty-eight was a good year for cars, young man."
"Yes, sir."
"Arturo Taccone is not the sort of man I would like visiting my great-niece."
"She left in the middle of the night. She does that." Hale glanced away then added a quick, "Sir."
It felt, in that moment, as if her going to school was all the excuse anyone had ever needed to start treating Kat like a child. "She is sitting right here!" Kat didn't realize she was yelling until her uncle looked at her in the manner of a man who has not been yelled at in a very long time.
"I'm here" Kat said in a softer voice.
She didn't say, / can hear you.
She didn't tell him, / came home.
She didn't promise, I'm not going anywhere.
There were at least a dozen things that she might have said to reclaim her place at the table, but there was only one that really mattered. "Taccone wants his paintings back."
Uncle Eddie studied her. "Of course he does."
"But Dad doesn't have them."
"Your father isn't one to ask for help, Katarina, especially not from me."
"Uncle Eddie, I need your help."
She watched her uncle take a long serrated knife from a
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block by the stove and slice three pieces of warm bread. "What can I do?" Uncle Eddie asked in his I'm just an old man tone.
"I need to know who did the Taccone job," Kat told him.
He rolled back to the table, handed her a piece of bread and a plate of butter. "And why would you need to know that?" he asked. But it wasn't a question--it was a test. Of knowledge. Of loyalty. Of how far Kat was willing to crawl to get back to w
here she'd been last summer.
"Because whoever did the Taccone job has Taccone's paintings."
"And. . ."
Kat and Hale looked at each other. "And we're going to steal them." Kat felt a surge of strength as she said the words. Like confession, it was good for the soul.
"Eat your bread, Katarina," Uncle Eddie told her, and Kat obeyed. It was the first meal she'd had since Paris.
"This is a serious thing you're trying to do," Uncle Eddie said. "Who, may I ask, is this we of which you speak?"
Hale looked at her. He opened his mouth to answer, but Kat cut him off. "Hale and I can do it."
"Then this is a very serious thing. I'm afraid it might be difficult to accomplish from the Colgan School. . . ."
If the stories were to be believed, Uncle Eddie had once won a million dollars in one weekend playing cards in Monte Carlo. Without cheating. For the first time in her life, Kat believed in the power of her uncle's poker face.
She lowered her gaze and told her uncle what he already knew: "It turns out the Colgan School and I have had a parting of ways."
"I see." Her uncle nodded but didn't gloat. He didn't have to. "We need a name, Uncle Eddie," Hale said.
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"People genuinely like your father, Katarina." Uncle Eddie thumbed his nose and muttered, "Although why, I do not understand. But he has friends." He placed a rough hand on top of hers. "Let me make some calls. It might take a day or--"
"We don't have a day or two." Kat felt herself growing angry. "We know you can find out who did the Taccone job, Uncle Eddie." She stood up, towering over her uncle for the first--and probably last--time in her life. "If you can't or won't tell us, we'll find someone who will. But it has to be done." She drew a deep breath. "/ have to do it."
"Finish your soup, Katarina," Uncle Eddie said, but Kat didn't sit; she didn't eat. She watched her uncle stand and walk to the pantry; but instead of some rich dessert, he pulled out a thick roll of long paper.
Hale glanced at her, his eyes wide as her uncle pushed their meals away and laid the roll on the end of the table.
"The man who did the Taccone job ..." Uncle Eddie began slowly. Maybe it was fatigue or habit, but his accent seemed thicker than normal as he leaned over the scroll. "We don't know who he is. We don't know where he is." Kat's heart beat faster while her spirits fell. Then, Uncle Eddie gave a flick of his wrist and, in a flash, the scroll unfurled on the long table, and Kat's eyes settled on the most elaborate blueprints she'd ever seen.
Her uncle smiled. "But we know where he's been."
The street was dark by the time they left the brownstone. Maybe Kat had been too long in the hot kitchen, but without the sun, the air really did feel like winter, as if they'd been inside long enough for the season to finally change.
Hale walked beside her, buttoning his heavy wool coat.
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Kat shivered, and when he put his arm around her, she didn't push him away. They blended into the scenery--two kids out for a walk to the library. Maybe a movie or a slice of pizza. Just a boy and a girl. Just a couple.
Heavy drops of drizzle landed on Hale's dark coat and shone like beads of silver.
"You ever seen that much security on one set of blueprints before?" he asked.
Kat shook her head. "No."
"So whoever did it was really smart," Hale said.
Kat thought about the cool indifference with which Arturo Taccone had threatened her father's life, and added, "And really stupid."
Hale was silhouetted against the streetlamp's yellow light, but the glint in his eyes was unmistakable. "Remind you of anyone we know?"
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12 DAYS UNTIL DEADLINE
LAS VEGAS, USA
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[Page Blank]
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CHAPTER 7
There are a lot of reasons people come to Las Vegas. Some come because they want to get rich. Some come because they want to get married. Some want to get lost, and others found. Some are running to. Some are running from. It had always seemed to Kat that Vegas was a town where almost everyone was hoping to get something for nothing--an entire city of thieves.
But as Kat and Hale rode the escalator from the casino floor to the conference rooms above, she realized those reasons probably did not apply to the International Association of Advanced Mathematics and Research.
"I didn't know there were this many math guys," Hale said as they stepped onto the crowded concourse. Kat cleared her throat. "And women," he added. "Math women."
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Everywhere Kat looked, she saw men wearing bad suits and name badges, mingling and laughing, oblivious to the slot machines and cocktail waitresses only a floor below. Kat supposed the keynote speaker must be as brilliant and riveting as the rumors said. If you were interested in derivatives, theorems, and polynomials, that is. Kat and Hale followed the crowd into the dim ballroom where the man was lecturing. They found seats in the back row.
"So these are the smartest people in the world, huh?" Hale whispered.
Kat scanned the crowd. "At least one of them is."
Hale's gaze was locked on the conference program he held in his hands. "Where is he?"
"By the projector. Fifth row. Center aisle."
At the front of the room, the professor rambled on in a language that only a few people in the world could truly understand.
"You know"--Hale's breath was warm against Kat's ear in the chilly ballroom--"I don't know that both of us really have to be here. ..." The slide changed. While hundreds of mathematicians waited with baited breath, the boy beside Kat whispered, "I could go make some calls . . . check on some things. ..."
"Play some blackjack?"
"Well, when in Rome ..."
"Rome is tomorrow, babe," Kat reminded him.
He nodded. "Right."
"Shh."
"Do you understand any of this?" he said, pointing to the lines and symbols that covered the massive screens.
"Some people understand the value of an education."
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Hale stretched and crossed his legs, then settled his arm around Kat's shoulders. "That's sweet, Kat. Maybe later I'll buy you a university. And an ice cream."
"I'd settle for the ice cream."
"Deal."
They stayed in the overly air-conditioned ballroom, listening to the entire first lecture and part of the second. By the time she saw a member of the hotel's audiovisual staff slink out the back doors, Kat's hands were frozen and her stomach was growling. So she didn't think twice about grabbing Hale and slipping through the open door.
While the math genius droned on inside Ballroom B, three teenagers gathered secretly in the empty casino hallway.
No one overheard Hale say, "Hi, Simon."
"So you tell us, how was the lecture, Simon?" Hale paused and read the name tag of the boy in front of him. "Or is it Henry?"
But the boy just smiled as if he'd been caught--which he had--by two of the few people on earth whose opinions actually mattered to him.
"How'd you find me?" Simon asked. Hale just raised his eyebrows, and Simon muttered, "Never mind."
Soon the escalator was taking them away from the PhDs and carpeted ballrooms; the silence gave way to ringing machines and screaming tourists. Kat practically had to yell as she asked, "How's your dad?"
"Retired," Simon answered. "Again. Florida this time, I think."
"Retired?" Hale didn't try to hide his shock. "He's forty-three."
"People do crazy things when they hit the prime
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numbers," Simon explained with a shrug. He leaned closer. "He's actually been consulting with Seabold Security." "Judas," Hale teased.
But Kat barely heard. She was too busy scanning the casino. Tourists in fanny packs sat in rows at slot machines. Waitresses glided through the crowd. It was easy to feel alone there, lost in the chaos. But Kat was a thief. Kat knew better.
She patted the cylindrical case in her hands and l
ooked at the boys beside her. "Let's go find a blind spot."
As they walked through the maze of the casino floor, Kat couldn't help but notice a slight bounce in Simon's step as he chatted on about the lecture, the advances in technology. The geniuses and legends who'd given talks that morning at breakfast.
"You know you're smarter than all of them, right?" Hale said flatly. "In fact, if you wanted to prove it. . ." He glanced at the blackjack tables.
Simon shook his head. "I don't count cards, Hale."
"Don't?" Hale smiled. "Or won't? You know, technically, it's not illegal."
"But it's frowned upon." Sweat beaded at Simon's brow. He sounded like someone had just suggested he swim after eating ... run with scissors. . . . "It is seriously frowned upon."
They found a table outside, near the edge of the crowded pool, away from cameras and guards.
Simon dragged his chair beneath an umbrella. "I burn," he explained as Kat took the seat across from him. He took a deep breath, as if working up the courage to ask, "Is it a job?"
Hale stretched out on a lounge chair, his eyes hidden behind dark shades. "More like a favor."
Simon seemed to deflate, so Kat added, "For now."
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The desert air was dry, but there was no denying the smell of chlorine--and money--as Kat rolled the blueprints out onto the glass tabletop.
Simon leaned over the plans. "Are these the Macaraff 760s?"
"Yep," Hale answered.
He whistled in the same way Hale sometimes whistled, but Simon's sounded more like a wounded bird.
"That's a lot of security. Bank?" he guessed. Kat shook her head. "Government?" Simon guessed again.