by Ally Carter
"Art," Kat said.
"Private collection," Hale added.
Simon glanced up from the table. "Yours?"
Hale laughed. "I wish."
"Is it our objective to make it yours?" Simon's eyes grew wide.
Hale and Kat exchanged a look. Hale's grin seemed to admit that the thought had crossed his mind. Then he leaned closer and said, "It's not exactly a typical operation."
Simon wasn't fazed; his mind was too full of theories and algorithms and exponential alternatives for typical to have any meaning for him anymore.
He studied the blueprints in silence for ten minutes, before looking up at Kat. "In my professional opinion, I'd say it's a pass. Unless this place is Fort Knox. Wait a second." His eyes shone. "Is it Fort Knox?"
"No," Hale and Kat said in unison.
"Then I wouldn't hit it," he said, pushing the blueprints away.
"It's already been hit," Kat confided.
"Your dad?"
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"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Kat exclaimed.
Hale took off his sunglasses to look Simon in the eyes. His voice barely carried over the sounds of the laughter and splashes from the pool. "We would like very much to know who hit it."
"Who hit this?" Simon jabbed his finger at the center of the blueprints. "It's not a big list, I can tell you that."
"The smaller the better, my friend," Hale said with a pat on Simon's back. "The smaller the better."
"Can I keep these?" Simon asked.
"Sure," Kat said. "We've got a spare set. And, Simon . . . thanks."
She was already standing and starting to walk away, when Simon asked, "This is why you're back, isn't it?"
Kat squinted against the bright sun. She felt a million miles from the gray-skied campus of Colgan.
"Yeah." She glanced at Hale. "It's kind of. . ."
Simon waved her away. "I don't need to know. I was just wondering if it had anything to do with those two guys who have been following us since we left the lecture."
Of all the people Kat expected to see on the Las Vegas strip, Arturo Taccone's goons were not on the list. They hadn't tried to blend in among the tourists and high rollers-- hadn't taken a place at the tables, or positioned themselves by the slots--and that, more than anything, infuriated her. Together, Goon 1 and Goon 2 were five hundred pounds of European muscle.
And yet Kat had missed them.
She worried what else she might be missing as she rushed Hale and Simon away from the pool.
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When Kat looked back, she saw Goon 2 raising his left arm, pointing at his watch. "Kat?" Simon asked. "Keep walking."
"What time is it?" Kat wondered aloud as she and Hale walked across the tarmac to the Hale family's private plane. "Let me think . . . Twelve hours in the air . . . That'll put us there--"
"High noon," Hale answered. "Give or take."
"Okay, first thing tomorrow we hit the streets around Taccone's place. Somebody saw something."
"I got it covered."
"The DiMarcos might be in town." "Actually, they're in jail." "All seven of them?"
Hale shrugged. "It was an interesting October."
Kat shook her head and tried to tell herself that not everything had changed. "Okay, then we should call--"
"I said, I've got it." Hale's voice was firmer now. Kat stopped in her tracks and stared at him.
"Define got it"
"Hey, I'm more than just a delightful travel companion, you know." He grinned. "I'm not exactly friendless." "Who?" Kat asked. But Hale kept walking. "A friend"
Kat reached for his arm and stopped him. "A friend of yours? A friend of mine? Or a friend of ours?"
He broke free of her grip and stepped away, hands in his pockets and a dark smile on his face. "Are we going to have a problem, Katarina?" he asked, sounding eerily like Uncle Eddie.
"What?" she asked, feigning innocence. "I'm just
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wondering who he is? Someone you and the Bagshaws used in Germany?"
"Luxembourg, actually." Hale paused and turned around. "Technically, the Bagshaws and I did a job in Luxembourg." Kat started to say something--wanted to say something--but the words didn't come. "You were gone, Kat." Hale wasn't teasing anymore.
"I know."
"You were at Colgan."
"I was only there three months."
"That's a long time, Kat. In our world, that's a long time." He took a deep breath. "Besides, your heart left a long time before the rest of you followed."
"Well, I'm back now." She started for the plane. "And there's a really small list of people who can do this thing, and an even smaller list you can trust to do it, so--"
"Your dad and Uncle Eddie weren't the only people you left when you went away, you know." Kat heard the words fly toward her across the tarmac. She turned, remembering the stale air of Hale's mother's room, and she knew she was looking at the one person in her life who was more used to being left than leaving.
He looked away, then back again. "Either we're a team or we aren't. Either you trust me or you don't." Hale took a step toward her. "What's it going to be, Kat?"
It is an occupational hazard that anyone who has spent her life learning how to lie eventually becomes bad at telling the truth; in that moment, Kat didn't have a clue what to say. I can't do this without you sounded trite. What they were doing was too big for a simple Please.
"Hale, I--"
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"You know what? Never mind. Ether way, I'm in, Kat." He seemed utterly resolved as he slipped on his sunglasses. "I'm all in."
She watched him climb the stairs to the plane, heard him call over his shoulder, "Besides, I do make excellent arm candy."
Kat wanted to agree. She tried to say thank you. But all she managed to do was worry about who--or what--might be waiting on the ground in Italy.
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11 DAYS UNTIL DEADLINE
SABINA VALLEY, ITALY
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CHAPTER 8
No way. Kat heard the words in her head before she thought to say them aloud. No, Hale. No. Just . . . no. Kat shook the sleep out of her head and tried to think clearly about the situation. After all, she was in Italy. With a smart and handsome boy. Standing on a private jet. The world lay quite literally at her feet, and yet, all Katarina Bishop could do was watch the door ease open, revealing a private airstrip, one of the most beautiful valleys in the world, and a young woman with long flowing hair and a cocked hip. All she could say was, "No way."
It is fairly safe to assume that all thieves (or anyone who has spent much of their life in the dark) will have a sixth sense that allows them to hear more, process more quickly. And yet Kat wondered why the sight of that
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particular girl made the little hairs on her neck stand on end. "Hello, Kitty Kat." Oh yeah. That was it.
"Can I talk to you?" Kat grabbed at Hale, but even though she was very catlike on her feet, Hale was much sturdier on his. He moved past her and down the stairs just as the girl leveled her gaze at him and said, "Hey, handsome."
When he hugged the girl, her long legs left the ground, and Kat wanted to point out that it was far too cold for such a short skirt. She longed to note that high heels were a very bad idea in a city full of cobblestone. But Kat just stood frozen at the top of the stairs, not moving until the girl said, "Oh, come on, Kitty, don't you have a hug for your cousin?"
Families are strange things--living things--in more ways than one. And family businesses . . . well, there was no limit to the oddness.
Walking through the narrow streets of the small town Arturo Taccone called home, Kat had to wonder for the millionth time if it was that way in all family businesses. Was there a shoe store in Seattle that had been handed down through generations only to spawn two teenage girls who couldn't be left alone together? Was there--at this very moment--a restauran
t in Rio where two cousins were crossing their arms and refusing to work the same shift?
Or perhaps these feelings were reserved for the family businesses where people are occasionally shot. Or imprisoned. But Kat would never know. She only had one family, after all, and nothing whatsoever to compare it to.
"Hale," Gabrielle whined as she draped her arm through his, "Kat's not being very nice to me."
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"Kat," Hale said as if enjoying playing grown-up, "hug your cousin."
But Kat never forced affection. And unlike Gabrielle, she adamantly refused to whine. Maybe she'd lost those abilities when she lost her mother; or maybe, like bad reflexes and a steadfast relationship with the truth, those skills were slowly being bred out of her family. Whatever the case, she managed to say, "It's good to see you, Gabrielle. I thought you were in Monte Carlo. The Euro trash circuit."
"And I thought you were in study hall. Guess we were both mistaken."
Kat studied her cousin and wondered how it was possible that she was only a year older---not even that. Nine months. And yet she looked nine years more mature. She was taller, curvier, and just in general more. As she pressed against Hale, she held his arm tightly, leaving Kat to walk beside them like a third wheel down streets that were barely wide enough for two.
"So, where's Alfred?" Gabrielle asked.
"You mean Marcus?" Hale corrected.
"Whatever." The girl dismissed her mistake with a wave, and Kat thought it was too bad that her head hadn't filled out quite as completely as her bra. But then her cousin said, "Happy birthday," and a package of photos suddenly vanished from her hand and appeared in Hale's jacket pocket.
The pass was smooth. Effortless. The practiced move of a seasoned pro, a member of the family.
"How's your mom?" Kat asked her.
"Engaged." Gabrielle gave an exasperated sigh. "Again."
"Oh," Hale said. "Congratulations."
"You could say that. He's a count. I think. Or maybe a duke." She turned to Hale. "Which one's better?"
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Before he could answer, they came to a low stone wall. Beyond it, vineyards stretched out across the Sabina Valley. A river sliced through the fertile land while sheep grazed on a distant hill. Italy was one of the most beautiful places on earth, and yet Kat was unable to tear her eyes away from the photos in Hale's hands. Images of a massive compound near a beautiful lake. Hale leaned against the wall, flipping through the photos that zoomed in closer and closer to the compound. Soon Kat was staring at the walls and lines that, until then, she'd only seen modeled in blueprints.
"This is as close as you got to the house?" Hale asked Gabrielle.
She chomped her gum. "You mean to the fortress? Seriously nice picking, guys."
"We didn't pick it," Kat reminded her.
"Whatever. The place has a fifteen-foot stone wall."
"We know," Kat told her.
"Four perimeter towers. With guards."
"We know." Kat rolled her eyes.
"And a moat. Did you know that, Miss Smarty-pants? Did you know there's an actual moat? Like with things under the water?" Gabrielle gave a whole-body shiver (and parts of her shivered a bit more than others), but the point was clear.
Hale put the pictures back into his pocket and turned, placed his elbows on top of the wall, leaning there.
"Fine," Kat said. "What about the police report?" she asked, but Gabrielle just laughed. "You didn't check with the police . . . at all? You didn't ask them about. . . anything?" Kat asked over the sound of laughter that echoed on the cobblestones. Even Hale was smiling. But Kat just stood there, amazed that someone who shared Uncle Eddie's blood might not know that very
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few jobs in history have ever stayed off the police's radar entirely.
After all, people tended to notice if, at 8:02 p.m., every car alarm in the city went off for twenty minutes. Or if fifteen traffic lights went out between the hours of nine and ten. Or if a patrol car found an unmarked van abandoned by the side of the road--full of duct tape and hummingbirds.
These are the footprints of people who are very careful where they step. But they're footprints nonetheless.
"Men like Arturo Taccone don't call the police, Kat." Gabrielle spoke slowly, as if Kat had gotten amazingly stupid while she was away. "Those of us who don't abandon our families are able to learn these things."
"Geez, I left for a few--"
"You left." Gabrielle's voice was colder than the wind. "And you'd still be behind your ivy-covered walls if we hadn't ... You'd still be there."
Authenticity is a strange thing, Kat knew. Someone carves an image out of stone. A machine prints a dead president on a bill. An artist puts paint on a canvas. Does it really matter who the painter is? Is a forged Picasso any less beautiful than a real one? Maybe it was just her, but Kat didn't think so. And still, as she looked between her cousin and Hale, she thought she smelled a fake.
"Gabrielle," Kat said slowly, "how'd you know there was ivy at Colgan?"
Kat heard her cousin scoff and make up some line about a lucky guess. But an image was already flashing through Kat's mind: a grainy surveillance video. Someone in a hooded sweatshirt running across the quad. She turned to Hale and realized that he was too tall, too broad. The person on the screen had been close enough to Kat's size to fool the Colgan
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School Honor Board, but what really bothered Kat was that she had been tricked too.
"Gabrielle, Hale?" Kat smacked his shoulder. "It wasn't bad enough that you got me kicked out of school, but you had to use her to help you? Gabrielle!"
"I can hear you," her cousin sang beside her.
Hale looked at Gabrielle and gestured at Kat. "She's adorable when she's jealous." Kat kicked his shin. "Hey! It had to be done, remember? And contrary to popular belief, I don't know that many girls." They both stared at him. "Okay, I don't know that many girls who have your special skills."
Gabrielle batted her eyelashes. "Oh, you do know how to make a girl feel special."
But Kat. . . Kat felt like a fool.
She looked at Hale. "I'll see you at the hotel." She turned to her cousin. "And I'll see you at Christmas or at one of your mother's weddings or . . . something. Thanks for coming, Gabrielle. But I'm sure there's a beach somewhere that wishes you were on it, so I'll let you get back to your business and I'll get back to mine."
She had almost made it to the corner when her cousin called, "You think you're the only person in the world who loves your dad?"
Kat stopped and studied Gabrielle. For the first time in her life, she could have sworn her cousin wasn't trying to con her. By the time Gabrielle was seven, she had been trained to call five different men daddy. There was an oil tycoon from Texas, a billionaire from Brazil, a man with a very unfortunate overbite who did something for the Paraguayan government, which oversaw the import/export of a highly overpriced fake Monet or two, but none of them had been her father.
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"You need me," Gabrielle said. There was no doubt in her voice. No flirt. No ditz. She was in every way Uncle Eddie's great-niece. A pro. A con. A thief. "Like it or not, Kitty Kat, the reunion starts now."
Kat sat quietly as Gabrielle parked a tiny European car on the side of a winding country road. There were no headlights, no sounds. As Kat opened the door and stepped outside, she felt a cool damp breeze, and looked up at a dark starless sky. A thief couldn't ask for anything more.
"Tell me again why / had to ride in the backseat." Hale stretched and stared down at her.
"The billionaire always rides in the back, big guy." She reached to pat him on the chest, but before she could pull away, he caught her wrist and held her gloved hand against his pounding heart.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked.
There were a million lies Kat could have told, but none more powerful than the truth. "This is our only idea."
While Gabrielle popped the hood and disabled the engine so that
no roaming guards or passing busybodies would stop to ask questions, Kat kept her gaze locked with Hale's. In that moment, he looked a lot like the boy in the Superman pajamas. Scared but determined, and maybe just a little bit heroic.
"Kat, I--"
"Coming?" Gabrielle's whisper sliced through the night, cutting off whatever Hale was about to say. Kat was left with no choice but to turn and start up the steep embankment, shrouded in inky darkness, fallen branches sounding like firecrackers as they snapped underfoot.
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"Oops," Kat said ten minutes later, stumbling for what felt like the millionth time. She didn't know what was worse, that Hale had had to steady her, or that Gabrielle was witnessing her clumsiness.
She kept waiting for her cousin to say Kat's out of practice. She was sure Hale was about to joke that the Colgan School's physical education curriculum was sorely lacking in practical application. But no one said a word as they made their way to the top of a tall hill, climbing steadily until Gabrielle came to a sudden stop. Kat almost collided with her cousin as she pointed and said, "That's it."
Even at night, even from this distance, anyone could see that Arturo Taccone's home was really a palace made of stone and wood, surrounded by vineyards and olive trees. A postcard paradise. But what Kat noticed were the guards and the towers, the walls and the gates. It was no paradise--it was more like a prison.
The grass was damp against their stomachs as the three of them lay at the top of the hill, looking down on the villa below. Kat hated to admit it, but Gabrielle was absolutely right: you did have to see it to believe it. The day before, when they had spread out the blueprints for Simon to study, Kat had thought Arturo Taccone's home was one of the hardest targets she'd ever seen. But when the dark clouds parted for a moment, and the moon shone like a spotlight on the moat, Kat realized that only a fool would approach those walls.