by Kim Foster
Brooke assured me she would be able to stay alive. “Sandor will want you dead, Cat,” she’d said. “If he thinks I can help find you—it’ll be worth keeping me alive.”
Even now, as I approached the vault, this part of the plan felt shaky. How long could she sustain the bluff? I had to work fast; I didn’t want to leave Brooke with them too long.
I faced the biometric lock and took a deep breath. Fortunately, I now had an ace in this department. While everyone had been standing beneath me, I’d been able to train a military-grade microcamera on Sandor’s eyes and snap a high-resolution digital image of his irises.
I located that image within the memory of the camera. I zoomed in on the eyes. Brooke had been confident this would replicate an iris and I’d called my tech guy Lucas to corroborate that opinion. He’d agreed. The digital image would capture all the points and pigments of an iris’s fibrous and vascular tissue, the pattern unique to each of us—much more detailed than a fingerprint.
Lucas and Brooke were both confident we could fool the sensor this way. As I held the screen in front of the scanner, my palms sweaty inside my gloves and my mouth dry, I wished I shared their confidence.
There was a second of silence. Everything seemed suspended. And then—beep. A pinpoint LED light on the sensor turned green and there was a sharp click. Steel slid over steel with a slick metallic sound and the door disappeared into a deep pocket. I exhaled with relief and slipped silently inside the vault.
The vault itself was a steel chamber, lit with spot halogens in the ceiling. It was empty except for a safe embedded in the far wall. The cold air carried a stale, metallic smell.
“I’m in,” I whispered to Ethan.
I heard nothing through the earpiece. “Ethan? Can you hear me?” Still nothing.
Shit. I fiddled with my earpiece. Silence. What did that mean? Had something happened to him? Or was it just a malfunctioning communication line? I squeezed my eyes tight. Not good.
Could I go on? Or should I abort, right now? Indecision wrung my insides. How could I stop now? I was so close. Maybe he was just having trouble with his receiver. I couldn’t scrap the whole thing because of that. I paused, thinking it out. Nothing had changed; we all knew the plan, we all knew what to do next.
I jammed my teeth together. Do it, Cat. I turned to my next task: cracking this safe.
And it was a mother. I stood in front of it, arms folded, surveying the lock mechanism. The technology of this safe was shiny and new. It matched the specs Ethan provided. A month ago I would have been tripped up by this safe, big time. However, thanks to a very helpful workshop, I was entirely up to speed. Thank you, Twelfth Annual Conference of the Museum Security Alliance.
I pulled my gloves taut about my fingers and cleared my mind. I had to forget about Sandor in his bloodlust, Brooke trapped with the Caliga, Nicole creeping along somewhere in the building, Ethan God knew where, and Jack . . . no. I shut it all out. All that existed was this safe. I heard blood pulsing in my ears and I breathed slowly, shutting out all other thoughts and images and focusing only on this safe.
I turned the wheel pack, feeling for the slightest amount of give. It would be a barely perceptible sensation. But this was just the first step.
Every safe can be cracked. You just needed to find the right rhythm, the right music. Safes are unique, each with its own resonance. Even factory-made, externally identical models.
Twenty minutes later pearls of sweat were materializing on my forehead. A prickly discomfort crept up my spine—what if I couldn’t do this? I blocked out the doubt and keep going, head bent, eyes closed.
And then, everything gelled. It was like sensing that infinitesimal moment when the tide changes. I found the rhythm, and one by one, the tumblers fell into place. I had it. I’d crossed the Rubicon. Just one more connection—
There was a glorious click and the safe swung open. I was in. And there was the Aurora Egg. Gold filigree shimmered across the surface of the perfect egg shape, winking with the secret within. I’d seen this Fabergé before, of course, but now I knew what it contained. A chill traced through my body.
At once, I felt whole. I didn’t need to touch the ring on my finger, concealed beneath my glove, to know it was there. This Fabergé Egg, this one thing, was like the final shard of a shattered vase—the fragment that flew far and became trapped under the sofa, lost and forgotten, condemning the repaired vase to incompleteness.
But finally, I’d found my lost shard.
It must have been because this thing, this Fabergé, had been taken so many times—first, as the original Gifts, taken from their rightful owner. Then smuggled, stolen again, transformed and concealed. Now at last I could return it, bring things full circle and correct that old, ancient wrong. You can’t change the past, they’d said. But here, looking at this, I knew that I could.
I reached out and cradled the Fabergé in my gloved hands. My fingers tingled where they touched the jeweled surface of the Egg. I felt the sharpness of the metal scrolls encrusted on the Egg’s shell. My hands and arms felt the weight of the Egg—heavy, but not nearly heavy enough.
It was time to finish it, and get the Egg back to those who rightfully owned it. My original plan had been to return it to the true Romanovs. They did have a claim. But the rightful claim, knowing what was inside, was with the church. With the monks who were murdered. Later, we would need to contact their monastery and get the Gifts back in the right hands.
But for now, I had to get out of here.
I looked at my watch. Right about then, Ethan was making his way to the Clock Tower from his hiding place. As long as everything had gone according to plan.
Also, at that moment, Brooke was enacting her escape. This, as long as she got a sliver of a chance. It should be all she needed. Her special talent was performing Houdini-like escapes. But if she couldn’t do it? “Go without me,” she’d said when we were making the plan. “Don’t wait. If I don’t get my chance before you get the Egg, I’ll find a chance later. I hope to meet you up at the Clock Tower, but the most important thing is getting the Egg out of there.”
I closed the safe door, exited the vault and reset the alarm. It was with great effort that I restrained the urge to race out of there. Don’t rush, Cat. Just get it done quickly and silently.
Once inside the ventilation shaft I pulled up the rope and replaced the grate. I’d left everything exactly as I found it, spiriting the Egg away.
I crawled, holding the blueprint in mind. Rivets and metal edges pressed into my knees and elbows, which were bruised now and groaned at me with a sore, gnawing pain. The only light in the dark and dusty shaft came from periodic vents, and even then it was weak and filtered.
My emotions were under lock and key; I couldn’t get too excited yet. But, even still, a small measure of satisfaction slipped through. I had the Egg. I’d almost done it.
The ventilation shaft narrowed. My pulse quickened because this meant I was getting close. The space was tighter now, confined, and my progress slowed. I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the closeness of the walls. I pushed forward and thought eagerly of getting out to fresh air, to freedom, to the lights of the city from the top of Big Ben.
At last, I reached the end of the shaft. I pushed away the grate and dropped down. It was just one stairwell now between me and freedom. The limestone steps would take me up to the belfry of the Clock Tower, to Big Ben. At each turn I methodically paused to listen, to ensure nobody else was there.
I reached the door at the top of the stair. If everything had gone according to plan, Brooke, Ethan, and Nicole would be up here already. If.
If all the levers and gears of this clockwork plan came together, then it would all be worthwhile. But if someone was missing—what then? My chest constricted at the thought of leaving someone behind. Because it would be my fault. I had dragged everyone into this and it was my responsibility to get everyone out.
I took a deep breath and pushed open the door that led
to the belfry. Cold, wet air misted my face. Up above the great clock, the walls of the tower ceased to be solid brick, becoming instead a framed spire of cast iron and stone.
I blinked. Three shadowy figures were silhouetted in the drizzle. I squinted to discern who was there, and made out Brooke, Ethan, and Nicole. My heart leaped. They’d all made it.
“Everybody okay?” I ran my eye over them all. None appeared to be exhibiting any major wounds. I exhaled with relief. My breath formed a frosty cloud in front of me.
“Did you get it?” asked Brooke, apprehension in her voice. I walked closer to them, tracing a path around the great bells. Fog seeped through the latticework like fingers.
“I did.” My insides were bubbling and fizzing like champagne. Brooke’s eyes went wide, and she smiled a genuine smile of relief.
Ethan was also grinning. “Good work, Montgomery.”
I did it. I was on top of the world. We’d pulled off the impossible job.
But we still had an escape to complete. I turned to Nicole. “You okay?” I asked. She nodded with a smile. She appeared to have recovered from her ordeal.
The small bells chimed the quarter hour.
“Okay, let’s get out of here,” I said. We began preparing our equipment to descend the side of the Clock Tower. Nicole went to stand guard at the door.
As we worked, I caught sight of the bump underneath my glove, on my fourth finger. Penny’s ring. I smiled. It’s over, Penny.
But then a small shadow passed over me. I’d fulfilled my quest . . . what now? Did this mean I was free? I’d always longed for that freedom, when I no longer had to be a thief, when I could stop being the villain.
But—that would mean turning away from everything else that made me feel whole. Everything that made me feel special. Is that truly, deep down, what I wanted?
Ethan dispensed harnesses and ropes while I cut a large hole through the heavy metal mesh that filled the ornately carved stone window frames. Beyond the frame was a small ledge bordered by a stone railing. Over this was a straight drop two hundred feet to the ground. Brooke fastened the anchors. We worked quickly and quietly amid the mist.
And then, the belfry door opened.
I spun. Sandor stood framed in the doorway, flanked by three of his men. My eyes flew wide—I was frozen. All four of them had weapons drawn. We held nothing, bits of rope and carabiners.
“Drop everything,” said Sandor, glaring.
But—what happened to Nicole?—the panicky thought pushed through. She was supposed to be standing guard. Then I saw her standing to the side, near Sandor, gazing at us. She looked unruffled and unsurprised. More than that—she looked satisfied.
In one horrible moment the truth hammered into me: Nicole was working with Sandor.
Chapter 39
Nicole was a double agent. A traitor. They must have planned this all along. She must have alerted Sandor to our getaway rendezvous after we rescued her. And the rescue? A total scam. I felt a tidal wave of nausea at the deception and betrayal. My mind spiraled back to all those coincidences, all those invitations. Had she been keeping an eye on me for Sandor?
“Well, Miss Montgomery,” said Sandor, lips drawing back. “It was a valiant effort. Unfortunately I can’t let you go any further.” His face grew even nastier. “I have not spent my life searching for the Gifts to have you snatch them away. My father did not die in this hunt so I could fail him again.”
A mental blueprint of the tower flashed into my mind. There must have been an escape from here. There had to be a way out of this. I calculated obstacles and trajectories as we stood immobile, hands raised.
Sandor extended a hand. “Miss Montgomery . . . the Egg please?”
I didn’t move. “Sandor, I can’t let you have it.” After coming so close, and after feeling that monumental sense of completion—I just could not hand it over. At this moment, I would face death first.
Sandor’s countenance flashed irritation, then boredom. He sighed and raised a signaling hand. It was this facial expression, this particular gesture, that gave me my shaved second of warning. Because I’d seen it before: just before he ordered the execution of the monks.
I screamed a warning to Ethan and Brooke and dove behind a platform, just as a thug’s black Glock exploded with a sickening bang. Brooke screamed and I saw her fall. Blood poured from a gunshot wound in her right leg.
The quarter bells suddenly chimed again, reverberating in my ears. Ethan lunged from his rolled position on the ground. With terrifying efficiency he withdrew a knife and threw it. The blade caught a man square in the throat, killing him. Ethan’s face bore an expression I’d never seen on him: cold, inhuman, detached. Like a panther, unemotional about a kill. Suddenly there was a gun in Ethan’s hand. Where had that come from?
After that everything happened very fast. It was a blur, a fugue. Bullets slammed into the stone and iron of the belfry and crashed into the bells with a macabre musicality. I was pinned behind a post now, unable to do a thing, terrified of who was left standing out there. I frantically scanned for an escape route.
Then Sandor’s face loomed out through the mist, moving fast toward me. Cold fury twisted his ghoulish face. A knife blade glinted. There was a fierce swish as he sliced it through the mist. I grunted and dodged the lethal arc. I thrust my leg up and knocked the knife away, sending it skittering out of range along the stone floor. I grabbed on to Sandor and attempted to take him down but he was surprisingly strong for such a slight man. We were locked. His hands came up to my throat and I felt the terrifying pressure of his fingers around my neck, squeezing, sending panic to my brain. Stars exploded in my vision and I scrabbled at his hands with my fingers but he had an iron grip. I frantically scissored my legs up and wrapped around his head. With desperate strength I twisted and peeled him from me, wrenching his arms from my throat. I kicked, hard, catching him under the jaw; his head snapped back. He crumpled down, unconscious. I gulped oxygen.
I raced to Sandor’s knife on the ground and grabbed it, then swung my eyes wildly back to Ethan. He stood above three dead men. Two had perfectly centered gunshot wounds in their foreheads and one seeped blood from the large gash in his throat.
The fog was thickening now, rolling in like cotton puffs around the iron staircases and girders. The haunting bells chimed the hour and Big Ben tolled three times. The sound was deafening.
Where is Nicole? I thought in a panic, gaze sweeping the belfry. There was no sign of her. The door to the belfry was ajar, swinging slightly. She must have run away when the Caliga began to fall.
I looked back at Ethan and saw, then, that blood was pouring from his shoulder. And his face was pale. He no longer appeared cold and detached.
“Ethan, your shoulder! Are you okay?” I shouted. He looked down, and I saw his face go slack. I lunged toward him just as he stumbled and fell. His head cracked on a stone ledge and he went out, cold.
I raced to Ethan’s immobile body on the ground, by a stone post. He was breathing—his chest was rising in shallow, ragged breaths. But he couldn’t be roused. The shoulder gunshot wound wasn’t as bad as it had first appeared—the head injury was the greater problem now.
My eyes darted to where Brooke was. I spotted her, where she’d dragged herself behind a stone bench. She sat on the ground, breathing heavily. The good news was that her only gunshot wound appeared to be in her lower leg. The bad was that it was bleeding heartily. Blood soaked her Lycra leggings.
“Brooke! Can you hear me?”
Brooke’s eyes were cloudy, unfocused, and her face was flat.
Fighting down emotions, I ripped off my shirt. The fabric tore loudly. I cinched a tourniquet around her leg, then ripped off my blood-soaked gloves. My eyes veered to the belfry door. I yanked a crowbar from Ethan’s pack and darted to the door. I shoved the crowbar through the door handles. This should buy us a few seconds, anyway, when the rest of Sandor’s people arrived.
“Brooke, we have to go. Now.” My voice w
as ragged. Brooke, however, was fixed to the spot. I glanced back at Ethan, still unconscious.
“Brooke—I need help with Ethan.” No response. I didn’t think she’d lost enough blood to cause this catatonic state. She must have been in shock, stupefied by the trauma. Although there was always potential danger to our line of work, it was rare to have things get quite this grim. She had to snap out of it. Now.
The urgency to get off this tower was squeezing me like a hydraulic crusher. We had to get out of there. I dropped Brooke’s harness next to her, then raced to Ethan. I hauled him up from the ground, dragged him closer to the edge, and struggled him into a harness. We’d have to do a tandem rappel. I turned my head and saw that Brooke was making no attempt to get into her own harness. Her eyes were distant, lost at sea.
I finished fastening Ethan’s harness. “Brooke, you have to move. Now.” But she sat there, stunned. “Brooke. Go!”
She wasn’t going. Ethan was still bleeding from his shoulder. And he was heavy. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth. How was I going to do this? I left Ethan resting on the ground, and raced to Brooke. I lifted her up, slipped the straps around her catatonic frame, cinched the belt, attached the carabiners, and attached her rope to an anchor.
“Okay, there. Go.” I led her limping through the open Gothic window frame, to the railing, and all but pushed her over the edge. She looked down, a shell of a human. With indifference, she clambered slowly over, woodenly lowering herself like a marionette.
I pulled my own harness straps tight, the nylon webbing taut around my thighs. I cinched the straps of the sack that contained the Fabergé. I then linked Ethan’s harness to mine and climbed over the edge with him attached to me. As I leaned back I felt the straps tighten, cutting firmly into my legs. My stomach flipped up into my chest as we took the first drop. I couldn’t see the ground through the heavy fog but I could make out the shadowy form of Brooke, farther down. We descended in front of the enormous, illuminated clock face. My heart surged: we were going to make it. We were going to be okay—