Perfect Scoundrels

by Ally Carter

  “You’re an important man now, Scooter. You have responsibilities.”

  “Isn’t that why I have you?”

  “Well, yes.” Garrett laughed a little. “I guess it is.”

  Hale stood and reached for the desk, ran his hand along the small section that Kat had been examining only moments before.

  “What is it?” Garrett asked.

  “I did that,” Hale said, pointing to the flaw that had been filled with putty.

  “You carved into an original Petrovich?”

  “Hazel told me to,” Hale countered. “I was…I don’t know…six or seven and she gave me a knife—told me that that was where H would mark the spot.”

  For a moment, Hale’s trustee was quiet. Then he jerked his head toward the door. “Why don’t you go check on Duncan, Scooter? Make sure he brings that woman back. This is your grandmother’s desk. We can’t have it damaged further.”

  When Hale left, Kat felt frozen, watching as Garrett walked around the desk, studying the ornate carvings. She couldn’t breathe as the man turned the piece of the desk where Hale had pointed. A small hidden drawer opened with an ominous pop. To Kat, it sounded like a bubble bursting as a narrow piece of molding slid away from the rest of the desk, and the man reached inside and pulled out a pile of papers held together by a single clip. Quickly, he slipped them into an interior pocket of his suit coat.

  “He’s got it,” Kat said.

  “What?” Gabrielle asked. “No, Angus, you need to get out of the garden! I’m sorry, Kat. What were you—”

  “He’s got it. Garrett has the will.” The words were almost for herself, because, in that moment, the girl who always had a plan had absolutely no idea what to do. Options and alternatives swirled in her mind, but before she could do a single thing, Director Duncan appeared at the doorway, Hale at his side.

  “She’s on her way, Mr. Garrett,” the director said, but Garrett no longer seemed interested.

  Instead, he spoke directly to the boy. “Come, Scooter, we’ve seen enough. We’ll get out of your way, Mr. Duncan.”

  “But…” The director seemed befuddled.

  “You’re a busy man, and we’re jet-lagged. Come on, Scooter, let’s go.”

  Two guards appeared and asked the director a question, so Kat kept herself pressed against the wall and whispered as loudly as she dared, “Gabrielle, Simon?”

  “I’m here, Kat.” The voice was Nick’s.

  “Garrett’s leaving with the real will. We’ve got to get it back. Now!”

  There are moments in any thief’s career that seem to last a lifetime—the second it takes for a guard to check a window, for the security camera to sweep. But the longest minute that Kat Bishop ever lived through was the one that came after she saw Hale and his trustee disappear through the door of the Henley’s restoration room. She could hear the museum director chatting with the guards on the other side of the shelves. Her crew was shouting out orders and questions, rapid-fire in her ear. But Kat could do nothing but stand and wait and listen.

  “I have them at the north entrance,” Gabrielle said.

  “Hamish, Angus, you clear?” Nick asked.

  “As a bell, Nicky boy,” Hamish said.

  “Kat, what are you going to do?” Simon asked. “Kat?”

  The comms unit squeaked—an almost deafening sound—and Kat threw her hand to her ear, trying to keep it in.

  “What was that?” a guard asked.

  There were footsteps on the concrete, and Kat pressed herself more tightly against the shelves.

  “There,” the director said. “Look at that.”

  Kat held her breath. She closed her eyes.

  “Just look at those rubbish bins. When was the last time they were emptied?” The director sounded mortified and ashamed. “You lads notify the janitorial staff. I want a full crew down here now.”

  She heard the door open and close, and for a second, Kat was alone.

  “Garrett,” Kat whispered. “Stick with Garrett. I’ll be right there.”

  “Kat, no!” Nick shouted. “You can’t get out of there unseen until the morning. It’s too risky.”

  But Kat just smiled. “I’ll see you soon.”

  On the streets near the Henley that day, there were any number of odd things that could have easily been seen by anyone who cared to look.

  First, there was a pair of ruddy-faced boys who were scaling the fence that surrounded the gardens. Two guards were in hot pursuit, but no one bothered to summon Scotland Yard or even the police. And once the boys had run into the nearest Tube station, the guards, huffing and puffing, gave up their chase and went back inside.

  The second fairly strange thing was that a long black limousine was sitting at the opposite side of the building. It wasn’t parked. It did not circle. Instead, the car just idled by the main entrance as if, at any moment, a very well-financed thief was going to stroll out the front doors of the Henley and make an incredibly elegant escape. But anyone expecting that scenario would have been disappointed when a boy emerged through the Henley’s doors, an older man at his side.

  The man hurried away from the museum, throwing cautious looks over his shoulder. But the boy walked into the fleeting sunlight as if there were no place on earth where he would not feel at ease.

  The pair was almost to the limousine when the man said something, and a moment later, the boy climbed into the backseat alone. When the limo drove off, the man continued on foot, disappearing into the crowded streets. He seemed perfectly unaware when yet another boy emerged from the Henley’s doors with the last few straggling visitors of the day. This boy wore dark glasses and kept an even, steady pace, always fifty feet or so at the man’s back.

  But the oddest sight of all came when the janitorial staff carried the day’s rubbish to the large bins in the back of the building. The men chatted as they dumped the cans into the massive dumpster, straining a bit under their weight before going back inside.

  Not one of them saw the girl who emerged from the dumpster a minute later, filthy and disheveled. She dropped to the ground and ran.

  “Where is he?” Kat asked as she bolted down the street.

  “We’re almost to the Thames.”

  “Stay with him, Nick,” Kat said.

  “Don’t worry. He’s not going anywhere.”

  “Hamish? Angus?” Kat asked. “Help Nick.”

  “On it, Kitty,” Hamish answered back.

  Kat heard a roar behind her and turned just in time to see Gabrielle on a motorcycle, speeding her way.

  Gabrielle pulled to the side of the street and yelled, “Get on!” but Kat wasn’t waiting for an invitation.

  “I think this might be my first high-speed chase,” Simon said from the sidecar. Gabrielle banked hard, careening around a curve. “I’m not sure I like it!”

  “Nick, where is he?” Kat asked, but was met with only silence. Gabrielle revved the bike and Kat asked again, “Nick? Angus? Hamish?”

  “Our comms units are running out of a van in the Henley parking lot,” Simon said. “We must be out of range.”

  As they neared the Tower of London, the traffic began to congest and clog, tour buses and red double-deckers merging with black cabs and service vans, all full of people trying to fight their way across the river.

  But there was only one face that mattered, so Kat put her hands on Gabrielle’s shoulders and stood, scanning the crowds that filled the busy street.

  “Kat.” Nick’s voice came through her earpiece. It was scratchy and garbled and Kat only made out one word. “…bridge…”

  That was all she needed to hear. In a flash, Kat was off the bike and running past the House of Parliament, through the shadow of Big Ben.

  “Kat, what do you want us to do?” Nick finally said, his voice clear. “Kat, do you want us to approach him?”

  She could see Nick near the Bagshaws fifty feet away from Garrett on the opposite side of the street. They stood shielded by the traffic and pedestrians
, lingering with the vendors and artists who gathered, hocking their wares to the tourists.

  But one man wasn’t there for the sights. Kat was on the bridge, pushing through the crowds, when she saw him stop at the rail and reach into his pocket. A second later, the papers were in his hands.

  “Kat?” Nick asked.

  “Stop him,” Kat said, but the static must have come again, they were so far from Simon’s base at the Henley. “Stop him!” she shouted, but it was too late. The boys couldn’t see when the man pulled a lighter from his pocket. No one noticed a thing until flames began to lick at the corners of the pages, and soon they were alive with fire, crumbling into black and falling into the Thames.

  Katarina Bishop was not a girl unaccustomed to setbacks. She’d been born into a world of Plan A, B, C, and at the very least, D. She knew things never went exactly according to plan, but never before had she been so clueless about what could or should come next.

  She could call Eddie and ask for advice, but Eddie had a strict “Do Not Disturb Unless Someone Is Bleeding” policy. She could go to her father, but she wasn’t exactly sure where he was or if he’d forgive her when he found out she’d had the complete blueprints to the Henley and had only tried to steal a stack of papers.

  Nick and his blueprints were on a flight back to Brussels and his mom and his school. He’d done all he could to help, and now the only thing Kat knew for certain was that Hale’s world was different from hers. They spoke a different language, played by different rules. So as she walked into Carlos’s apartment an hour later, Kat couldn’t shake the feeling that the only person who could help was the only person she absolutely couldn’t call.

  Then a ray of light came slicing through the dark. Literally. Kat threw her hands up to shield against it, and Angus and Hamish bolted toward the outline of a man in a chair. They were almost there when Gabrielle reached for the switch on the wall and the kitchen lights flickered on, freezing Kat and her crew where they stood.

  “You dropped this.” Hale turned off the flashlight that Kat had last seen skidding across the Henley’s concrete floor. “Thought you might want it back.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “It’s my favorite.”

  “I know.”

  “How’d you find us?” Kat asked.

  “I met this girl once.… She taught me all kinds of useful things.”

  “She sounds like a keeper,” Kat said, but this time Hale made no reply.

  Instead, he stood and examined the large room. “So, this is a nice place.”

  “It belongs to Carlos,” Angus said.

  “Carlos is Cuban,” Hamish finished.

  “Good for him,” Hale said. And then he stopped. There were four other people in the room, but Hale only looked at Kat, and something in his gaze burned her, froze her, made her want to run.

  “I can explain,” she blurted.

  “I’m sure you can. But I don’t want an explanation, Katarina. I’d rather have the truth.” The playful smile was gone. The spark in his eyes was extinguished. There was nothing but cold fury that stared back at her when he asked, “Why are you in London, Kat?”

  “I tried to tell you, Hale, but—”

  He took a slow step closer. “Why are you in London?”

  “It’s probably nothing. And I didn’t want to worry you until we knew something for sure, so—”

  “Why. Are. You. In. London?”

  “Hale…” Kat reached for his hand, but he pulled away. He couldn’t touch her. “We came to get something out of your grandmother’s desk.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “We think…we heard that she might have had a different will. And we came to see for ourselves.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Hale shook his head. “Why would you think such a thing?”

  For the first time, from the corner of Kat’s eye, she saw Marcus. He stood stoically at attention as always, but right then he made a subtle shift. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say a word, Kat said, “Uncle Eddie.”

  “What about him?” Hale asked.

  “He heard the will was a fake,” Gabrielle said. “A really good con.”

  “So Uncle Eddie heard that my grandmother’s will was a fake?” Hale asked. “But you don’t come to me. You don’t say a thing to me because… Why didn’t you say anything, Kat? Why would you…” Then Hale’s voice trailed off. He glanced toward the window with its views of the Tower and Buckingham Palace—places of power, family. Deceit. And his voice was cold when he said, “I’m not really the heir, am I?”

  Of all the lies Kat had told in her life, not one was harder than the truth.

  “I don’t know. But something’s wrong, Hale. We don’t know what, exactly, but your grandmother did leave some papers in that desk.”

  Hale spun on her. “What did they say?”

  Kat hung her head. “Garrett got to them before I did. They’re gone, Hale. I’m sorry.”

  “What did they say?” he asked, his voice cold.

  “We don’t know,” Gabrielle said. But Hale just kept looking at Kat. “Sure you do. Don’t you, Kat?”

  “It might have been a will. I don’t know, though. Like I said, Garrett got to the papers first. And then he destroyed them. They’re gone, Hale. I’m sorry. I’m so—”

  “So you think Garrett’s behind all of this? So he can…what? What’s his endgame? What does he want?” Hale sounded very much like someone trying to look at things objectively. As though it were just another job.

  Kat shrugged. “We don’t have a clue.”

  “You know who might have been able to help with that?” Hale shouted. “Me!”

  “Hale,” Kat said, reaching for him; but he pulled away. “I wanted to tell you, but—”

  “But what, Kat? But I couldn’t be trusted? But I’m too immature to keep a secret? Maybe you think I’m a screw-up, too.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I saw him destroy those papers, Hale,” Kat countered.

  “Yeah. Exactly. Papers. They could have been anything. This proves nothing.” He stormed toward the door, then stopped short. “No. Wait. It proves I don’t have a girlfriend anymore.”

  Sleep every chance you get. Eat every chance you get. These were two of many lessons that Kat had learned at her father’s knee and her uncle’s table, but on the long flight over the Atlantic, she couldn’t manage to doze. She wanted to blame it on her coach-class ticket, but every time she closed her eyes, she heard Hale’s words and the slamming door. It felt like a dream on a constant loop inside her head, and as much as she wanted to press pause, it just kept playing over and over, and the scene never changed.

  Not on the walk through the airport. Not during the long ride in the back of the cab. Even standing on Uncle Eddie’s stoop, Kat still saw the look on Hale’s face, and for once she had absolutely no idea how to steal the thing she really wanted.

  “Don’t worry,” Gabrielle said. “He’ll get over it.”

  Kat put her key in the lock and looked out over the sleepy street. Newspapers lay waiting for owners; the bakery on the corner had hot bagels and warm coffee. Gabrielle gave a full-body stretch and never once complained about the discomfort of the flight. There are some things even worse than flying coach internationally, and Gab knew it.

  “He’ll come around,” she said. “Trust me, boys always come around.”

  But that wasn’t it, so Kat shifted. “I’m not worried. I’m scared.”

  “Hale will be fine. He’s just got to—”

  “Not about Hale. Garrett. There was this moment in London… It was like…” She trailed off, unable to say the words aloud.

  “What?”

  “It was almost like he knew I was there. Or he was expecting me to be there or something.”

  “You’re getting paranoid in your old age,” Gabrielle teased, but Kat didn’t think it was funny.

  “Remember what Marianne said? About Garrett?�
��

  “You mean how she was surprised that Hazel never got around to firing him?”

  “Well, looks like that’s not exactly correct.” Kat handed Gabrielle the piece of carbon paper that she had found in the desk.

  “How old is this?” Gabrielle asked with a laugh, but then her eyes scanned over the copy.

  “Hazel typed that letter four days before her coma—two days before she arrived in New York.”

  Gabrielle stopped reading. “So Hazel was old-fashioned? What does that…”

  “Read the first line. Right there.” Kat pointed to the words. “It’s a termination letter. Hazel did fire Garrett. And five days later, she died.”

  Neither Kat nor Gabrielle mentioned those facts again as they let themselves into their uncle’s house and made their way toward the kitchen. They didn’t reach for a light. They didn’t have to. Even without their particular skill sets, the walk was one they both knew well.

  “And…?” Eddie said just before they reached the kitchen.

  When Gabrielle shook her head, Eddie hung his and gave each niece a pat on the back. “It was a good thing you did for your young man, Katarina.”

  Kat was fairly certain that Uncle Eddie was the smartest person she’d ever known, but right then she was equally certain he was wrong. He hadn’t seen the look in Hale’s eyes. He hadn’t heard the fury in his voice. Eddie didn’t know what Kat had spent the past twelve hours fearing—that she had flown all the way to London only to lose something she could never, ever steal back.

  Kat wanted to tell him, beg him to explain to her exactly how she could go back in time and do it all differently. But she didn’t bother. Even Uncle Eddie couldn’t con the clock.

  She just sat quietly as her uncle headed upstairs; but when he reached the door, he gave one last backward wave toward the table.

  “Something came for you, Katarina.”

  There was a letter on the table. As soon as Kat touched it, she knew it was important. The paper was heavy cotton, and her name was printed on the front in gold embossment. She turned over the envelope and ran her hand along the raised letters that read GENESIS.