Perfect Scoundrels

by Ally Carter

  “I steal things,” Simon told him.

  Silas arched an eyebrow. “I see,” he said, then crossed his arms and grinned in the manner of a man who can’t wait to get to work.

  “Great. So while Silas is trying to duplicate the prototype, we’ll try to retrieve the original.”

  “Retrieve?” Marianne asked.

  “Steal,” Gabrielle and the Bagshaws said in unison.

  “Oh.” Marianne gave a sigh that said this day was getting more scandalous—and interesting—by the second.

  “Now, forgive me for pointing out the obvious,” Silas shifted in his chair and leaned closer to Kat, “but retrieving the original isn’t going to do us any good after Garrett rolls out the fake at the gala two nights from now.”

  “That’s why we’re going to disrupt the launch,” she said.

  “You know,” Angus said, “I’ve got a little C-four that I’ve been saving for a rainy—”

  “We’re not blowing up my company, Angus,” Hale said.

  “Righto. Carry on, Kitty.”

  “Like I was saying, we’re going to have to disrupt the launch, hopefully in a way that will keep it from being rescheduled any time soon. Also, we need to keep Garrett…distracted.”

  The older generation sat looking at the younger, and Kat wondered exactly when and how the baton had been passed. She wanted to know if it was too late to give it back.

  “And that’s why”—she took a deep breath—“we’re going to run a con. It hasn’t been done in a long time, but that’s okay, because we have the talent to pull it off.” She felt her hands shake, so she gripped one in the other. “Have you ever heard the story of the Grand Duchess Anastasia?”

  “Well, of course,” Marcus said. “She was Russian royalty, killed in the uprising. Now, some people said that she had survived, but that was a conspiracy. A…”

  “Con,” Hale filled in.

  Silas was shaking his head. “But what does this have to do with—”

  “Reginald.” Marianne’s voice was solid and sure. “It is because of Reginald, isn’t it? But…how? Who could possibly…” She let the words trail off, and Kat felt the room shift, all eyes turning to Uncle Eddie.

  “No.” Eddie was starting toward the kitchen. “No,” he said again, once Kat had caught up to him. He was trying to act normal—like he wasn’t upset—but he went to his stove and began moving pots from burner to burner, and Kat thought that, for one of the world’s greatest bluffers, it was a shame for him to have such an obvious tell.

  “You’re the only one who can do it, Uncle Eddie.”

  “No, Katarina,” he said. “No man alive can do it.”

  “We have to try. It doesn’t have to be the full Anastasia, just enough to delay a few days. All we need to do is keep Garrett too busy to prove that the Hales have a fake, and appease his buyer. We do that and then—”

  “It cannot be done.” It was more proclamation than statement, the lord high grifter telling all who could hear that the Anastasia was dead.

  “Yes, it can be. You can do it.”

  “I could have,” he admitted. “Maybe. If it were thirty years ago and I were ten years younger. But the Anastasia is not an easy thing, Katarina. It is a dead con.”

  “So no one will be expecting it.”

  “I’m saying it is impossible!”

  His fist banged against the counter. The pots shook. All Kat could think was that she had never heard her uncle yell before. Not at her. Not in that room. He was the sort of man for whom a whisper carried far more force than a shout.

  Then he took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. “With science—DNA—it cannot succeed.”

  “We don’t need it to succeed. We just need it to buy us a little time.”

  “There is never going to be enough time to rob the Superior Bank of Manhattan.”

  Kat knew he was right, but she didn’t dare say so. “So we’ll buy enough time to find some other way. You can do this, Uncle Eddie.” She eased closer, placed her hand on top of his. “Please.”

  “You are a smart girl, Katarina. But young. I think this time you are not thinking with your head,” Eddie told her. “Someday you will know that the heart is not always as wise as it is strong.”

  “Uncle Eddie…” Kat’s voice broke. She was too busy thinking about the files in Garrett’s office, wondering just how many secrets had once lain inside the one labeled Scooter, and her hands began to tremble, knowing she’d just stolen Hale back. She didn’t want to lose him again.

  “Uncle Eddie,” Hale said from the door.

  The old man shifted his gaze to the boy, looked at him like he was an outsider, a stranger. A threat. Kat wondered how her life would have turned out if she’d left that fateful night two years before with a painting and not a boy.

  “You still owe me for my window.”

  “Ten percent,” Hale told him flatly. “I will give you ten percent of Hale Industries if you do this.”

  “Hale…” Kat said, dumbfounded.

  “Okay,” Hale countered before Eddie had even said a word. “Fifteen.”

  “You think I don’t want to do this because there’s nothing in it for me?”

  “I think you’re the greatest thief in the world. And without you—in a month—Hale Industries will be half as valuable as it is today, so that’s why I’m willing to give you twenty percent of a billion-dollar corporation for a week’s worth of work.”

  Kat stood quietly, honestly not sure what would happen next. Hale sounded like himself. He looked perfectly normal. But there was something there, a raw, aching thread, and Kat knew that if she pulled it, his whole world might unravel.

  “Please, Uncle Eddie.” She pleaded with the only man who could fix it all, watched him sink carefully into a chair. He moved like every bone in his body was threatening to break, and Kat half expected to hear a creak as he placed his elbows on the table.

  “Your mother brought a strange man to this house once, Katarina. I had hoped it might be a few more years before history repeated itself.”

  Kat rolled her eyes at the mention of her father. “Uncle Eddie, I brought Hale home ages ago,” she reminded him; but her uncle just shook his head.

  “I’ve known my great-niece’s friend. A boyfriend, on the other hand…that is a most different matter.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hale said. He stood up a little straighter, spoke a little louder.

  “You have a powerful family, boy.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hale said. “Please don’t hold them against me.”

  Then Eddie gave a wry smile. “Who says I was talking about them?”

  The abandoned lab they rented was somewhere in New Jersey. Gabrielle drove while Kat’s mind drifted, nothing but a massive list of all the things she had to do. So when they finally walked through the main doors, her first thought was that they must have been in the wrong place.

  The only light came through grit-covered windows. A thick layer of dust covered everything: crates and shelves and long rows of tarp-covered equipment.

  But then there were the voices. Kat followed them through a maze of crates bearing the Hale Industries logo until she could see Marcus in the center of a wide empty room, pacing. He had a ruler in his hand, and when he stopped, he looked at Eddie, who sat in the center of the space on an old office chair.

  “The Hale men have all graduated from which academy?” Marcus asked.

  “Colgan.” Eddie glared at Hale. “And I believe that is all Hale men but one.”

  “Correct,” Marcus said, and kept on pacing. “As a child, Reginald had three nannies, all named…”

  “Beatrice,” Eddie said.

  “But he called them…”

  “Bunny,” Eddie replied with a cringe.

  “Correct. In an interview with Esquire magazine, Reginald listed his interests as…”

  “Polo and sailing,” Eddie said.

  “But his actual pastimes were…”

  “Drinking and womanizin
g,” Eddie replied.

  “Correct.” Marcus gave a nod and studied his pupil, while Kat skirted the edge of the room and took a seat next to Hale.

  “How’s it going?” she whispered.

  “Okay. I think. To be honest, I’m not really sure. Marcus is acting…scary.”

  “Posture!” Marcus snapped. “Hale men do not slouch.”

  “Yeah,” Kat said. “He is.”

  Then it was Marianne’s turn to look Eddie up and down. She spoke to her brother. “Marcus, if I’m to be honest, I’m more concerned about his overall presence. Edward can memorize all the facts we give him, I’m certain. But Reginald had such vigor—such spirit. His manner was very distinctive.”

  “True,” Marcus said.

  “Let me see you walk,” Marianne told Eddie, who stood and took a few steps across the floor.

  Marcus eyed Eddie from a new perspective. “The shoulders are off.”

  “His hands are wrong,” Marianne said as if Eddie wasn’t even there.

  “Don’t forget the limp,” Marcus told Eddie.

  Kat looked at Hale. “I’ve never heard Marcus talk this much.”

  “Yeah,” Hale whispered. “I’m trying to decide if I like it.”

  Just then, Marcus took the ruler and struck Eddie in the stomach. “Hale men speak from the diaphragm!”

  Hale nodded. “I definitely like it.”

  Kat leaned her elbows on the table, and for the first time, noticed the piles that were collected there.

  Old family albums lay spread across the surface. Black-and-white photos had been pulled from the pages, and Kat flipped through them one by one, staring down at the face of the same young man. Tall and strong and golden.

  Standing among a tribe in Kenya, a lion at his feet. Posing with a team of dogs in the blowing snow at the top of the world. On a raft in the Amazon. Climbing K2.

  Kat looked from the young man in the picture to the boy who sat beside her, and she wondered if trying to steal a more exciting life might be at least a little bit genetic.

  “Here,” Marianne said. “Watch this. See the way Reginald carries himself?”

  Suddenly, the lights went out and the beam of a projector was slicing through the room, splashing across a white wall, beneath high, dingy windows. Watching, Kat forgot what century—much less what year—they were in, because on the screen it was the Hamptons in summer. There were girls in tennis whites and men in seersucker suits. Slowly, the camera panned across a wide lawn, taking in the smiling faces and waving hands. There was an undeniable resemblance among them all, and Kat, who had a long line of “relatives” who didn’t share the same blood, had to remind herself that there are some families that do have the same smile—the same eyes.

  Then she remembered why they seemed so familiar, and she turned to take in the boy beside her. But it was like Hale had forgotten she was there. He was staring at the flickering image, being pulled into a memory that wasn’t his own.

  “That’s her,” he whispered.

  “Who?” Kat asked.

  He pointed. “Hazel. That’s her.”

  There were three young women on the screen, but one stood apart from the group. She kept her hands intertwined, like someone who had been invited—but not born—inside the family.

  Kat watched her smile and laugh. The wind blew through her hair, and it was easy for Kat to imagine the cool breeze and warm sun on the woman’s skin, but she wasn’t truly comfortable there on that sunny stretch of lawn.

  “Which one is Reginald?” Kat pointed back to the screen.

  “In the hat,” Hale said just as, in the video, the long-lost uncle slapped the recently departed grandmother on the butt.

  “See,” Marianne told Eddie. “Vigor!”

  “Yes, Edward,” Marcus agreed. “Do you think you can capture that?”

  But Kat didn’t listen for the answer. She was too entranced by the woman on the screen. “She was beautiful.”

  Hale tilted his head. “She was lonely.”

  Kat knew that he was right. She was also certain that he knew the feeling. The Hale name was his birthright and legacy, but like his grandmother, he had never truly belonged.

  Kat watched Hale’s face change and knew that the sadness he had carried since the funeral was back. He wasn’t okay. She saw it in him, lingering just under the surface, waiting to break free.

  There were flash cards with photos of distant relatives, a quiz about the family pets. Kat had been by Hale’s side almost constantly for over two years, but she learned more about his family in those four hours than she had ever even suspected before. And through it all, Eddie never wavered or complained, soaking up the facts and figures like a sponge.

  “And when they ask for a DNA test?” Marianne asked at last. Kat could tell the question had been weighing on her for hours, and finally she couldn’t hold it back anymore. “What will we do then?”

  Kat thought about her uncle’s words, his warnings. He was right, of course. The Anastasia was a dead con, but they didn’t have to steal the company. She smiled. They only had to steal time.

  “Simple, Marianne. We stall,” Kat said.

  “I know Garrett, child,” Marianne said. “I’ve known him since he was no older than you. And, believe me, if that man wants something, it will be quite hard to stop him.”

  Hale took her hand. “Marianne, can you trust me?”

  “Of course,” she said. Then a strange look crossed her face.

  “What is it?” Hale asked.

  “I just keep thinking that if your grandmother were here now…”

  “She’d be pretty disappointed, huh?” Hale asked, head down.

  “No.” Marianne took his face in her hands. “She’d be having a fabulous time.”

  For the first time in days, Hale smiled, and a sharp feeling shot through Kat, the possibility that maybe he might come back to her. That maybe, just maybe, Hale might not be entirely gone.

  “Okay, we have work to do,” Eddie said, shuffling toward them. He turned to Kat. “Shouldn’t you be casing a bank?”

  “I have my best people on it.”

  “I wouldn’t call Angus and Hamish your best,” Eddie said. “But they’ll do. And you.” He pointed at Hale. “Isn’t it time you went home?”

  Home. It was easy for Kat to forget that Hale had one when, in fact, he had several.

  “Oh,” Hale said. “Right. See you at the gala?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Kat said. She watched Hale move into the shadows of the building, nothing but footsteps retreating, beating out a pulse somewhere deep inside of Kat, telling her it was too late to stop now.

  Katarina Bishop didn’t like dresses. It wasn’t a feminist statement. She would never judge anyone who felt the call of a twirly skirt or toile-covered confections. But once a girl gets a bow caught in a security gate at Buckingham Palace, it stands to reason that she would be a no-fuss, no-muss, jeans-and-T-shirt type of female. Unfortunately, it was not a jeans-and T-shirt type of night.

  “Stand still,” Gabrielle told her. She squeezed the smaller girl by the shoulders and tugged on a string.

  “Ouch,” Kat said.

  “You’ve got a little waist,” Gabrielle said. “That’s good. At least something’s smaller than your boobs.”

  “Well,” Kat said, “that’s a relief.”

  Gabrielle shrugged. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

  “Shooting wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  Kat wanted nothing more than to take off the gown and burn the high heels that Gabrielle had picked out for the occasion, but every thief knows that camouflage is half the battle, and Kat was standing on the brink of enemy territory. She needed all the help she could get.

  “What kind of company has a black-tie-optional product launch?” Kat asked.

  “The Hale kind,” Gabrielle said, not looking up. “And it’s not a launch, it’s a gala. And from what I hear, it’s going to be a huge homage to Hazel or something; so, e
ven without the con, this is a big night for Hale. And you’re going.”

  “Are you scolding me?” Kat asked. She had to wonder if this was what it felt like to be a teenage girl with a mother.

  “I’m telling you that Kat-the-girlfriend has work to do. Tonight isn’t just about Kat-the-thief.”

  “I know,” Kat said.

  Gabrielle stepped back and eyed her cousin. “Because you realize you just sent him back into the lion’s den, don’t you?”

  Kat thought about the dark look that crossed his face every time he saw a picture of his grandmother, of the loneliness that lived behind those eyes, and said, “I know.”

  “With his family.”

  “I know,” Kat said one final time.

  “And old friends…” Gabrielle didn’t finish the thought. She just looked Kat up and down. “I bet Natalie’s wearing heels tonight.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Come on, Kat.”

  “I’m not worried Hale’s going to cheat, Gabrielle.” Kat studied her reflection in the mirror. “I’m just…”

  Gabrielle took a step back, but she wasn’t looking at Kat’s dress or her hair. She stared squarely into her cousin’s eyes and said, “Spill.”

  “I’m not sure. It’s just… Do you think he’s doing okay?”

  Gabrielle considered the question, and when she answered, she spoke carefully, like the words themselves might easily bruise. “I don’t know, Kat. I really don’t. I’m lucky. I’ve never lost anyone. But I am curious—two weeks after your mother died, how were you?”

  Kat stared into the mirror and tried hard not to think about the answer.

  When Kat, at last, saw the main entrance of Hale Industries, the lobby was filled with towering arrangements of flowers on every table, an orchestra playing near the stairs. But walking through the door with Gabrielle, Kat looked around at the people who filled the party, all decked out in their finest gems, and she realized she’d rather be in the alley with Silas than at the party with these people any day.

  She was, however, alone in that opinion.

  “Ooh,” Gabrielle said when a woman walked past in a diamond and emerald choker. “I want it.”