The child who had never had a house felt homesick. The thief who had robbed the Henley wanted help. And the girl who’d walked away from her family business came to realize that, no matter what she did, she never could leave the kitchen.
“So…someone stole the Cleopatra,” Hamish said, as if he couldn’t take the silence one minute more.
His brother gave a low whistle and shook his head. “Wish we’d been around for that.”
“No.” Gabrielle repositioned her ice pack. “You don’t.”
“Angus,” Kat said, turning to the brothers. “Hamish, her real accent is British. Do you know her?”
The two brothers stared, each daring the other to speak.
“No,” Amish said softly.
“How bad is it?” Hale asked her.
“Bad,” Kat said. She stared down at the granite, trying to find a pattern in the specks of light and dark, but there was no sense to be found in it. “We’re blown. She knows both of you.” She pointed between Hale and Gabrielle.
“She doesn’t know me,” Simon said.
Kat laughed. “I think we should assume she knows everyone. It would be like…” She shook her head, tried to bring her mind back into focus.
“Uncle Eddie,” Gabrielle finally finished for her. “It would be like trying to con Uncle Eddie.”
“Yeah,” Kat said. “She knows…everything.”
“Like what?” Gabrielle asked.
“Like who we are…Like why we’re here…Like every con we could possibly run to get the emerald back…”
“So?” Hale asked.
“So she’s better than I am!”
Part of Kat hoped that at least one member of her crew would exclaim, Of course not ! Another part of her presumed that someone might say, Don’t be ridiculous. But no one quoted her résumé. Not a soul mentioned the Henley.
“We can’t do it,” Kat admitted slowly. “We just can’t…win.”
Hamish smiled and rubbed his hands together. “Sure we can. What do you say? Pigs in a Blanket?” He leaned over the cool counter and raised his eyebrows at Gabrielle.
“The only way I’ll get under a blanket with you is if both of us are on fire,” she told him.
“You guys don’t get it,” Kat snapped. “We can’t con her.
She knows all the old cons. She probably invented half of them.”
“So we think of some new ones.” Gabrielle rose.
“She knows us.” Kat looked at Hale.
“So we don’t rely on us,” Hale countered.
“She knows Uncle Eddie. I’d bet money she knows everyone we know.”
Hale moved closer. “So we find someone she doesn’t know.”
The ship was moving, slipping farther and farther from the shore, and yet it felt as if the whole world was watching. The kitchen was too crowded. Kat’s stomach turned, and so she kept her gaze on Hale, as if he were a solid point on the horizon that she was going to focus on until she could no longer feel the yacht rock or sway.
“We’re going to find someone she doesn’t know,” Hale said again.
Right then, Kat swore she wouldn’t look away for anything, but that was before she heard the footsteps, saw the shadow in the doorway, and heard the voice that asked, “You mean someone like me?”
CHAPTER 24
The first time Kat had seen the boy who stood framed in the doorway, they’d both been standing on a street corner in Paris. Their first conversation had been over a picked lock and a picked pocket, and Kat had had a sneaking suspicion that she was in the room with someone with a great deal of natural talent and the subsequent disrespect for laws and truth. But those weren’t the moments that came to Kat’s mind as the whole room stood staring, waiting to see what other surprises might be lurking on the other side of that door.
“What?” Nick asked, looking at the awestruck teens. “You can’t recognize me when you aren’t leaving me in a locked gallery for the police to find?”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Nicholas,” Gabrielle said, casually inspecting her nails. “We knew museum security would find you long before the cops did.”
“Sweet as always, Gabrielle.” Nick nodded at the girl, then turned to Simon and the Bagshaws. “Fellas…sorry to barge in.”
“I think the technical term is stow away,” Hale said.
Nick snapped his fingers. “I think you’re right.”
“What?” Hale looked him up and down. “No wet suit?”
“Didn’t want to mess up my hair,” Nick said with a smile.
And through it all, Kat sat speechless.
“Boys, boys,” Gabrielle said, leaning against the counter like a jazz singer from the thirties. “Play nice.”
“I am nice,” Hale said, but his voice was made of glass. “I was just about to ask our old friend Nick how Paris is these days.”
“Lyon,” Nick corrected. “My mom’s at Interpol headquarters now.” His gaze slid sideways to Kat. “Or didn’t you know?”
He sounded perfectly straight when he said it, and that was when Kat realized two very important things: the first was that Nick was going to keep her secret. The second was that Nick…was good. She wasn’t sure which she wanted to think about, so instead she just said, “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough.”