The guard eyed the device again, then patted Simon on the back. “Lucky kid. You watch where you’re going, okay?”
“Will do,” Simon said, and that, more than anything, wasn’t a lie.
The docents at the Henley were used to seeing almost every sort of behavior from the thousands of guests who paraded through the museum each year.
But when a teenage girl in amazingly high heels stumbled through the halls that day, there was something about her that simply demanded the guards’ attention. Some said later it was her short skirt. Others wisely observed that it was more likely the legs that protruded beneath it. Whatever the case, their eyes were most certainly not on her hands.
“Wow!” the girl exclaimed too loudly as she walked into the room that had recently become known as the Romani Room. She craned her head to look at the ornate ceiling overhead. “That’s tall!”
The docents at the Henley did not know what every thief knows—that if there’s no way to do something without being seen, then it’s best to do it in a way that will be well and fully stared at.
“That,” Gabrielle said, spinning on her high heels and pointing at the painting that hung at the center of the room, “is pretty!”
The guards who were monitoring the Romani Room that day had never been accused of being lazy or slow, of being dense or unaware. But that did not change the fact that they had never seen a seemingly intoxicated young woman teeter across a marble floor and lunge for a painting worth a quarter of a million dollars.
The tourists, who, so far, had been far too proper to openly stare, had to hurry out of the way. The guards, who had been too busy studying the young woman’s legs to notice where those legs were carrying her, could only gape.
Her hand brushed against the frame, and her legs immediately stopped being the most interesting thing about her.
A shock echoed throughout the room. Metal grates descended from the ceiling, blocking the doors in a split second while women screamed and children cried and a siren pierced the air so loudly that men dropped their children’s hands to cover their own ears.
Even the guards cringed and bent over, the crackles of their walkie-talkies lost in the chaos of sirens and trapped tourists. When they remembered the girl with the long legs and the short skirt who lay on the cold marble floor, she was too unconscious and too pretty for anyone at the Henley to stay mad for long.
No one noticed the way Kat stood on the other side of the grates watching everything unfold, plugs in her ears blocking out the sound. Plans were already taking shape in her mind as she turned and walked slowly toward the exit.
If it hadn’t been for the alarms and the grates, the trapped tourists and the unconscious girl, someone at the Henley might have noticed the two goons who appeared at Kat’s side as if from nowhere.
They might have seen Kat and the men disappear behind the tinted glass of a stretch limousine and noted that Kat didn’t scream.
They might have heard her say, “Hello, Signor Taccone.”
Chapter 19
The first thing Kat did, of course, was kick herself. She should have been expecting this. She should have heard them coming. But the alarms had been too loud and the earplugs too effective, and her mind had been too distracted by the serious work she had to do, and so Kat’s guard was down that day. But she wasn’t going to let Arturo Taccone know it.
He smiled frostily at her from the other side of the limo’s backseat, and despite everything, she was almost glad for the warmth of the goonlike bodies on either side of her.
“Your efforts are entertaining, Katarina,” he said with a slight laugh. “Ineffective, but entertaining.”
Kat thought back to the sight of her cousin slumping to the cold floor of the gallery while the Henley’s state-of-the-art defenses were put to the test by a sixteen-year-old girl. And her legs.
“I told you I wasn’t the right person for the job,” Kat said. “Now, there’s a Japanese crew that comes highly recommended. I could get you a name and number if you’re interested.”
Taccone’s dismissive wave made Kat realize that he was enjoying this. She thought of his hidden bunker, and she knew somehow that the joy he got from keeping things so beautiful and precious under lock and key was nothing compared to the thrill of following them across Europe. Paintings are just things, after all. What Arturo Taccone really loved was the chase.
“So tell me, Katarina”—he jerked his head in the direction of the grand old building that was disappearing in the distance—“what are you going to steal? Da Vinci’s Angel, perhaps? I would pay handsomely to add that to my collection, you know.”
“I’m not a thief,” Kat said. He looked at her. “Anymore,” she added. “I’m not a thief anymore.”
Taccone didn’t try to hide the amusement in his eyes. “And yet here you are.”
“I’m here to get your paintings, Signor Taccone, so technically I’m re-stealing.” Again, Hale’s voice echoed in her head. “Re-stealing is more like a double negative.”
“You think your father has hidden my paintings inside the Henley?” Taccone scoffed, a cruel guttural sound. “And exactly why would he do that?”
“Not my dad,” she said. “Remember?”
“Oh, Katarina,” he said with a sigh. “If not your father, then who?”
She thought for a moment about Visily Romani—about a legend, a ghost. But he wasn’t a ghost, not really. Somewhere in the world there was a man—a very real man—with blood and bones and the necessary knowledge to break into the most secure museum in the world, and to use that particular name to do it.