Gabrielle boarding a train in Vienna, her hair blowing in the wind.
Hale striding through the lobby of a Las Vegas hotel.
Her father sipping coffee, crossing a crowded Paris square.
Uncle Eddie sitting on a park bench in Brooklyn.
The people she most cared about were depicted there in black-and-white and the message was clear: Arturo Taccone knew how to find the people and things that were important to her, and if Kat didn’t do the same, he wouldn’t be the only one to lose something he loved.
For the first time in Katarina Bishop’s life, she truly understood that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Chapter 20
Kat was late coming home. To the Hale family’s country home, that is. Kat’s only home was a brownstone in New York, and the man who ruled that household had strictly forbidden her from doing what she was doing.
She felt the envelope of photographs rub against her bare stomach, where she’d tucked it beneath the waistband of her jeans. Hiding it. The foyer was big and cold and empty. Paintings of Hales long since dead and gone lined the hall. Kat imagined them keeping watch, waiting for some living breathing member of the family to come home.
Kat missed Uncle Eddie.
She suddenly craved soup.
She wanted to talk to her father.
She took a step and felt the envelope against her stomach again, and instantly, she wanted to call everyone she ever knew and tell them to scatter—to hide. But the only people she knew were professional thieves. They never stopped hiding.
“Angus, she’s back!” Hamish Bagshaw’s voice had changed, Kat was sure of it. He sat at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her along the way.
As he chomped his gum and grinned, his brother stepped into the hallway, carrying a bowl of ice. “Brilliant,” Angus said.
Kat wanted to keep walking, but Angus stepped in front of her.
“We were hoping we might have a minute of your valuable time,” he said.
Hamish cast a quick glance down the empty hall and then added, “Alone.”
Angus was eleven months older than his brother, and slightly taller. They both had hair that was somewhere between red and blond, and skin that looked as if it might burn even on a cloudy day. Their shoulders were broad but their arms were scrawny, and Kat realized that they were still growing—that they were still a long way from being men.
“What is it?” Kat asked.
“We’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while about . . . well . . . recent unfortunate events, and we just wanted to say—”
“Wait.” Kat stopped him. “What recent unfortunate events?”
“Well . . .” Hamish started. “We had a bit of trouble on a job a while back.”
“In Luxembourg?” Kat asked.
“Did ol’ Hale tell you about that, then?” Hamish asked. “That was a right good con, that was—”
“Hamish!” Kat snapped. The brothers shook their heads.
“After Luxembourg,” Angus clarified.
“What—” Kat started, but Hamish was already throwing his arm around her, saying, “You know what I love about you, Kat?”
“Besides your beauty,” Angus interjected, even though, to Kat’s knowledge, neither of them had ever noticed she was female.
“Besides that,” Hamish confirmed with a nod.
“And your mind,” Angus added.
“A truly great mind,” Hamish agreed.
“Guys.” Kat felt her patience wane. “What happened ?”
“You see, Kat, it wasn’t so much what . . .” Angus let the word linger.
“As who,” his brother finished.
Angus pulled away, then studied her. “You really haven’t heard?” As Kat shook her head, his gaze fell to the floor. “Wow, Kat, you really were gone, weren’t you?”
More than the feeling of walking back into Uncle Eddie’s kitchen, the look on the two brothers’ faces told her that it was true—she had done it. Katarina Bishop had really left the life. Once. For a little while. It hadn’t been a dream.
“What happened?” Kat asked.
“It’s not that bad, really,” Hamish said. “We shouldn’t have—”
“Am I going to have to call Uncle Eddie?” she threatened.
“We didn’t know they were nuns!”
There is a rule older than the Chelovek Pseudonima—a truth not even the greatest liar can deny: You cannot con an honest man. But if you do . . .
You’ll regret it.
“We’re blacklisted, Kat,” Angus admitted with a guilty glance at his brother. “Uncle Eddie says we can’t work for a while, but your dad’s always been good to us, so if you say leave, we leave. If you say we’re in . . .”
Kat stood there looking at the very boys who had stolen the first tooth she had ever lost and tried to ransom it to the tooth fairy; the two young men who had once stolen a Tyrannosaurus rex from the Museum of Natural History—one bone at a time.
“Guys, Uncle Eddie doesn’t want anyone doing this job.” Kat turned and started through the big sprawling house, calling behind her, “You’re in!”
Walking into the library a moment later, Kat knew something was wrong.
For starters, Simon was even paler than usual. Gabrielle lay on the sofa, her feet propped up, a damp rag on her forehead; her hair was significantly frizzier, and as Angus placed the bowl of ice beside her, neither Bagshaw even tried to look down her shirt.
“Welcome back.” She noticed Hale leaning against a window seat on the far side of the room, not quite sitting and not quite standing. He pushed away from the wall. “So glad you could join us.”