“Backup generators only give us fifteen seconds,” Simon said with a shake of his head.
They’d been through every con they’d ever heard of, and a few Kat guessed the Bagshaw brothers had made up on the spot, but she didn’t notice the hour until she saw Gabrielle stifle a yawn. Kat was too consumed by a ticking clock in the back of her mind. A deadline. A plan. She stared at the lists and diagrams they’d drawn in Magic Marker, and after that had dried up, eyeliner, all over the glass of the library windows.
“It’s no use,” Hale said, dropping to one of the leather sofas. “If we had a month . . . maybe.”
“We don’t,” Kat told him.
“If we had two maybe three more people . . .”
Kat closed her eyes. “We don’t.”
“Princess Bride?” Hamish offered, but his brother turned to him.
“Do you know where we can find a six-fingered man on such short notice?”
Kat could feel the air changing—the hope slipping away. Maybe they were too tired. Maybe they’d simply been closed up in that room for too long. But she actually jumped when she heard Hale say, “We need to call Uncle Eddie.”
“No.” Kat had thought it, of course. But it took her a moment to realize the voice that answered belonged to Gabrielle. “Uncle Eddie said no. Don’t you guys get it? If he said no, then . . .” she trailed off. It seemed to take all of her energy to sit upright on the sofa.
“We have to do it,” Kat finished.
Simon looked at Kat. “What about at night? Romani did it at night.”
If Romani did it, Kat thought but didn’t dare say. She didn’t want to remind anyone—least of all herself—that there might be nothing behind those five paintings but the most sensitive antitheft devices ever designed by man. That this might be, in every way, a ghost hunt, a fool’s errand. The greatest con the greatest con man to never live had ever pulled.
“You see these, Kat?” Hale gestured to the plan-covered windows. “One of these plans might work—maybe—for the best eight-man crew in the world. Except”—he turned, doing a quick headcount—“yeah, there are still just six of us.”
“We can do it with six.”
“Six makes it risky.”
“Yeah,” Kat said, spinning on him. “So was serving as the grease man when Dad robbed the Tower of London when I was five, but I did it.”
In the corner, Hamish and Angus were smiling. “Good times,” Angus said.
“You were late tonight.” Hale’s voice was cool, even cold, and Kat knew this was the time to tell him about the photos. Either that or walk away.
“Gabrielle—” she turned and looked at her cousin—“thanks. And um . . . moisturize. Simon,” Kat said as she tried not to look at Hale, “while I’m gone, figure out how to get eyes and ears in there.”
“Sure,” Simon said. “We could run a . . . Wait. Where are you going?”
When Kat reached the doorway, somehow Marcus was already there, a suitcase in his hand. “I believe you’ll be needing this, miss.”
Hale sighed. “Paris?” He looked away. “Say hi to your dad.”
5 Days Until Deadline
Chapter 21
Amelia Bennett had not been the youngest person in Interpol’s Art Crime division to achieve the rank of detective. She was not the only woman. And yet, in an agency that was in every way a part of the Old Boy network, it was impossible for anyone to look at her without first registering that she was neither old nor boy. This was only part of the mystery that surrounded her when she’d moved from London to the Paris branch. The thing that most mystified the professional mystery solvers of the small branch of Interpol’s main European office was that Amelia Bennett was so lucky.
And this morning, of course, was no exception.
No sooner had she walked into the cramped, unglamorous office, than one of her Old Boy colleagues met her at the door.
“You’ve got a witness to your gallery robbery,” he said in English, and Detective Bennett did not seem the least bit surprised that her cold case was warm again. “An American girl,” the man continued. “A tourist. She was down the street the night of the break-in. She says she saw a man in the area, acting suspiciously.”
At this, Detective Bennett raised her eyebrows. “Is he anyone we know?”
The man smiled and led her into the room where the young girl sat waiting.
“Thank you so much for coming in. I’m Detective Bennett,” the woman said. “I’m sorry. I don’t believe I got your name?”
“O’Hara,” the petite girl said. “Melanie O’Hara.”
“The Henley?”
Kat heard her father’s voice. Through the small binoculars she always carried, she saw him walking through the crowd of the familiar square, his phone held to his ear, oblivious to the fact that his only daughter was standing in the bell tower of the church, watching everything.
“That’s a nice way to greet your daughter. No ‘Hi, honey, how’s school?’” she teased.
Her father kept his left hand shoved in his pocket, deep inside his cashmere coat, and Kat couldn’t help thinking that it had gotten a lot colder in the past week.
“The Henley?” he asked again. “You know, someone said that my daughter was going to”—he stopped and surveyed the crowd while lowering his voice—“rob the Henley, but that can’t be. My daughter is at the Colgan School.”