At this the guard bristled and stood up even straighter. “Now see here—”
“No, you see, my good man. Out here, see, we’ve got snow. So in there, I’d bet, you’ve got heat. And where there’s heat there’s gas; and where there’s gas there’s . . .”
Angus trailed off while his brother said, “Boom.”
“So where do you need to go?” the guard asked in disgust.
Angus tapped the clipboard in his hand. “First floor. Main corridor.”
The guard looked at the Bagshaws one final time. He did not see the boys hold their breath as they waited to hear him say, “Well . . . all right.”
In such a public place, on such a busy day, it was no surprise at all that no one worried when a smaller-than-average boy with curly hair and a shirt that never stayed tucked in, slipped into the men’s room on the second floor. Of course, they also didn’t hear the same boy say, “Kat, I’m in position in my . . . office.”
As offices went, sadly, Simon had seen worse. The bathroom stall was larger than the closet he’d been locked inside in Istanbul. The toilet was far more comfortable than the tree stump he’d been forced to use as a desk in Buenos Aires.
He sat perfectly still, waiting for his laptop to start up, and as he looked down at the video image of Gregory Wainwright asleep in his office, Simon had to smile and think that he had been in far worse situations indeed.
Kat had been right fifteen days before when she’d sat in the library of Hale’s upstate house and asked if his family owned a cell phone company. Fifteen days. Somehow, to Hale, it felt longer.
When his phone rang, Hale answered but didn’t say hello. He stood outside the Henley, braced against the cold, and listened to Uncle Eddie’s gruff “I heard from Paris. You were right about him.”
And that was all either of them had to say. Hale slowly slipped the phone back into his pocket and stared at the big glass door.
“Well, are we getting on with this, or aren’t we?” Marcus’s voice brought Hale back to the moment. “Be mindful of the”— the sound of the thump cut him off midsentence—“bump.”
As Katarina Bishop walked down the long hallway toward the Romani Room, she didn’t seem to notice the two boys in the blue jumpsuits who were busily working around an open vent and several large machines. She skirted around the temporary barriers and nodded politely at one of the uniformed guards who stood nearby.
The man nodded back and said, “Sorry about the work, miss. Can I help you find something?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Kat looked at the art-lined hallway as if she were seeing it for the first time. “I’m just . . . looking, I guess.”
“You go ahead and look all you want. But don’t touch.” The guard chuckled.
And as Kat stepped into the Romani Room, she smiled and thought, Oh, I wouldn’t dare.
Sometime in the past week, the Henley’s least impressive collection had become Katarina Bishop’s favorite. Maybe it was the simple brushstrokes, the subdued use of light. Or maybe Kat was simply drawn to the other paintings that hung in that room—the ones the tourists couldn’t see.
Collectively, Arturo Taccone’s paintings were worth more than half a billion dollars . . . and her father’s life.
“How are we doing, Simon?” she whispered into the small microphone in her collar.
“Just about . . .” Simon started slowly. And then he stopped. “Wow.”
“What?” she asked, panic in her voice.
“Nothing,” he said too quickly.
“What?” she asked again.
“Well . . . it’s just that . . . your boobs look even bigger on TV.”
Kat took that opportunity to turn and glare at the nearest security camera. In his bathroom stall thirty feet away, Simon nearly fell off the toilet.
Kat wanted to look at her watch, but she didn’t dare. It was really happening, and there was nothing she could do to reverse it.
The crowd at the mouth of the Romani Room was already parting. Girls were turning to stare at the young billionaire entering the room. And in front of him—in a wheelchair—was Marcus.
“You see him?” Simon said in Kat’s ear, and she started to nod, but in that instant, Hale caught Kat’s eyes across the room.
They weren’t supposed to know each other.
There wasn’t supposed to be a look. A word. Not even the smallest glance.
And yet Hale was staring right at her, a desperate look in his eyes.
“Slow down!” Marcus snapped, and Kat wasn’t sure whether he was in character or not. He was supposed to be a cantankerous old man, but it was also true that Hale was proceeding far too quickly in her direction. “Let me out of this contraption!” Marcus shouted.
This seemed to remind Hale that there was a larger game at play. He stopped the wheelchair, and Marcus gripped the handrails as if attempting to push himself up.
“Now, Uncle,” Hale started, leaning down toward the man who was no more his blood relative than Uncle Eddie, “you know the doctors said—”
“Doctors!” Marcus snapped. It was the single-loudest thing Kat had ever heard him say. The word echoed in the long room. More people were turning to stare. Kat worried that Marcus might be enjoying his moment a bit too much, but there was nothing she could do about it.
“Don’t just stand there!” he snapped at Hale in the manner of someone who had several years’ worth of snaps bottled up inside of him and was very much enjoying this opportunity to let them out. “Help me up.”