She waited.
“Any second now,” Simon said through her earpiece.
“This year would be good,” Nick replied.
“You can’t rush greatness, guys,” Simon chided back, and Kat thought he sounded a tad too cocky for a boy who was currently operating out of the third bathroom stall on the left.
Suddenly, the red glow of the emergency lights was replaced by a pulsing blue light. “Simon!” Kat cried. “Rush something!”
A new siren—softer but somehow twice as menacing— sounded, coursing through the room.
“Simon! We’ve got to move. Now!”
“Just a second,” he said.
But Kat didn’t care about the encryption that was currently keeping them at bay. She was far more concerned about the spinning blue lights and the mechanical voice that was counting down, saying, “Fire-protection measures will take effect in FIVE. FOUR . . .”
“Simon!” Kat cried.
“Just one—”
“We don’t have a second!” Kat yelled just as the lights stopped spinning and a sound more terrifying than any siren pierced the air.
“Of course it is!” Gregory Wainwright shouted. A cell phone was trained to his ear, but his gaze stayed fixed on the two billionaires (or, more accurately, one billionaire and one butler) who stood five feet away, watching dark smoke spiral into a pale gray sky.
The Henley, after all, was burning. And all Gregory Wainwright could do was stand at a safe distance, yelling at the fire.
Hale felt the man staring, recognized the forced authority in his voice as he barked, “Absolutely! You should do that.”
Hale turned his back against the cold wind and tried not to think about the smoke, the fire, and most of all . . .
“Kat,” he whispered, silently cursing himself. He should have forced her to talk to him. He should have left Marcus, abandoned his role—made Kat listen to what Uncle Eddie’d had to say. But it was too late. He was stuck outside with the director while she was locked in there. With Nick. And right now Hale was as useless as Wainwright as he stood out in the cold, trying to pinpoint the moment when it all went wrong.
It was a good plan, wasn’t it? They had been prepared, hadn’t they? Or maybe not. A crew is only as strong as its weakest link, after all. Maybe they had been reckless and stupid and careless. Maybe Uncle Eddie had been right. Maybe this was simply what happened to people who dared to take on Visily Romani.
“Now, now, Mr. Hale.” The director placed a comforting hand on Hale’s shoulder. “There’s no need to worry. I assure you, our fire-protection measures are state of the art.”
“That is a relief,” Hale muttered.
“In fact, that was my head of security on the phone just now,” the director said. “He assures me that the affected area was completely evacuated.” But then Gregory Wainwright seemed to notice the concern this news brought to Hale’s eyes. “Don’t worry, Mr. Hale. Our fire-protection measures will be activated any second now.”
“What kind of measures would those be?” Marcus asked.
The director chuckled. “Well, we can’t use your common garden hose, now, can we? The water would do as much harm to a three-hundred-year-old painting as the smoke and fire would. Instead, we simply suck all the oxygen out of the room. Without oxygen, any fire dies.”
The director’s phone rang again. He turned to take it while Hale’s gaze turned back to the museum, his thoughts on the girl still stuck inside, with the boy who would never be a member of the family.
Kat knew the change was coming before she heard the terrible sucking sound.
“Simon . . .” she said again, fighting the urge to run across the room before she heard Simon yell . . .
“Now! The cameras are blind. You’re clear.”
Kat didn’t need to be told twice. She felt Nick at her elbow as they ran side by side down the length of the long exhibit hall to where the wheelchair sat, abandoned.
She fumbled with the straps that held the oxygen tanks to Marcus’s chair.
“You’ve got less than six seconds until you’re out of air, guys,” Simon warned as Kat tossed a tank toward Nick. “Four seconds,” Simon said as the hissing, sucking sound grew louder.
The room had grown darker, the paintings somehow fuzzy. And as the floor began to spin, Kat fell to her knees and marveled at what an excellent security measure a spinning floor made.
“Kat!” Simon screamed her name.
She heard Nick drop the canister. It smashed against his toe and toppled onto the hard floor.
“The masks!” Simon yelled, and something about the word made her notice the long plastic tubes in her hands— see the strange masks protruding from a pouch on the back of Marcus’s chair.
Kat was supposed to be doing something, she was sure, but she suddenly felt so sleepy—the masks seemed so far away.
“Kat!” Simon yelled again. She summoned her last ounce of strength, placed the first mask over her mouth, and drew in the pure oxygen.
The floor stopped spinning.
The paintings suddenly seemed beautiful again.
While Kat surveyed the room, Nick carefully unscrewed pieces of the wheelchair. As he tipped the metal tubes, a variety of tools slid into his palms. They both kept goggles secured over their eyes, and their breathing masks over their mouths, so there was no talking as Nick placed a tool into her hands, and Kat walked to the first painting, Flowers on a Cool Spring Day.
In the past week, Kat had come to love the combination of colors in the blossoms, the play of the light. It was not Henley’s most prized possession, but Kat found it beautiful in a soothing way. Yet nothing would ever be as beautiful as what Kat hoped lay behind it.