Ten men stood at the gallery’s entrance, tasers drawn, gas masks over their faces, as they watched doors swing open up and down the Henley’s halls.
Collectively, they represented one of the most highly trained private security forces in the world.
And yet nothing could have prepared them for what they saw.
“Wait,” the news correspondent said, and immediately Arturo Taccone turned back to the screen. “We are receiving the first, unconfirmed accounts that the Henley might be secure.”
“Stop,” Arturo Taccone said, and his driver pulled to the curb.
“Kids!” Kat heard one of the guards yell through the haze that filled her mind. “It’s a bunch of kids!”
She rolled onto her side and looked up through the fog as a man knelt on one knee and leaned toward her. “It’s okay,” he told her softly.
“Gas,” she mumbled and coughed. “Fire. The museum was on—” A coughing fit cut her off. Someone handed her a mask, and she breathed in fresh air.
There was more coughing around the room. From the corner of her eye she saw Simon holding a mask to his face. He was lying on the ground beside an empty artist’s stand, clutching a blank canvas. The guards were busy helping Angus and Hamish to their unsteady feet, so they never saw the smallest of the boys smile behind his mask. But Kat saw.
Lying on the floor that day, Kat saw everything.
“What is this?” Kat knew the voice. She had last seen the man disappearing into the crowd and the smoke, but this time Hale was not beside him. “Who are these children?” Gregory Wainwright demanded of the guards.
The guard pointed to the seal on Simon’s burgundy blazer. “Looks like they’re from the Knightsbury Institute.”
“Why weren’t they evacuated?” the director asked of the guards, but didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and snapped at the teens. “Why didn’t you evacuate?”
“We—” Everyone in the room turned to the girl with the long legs and the short skirt who was rising unsteadily to her feet. Two of the guards rushed to take her by the arm and help her to stand. “We had a”—coughing overtook her for a moment, but if Gabrielle was playing her part too fervently, Kat was the only one to think it—“had a class.”
She pointed to the bag at her feet. Brushes and paints were strewn across the marble floor where they’d fallen in the chaos. Wooden easels stood in a long line, facing the rows of art. No one stopped to notice that there were five children. Five easels. Four blank canvases. No one was in the mood for counting.
“We were supposed to . . .” She coughed again. One of the guards placed a hand protectively on her back. “They told us to wait here. They said this exhibit was closed so that we could try to copy those.” Gabrielle pointed from the blank canvases on their easels to the Old Masters that lined the walls. “When the sirens sounded, we tried to leave, but the doors were—” She coughed one more time and looked up at the men who surrounded her. Her eyelashes might have batted. Her cheeks might have blushed. A dozen different things might have happened, but the end result was that no one doubted her when she said, “Locked.”
Well, almost no one.
“What class? Why didn’t I know about any such class?” the director growled at the guards.
The gas was almost completely gone. Kat was breathing more normally. She smoothed the skirt of her uniform, feeling as if her balance had almost completely returned. Two and two were starting to equal four again as she turned and pointed to the sign on the open door, which read: GALLERY CLOSED FOR PRIVATE LECTURE (THIS PROGRAM MADE POSSIBLE BY THE W. W. HALE FOUNDATION FOR ART EXCELLENCE).
“But . . .” the director started, then turned. He ran a hand across his sweating face. “But the oxygen? The fire security protocols should have killed them!” He turned back to Gabrielle. “Why aren’t you dead?”
“Sir,” one of the guards cut in. “The fire was isolated in the next corridor. The oxygen deprivation measures wouldn’t have kicked in here unless—”
“Keep searching the galleries!” the director yelled. “Search them all.”
“The galleries are all secure, sir,” one of the guards assured him.
“We thought this gallery was secure!” Wainwright looked down, mumbling something to himself about oversights and liability. “Search them!”
“Sir,” one of the guards said softly, stepping closer. Kat savored the irony as he whispered, “They’re just kids.”
“Sir,” Simon said, his voice shaking so violently that Kat believed he was honestly on the verge of tears. “Could I call my mother? I don’t feel so good.”
And then one of the most brilliant technical experts in the world passed out cold.
The sound that came next was unlike anything Katarina Bishop had ever heard. It wasn’t the screech of an alarm. It was anything but the roar of sirens. One of the busiest museums in the world was like a ghost town, echoing. Haunting. And as the guards carried Simon into the grand promenade and its cleaner air, Kat half expected to see the shadow of Visily Romani hovering over them, telling her somehow that she’d done well, but she wasn’t finished. Not yet.
Through the Impressionist gallery’s open door, Kat watched Gabrielle slowly putting the blank canvases into the large carrying cases. Hamish and Angus hurriedly stuffed paintbrushes into backpacks. Kat moved to comfort Simon, but then she stopped. She listened.
A thud. An echo. A footstep.