Thomas woke just before dawn. In his first confused moment, he thought that the rustling he heard was Reggie Anderson come back. But then he realized Reggie would not have sneaked all the way up to the attic. Sitting up, he saw Max moving quietly between the familiar jumble of furniture and beds. She glanced behind her, as though to verify no one was watching, and Thomas shrank back into the shadows. In the moonlight, her face looked white and worried. Then she turned around again and slipped out into the hall.
He climbed out of bed and padded quickly across the carpet to the door, passing only a few feet from Danny, who was snoring loudly in an armchair, where he had fallen asleep after toasting Hugo and Phoebe. Thomas eased open the door with two fingers, praying it wouldn’t creak, and peeked out into the hall. A thin fissure of light spilled out into the hall from the bathroom. Thomas debated whether to knock and ask if everything was all right, or to wait for her in the hall, or to return to bed and question her later.
Then he heard more rustling and Max muttering, “It’s got to be here. . . . It has to be. . . .”
He took a deep breath, approached the bathroom door, and knocked softly.
Instantly, the rustling stopped. “Max?” he said. “It’s Thomas.”
“Go away,” she said fiercely. But instead, he pushed open the door.
Max sprang to her feet, fist clenched, as if she were going to attack him. In a second, Thomas took in everything: her rucksack open on the ground, its contents scattered across the linoleum; Max’s expression of fear; the white half-moons of her knuckles. Then he realized she wasn’t winding up to punch him. She was gripping something in her fist.
Suddenly, Thomas understood.
“Show me,” he said.
For a second, he thought she would refuse. But then her shoulders sagged and she held out her hand and opened her fingers, so he could see the silver lighter in her palm.
The silver lighter with a blue sapphire in its catch.
Thomas stared. “That’s . . . that’s Mr. Anderson’s lighter.” He looked up at Max’s miserable expression. “The one Reggie wanted.”
“I didn’t know it was anything special,” Max said quickly.
Thomas sighed. “You’ll have to give it back,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I can’t get busted for stealing,” Max said. “It was just a game. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was dipping in and out of people’s pockets, to see if anyone would notice—”
“Wait a second.” Thomas suddenly felt very alert. “Slow down. You took the lighter from someone’s pocket? Not from Mr. Anderson’s apartment?”
“I was bored,” she said. “Everyone was gabbing on and on about Potts. . . .” She shrugged.
An electric excitement zipped up Thomas’s spine. Max had lifted Mr. Anderson’s lighter from the pocket of one of the guests at Potts’s memorial. Since Reggie said that Mr. Anderson never went anywhere without his lighter, that could only mean one thing: someone had stolen it from Mr. Anderson.
He took a deep breath. “Max, listen to me carefully. This is important. Whose pocket did you pick?”
To his infinite disappointment, Max shook her head. “He was wearing a dark blue suit. You have to move fast, you know, when you’re snatching, otherwise—”
“Think,” Thomas cut her off. “Do you remember anything about him? Anything at all?”
“I told you,” Max said irritably. “I wasn’t taking notes.”
Thomas massaged the bridge of his nose. There had been hundreds of people at Potts’s memorial, most of them strangers. But had he recognized anyone? When he closed his eyes, all he could see was the glare of a dozen camera flashes. All he could hear was Evans telling him to look this way, look this way . . .
And then it was as if the flash was not in his mind but in his whole body, in his whole mind. He opened his eyes.
Evans.
Max was frowning at him. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
Thomas’s heart was going fast. “Please, Max. Try and remember. Did you pick Evans’s pocket?”
Before she could answer, Pippa spoke up from the hall. “What about Evans’s pocket?”
Thomas turned around. Pippa and Sam were standing in the hall. Sam was rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
Thomas snatched the lighter from Max’s hand.
“Max took this from someone yesterday,” Thomas said.
Pippa glared at Max. “I thought I told you—”
Sam gawked. “That’s the lighter Reggie was after.”
“I didn’t mean nothing by it,” Max grumbled.
“Anything!” Pippa said exasperatedly. “You didn’t mean— Oh, just forget it.”