“Hello, Marianne.” Eddie lingered on the word, then kissed her cheek. “You’re looking well, my dear.”
He gave her a sly wink, and when he pinched the maid’s bottom, Kat heard Hale’s aunt tell her husband, “Well, he certainly acts like Reginald.”
Then Eddie turned his attention to Hale. “So, I assume that you’re the young man who inherited Hazel’s half of the company.”
Only Garrett was able to speak. “Her…half?”
But Eddie didn’t bother to respond. He just kept studying Hale.
“Looks like you need to learn to hold your liquor.” Then he gave Hale a hard slap on the back and let out a loud, raucous laugh. “Who better to help you with that than me?”
“I don’t believe it.” Hale’s father was shaking his head. “I don’t believe you. Where have you been for fifty years? If you’re Reginald Hale, where did you go?”
Uncle Eddie smiled. There was a sparkle in his eyes, a glimmer. “Oh, that’s easy, Junior. I went crazy.”
For a groundbreaking piece of technology, Genesis was easily forgotten. Reporters yelled their questions for the old man, the new toy still covered with its cloth, shrouded in secrecy until another day. The catastrophe was averted and the spotlight had shifted, and Kat tried to savor the moment.
But then her cousin bumped her shoulder.
“Congratulations, Kat,” Gabrielle said. “He’s in. Of course, you know what this means.…”
“We’re going to need a Big Store,” Kat guessed.
Gabrielle nodded slowly. “We’re going to need a Big Store.”
Who had used the phrase Big Store first, Kat had to wonder as she walked toward Hale Industries’ back doors, looking forward to the short cab ride home. It didn’t really matter. In her head, lists were forming, phone numbers were swirling, and above it all, a clock was ticking down, second by second, toward Genesis’s imminent sale.
Two weeks. But maybe less. Maybe the Hong Kong buyer would back out now that the Hale demo had been upstaged. Maybe Garrett would give Ms. Montenegro a call and shift the time frame altogether. But Kat wasn’t a girl who was used to banking on maybes. There was a date on the calendar and it was circled in red, and Kat knew that eventually she was going to have to retrieve the prototype from the bank across the street.
When she reached the back doors she’d first used with Silas, Kat stopped and stared through the narrow windows at the bank, just fifteen feet away. Even without looking, she would have known what was there.
Steel and iron and the best cameras and guards that money could buy. A vault five stories beneath one of the most crowded streets on earth, in a place where nothing ever went unnoticed.
But Kat was going to get that prototype. Either she was going to steal it or Silas was going to remake it. She didn’t know how, but she knew she would get her hands on it eventually. She had to.
“Did you have fun tonight, Miss Bishop?”
Kat turned at the sound of the voice. Garrett was walking toward her. He kept his hands in his pockets, and his gaze locked on hers.
“It was lovely,” Kat said.
“That was quite a surprise, wasn’t it?” He ambled closer. Kat felt the cool glass of the window against her back. “Your boyfriend’s long-lost great-uncle showing up like that…”
“Yes.” Kat forced a little laugh. “I figured they probably needed some family time, so I was just going to—”
“But you know all about great-uncles, don’t you, Katarina?”
“I—”
“No lies, Kat.” Garrett’s chest rose and fell too quickly. Kat thought for a moment he might collapse, that maybe his heart was giving out. “Show me at least a little respect.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Kat said.
“Oh, I think you do, because, you see, I know who you are.” His breath was acrid and hot on her cheek. He brushed a finger down the side of her face until his hand rested on her throat. He squeezed gently at first. Then harder. “And I know what you are.”
“Let me go.” Kat’s voice quivered. The party was still in full swing at the end of the hall, and Kat grappled for options. “I’ll yell. I’ll tell security.”
“No. You won’t. I don’t think your kind of criminal ever actually calls the authorities.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kat tried to pull his hand off of her throat, push herself past him; but his other hand flew over her head, crashing into the door and holding it solidly in place.
“I said,” he spoke slowly, “show me some respect.”
Trembling, Kat watched the way the sweat gathered at his brow, his face red and flushed, as he fumed like an animal that was cornered and beginning to fight. He’s desperate, Kat thought. Then, just that quickly, she realized, No, he’s dangerous.
“What?” he asked, then bit back an evil, bitter laugh. “Did you honestly believe that no one in Scooter’s life knew where he was going—what he was doing? Didn’t you ever wonder why no member of the Hale family ever asked or cared when the golden boy was halfway around the world…with you?”
“I know my boyfriend from school,” Kat said. But again the man laughed.
“I thought you’d be a much better liar. Aren’t all thieves liars? Isn’t that how you stole the Cleopatra Emerald? Was that fun for you? It looked like fun from where I was standing.”
Kat thought about the empty file labeled Scooter and finally knew what had lain inside it. They weren’t Hale’s secrets. They were hers. And this man seemed to know every one.
“What do you want with me?”
He let go of her neck, but didn’t leave.
“Don’t think you’ve won this game, Kat. Do not make the mistake of believing that I haven’t seen you and your family’s interference coming from a mile away. Of course, ‘Uncle Reginald’”—he held up his fingers and made mock quotations around the words—“was a nice touch. Some might even say inspired. But I will win, Miss Bishop. In fact, I have already won. You just can’t see it yet.”
“No. You can’t see,” Kat told him. “You’re going to lose.”
He was bigger, stronger, crazier, but that didn’t matter. Not right then. Because Kat finally had the home court advantage, and she felt a new kind of strength rushing through her. All pretense was gone. She didn’t have to lie, to pretend she was anything other than a seasoned thief talking to a newcomer to the game.
Garrett looked across the alley.
“It can be done,” Kat said, reading his mind, knowing he was thinking about the bank that had never been robbed. She whispered, “And I’m going to do it.”
“Oh, watch what you say, Kat. It would be a shame if everything I knew were to find its way to…say…the Henley.”
He reached to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear, and Kat trembled. She remembered the look on Arturo Taccone’s face as the gangster threatened everyone she’d ever loved; the smile the grifter called Maggie had given her when locking Kat inside a tiny room. She’d seen a lot of very bad people up close in her short life, but there was something about Garrett in that moment that scared her. Greed had made him crazy and reckless, and he was going to take Kat down with him.
“I have cleaned up my last Hale family mess, Miss Bishop. You and your little boyfriend are on your own as far as I’m concerned.” He laughed again. “Let’s see how far you make it now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kat blurted, but the man simply turned.
“You’ll see, my dear. You will see.”
Over the course of the next twelve hours, Kat made twenty-one phone calls to six different continents. (Uncle Lester was doing a job off the coast of Antarctica and was very adamant that he not be disturbed for any reason.)
There was Uncle Sal in Rio; the Johnson twins, who were out on parole near Sydney. She personally composed a telegram for Uncle Marco (his preferred method of communication) and left a note in a dead letter drop for Uncle Felix, who had sworn off telephones after a particularly nasty MI5 experience in ’92.