“Yes,” Kat said. “You’re looking at her.”

A shocked smile spread across Arturo Taccone’s face, and Kat felt a sense of pride that she had won one round of whatever game they were playing. She only wished the game were over.

“I do hope I’ll see you again when this is finished, Katarina.

A man in my position has so many uses for a person with your talents.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Kat lied, then changed the subject. “I’m not going to tell you when,” she told him, “but you’ll know when it happens.”

“So, clandestine operations are not your forte, then?”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just counting on one of the half dozen guys you have stationed outside the Henley to tip you off when the time comes.”

He smiled, and Kat knew that this was somehow the highlight of his incredibly decadent dinner.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “Twenty-four hours after it’s over I’ll meet you at this address with the paintings.” She stood, and it felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her.

“You’re very thorough, Katarina. I meant what I said. When this is finished, you do not have to go back to the Colgan School—or someplace like it. This, as they say, could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

Kat looked at her cousin. “I already have all the friends I need.”

The lights were off when they got back. The house was still, peaceful. Sleeping. Or so she thought.

“Hi, Hale.”

She saw him through the open door of the dining room, sitting at an ancient-looking table. Twenty high-backed chairs surrounded him, but Hale was alone at the table’s head. He was there, Kat knew, waiting for her.

“Hot date?” she asked. But this time Hale didn’t have a comeback.

“Are you gonna get mad if I say I don’t like you going to see him alone?”

“Jealous?” she said, trying to tease, but the boy in the shadows wasn’t smiling.

“Take Angus and Hamish. Take Simon.” Kat raised her eyebrows. “Okay, so don’t take Simon. Take . . . Nick, if that’s what you want.” Hale seemed to stumble on the name. “Just don’t trust Taccone, Kat.”

“I took Gabrielle.” Kat pointed at her cousin, who was walking through the front door.

“I was the muscle,” Gabrielle called. She didn’t break her stride as she started up the stairs.

And yet Hale didn’t smile. In fact, it seemed to Kat as if he hadn’t even heard. She wondered how many miles they’d logged so far, how many more they had to go. But somehow it had only been thirteen days since they’d stood in Hale’s upstate house, and he’d said the words she couldn’t forget.

“You’re right. Taccone is a whole different kind of bad.”

Hale stood and stepped toward her. “Yeah.”

“Why are you doing this, Hale?”

“Why do think?”

Kat looked at the ornate room. The gorgeous moldings, the polished table. The empty chairs. It was in every way the opposite of Uncle Eddie’s kitchen, and somehow Kat already knew the answer to her question.

“Hale, this life . . .” she started slowly, still practically speechless. “This . . . what we do—what my family does—it looks a lot more glamorous when you choose it.”

“So choose it.” He handed her another envelope. Smaller this time. Thinner.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“That, darling, is my full confession. Dates. Times.” Hale leaned against the antique table. “I thought the crane rental receipt was a particularly nice touch.” Kat looked at him, speechless. “It’s your ticket back into Colgan. If you want it.”

“Hale, I . . .”

But Hale was still moving, shrinking the distance between them. He seemed impossibly close as he whispered, “And I didn’t choose it, Kat. I chose you.”

Kat stared at the envelope in her hands, maybe because of what it represented—her second chance—or maybe because she didn’t know where else to look, what else to do.

“The delivery is set?” Hale asked, and something in his tone told her she didn’t have to say anything—anything at all.

“Yeah.” She nodded and fell into step beside him. “No turning back now.”

“No guts,” he said.

She looked at him. “No glory.”

“We’re in way over our heads.”

One Day Until Deadline

Chapter 30

When Katarina Bishop emerged from her room that Monday morning, she wasn’t hoping for sun. She wasn’t dreading rain. And yet, as she looked out the circular window at the top of the stairs, there was something about the snow that filled her with dread. Her breath fogged the ancient glass, while all around her she heard the sounds of a crew preparing for a hard day’s work, and she knew they’d come too far to turn back.

“Kat?” Hamish’s voice was higher than usual. The sight of him elbowing Simon as they stood at the bottom of the stairs was disconcerting. The fact that Simon turned and looked at her and dropped a ridiculously expensive electronic gadget made her panic.

“What?” Kat asked.

But the Bagshaws kept gaping, and Simon kept staring, while Hale simply walked into the foyer and leaned against the railing like he’d just made a very large bet against very long odds—and won.

“What?” Kat asked again as she rushed down the stairs, through the foyer, and into the formal dining room.

The boys followed, but no one spoke.

“Are you guys freaking out on me?” she asked, turning on them. “Because today is not the day for freaking out!” She heard her voice rise, felt her hands tingle. “What is going on? ” she finally yelled when the staring and the silence became too much.

“Now, isn’t this role more fun than a nun?” Gabrielle sauntered into the room, casting a sideways glance at the skirt she had personally hemmed.

Hamish nodded. “Kat . . . you have . . . legs.”

“And boobs,” Angus added, staring quite directly at the section of the white blouse that Gabrielle had made a bit too form-fitting for Kat’s personal taste.

“Seriously, Kat,” Simon said, inching closer, “when did you get boobs?”

Hamish looked at Hale. “The boobs are new,” he said as if that point hadn’t already been thoroughly made.

“Is that padded?” Simon held out his hand as if to cop an oh-so-scientific feel.

“Hey!” Kat said, slapping his hand away.

“Her dad’s gonna get out of prison one of these days, boys,” Hale added. Kat thought she saw the faintest smile on his face as he said it, but then again, it was early. And she was stressed. And there were obviously other things on her mind, especially when the kitchen door swung open and Nick walked in, fresh from the shower and completely unfazed by the scene before him.

He didn’t stare at Kat. His hands didn’t tremble. He didn’t fidget or sweat. There was nothing at all about him that looked as if it were anything other than a normal day.

He walked toward her. “Are you ready?” he asked. Was she ready for the biggest job of her life? Was she ready for it to be over? Was she fully prepared to be the only thief in history to ever successfully remove something from the Henley without permission? “You’ve got everything?”

She nodded, grabbed a scone from the tray in Marcus’s hand, and started for the door.

“Kat,” Hale called after her.

Hamish whispered something that sounded suspiciously like, “What do you think? C-cup?”

Hale pushed into the foyer and caught Kat by the arm, stopping her. “Kat . . .” he started, but when Nick appeared in the hall behind him, he turned. “You mind?” he said in a tone Kat had never heard him use—not playful but not threatened, and Kat didn’t know how to read him.

Nick looked at Kat, who nodded. “Just give me a second.”

She heard Nick walk a few feet down the hallway, but her gaze never wavered from Hale’s. The Henley and the crew and her father felt a million miles away.

“Kat.” He stole a quick glance at Nick, then put his right palm on the wall behind her. She felt the warmth of it on her shoulder as he leaned even closer and whispered, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“It’s a little late to stop now, Hale. As you can see, I’ve already broken out my boobs for the occasion, so—”

“I’m serious, Kat. I don’t trust him.”

Kat studied the way he looked at her. She found herself reaching out, the tips of her fingers skimming the sides of his starched white shirt.

“Trust me.” And with that, Kat slipped away and went outside, felt Nick fall into step beside her. But something made her stop and turn and call, “Ten thirty.” Hale nodded but stayed silent, and Kat’s heart kept pounding in her chest, loud. Too loud. “I’ll see you at ten thirty,” she said again.

Hale smiled. “Oh, I’ll be there.”

Chapter 31

That Monday morning began as Monday mornings at the Henley almost always did. The person responsible for making the coffee made coffee. The person who kept track of birthdays brought cake. The staff briefing ran long as Gregory Wainwright talked about rising attendance levels and falling donations. But on that Monday morning, it seemed that fewer people whispered about Visily Romani than they had the week before. All in all, everyone concluded, it had been a most spectacular November.

Outside, the snow was nothing more than a light powdering, and guards and tourists alike watched it blow across the grounds like chalk dust. Or perhaps it was just the rows and rows of school buses lined up outside the main doors that brought this particular image to mind.

“Field trip season,” one of the guards told another.

“Blasted kids,” an old man complained.

No one would have ever guessed that seven of the world’s most talented teenagers were coming to the Henley that day for an entirely different sort of lesson.

“What’s wrong?” Katarina Bishop asked her dark-haired companion.

Nick stopped and let another long row of school kids pass, while a nearby docent lectured on the importance of light to the great Dutch artists of the eighteenth century.

“Nothing,” he said.

He didn’t look like the boy who had stood calmly in the kitchen that morning, the con artist who had picked her pocket on a Paris street. Nick seemed different as they walked down the main corridor. Scared? Kat wondered. Nervous? She wasn’t sure. But different he was, and as she stopped midstride in the center of the wide atrium, Hale’s warning echoed in her ears.

“If you want out, Nick—”

“I don’t want out.”

“—you say the word. Right now.” She pointed through the glass atrium toward the patchy rays of sunshine and the dry white snow. “You can leave.”

“I don’t want out.” He glanced around the crowded halls. The guards. The docents. The charming older couples with their sketchbooks and sack lunches. Just another day at the Henley. “It’s just . . . busier than I thought it would be.”