Chapter 10
The best-kept secret in London had to be City Airport, Kat had always thought. Smaller than Heathrow and more central than Gatwick, it was like flying into a small town until you looked out the window and saw Big Ben and the Tower of London below. It was as good a place as any for a teenage thief to go through customs and descend into the very place where she’d pulled off the biggest job of her career only a few months before.
But that didn’t mean Kat had to like it.
Stepping through the airport’s sliding doors and out into the dreary London day, Kat sensed a nagging doubt in the back of her head, a tiny voice that kept telling her something wasn’t quite right. Or maybe it was just Gabrielle.
“Commercial, Kitty?” Gabrielle asked, annoyed. “Really? We just had to fly commercial.…” Gabrielle shifted on the tall boots that descended from beneath a very short skirt printed with the Union Jack, and moved her head from side to side, popping her neck—the universal gesture for long flight. “For the girlfriend of a gazillionaire, you really don’t know how to travel.”
“We weren’t exactly traveling on official gazillionaire business.”
“We could have been,” Gabrielle said, “if we’d told Hale where we were going. And why.”
“Don’t start, Gabs,” Kat said.
“What?” Her cousin gave an innocent shrug, slid her dark glasses on, and walked toward a waiting cab. “Come on. This is our ride.” Gabrielle opened the door and crawled into the black car. Kat followed. She sat her bag at her feet and spoke to the driver.
“Hi, we’re going to—”
But before she could finish, the car zoomed off, throwing her against the seat back. Her suitcase toppled over, smashing against her foot.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry about that, Kitty,” the driver said.
“Hamish?” Kat cried.
“Should have warned you to… Hold on!” said Angus, Hamish’s brother, from the passenger seat as Hamish spun the wheel and sent the cab careening into traffic.
Kat sat breathless while the car swerved around big red double-decker buses and in front of men in suits riding bicycles with briefcases tied to handlebars. Outside, it started to rain, and Kat heard the water pelting against the car as Hamish turned down a narrow cobblestone alley—entirely too fast, in Kat’s opinion.
“So, guys,” she said, leery and glaring at Gabrielle, “I wasn’t expecting to see you on this trip.”
“What?” Gabrielle asked. “I can’t make an executive decision? Besides, everything is better with Bagshaws.”
Kat was beginning to seriously question her cousin’s definition of “better” when Angus looked over the front seat. “So, between you and me…”
“And me,” Hamish added.
“How rich is ol’ Hale these days?” Angus finished.
“Guys.” Kat gave an exasperated sigh. “He’s Hale. Hale is just the same as he was before, just—”
“Richer,” Gabrielle said. “About a million times richer.”
In the front seat, Angus gave a long sigh. “I always did like that boy.”
“So true,” his brother said. “So, so true.”
Then Hamish spun the wheel again. Dark alley gave way to the glow of neon through the foggy windows, and Kat knew immediately where they were. She couldn’t help herself: she thought about the last time she’d been in Trafalgar Square—the long ride in the back of a mobster’s car. Blackmail photos and death threats. She was beginning to question why she’d thought it was so important to come back to England.
“What’s wrong, Kitty?” Angus asked.
Kat reached out to touch the window. “London makes me nervous.”
“Don’t worry, Kat,” Hamish said. “You’re about to feel much, much worse.”
The skyscraper was new, right next to the Thames. Someone said something about it being the tallest building in Europe, but Kat wasn’t really in the mood to care. She just stood quietly in the elevator, and when they finally reached the penthouse apartment, Kat was more than a little relieved to see that Gabrielle had a key.
“Who owns this apartment?” Kat asked.
“Carlos,” her cousin said, pushing open the door and stepping inside. A staircase ascended into a second story. A modern kitchen covered the right side of the space. It was all steel and chrome and glass. Even though Kat was back in London, it felt like a different hemisphere—different century—from the country estate where they’d stayed when planning the Henley job.
“And Carlos is…”
“About to be step-daddy number five,” Gabrielle told her. She cocked a hip. “He’s Cuban.”
“How nice for him,” Kat said, and followed her cousin into the towering, frigid room.
Rain ran down the tall glass windows, and the flames from the long sleek fireplace didn’t even begin to fight the chill. Suddenly, Kat craved soup and a warm kitchen. She felt a long, long way from home.
“So tell me.” Kat dropped her bags and spun on the Bagshaws. “What exactly is wrong?”
“There’s a bathroom down there,” Gabrielle said. “If you want to try to do something about…this.” She gestured to Kat’s hair. Kat ignored her.
“Guys, what’s going—”
“Oh good, you’re here.”
“Simon,” Kat said, looking up at the boy descending the stairs, a laptop under each arm. As happy as she was to see him, another emotion boiled to the surface. “What are you doing here? What are all of you doing here? Gabrielle—”
“Don’t be mad at dear, sweet Gabrielle, Kitty,” Angus said, even though Kat was fairly certain that Gabrielle had never been dear or sweet a day in her life. “It’s hard out there for a couple of lads trying to find honest work.”
“Honest?” Kat asked.
“Or honestly dishonest, as the case may be,” Hamish said.
Kat turned to Simon. “I thought you were doing a PhD program at Cambridge.”
“Kitty…” Hamish tried again. “Kitty, are you—”
“Guys, we have a problem,” Kat finally managed to mutter.
“What?” Gabrielle said.
“The Petrovich exhibit isn’t in a room.”
Kat looked down the long promenade, at the desks arranged in the center of the massive corridor, each surrounded by velvet ropes. Guards were stationed on either end of the long hall filled with school groups and tourists and art lovers just out for the afternoon. “It isn’t in a room!” she spat in frustration.