“No.” Eddie was starting toward the kitchen. “No,” he said again, once Kat had caught up to him. He was trying to act normal—like he wasn’t upset—but he went to his stove and began moving pots from burner to burner, and Kat thought that, for one of the world’s greatest bluffers, it was a shame for him to have such an obvious tell.
“You’re the only one who can do it, Uncle Eddie.”
“No, Katarina,” he said. “No man alive can do it.”
“We have to try. It doesn’t have to be the full Anastasia, just enough to delay a few days. All we need to do is keep Garrett too busy to prove that the Hales have a fake, and appease his buyer. We do that and then—”
“It cannot be done.” It was more proclamation than statement, the lord high grifter telling all who could hear that the Anastasia was dead.
“Yes, it can be. You can do it.”
“I could have,” he admitted. “Maybe. If it were thirty years ago and I were ten years younger. But the Anastasia is not an easy thing, Katarina. It is a dead con.”
“So no one will be expecting it.”
“I’m saying it is impossible!”
His fist banged against the counter. The pots shook. All Kat could think was that she had never heard her uncle yell before. Not at her. Not in that room. He was the sort of man for whom a whisper carried far more force than a shout.
Then he took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. “With science—DNA—it cannot succeed.”
“We don’t need it to succeed. We just need it to buy us a little time.”
“There is never going to be enough time to rob the Superior Bank of Manhattan.”
Kat knew he was right, but she didn’t dare say so. “So we’ll buy enough time to find some other way. You can do this, Uncle Eddie.” She eased closer, placed her hand on top of his. “Please.”
“You are a smart girl, Katarina. But young. I think this time you are not thinking with your head,” Eddie told her. “Someday you will know that the heart is not always as wise as it is strong.”
“Uncle Eddie…” Kat’s voice broke. She was too busy thinking about the files in Garrett’s office, wondering just how many secrets had once lain inside the one labeled Scooter, and her hands began to tremble, knowing she’d just stolen Hale back. She didn’t want to lose him again.
“Uncle Eddie,” Hale said from the door.
The old man shifted his gaze to the boy, looked at him like he was an outsider, a stranger. A threat. Kat wondered how her life would have turned out if she’d left that fateful night two years before with a painting and not a boy.
“You still owe me for my window.”
“Ten percent,” Hale told him flatly. “I will give you ten percent of Hale Industries if you do this.”
“Hale…” Kat said, dumbfounded.
“Okay,” Hale countered before Eddie had even said a word. “Fifteen.”
“You think I don’t want to do this because there’s nothing in it for me?”
“I think you’re the greatest thief in the world. And without you—in a month—Hale Industries will be half as valuable as it is today, so that’s why I’m willing to give you twenty percent of a billion-dollar corporation for a week’s worth of work.”
Kat stood quietly, honestly not sure what would happen next. Hale sounded like himself. He looked perfectly normal. But there was something there, a raw, aching thread, and Kat knew that if she pulled it, his whole world might unravel.
“Please, Uncle Eddie.” She pleaded with the only man who could fix it all, watched him sink carefully into a chair. He moved like every bone in his body was threatening to break, and Kat half expected to hear a creak as he placed his elbows on the table.
“Your mother brought a strange man to this house once, Katarina. I had hoped it might be a few more years before history repeated itself.”
Kat rolled her eyes at the mention of her father. “Uncle Eddie, I brought Hale home ages ago,” she reminded him; but her uncle just shook his head.
“I’ve known my great-niece’s friend. A boyfriend, on the other hand…that is a most different matter.”
“Yes, sir,” Hale said. He stood up a little straighter, spoke a little louder.
“You have a powerful family, boy.”
“Yes, sir,” Hale said. “Please don’t hold them against me.”
Then Eddie gave a wry smile. “Who says I was talking about them?”
Chapter 28
The abandoned lab they rented was somewhere in New Jersey. Gabrielle drove while Kat’s mind drifted, nothing but a massive list of all the things she had to do. So when they finally walked through the main doors, her first thought was that they must have been in the wrong place.
The only light came through grit-covered windows. A thick layer of dust covered everything: crates and shelves and long rows of tarp-covered equipment.
But then there were the voices. Kat followed them through a maze of crates bearing the Hale Industries logo until she could see Marcus in the center of a wide empty room, pacing. He had a ruler in his hand, and when he stopped, he looked at Eddie, who sat in the center of the space on an old office chair.
“The Hale men have all graduated from which academy?” Marcus asked.
“Colgan.” Eddie glared at Hale. “And I believe that is all Hale men but one.”
“Correct,” Marcus said, and kept on pacing. “As a child, Reginald had three nannies, all named…”
“Beatrice,” Eddie said.