“It will work,” Kat said. “It will work if we have you.”
“I can’t make another stone like that. Not in three days.” He ran a varnish-stained hand across his scruffy face. “Not ever.”
Kat shook her head. “I don’t need a stone, Charlie. I need a con.”
“No. No,” he said, and his gaze flew to the door, as if there were something lurking outside, beating against the side of the house like the snow and the wind, fighting to get in.
“Yes, Charlie.” She reached for his hand. “I’ve been trying for days to think of someone she doesn’t know—someone we can trust to work inside. But then I realized that someone she knows is the perfect person.”
“Eddie. You want Eddie.”
She would have given anything to tell him he was wrong, but Eddie was the master, the best. He was also on the other side of the world and the other side of a line that said no one steals the Cleopatra Emerald, so Kat shook her head and stared up at the next best thing.
“Uncle Eddie can’t…No, Uncle Eddie won’t help me, Charlie. Not this time. This time I need you.”
“I loved her, Katarina.” Heartbreak seeped into his eyes. It seemed to take him a moment to realize what he’d said. “And so did he.”
When Charlie pulled away, the best hands in the business were shaking. His lip quivered. And Kat hated herself for bringing that darkness to his door.
“I’m sorry, Charlie.” She hesitated for a moment but then leaned down and kissed his head. She started for the door. “I won’t bother you anymore.”
“Margaret Gray.”
Kat stopped and turned. She watched him run a hand through his hair in a gesture she’d seen his brother make a thousand times.
“Her name is Margaret Gray,” he said slowly. “And I never want to see her again.”
CHAPTER 30
It was almost dusk by the time the small motorboat made it back to the W. W. Hale. It said a great deal about Kat’s current state of mind that she really didn’t want to crawl aboard the larger, safer vessel.
“Maybe I could just sit here for…a week or two,” she told Hale.
“Not this time,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her on board.
Marcus stood ten feet away, posture perfectly straight, a tray of tea and scones in his hands.
Simon had covered the ship’s massive windows with figures and formulas, and he pointed between them and Gabrielle. Ordinarily, this would have been a source of very little concern, except that Gabrielle was wearing high heels and a rappelling harness and arguing.
“Kat!” Simon threw up his hands in disgust and walked toward her. “Will you tell your cousin the kind of damage falling from over a hundred feet can do?”
On the deck above, the Bagshaws were yelling something about old wiring systems and backup generators, neither bothering to remove their protective headphones, so they just yelled louder.
“Why don’t you just ask Kat?” Hamish yelled.
“Yeah,” his brother countered. “Be that way and I’ll ask Kat!”
“Guys,” Gabrielle said, but the word was lost amid the smoke and the headphones. “Guys!” she tried again. “Kat’s here!”
Hamish was oblivious as he turned and pointed. “Hey, Kat’s here.”
It was Nick alone who looked from Kat to the way Hale leaned against the rail with his arms crossed. It might have been a perfectly adequate poker face anywhere else in the world, but it wasn’t quite good enough for Monte Carlo.
So Nick stepped closer to Kat and asked, “Where were you?”
“Austria,” Hale answered, but Nick acted like he hadn’t even heard.
“You fly off in the middle of the night, leaving nothing but a shopping list and an I’ll be back. So where were you?” Nick wanted to know.
“Austria,” Kat said, as if Hale’s answer should have been good enough.
“You know how to do it, don’t you, Kitty?” Hamish was practically out of breath from his run down the stairs when he bolted onto the deck before her.
“So what is it?” Angus asked, appearing at his brother’s side and rubbing his hands together. In the dim light, his eyes seemed to glow. “Is it Hansel and Gretel?”
“Can’t be,” Hamish told him. “We only have the one grenade launcher.”
“Right.” Angus nodded as if Hamish had a most excellent point.
“That’s not it, guys,” Hale said with a quick shake of his head.
But Nick was stepping closer to Kat. The words, she could tell, were meant only for her. “What was in Austria?”
Kat no longer felt the rock and sway of the ship, but she was far from steady on her feet as she told him, “Our exit strategy.” She pushed past them. “He said no.”
She’d hoped that would be the end of it, but then she saw the way the deck was lined with cord and cable, a feather boa, two ball gowns, three tuxes, a box with a French label citing that the contents were extremely explosive, and at least six dozen long-stemmed roses (which Kat had yet to decide whether or not they should even try to use).
“Kat,” Simon spoke softly, “what happened?”
Kat looked across the faces that stared back at her, open and tired and confused, and she knew it was too late. For everything.
“I thought I had a way, guys. I really did. But Uncle Eddie was right—no one steals the Cleopatra Emerald. I’m sorry I conned you all into thinking that we could do it twice.”
Every decent con man knows that the simplest truth is more powerful than even the most elaborate lie. Kat saw it then. It broke against them all like the waves.
“So we get another plan,” Gabrielle said.
“What about the bank?” Simon asked. “We’ve got the Bagshaws.…”
“While we appreciate the vote of confidence, my boy,” Hamish said with a slap on Simon’s back, “it’s a vault thirty feet beneath the priciest real estate in the world.”
“So no?” Simon said.
Hamish shook his head. “No.”
“Does she know the Wind in the Willows?” Gabrielle asked.