Everything had gone almost exactly according to plan. Or at least that’s what the various members of the Henley’s security department told themselves.
The entire building had been evacuated in less than four minutes. The fire itself had been contained to a single wing of the Henley’s six sections. A hallway, really, located far away from the major exhibits like the Renaissance room and Impressionist gallery. So now the Henley’s only fear was minor smoke damage to minor paintings.
If any of the members of the staff had stopped to think about it, they might have wondered how the smoke-to-fire ratio had been so strangely high to begin with, but they didn’t. Instead, they patted themselves on the back and looked forward to bonuses and commendations once word of their quick thinking and clear resolve reached the powers that be.
Far away from the Romani Room, locked inside the Henley’s security annex, they watched the various exhibits through an eerie haze, not noticing that the feed was nothing but a continuous loop; not seeing the Bagshaw brothers and Simon as they made their way down the empty hallways toward a door that was certainly locked—a wing the guards were sure was abandoned.
No one in the guard room saw Simon raise his hand and knock. Not a soul noticed when Gabrielle pushed open the door to the Henley’s second best exhibit. She studied the trio and said, “You’re late.”
The paintings were there.
Kat held them in her gloved hands. She saw them through her goggled eyes. It was not a dream or a mirage—they were there. And yet she couldn’t let herself believe it.
“Two and a half minutes,” Simon warned as Kat walked past the four frameless canvases that leaned against the wall like the artists’ stalls on the streets of New York and Paris. It wasn’t hard to imagine that she’d gone back in time a few hundred years and was looking at the works of a few unknowns, guys named Vermeer and Degas.
Nick had taken off his blazer and tie and was now hurrying around the hot room, packing, preparing for the next phase, but one painting remained, and as Kat eased toward it, she could feel the seconds passing, and something else . . . hope? Fear?
But the feeling that mattered most was the massive whoosh of rushing air that was suddenly cascading through the vents, blowing across Kat’s face and through her hair as she reached toward the final painting and then stopped, looked up, and heard a familiar voice say, “Hello, Kitty Kat.”
Gabrielle’s hair should have been tousled as she hung upside down, dangling from an air duct twenty feet above the ground. Her face should have been smudged. It was one of life’s great injustices, in Kat’s opinion, that some girls could crawl through two hundred feet of ductwork and come out on the other side looking even more glamorous for the adventure. But the single most remarkable thing about Kat’s cousin in that moment was the look on her face as she scanned the row of paintings and whispered, “It’s them.”
Kat and Nick ripped off their oxygen masks. They tossed their goggles aside. Fresh air was rushing past Gabrielle, filling the gallery, as Kat moved toward the last painting and reached carefully for the pressure switch. Despite the fresh air, Kat held her breath as she eased the final painting from the wall, turned it over, and heard her cousin say, “Uh-oh.”
The scene outside the Henley was exactly what one might expect under these circumstances. Shrill sirens filled the air as fire trucks and police cars raced down the cobblestone streets and blocked off a perimeter around the main entrances.
Though the security team swore that the fire had been contained, black smoke still escaped from doors and windows, and then faded into the winter breeze.
The dusty snow had turned to drizzle, so reporters stood under umbrellas as they broadcast the story around the world.
The Henley was burning. And it seemed that all of London had come out to watch the fire.
Gregory Wainwright saw his career dangling by a thread. And yet there was little else he could do while the firefighters scrambled off their trucks and school children huddled together on the sidewalks for roll call. And so the director maintained his distance from the crowd, standing with the young billionaire and his uncle, making small talk— making allies.
“Well, it was nice seeing you again, Mr. Wainwright,” Hale said, trying to pull away. “If you’ll excuse me, I really must attend to my uncle.”
“Oh, dear!” the director exclaimed. “Mr. Hale! Forgive me. I completely forgot. Here”—he looked around as if expecting a wheelchair to magically appear out of thin air—“allow me to find you someplace to rest. Perhaps I can send one of the firemen to retrieve your chair—”
“No!” Hale and Marcus blurted in unison.
“I’m fine,” Marcus said again with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I have many just like it. And you have quite enough to worry . . . ” Marcus turned to survey the still-smoking building, the crowds of tourists with their flashing cameras, and the journalists with their plastic smiles. “It does make a man wonder if that Visily Romani business was really nothing after all.”
Hale looked at Marcus, but the older man didn’t meet his gaze. Instead he tucked his hand into the lapel of his coat in the way he’d seen men of wealth do for the majority of his life. “But I suppose you cannot be blamed if two disasters happen within a month.”
Hale watched the director’s eyes narrow, first with resentment, then puzzlement.
“Coincidences happen,” Marcus carried on, but Wainwright was already doing the math, calculating the odds of a fire and thief coming to the most secure museum in the world within weeks of each other.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hale.” The director pulled out his cell phone and set off at a frantic clip. He paused briefly to call over his shoulder, “Please call my assistant about the Monet!”
And, with that, Gregory Wainwright was gone.
“It’s not here,” Kat said flatly as she stared at the back of the final frame.
“Kat,” Simon said through her earpiece, “I’m hearing chatter on the security frequencies. I think—”
But Kat wasn’t listening. She was too busy looking at the place where the final painting was supposed to be . . . but wasn’t.
“Girl Praying to Saint Nicholas . . . Girl Praying to Saint Nicholas was supposed to be there!” Kat looked up, past Nick’s worried eyes. She completely ignored her cousin, who dangled gracefully from the vent, manipulating a long wire. Instead, Kat’s eyes scanned the room, counting, “One, two, three—”