For ten minutes she stood outside, watching the scene through the large picture window. Hands brushed against shoulders. Eyelashes batted up and down. The whole spectacle was enough to make Kat pace (although every good thief knows she’s far less likely to be noticed if she stays perfectly still).
“Are you watching this?” she asked Gabrielle for the fourth time. But her cousin’s attentions were focused on the young man at the sidewalk café who was equally enamored by Gabrielle and, more specifically, her highly inadequate skirt.
“He’s gonna blow it.” Kat threw her hands in the air. “It’s our one good lead and he’s gonna blow it.”
But her cousin didn’t notice. If she had, she might have said something—done something—but as it was, she didn’t even turn until Kat was across the street, walking through the gleaming doors.
“There you are.” Kat was panting, only half pretending to be out of breath as she walked up to the counter.
“Hi.” Hale pulled away from the salesgirl’s hand as if he had felt a spark. Literally. “I was just . . .” he started.
Kat sighed. “Dad says you have thirty minutes to make it back on board or else we’re leaving for Majorca without you and telling your mother you fell overboard.” Kat turned to the salesgirl. “Of course, I voted for actually pushing him overboard.” She exhaled loudly. “I’m his sister.”
“Stepsister,” Hale added without missing a beat.
The young woman smiled with the knowledge that Kat wasn’t his girlfriend. Kat wasn’t competition. She was simply a petite girl who was too pale and too thin to have spent much time on the Italian coast.
“Are you almost finished?” Kat asked with some genuine annoyance.
“Yeah,” Hale said, sounding exactly like the bored billionaire he was. “They’ve got some cool stuff.”
Somehow Kat doubted that the geniuses behind the finest watercrafts in the world would like to hear their inventions demoted to “cool stuff,” but if the salesgirl shared this feeling, she didn’t show it.
“So are you going to buy one or aren’t you?” Kat asked.
“Uh . . . yeah,” Hale said, walking around the showroom. “I kinda like this one.”
If Kat hadn’t known better, she might have thought the vessel Hale had chosen was a model, a replica—something shrunk down to size in order to fit onto the showroom floor. But, of course, it wasn’t. And that, of course, was the point.
The Sirena Royal was the smallest non-military underwater vessel in the world. Not much larger than the mermaids for which it was named, it was six feet long and four feet tall, roughly the size of a go-cart—the very type of craft that could submerge in the small river that connected to the Taccone moat. The very type of craft that—at this moment—was their one and only lead.
“Yeah,” Hale said, standing back and admiring it. “I’ll take this one.”
“Eccellente, signor! ” the salesgirl exclaimed, but Hale just jerked his head in Kat’s direction.
“You’ve got the credit card, don’t you, sis?”
Kat was more than happy to follow the young woman to a tall counter, where she began pulling out forms and shuffling papers until Kat’s pale hand landed on top of her own, cutting her off in midmotion.
“If I may be honest, Lucia,” Kat said, reading the woman’s name tag, “my dear stepbrother is a bored little boy.” Kat looked at Hale from the corner of her eye. “He likes toys.”
Kat could never be sure if Hale had heard her or not, but nevertheless, he chose that moment to pick up a model of a world-class racing yacht and begin making bubble noises as it dove to the bottom of an imaginary lake.
“Three years ago he convinced his mother to buy a villa on Lake Como because he needed a place to play.” Kat paused for a moment, recalling that Hale’s family did have a home in Northern Italy. “The year after that he bought an eighty-foot yacht because he needed something to play on.”
Behind her, Hale was using his model to dive-bomb a cup full of pencils.
Kat leaned closer to the salesgirl and lowered her voice. “But boys don’t like sharing their toys, do they, Lucia?”
The salesgirl shook her head. “No.”
“And so when the Bernard brothers bought a ninety-foot yacht last summer, my dear stepbrother was not very happy. And”—she cut her eyes back to Hale and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“unfortunately, when he’s not happy, his mother isn’t happy, and when his mother isn’t happy . . .”
Lucia nodded. “I see. Yes.”
“I’m telling you this because he really needs to be the guy with the Sirena Royal—not one of the guys with the Sirena Royal.” Kat flashed her most sympathetic smile. “Trust me, if we get home and find out that there’s another one just across the—”
“Oh no, there isn’t!” Lucia exclaimed.
“Really?” Kat asked.
“Well, to be honest . . .” Lucia stole a glance around the room, as if what she was about to say might make three generations of Marianos roll over in their graves. “It’s really more for show, you know? We don’t sell that many.”
In the corner of the room, Hale had strapped himself inside the Sirena Royal and was doing his best imitation of a World War II fighter pilot, bombing unsuspecting foes.
“But they’re so cool,” Kat said. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Really,” Lucia soothed. “In the last year, we sell only two.”
“I knew it!” Kat said, throwing up her hands and starting toward Hale. “I told my brother that the Bernard brothers would already have—”
“Oh no, miss,” Lucia said. “We no sell them to brothers.”
“Really?” Kat turned. “Are you certain?”
“Oh yes. The first went to a business. They do the studies underwater. It’s really quite—”
“And the other?” Kat asked, stepping closer.
“Well, he was someone who might run in the same . . . circles as your family,” Lucia admitted carefully, but Kat thought, You have no idea.
She watched the young woman shift as if debating what to say or, more precisely, how to say it. Finally, she whispered, “This man . . . you see, he was quite . . . wealthy.”
“Well then, I’m afraid . . .” Kat said, turning to walk away, counting on Lucia’s eventual . . .
“But he didn’t live in Italy!”
Kat turned slowly. “Oh, really?”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Romani.”
“Romani?” Kat asked.
“Yes,” the young woman said. “Visily Romani. He was very specific—he wanted his Sirena delivered to Austria.”
“Austria?”
“Yes, directly to one of his estates. Near Vienna.”
Although she would never have admitted it out loud, there were many things Katarina Bishop had begun to like about the Colgan School.
There was, after all, something to be said for sleeping in the same bed every night and always knowing the way to and from the bathroom in the dark. She’d absolutely adored the library—an entire building where anyone could take things they didn’t own and feel no remorse about it. But the thing Kat had loved most about Colgan—the thing she missed most as she sat beside Hale and Gabrielle on a train bound for Vienna—was that one of the most strenuous prep schools in the world was the only place Kat had ever been where it was okay not to think.
After all, on her very first day at Colgan she’d been given a piece of paper that told her what classes she would attend and at what times. There was a board in the main hall that announced what meals she would eat and what sporting events she could witness. Each week her teachers dutifully told her which chapters she should read and from which books, which projects she should perform and in what order.
It was exactly as she’d suspected ever since the night Uncle Vinnie (who wasn’t really her uncle) had pulled her out of Uncle Eddie’s kitchen and informed her that boarding school would be a lot like prison (which, ironically, was exactly where Vinnie had been before showing up on Uncle Eddie’s front stoop that very night).
Kat had listened to him with a clarity that suited Uncle Eddie’s great-niece. She didn’t let it scare her. She just analyzed all the angles and came to the conclusion that Uncle Vinnie was exactly right, and she essentially had two options: Colgan now or jail later.
Colgan had cuter uniforms.
But now autumn was over and Colgan was gone; Kat was left to stare out the train window at the snowy caps of the Alps. In her coat pocket she had three passports and one of Hale’s credit cards. She was very good with four languages and decent at two more. She could go anywhere. She could do anything. Maybe it was the altitude, but suddenly Kat felt herself growing dizzy—short on air and smothered by the infinite possibilities that lay before her, and the questions her mind couldn’t help but ask.
Like, how was it possible for Gabrielle to be even prettier when she slept, when Kat herself could rarely wake up without encountering at least a little bit of drool?
And why did Gabrielle insist on sleeping with her head on Hale’s shoulder, when Kat—who had hit him there on a number of occasions—knew for a fact that it was quite hard and the compartment above the seats contained an assortment of very soft pillows?
Kat tried not to think about the other things—the hard questions that were locked outside, racing the train. She wished she could outrun them, lose them like a tail. But Kat knew better. They’d be waiting for her in Austria.
Kat’s ears popped as the train went faster, climbed higher, and the thoughts that had been swirling in her mind narrowed to one person, one place.
Visily Romani.
Vienna, Austria.
And with that, Kat closed her eyes. She didn’t see the first flakes of snow fall outside her window. She didn’t feel Hale cover her with a blanket. She was already fast asleep.
9 Days Until Deadline
Chapter 12
The one thought that Kat hadn’t had on the train was the first one that torpedoed her mind as soon as they reached the station the next morning: sometimes it’s nice being partnered with a billionaire.
“Did you have a nice trip, miss?” Marcus asked, appearing from thin air on the crowded platform. Their bags were already on the cart in front of him. When they stepped outside, Kat was struck by the frigid air, but thankfully a car was already waiting.
The winter’s first snow had been plowed neatly to the side of the roads, and the sidewalks were covered with tourists and townspeople going about their day. Kat watched through her window and thought: Visily Romani could be here.
Visily Romani could be anywhere.
Visily Romani could be anyone.
No one spoke on the car ride or said a word as they walked through the hotel lobby. Kat had the vague realization that it was nice reaching a penthouse via an elevator and not a ventilation duct, and as the car rose, she closed her eyes. She might have been content to stand like that all day. All week. All year. But too soon the doors were sliding open.