A Beautiful Heist (29 page)

I took a deep breath and pushed open the door that led to the belfry. Cold, wet air misted my face. Up above the great clock, the walls of the tower ceased to be solid brick, becoming instead a framed spire of cast iron and stone.

I blinked. Three shadowy figures were silhouetted in the drizzle. I squinted to discern who was there, and made out Brooke, Ethan, and Nicole. My heart leaped. They’d all made it.

“Everybody okay?” I ran my eye over them all. None appeared to be exhibiting any major wounds. I exhaled with relief. My breath formed a frosty cloud in front of me.

“Did you get it?” asked Brooke, apprehension in her voice. I walked closer to them, tracing a path around the great bells. Fog seeped through the latticework like fingers.

“I did.” My insides were bubbling and fizzing like champagne. Brooke’s eyes went wide, and she smiled a genuine smile of relief.

Ethan was also grinning. “Good work, Montgomery.”

I did it.
I was on top of the world. We’d pulled off the impossible job.

But we still had an escape to complete. I turned to Nicole. “You okay?” I asked. She nodded with a smile. She appeared to have recovered from her ordeal.

The small bells chimed the quarter hour.

“Okay, let’s get out of here,” I said. We began preparing our equipment to descend the side of the Clock Tower. Nicole went to stand guard at the door.

As we worked, I caught sight of the bump underneath my glove, on my fourth finger. Penny’s ring. I smiled.
It’s over, Penny.

But then a small shadow passed over me. I’d fulfilled my quest . . . what now? Did this mean I was free? I’d always longed for that freedom, when I no longer had to be a thief, when I could stop being the villain.

But—that would mean turning away from everything else that made me feel whole. Everything that made me feel special. Is that truly, deep down, what I wanted?

Ethan dispensed harnesses and ropes while I cut a large hole through the heavy metal mesh that filled the ornately carved stone window frames. Beyond the frame was a small ledge bordered by a stone railing. Over this was a straight drop two hundred feet to the ground. Brooke fastened the anchors. We worked quickly and quietly amid the mist.

And then, the belfry door opened.

I spun. Sandor stood framed in the doorway, flanked by three of his men. My eyes flew wide—I was frozen. All four of them had weapons drawn. We held nothing, bits of rope and carabiners.

“Drop everything,” said Sandor, glaring.

But—
what happened to Nicole?
—the panicky thought pushed through. She was supposed to be standing guard. Then I saw her standing to the side, near Sandor, gazing at us. She looked unruffled and unsurprised. More than that—she looked satisfied.

In one horrible moment the truth hammered into me: Nicole was working with Sandor.

Nicole was a double agent. A traitor. They must have planned this all along. She must have alerted Sandor to our getaway rendezvous after we rescued her. And the rescue? A total scam. I felt a tidal wave of nausea at the deception and betrayal. My mind spiraled back to all those coincidences, all those invitations. Had she been keeping an eye on me for Sandor?

“Well, Miss Montgomery,” said Sandor, lips drawing back. “It was a valiant effort. Unfortunately I can’t let you go any further.” His face grew even nastier. “I have not spent my life searching for the Gifts to have you snatch them away. My father did not die in this hunt so I could fail him again.”

A mental blueprint of the tower flashed into my mind. There must have been an escape from here. There had to be a way out of this. I calculated obstacles and trajectories as we stood immobile, hands raised.

Sandor extended a hand. “Miss Montgomery . . . the Egg please?”

I didn’t move. “Sandor, I can’t let you have it.” After coming so close, and after feeling that monumental sense of completion—I just could not hand it over. At this moment, I would face death first.

Sandor’s countenance flashed irritation, then boredom. He sighed and raised a signaling hand. It was this facial expression, this particular gesture, that gave me my shaved second of warning. Because I’d seen it before: just before he ordered the execution of the monks.

I screamed a warning to Ethan and Brooke and dove behind a platform, just as a thug’s black Glock exploded with a sickening bang. Brooke screamed and I saw her fall. Blood poured from a gunshot wound in her right leg.

The quarter bells suddenly chimed again, reverberating in my ears. Ethan lunged from his rolled position on the ground. With terrifying efficiency he withdrew a knife and threw it. The blade caught a man square in the throat, killing him. Ethan’s face bore an expression I’d never seen on him: cold, inhuman, detached. Like a panther, unemotional about a kill. Suddenly there was a gun in Ethan’s hand. Where had that come from?

After that everything happened very fast. It was a blur, a fugue. Bullets slammed into the stone and iron of the belfry and crashed into the bells with a macabre musicality. I was pinned behind a post now, unable to do a thing, terrified of who was left standing out there. I frantically scanned for an escape route.

Then Sandor’s face loomed out through the mist, moving fast toward me. Cold fury twisted his ghoulish face. A knife blade glinted. There was a fierce swish as he sliced it through the mist. I grunted and dodged the lethal arc. I thrust my leg up and knocked the knife away, sending it skittering out of range along the stone floor. I grabbed on to Sandor and attempted to take him down but he was surprisingly strong for such a slight man. We were locked. His hands came up to my throat and I felt the terrifying pressure of his fingers around my neck, squeezing, sending panic to my brain. Stars exploded in my vision and I scrabbled at his hands with my fingers but he had an iron grip. I frantically scissored my legs up and wrapped around his head. With desperate strength I twisted and peeled him from me, wrenching his arms from my throat. I kicked, hard, catching him under the jaw; his head snapped back. He crumpled down, unconscious. I gulped oxygen.

I raced to Sandor’s knife on the ground and grabbed it, then swung my eyes wildly back to Ethan. He stood above three dead men. Two had perfectly centered gunshot wounds in their foreheads and one seeped blood from the large gash in his throat.

The fog was thickening now, rolling in like cotton puffs around the iron staircases and girders. The haunting bells chimed the hour and Big Ben tolled three times. The sound was deafening.

Where is Nicole?
I thought in a panic, gaze sweeping the belfry. There was no sign of her. The door to the belfry was ajar, swinging slightly. She must have run away when the Caliga began to fall.

I looked back at Ethan and saw, then, that blood was pouring from his shoulder. And his face was pale. He no longer appeared cold and detached.

“Ethan, your shoulder! Are you okay?” I shouted. He looked down, and I saw his face go slack. I lunged toward him just as he stumbled and fell. His head cracked on a stone ledge and he went out, cold.

I raced to Ethan’s immobile body on the ground, by a stone post. He was breathing—his chest was rising in shallow, ragged breaths. But he couldn’t be roused. The shoulder gunshot wound wasn’t as bad as it had first appeared—the head injury was the greater problem now.

My eyes darted to where Brooke was. I spotted her, where she’d dragged herself behind a stone bench. She sat on the ground, breathing heavily. The good news was that her only gunshot wound appeared to be in her lower leg. The bad was that it was bleeding heartily. Blood soaked her Lycra leggings.

“Brooke! Can you hear me?”

Brooke’s eyes were cloudy, unfocused, and her face was flat.

Fighting down emotions, I ripped off my shirt. The fabric tore loudly. I cinched a tourniquet around her leg, then ripped off my blood-soaked gloves. My eyes veered to the belfry door. I yanked a crowbar from Ethan’s pack and darted to the door. I shoved the crowbar through the door handles. This should buy us a few seconds, anyway, when the rest of Sandor’s people arrived.

“Brooke, we have to go. Now.” My voice was ragged. Brooke, however, was fixed to the spot. I glanced back at Ethan, still unconscious.

“Brooke—I need help with Ethan.” No response. I didn’t think she’d lost enough blood to cause this catatonic state. She must have been in shock, stupefied by the trauma. Although there was always potential danger to our line of work, it was rare to have things get quite this grim. She had to snap out of it. Now.

The urgency to get off this tower was squeezing me like a hydraulic crusher. We had to get out of there. I dropped Brooke’s harness next to her, then raced to Ethan. I hauled him up from the ground, dragged him closer to the edge, and struggled him into a harness. We’d have to do a tandem rappel. I turned my head and saw that Brooke was making no attempt to get into her own harness. Her eyes were distant, lost at sea.

I finished fastening Ethan’s harness. “Brooke, you have to move.
Now
.” But she sat there, stunned. “Brooke. Go!”

She wasn’t going. Ethan was still bleeding from his shoulder. And he was heavy. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth. How was I going to do this? I left Ethan resting on the ground, and raced to Brooke. I lifted her up, slipped the straps around her catatonic frame, cinched the belt, attached the carabiners, and attached her rope to an anchor.

“Okay,
there.
Go.” I led her limping through the open Gothic window frame, to the railing, and all but pushed her over the edge. She looked down, a shell of a human. With indifference, she clambered slowly over, woodenly lowering herself like a marionette.

I pulled my own harness straps tight, the nylon webbing taut around my thighs. I cinched the straps of the sack that contained the Fabergé. I then linked Ethan’s harness to mine and climbed over the edge with him attached to me. As I leaned back I felt the straps tighten, cutting firmly into my legs. My stomach flipped up into my chest as we took the first drop. I couldn’t see the ground through the heavy fog but I could make out the shadowy form of Brooke, farther down. We descended in front of the enormous, illuminated clock face. My heart surged:
we were going to make it.
We were going to be okay—

I felt a tug on the rope. I looked up. Seven feet up, Sandor’s face appeared over the banister’s edge. A dark bruise had blossomed on his jaw. And that cold fury he had before? Replaced now with good old-fashioned hot fury. His teeth were bared like an animal’s and his eyes were wide, crazed.

“You’re not going anywhere with that Fabergé,” he growled.

He gripped the rope and vigorously launched himself over the ledge as I dangled, helplessly. He descended hand over hand and he was upon me in a second. He slammed into me and clutched at the sack where the Egg was tucked.

“Sandor, stop!” I gasped. “You’re going to kill us all.”

“You stupid bitch. You have no idea what you’re doing. You have no right.” He was pulling, dragging, clawing. “I lost everything in this search. I’m not going to lose the prize.”

I felt the sack loosen as Sandor grappled at it. I twisted away. But he was in a better position, just above me. One more grab and he’d probably be able to wrench it away from me. I couldn’t get Sandor off me. I couldn’t do it alone. But Ethan was still unconscious.

“Brooke!” I screamed, looking down in a dizzy panic. “Help!” But she didn’t respond.

Sandor groped at my harness, trying to unhook it. I’d tied my harness last, hastily, and the connections were poor. I could feel it shredding. I kicked at him, trying to push him away, but I couldn’t get good leverage, and he was like a man possessed.

Suddenly I could tell the harness was not going to hold me. Ethan’s weight was dragging me down. I twisted and scrabbled at the glass panes and the iron numbers of the clock face, desperate for a foothold. My foot smashed through one of the panes. I could feel myself losing my grip. My mind raced to the rappel anchors—they couldn’t possibly support the weight of three.

Oh God. I’m not going to make it here.
A crushing, hopeless darkness pushed through the panic.

“It’s mine,” hissed Sandor.

He had a firm grip on the straps of my bag at last. He loosened the opening and reached inside. I felt a lightening, but I twisted away and Sandor’s hand wobbled. The Egg rolled out of my bag and rested, miraculously, cradled between the hands of the great clock. Time momentarily stopped as we stared at it, unbelieving.

We both reached for it but it was just beyond our fingertips. Sandor stretched, pushing me back. He almost had it. It was all I could do to hang on for life.

I glimpsed his face. He was consumed, crazed. His drive for the Gifts had turned him psychotic. And now, I had glimpsed his reasons. He’d been dogged by it his whole life. And that thing he’d said in the Clock Tower—had his father died in the search? Was it Sandor’s fault?

“Sander—you can’t reach it. It’s too far.” My mind raced; maybe I could talk him down.

“No. It’s mine,” he snarled. “I have to get it. I cannot live unless I—”

Sandor reached and stretched, and I watched with horror as his fingertips brushed the Egg. He was trying to swing us closer, but it wasn’t enough. He planted his feet on the clock’s arm and used it to push, holding on to the rope with a single hand. He reached out impossibly far, and—

He lost his grip on the rope. In slow motion I saw his face turn back, too late. There was air between his hand and the rope, and nothing but air beneath him.

All the oxygen left my lungs as I watched him fall, screaming. I lost sight of him before he hit the ground, swallowed up by the night air and the heavy fog. I turned away, cringing.

When I opened my eyes, I saw the Egg, glistening, balancing, teetering just a little. The Egg was about to fall down from the full height of the Clock Tower to smash on the ground beneath.

I couldn’t let that happen.

I focused on the Egg and reached for it. I strained as far as I could, holding the rope with one hand. I could feel the pull on my harness. It wouldn’t hold much longer, the straps were loosening. But I almost had it. If I could just reach a little further. I could touch the surface of the Egg now, but I needed to grab it, to cradle it in.

“Catherine, let it go,” came a steady voice on my far side. I turned and saw Brooke. She must have roused from her trance, perhaps when Sandor fell, and climbed back up beside me.

But I couldn’t let the Fabergé go. I reached with my hand and caught sight of Penny’s ring. This Egg was everything right now. I’d sacrificed so much for this chance to put things right.

But if you don’t let it go, it’s going to be your death,
said a voice in my head. Just like it was for Sandor.

Frustration made me want to rip my skin off in shreds. I’d come so far. I was so close. But it was down to this: I had to choose, here, between saving the Fabergé, and life.

I couldn’t fix the past but I could live, right now. Suddenly I saw that the Egg was just a thing. It couldn’t truly change the past. It was not salvation, not redemption or penitence. It was time for me to stop looking for symbols of forgiveness. I needed to forgive myself. And live.

I pulled my hand away. The Egg wobbled a little. Then it teetered, and rolled off the clock hand, falling into the mist.

Bleak failure punched my stomach. The Fabergé was gone. The Gifts of the Magi were destroyed, smashed upon the streets of London. All that remorse, all those generations of people trying to correct the original mistake made by two thieves so long ago—it was all gone and shattered on the ground.

I had failed.

And yet . . .
in the back corner of my mind, just out of sight, there was a lightness of being. Because alongside the Fabergé something else lay destroyed on the ground. It was my own personal burden: the guilt I’d been carrying for years about Penny.

Brooke’s hand was on my arm. “Cat. We need to move.”

I looked into her eyes. I snapped back to the present predicament. We needed to get out of there.

“There’s no way we can go down now,” she said. “A crowd will be gathering—a man just fell to his death.”

We needed a new plan. Trouble was, every palace exit would be blocked now, whether by Sandor’s people or by the police. We were trapped. And we couldn’t waste time climbing back up to the belfry.

Brooke lowered down, just below the clock face, and kicked through a window. At the sound of breaking glass, Ethan roused a little, shifting slightly and mumbling incoherently. Brooke pushed the glass shards away, clearing a hole, then helped me and Ethan through, grasping firmly to my arms and sides. We stood up inside and got our bearings. We were in the clock repair room, just behind the face. How were we going to get out of there? I recalled the schematics of the building in my mental image-finder. A plan began to formulate.