Heist Society (6 page)

N
o way.
Kat heard the words in her head before she thought to say them aloud.
No, Hale. No. Just . . . no.
Kat shook the sleep out of her head and tried to think clearly about the situation. After all, she was in Italy. With a smart and handsome boy. Standing on a private jet. The world lay quite literally at her feet, and yet, all Katarina Bishop could do was watch the door ease open, revealing a private airstrip, one of the most beautiful valleys in the world, and a young woman with long flowing hair and a cocked hip.

All she could say was, “No way.”

It is fairly safe to assume that all thieves (or anyone who has spent much of their life in the dark) will have a sixth sense that allows them to hear more, process more quickly. And yet Kat wondered why the sight of that particular girl made the little hairs on her neck stand on end.

“Hello, Kitty Kat.”

Oh yeah. That was it.

“Can I talk to you?” Kat grabbed at Hale, but even though she was very catlike on her feet, Hale was much sturdier on his. He moved past her and down the stairs just as the girl leveled her gaze at him and said, “Hey, handsome.”

When he hugged the girl, her long legs left the ground, and Kat wanted to point out that it was far too cold for such a short skirt. She longed to note that high heels were a very bad idea in a city full of cobblestone. But Kat just stood frozen at the top of the stairs, not moving until the girl said, “Oh, come on, Kitty, don’t you have a hug for your cousin?”

Families are strange things—living things—in more ways than one. And family businesses . . . well, there was no limit to the oddness.

Walking through the narrow streets of the small town Arturo Taccone called home, Kat had to wonder for the millionth time if it was that way in
all
family businesses. Was there a shoe store in Seattle that had been handed down through generations only to spawn two teenage girls who couldn’t be left alone together? Was there—at this very moment—a restaurant in Rio where two cousins were crossing their arms and refusing to work the same shift?

Or perhaps these feelings were reserved for the family businesses where people are occasionally shot. Or imprisoned. But Kat would never know. She only had one family, after all, and nothing whatsoever to compare it to.

“Hale,” Gabrielle whined as she draped her arm through his, “Kat’s not being very nice to me.”

“Kat,” Hale said as if enjoying playing grown-up, “hug your cousin.”

But Kat never forced affection. And unlike Gabrielle, she adamantly refused to whine. Maybe she’d lost those abilities when she lost her mother; or maybe, like bad reflexes and a steadfast relationship with the truth, those skills were slowly being bred out of her family. Whatever the case, she managed to say, “It’s good to see you, Gabrielle. I thought you were in Monte Carlo. The Eurotrash circuit.”

“And I thought you were in study hall. Guess we were both mistaken.”

Kat studied her cousin and wondered how it was possible that she was only a year older—not even that. Nine months. And yet she looked nine years more mature. She was taller, curvier, and just in general
more
. As she pressed against Hale, she held his arm tightly, leaving Kat to walk beside them like a third wheel down streets that were barely wide enough for two.

“So, where’s Alfred?” Gabrielle asked.

“You mean Marcus?” Hale corrected.

“Whatever.” The girl dismissed her mistake with a wave, and Kat thought it was too bad that her head hadn’t filled out quite as completely as her bra. But then her cousin said, “Happy birthday,” and a package of photos suddenly vanished from her hand and appeared in Hale’s jacket pocket.

The pass was smooth. Effortless. The practiced move of a seasoned pro, a member of the family.

“How’s your mom?” Kat asked her.

“Engaged.” Gabrielle gave an exasperated sigh. “Again.”

“Oh,” Hale said. “Congratulations.”

“You could say that. He’s a count. I think. Or maybe a duke.” She turned to Hale. “Which one’s better?”

Before he could answer, they came to a low stone wall. Beyond it, vineyards stretched out across the Sabina Valley. A river sliced through the fertile land while sheep grazed on a distant hill. Italy was one of the most beautiful places on earth, and yet Kat was unable to tear her eyes away from the photos in Hale’s hands. Images of a massive compound near a beautiful lake. Hale leaned against the wall, flipping through the photos that zoomed in closer and closer to the compound. Soon Kat was staring at the walls and lines that, until then, she’d only seen modeled in blueprints.

“This is as close as you got to the house?” Hale asked Gabrielle.

She chomped her gum. “You mean to
the fortress
? Seriously nice picking, guys.”

“We didn’t pick it,” Kat reminded her.

“Whatever. The place has a fifteen-foot stone wall.”

“We know,” Kat told her.

“Four perimeter towers. With guards.”

“We know.” Kat rolled her eyes.

“And a moat. Did you know that, Miss Smarty-pants? Did you know there’s an actual moat? Like with
things
under the water?” Gabrielle gave a whole-body shiver (and parts of her shivered a bit more than others), but the point was clear.

Hale put the pictures back into his pocket and turned, placed his elbows on top of the wall, leaning there.

“Fine,” Kat said. “What about the police report?” she asked, but Gabrielle just laughed. “You didn’t check with the police . . . at all? You didn’t ask them about . . . anything?” Kat asked over the sound of laughter that echoed on the cobblestones. Even Hale was smiling. But Kat just stood there, amazed that someone who shared Uncle Eddie’s blood might not know that very few jobs in history have ever stayed off the police’s radar entirely.

After all, people tended to notice if, at 8:02 p.m., every car alarm in the city went off for twenty minutes. Or if fifteen traffic lights went out between the hours of nine and ten. Or if a patrol car found an unmarked van abandoned by the side of the road—full of duct tape and hummingbirds.

These are the footprints of people who are very careful where they step. But they’re footprints nonetheless.

“Men like Arturo Taccone don’t call the police, Kat.” Gabrielle spoke slowly, as if Kat had gotten amazingly stupid while she was away. “Those of us who don’t abandon our families are able to learn these things.”

“Geez, I left for a few—”

“You
left
.” Gabrielle’s voice was colder than the wind. “And you’d still be behind your ivy-covered walls if we hadn’t . . . You’d still be there.”

Authenticity is a strange thing, Kat knew. Someone carves an image out of stone. A machine prints a dead president on a bill. An artist puts paint on a canvas. Does it really matter who the painter is? Is a forged Picasso any less beautiful than a real one? Maybe it was just her, but Kat didn’t think so. And still, as she looked between her cousin and Hale, she thought she smelled a fake.

“Gabrielle,” Kat said slowly, “how’d you know there was ivy at Colgan?”

Kat heard her cousin scoff and make up some line about a lucky guess. But an image was already flashing through Kat’s mind: a grainy surveillance video. Someone in a hooded sweatshirt running across the quad. She turned to Hale and realized that he was too tall, too broad. The person on the screen had been close enough to Kat’s size to fool the Colgan School Honor Board, but what really bothered Kat was that she had been tricked too.

“
Gabrielle
, Hale?” Kat smacked his shoulder. “It wasn’t bad enough that you got me kicked out of school, but you had to use
her
to help you? Gabrielle!”

“I can hear you,” her cousin sang beside her.

Hale looked at Gabrielle and gestured at Kat. “She’s adorable when she’s jealous.” Kat kicked his shin. “Hey! It had to be done, remember? And contrary to popular belief, I don’t know that many girls.” They both stared at him. “Okay, I don’t know that many girls who have your special skills.”

Gabrielle batted her eyelashes. “Oh, you do know how to make a girl feel special.”

But Kat . . . Kat felt like a fool.

She looked at Hale. “I’ll see you at the hotel.” She turned to her cousin. “And I’ll see you at Christmas or at one of your mother’s weddings or . . . something. Thanks for coming, Gabrielle. But I’m sure there’s a beach somewhere that wishes you were on it, so I’ll let you get back to your business and I’ll get back to mine.”

She had almost made it to the corner when her cousin called, “You think you’re the only person in the world who loves your dad?”

Kat stopped and studied Gabrielle. For the first time in her life, she could have sworn her cousin wasn’t trying to con her. By the time Gabrielle was seven, she had been trained to call five different men daddy. There was an oil tycoon from Texas, a billionaire from Brazil, a man with a very unfortunate overbite who did something for the Paraguayan government, which oversaw the import/export of a highly overpriced fake Monet or two, but none of them had been her father.

“You need me,” Gabrielle said. There was no doubt in her voice. No flirt. No ditz. She was in every way Uncle Eddie’s great-niece. A pro. A con. A thief. “Like it or not, Kitty Kat, the reunion starts now.”

Kat sat quietly as Gabrielle parked a tiny European car on the side of a winding country road. There were no headlights, no sounds. As Kat opened the door and stepped outside, she felt a cool damp breeze, and looked up at a dark starless sky. A thief couldn’t ask for anything more.

“Tell me again why
I
had to ride in the backseat.” Hale stretched and stared down at her.

“The billionaire always rides in the back, big guy.” She reached to pat him on the chest, but before she could pull away, he caught her wrist and held her gloved hand against his pounding heart.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked.

There were a million lies Kat could have told, but none more powerful than the truth. “This is our only idea.”

While Gabrielle popped the hood and disabled the engine so that no roaming guards or passing busybodies would stop to ask questions, Kat kept her gaze locked with Hale’s. In that moment, he looked a lot like the boy in the Superman pajamas. Scared but determined, and maybe just a little bit heroic.

“Kat, I—”

“Coming?” Gabrielle’s whisper sliced through the night, cutting off whatever Hale was about to say. Kat was left with no choice but to turn and start up the steep embankment, shrouded in inky darkness, fallen branches sounding like firecrackers as they snapped underfoot.

* * *

“Oops,” Kat said ten minutes later, stumbling for what felt like the millionth time. She didn’t know what was worse, that Hale had had to steady her, or that Gabrielle was witnessing her clumsiness.

She kept waiting for her cousin to say
Kat’s out of practice
. She was sure Hale was about to joke that the Colgan School’s physical education curriculum was sorely lacking in practical application. But no one said a word as they made their way to the top of a tall hill, climbing steadily until Gabrielle came to a sudden stop. Kat almost collided with her cousin as she pointed and said, “That’s it.”

Even at night, even from this distance, anyone could see that Arturo Taccone’s home was really a palace made of stone and wood, surrounded by vineyards and olive trees. A postcard paradise. But what Kat noticed were the guards and the towers, the walls and the gates. It was no paradise—it was more like a prison.

The grass was damp against their stomachs as the three of them lay at the top of the hill, looking down on the villa below. Kat hated to admit it, but Gabrielle was absolutely right: you did have to see it to believe it. The day before, when they had spread out the blueprints for Simon to study, Kat had thought Arturo Taccone’s home was one of the hardest targets she’d ever seen. But when the dark clouds parted for a moment, and the moon shone like a spotlight on the moat, Kat realized that only a fool would approach those walls.

“Groundhog?” Hale asked.

“No time,” Kat replied. “The tunneling alone would take days, and Taccone wouldn’t leave these woods unpatrolled for that long.”

“Fallen Angel?”

“Maybe,” Kat answered, looking to the sky. “But even on a night with no moon, that inner courtyard is awfully small to risk someone seeing you or your parachute. And no one builds guard towers if they aren’t going to fill them with guards.”

“With guns,” Gabrielle added.

Kat watched her cousin turn onto her back, rest her head on her arms, and stare up at the black clouds that filled the sky. She might as well have been lying on a beach or in her own bed for all the ease she exhibited. But Kat’s feet ached from the run through the woods. Her black ski cap was too tight and itchy. Kat was wondering what exactly it was that Hale smelled like, and whether or not she liked it.

Kat didn’t know how to rob Arturo Taccone.

So Kat didn’t know how
anyone
could have robbed Arturo Taccone.

And that was what she hated most of all.

“So someone either Trojan Horsed or Avon Ladied or . . .” Hale was going on, still listing options, but Kat was through speculating; she didn’t dare to guess. Instead, she was recalling the words Hale had said to Simon:
It’s not an ordinary job
. Kat was realizing that maybe it couldn’t be done by an ordinary thief.