Perfect Scoundrels
Page 8

Chapter 10
The best-kept secret in London had to be City Airport, Kat had always thought. Smaller than Heathrow and more central than Gatwick, it was like flying into a small town until you looked out the window and saw Big Ben and the Tower of London below. It was as good a place as any for a teenage thief to go through customs and descend into the very place where she’d pulled off the biggest job of her career only a few months before.
But that didn’t mean Kat had to like it.
Stepping through the airport’s sliding doors and out into the dreary London day, Kat sensed a nagging doubt in the back of her head, a tiny voice that kept telling her something wasn’t quite right. Or maybe it was just Gabrielle.
“Commercial, Kitty?” Gabrielle asked, annoyed. “Really? We just had to fly commercial.…” Gabrielle shifted on the tall boots that descended from beneath a very short skirt printed with the Union Jack, and moved her head from side to side, popping her neck—the universal gesture for long flight. “For the girlfriend of a gazillionaire, you really don’t know how to travel.”
“We weren’t exactly traveling on official gazillionaire business.”
“We could have been,” Gabrielle said, “if we’d told Hale where we were going. And why.”
“Don’t start, Gabs,” Kat said.
“What?” Her cousin gave an innocent shrug, slid her dark glasses on, and walked toward a waiting cab. “Come on. This is our ride.” Gabrielle opened the door and crawled into the black car. Kat followed. She sat her bag at her feet and spoke to the driver.
“Hi, we’re going to—”
But before she could finish, the car zoomed off, throwing her against the seat back. Her suitcase toppled over, smashing against her foot.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry about that, Kitty,” the driver said.
“Hamish?” Kat cried.
“Should have warned you to… Hold on!” said Angus, Hamish’s brother, from the passenger seat as Hamish spun the wheel and sent the cab careening into traffic.
Kat sat breathless while the car swerved around big red double-decker buses and in front of men in suits riding bicycles with briefcases tied to handlebars. Outside, it started to rain, and Kat heard the water pelting against the car as Hamish turned down a narrow cobblestone alley—entirely too fast, in Kat’s opinion.
“So, guys,” she said, leery and glaring at Gabrielle, “I wasn’t expecting to see you on this trip.”
“What?” Gabrielle asked. “I can’t make an executive decision? Besides, everything is better with Bagshaws.”
Kat was beginning to seriously question her cousin’s definition of “better” when Angus looked over the front seat. “So, between you and me…”
“And me,” Hamish added.
“How rich is ol’ Hale these days?” Angus finished.
“Guys.” Kat gave an exasperated sigh. “He’s Hale. Hale is just the same as he was before, just—”
“Richer,” Gabrielle said. “About a million times richer.”
In the front seat, Angus gave a long sigh. “I always did like that boy.”
“So true,” his brother said. “So, so true.”
Then Hamish spun the wheel again. Dark alley gave way to the glow of neon through the foggy windows, and Kat knew immediately where they were. She couldn’t help herself: she thought about the last time she’d been in Trafalgar Square—the long ride in the back of a mobster’s car. Blackmail photos and death threats. She was beginning to question why she’d thought it was so important to come back to England.
“What’s wrong, Kitty?” Angus asked.
Kat reached out to touch the window. “London makes me nervous.”
“Don’t worry, Kat,” Hamish said. “You’re about to feel much, much worse.”
The skyscraper was new, right next to the Thames. Someone said something about it being the tallest building in Europe, but Kat wasn’t really in the mood to care. She just stood quietly in the elevator, and when they finally reached the penthouse apartment, Kat was more than a little relieved to see that Gabrielle had a key.
“Who owns this apartment?” Kat asked.
“Carlos,” her cousin said, pushing open the door and stepping inside. A staircase ascended into a second story. A modern kitchen covered the right side of the space. It was all steel and chrome and glass. Even though Kat was back in London, it felt like a different hemisphere—different century—from the country estate where they’d stayed when planning the Henley job.
“And Carlos is…”
“About to be step-daddy number five,” Gabrielle told her. She cocked a hip. “He’s Cuban.”
“How nice for him,” Kat said, and followed her cousin into the towering, frigid room.
Rain ran down the tall glass windows, and the flames from the long sleek fireplace didn’t even begin to fight the chill. Suddenly, Kat craved soup and a warm kitchen. She felt a long, long way from home.
“So tell me.” Kat dropped her bags and spun on the Bagshaws. “What exactly is wrong?”
“There’s a bathroom down there,” Gabrielle said. “If you want to try to do something about…this.” She gestured to Kat’s hair. Kat ignored her.
“Guys, what’s going—”
“Oh good, you’re here.”
“Simon,” Kat said, looking up at the boy descending the stairs, a laptop under each arm. As happy as she was to see him, another emotion boiled to the surface. “What are you doing here? What are all of you doing here? Gabrielle—”
“Don’t be mad at dear, sweet Gabrielle, Kitty,” Angus said, even though Kat was fairly certain that Gabrielle had never been dear or sweet a day in her life. “It’s hard out there for a couple of lads trying to find honest work.”
“Honest?” Kat asked.
“Or honestly dishonest, as the case may be,” Hamish said.
Kat turned to Simon. “I thought you were doing a PhD program at Cambridge.”
“Oxford.” Simon blushed. “And I didn’t find the academic setting as challenging as I’d hoped.”
“University girls don’t date teenage geniuses,” Hamish translated.
“Okay. Great. So Simon’s a dropout and you two are…here.” She pointed at the Bagshaws. “But guys, it’s not a big job. I mean, we just need to get into Hale’s grandmother’s flat. That’s not exactly—”
“Oh, the flat is nothing.” Angus pulled an apple from a bowl on the marble counter and took a big bite as he said, “Hale’s aunt inherited the place, and she’s kind of…”
“Unpleasant,” Hamish filled in while Angus provided his own (far less flattering) word.
Simon talked on. “So the whole staff is turning over. Getting in and out with all the chaos would be a cakewalk.”
Kat studied the solemn faces that were looking back at her. “So that means the problem is…”
“The desk is an original Petrovich.” When Simon spoke, he began to subtly vibrate in excitement. “I mean, a real Petrovich. Did you know that Catherine the Great herself discovered him and—”
“Simon,” Gabrielle said. “Focus.”
“Sorry.” He pulled his thoughts back together. “It’s just, I’ve always wanted a Petrovich,” Simon said. “Those desks are like works of art.”
“And that, dear cousin, is the problem, because there is going to be an exhibition of Petrovich’s finest work at…” Gabrielle let the words drag out long enough for Kat to guess.
“The Henley.”
“Yep,” Hamish said. “Welcome to London.”
“Can’t we get in before the museum takes possession?” Kat asked.
Angus gave an exaggerated sigh. “The Henley picked up the desk three days ago.”
Gabrielle nodded, then hopped onto the counter and crossed her long legs. “And so that means…”
“We have to rob the Henley,” Simon said.
Kat sank onto a truly uncomfortable sofa. “Again.”
Chapter 11
Despite the fact that Alexander Petrovich was a member of the court of Catherine the Great, he was not a royal. Even though he apprenticed with Moscow’s finest carpenters, he was far more than a mere craftsman. No, what Petrovich really was was an artist. And like most of the great artists in history, his work eventually wound up at the Henley.
Oh, there was no denying that things at the Henley had changed in the past few months. From the moment a small business card bearing the name Visily Romani had appeared in a locked (and supposedly secured) wing of the museum, many said that the Henley’s luck had shifted.
First there were headlines. Later, there was fire and chaos. And when the smoke finally cleared, a group of frightened schoolchildren was found locked in a gallery, and Leonardo da Vinci’s Angel Returning to Heaven was gone. And soon the Henley’s reputation as the most exclusive (not to mention secure) museum in the world had vanished.
But months passed. The smell of smoke faded. And now the Angel and Romani and perhaps even the children themselves were gone for good, and things were finally returning to normal.
Or so the Henley thought.
It was a rare sunny day in London when Kat stood in the courtyard outside the museum’s main doors, staring up at the atrium made almost entirely of glass. Kat’s life had changed inside those walls. Walking in, she had been Uncle Eddie’s great-niece, Bobby Bishop’s daughter. But walking out, Kat had had a piece of Holocaust art under her arm and a new purpose to her step, and she never looked back.
So it should have felt nice walking through that massive atrium and back into the sight of her former glory. But it didn’t.
For starters, there was the wig that Gabrielle had purchased and Kat had been afraid not to wear. Then there were the heels her cousin had forced her into and the thick glasses that completed her disguise. But more than anything, there was the terrible sense of dread that filled her gut as she walked past the wall where Angel Returning to Heaven had once hung.
So, needless to say, Kat was glad for any excuse to walk in the other direction. Glass sculptures dangled from the tall ceilings, floating in a nonexistent breeze. But when Kat turned a corner, she had no choice but to stop dead in her tracks.
“Hey, Kat?” Gabrielle asked through the comms unit in her ear. “Are you at the Petrovich room yet?”
Kat said nothing.
“Kitty…” Hamish tried again. “Kitty, are you—”
“Guys, we have a problem,” Kat finally managed to mutter.
“What?” Gabrielle said.
“The Petrovich exhibit isn’t in a room.”
Kat looked down the long promenade, at the desks arranged in the center of the massive corridor, each surrounded by velvet ropes. Guards were stationed on either end of the long hall filled with school groups and tourists and art lovers just out for the afternoon. “It isn’t in a room!” she spat in frustration.