Uncommon Criminals
Page 8

“You look just like your mother.”
Kat jerked, her uncle’s voice pulling her back into the room and the moment. She felt her eyes begin to water and knew she wasn’t the only one seeing double.
“Yeah.” Kat wiped her eyes and hoped no one noticed. “I guess I do.”
When Kat moved toward him, she thought that he might bolt and run, but instead he caught her arm and held her there. His hands were covered with varnish and stain—an artist’s hands. Unburned and unscarred. And yet he just squeezed harder, tighter than a vise. There was something real about the master forger when he stared into her eyes and said, “Does he know you’re here?”
Kat shook her head. “No.”
When he released Kat’s arm and dropped into a chair, Gabrielle grabbed a footstool and pulled it closer. “Uncle Charlie,” she started, “we have a job—a big one.”
“You have a job?” he asked, then laughed, quick and hard. “Where’s your mother?” he chided.
“She’s busy,” Gabrielle told him. “And we’ve pulled plenty of jobs on our own.”
“I don’t suppose you heard about the Henley?” Hale said, but his smooth smile broke when faced with Charlie’s glare.
“Beginner’s luck,” the old man countered.
“We can do this, Uncle Charlie.” For the first time in her life, Gabrielle sounded like someone who genuinely needed someone else’s approval. “We’ve got a plan.”
“You’re children,” the old man hissed.
“Like Nadia was a child?” Gabrielle said. “And my mother. And—”
“Don’t touch that,” Charlie snapped, and Hale inched away from the Ming vase that held an assortment of ratty old umbrellas.
“We came a long way to see you, Charlie,” Gabrielle said.
The old man cut his eyes at her. “The ride is always easier on the way down.”
“We wouldn’t have come if there was anything in this world you couldn’t make,” Gabrielle said, not flirting; not lying. It was in no way a con when she told him, “We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t need the best.”
“I am the best.” It was the sure and steady voice of someone who knows that it’s true. And yet, Kat couldn’t help but notice that he rocked slightly at the waist. The artist’s hands trembled. “I’m retired,” he said, looking away. “And your uncle doesn’t want you here.”
“You’re our uncle too,” Gabrielle protested just as Kat eased onto the stool and caught her uncle’s eyes.
“Someone is using one of the Pseudonimas, Uncle Charlie,” she said, and watched him turn as pale as the snow. “Have you heard that?”
“It’s not me,” he snapped.
“I know.” Kat reached for his hand, but he flinched and pulled away. “I know,” she said again, softer this time. “But I need your help, you see.”
“We,” Hale inserted.
“We need to do a job for Visily Romani.” Kat took a deep breath. “We need the Cleopatra Emerald.”
And in a flash they were there—the steely resolve and power of will that Kat had seen so often on the face of Uncle Eddie. “No!” the man snapped, rising from the chair and pushing across the room with so much force Kat almost lost her balance.
She struggled to her feet, but the man didn’t stop, didn’t turn as Kat went on.
“The Kelly Corporation is moving the emerald to its corporate headquarters in New York two days from now, and we have to steal it, Uncle Charlie. Visily Romani needs us to steal it.”
“No one has to steal the Cleopatra Emerald. Eddie knows that. We know that. We know…We learned that lesson the hard way.” He turned to Gabrielle. “You should go.”
“Charlie, please.” Despite her smaller than average size, Kat crossed the room in three long strides.
“I can’t make that in…It can’t be…I’d need…”
“I’ll get you whatever you need,” Hale said.
“It cannot be done!” The old man yelled so loudly that Kat half feared an avalanche. “I can’t make that. I can’t make it. I can’t…”
“We don’t need you to make us a fake Cleopatra Emerald, Uncle Charlie.” Kat’s voice was low and kind and even. When she touched his arm, he didn’t pull away. “We just need you to give us the one you’ve already got.”
CHAPTER 10
Somewhere between the airport and the brownstone, the others must have fallen asleep. Kat watched Gabrielle curl into a tiny ball like a kitten while Hale splayed across the limo’s backseat, long legs and arms, and a head that, on occasion, would drift onto Kat’s shoulder in a way she couldn’t bring herself to mind.
Kat knew that she should be resting, but her eyes stayed open, watching the darkness fade. Thinking. Planning. Worrying about all the ways it could end badly. The switch could get blown or the gear could jam. The roof access might be compromised and the blueprints could be out of date. There were always a million ways a job could go wrong, but only one way for it to go right.
There were always too many chances.
When the car stopped, the street was quiet in that space that wasn’t quite night and wasn’t quite morning, and the girl who wasn’t quite a thief thought for a minute about staying there, telling Marcus to cut the engine and let everyone just sleep. But then Hale shifted beside her.
“We home?” Kat felt his breath against her neck, warm and soft. It was as if, half awake, he’d forgotten to be angry about Moscow and Rio and all the others. She missed the boy who was curled against her. “Did you sleep?”
“Sure.”
“Liar,” Gabrielle said, straightening and stretching. “You’re thinking about the roof, aren’t you?”
“Among other things,” Kat had to admit.
“The switch?” Hale asked.
“The cameras?” Gabrielle guessed, but Kat sat perfectly still, unsure whether she was hearing the spinning of the wheels in her head or the idling car. It seemed to take all the strength she could summon to reach for the door and step out into the dusky light.
“The timing.” She felt the green stone in her pocket, smooth and fragile. “The timing…is everything.”
Turning from the car, Kat expected to see the empty street and the vacant brownstone, to find peace and quiet and anything but the sound of a gruff voice saying, “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Kat would never know how many faces and names her uncle had worn in his long life. Eddie himself probably had no idea. There was only one Eddie that mattered, though, and that was the man who turned and left the stoop, walking through the dim house. That was the man the three teens followed into the heat of the kitchen.
“You’ll sit,” he told Kat. “You’ll eat.”
It was the first time in a long time that Kat could remember a decision being made for her, and she couldn’t help herself—she did exactly as she was told. And she liked it.
He struck a match and lit the flame on the old stove, then pulled a dozen eggs from the refrigerator. It was part habit, part ritual, and the hands that had run a thousand cons moved with steady, even purpose.
“You have been to Europe.”
It wasn’t a question, and Kat knew better than to deny it. Hale and Gabrielle shared a worried glance behind her uncle’s back, but Kat just sat, feeling the weight of Charlie’s stone in her pocket, pressing against her hip.
“And how is your Mr. Stein?”
The first thought that came to Kat’s mind was relief: He doesn’t know. The second, she had to admit, was irritation. “He’s not my Mr. Stein.”
“I see headlines about statues in Brazil.…” Uncle Eddie talked on as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “I hear whispers that a Cézanne has gone missing in Moscow.…”
Hale held up two fingers. “Just a little one.”
“And I think maybe the South American operation can survive a few days without me. I think maybe I am needed at home.”
Eddie found his cast-iron skillet but didn’t turn, didn’t speak, until the silence was too much for Kat, and she blurted, “They were easy jobs.”
Uncle Eddie looked at Hale, who shrugged and said, “I wouldn’t know.” He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Wasn’t invited.”
Kat felt an odd thing in the air then, with Uncle Eddie looking at Hale. “She goes alone?” her uncle asked.
“She’s slippery that way,” Hale said, and suddenly Kat hated them for whatever alliance they had formed in her absence.
“She is standing right here!” Kat snapped. “The last I checked, she has managed everything she’s tried so far.”
“Talent, Katarina, is a dangerous thing.” Uncle Eddie turned back to his stove, placed bacon onto cast iron, and when he spoke again, it was in Russian, low and under his breath.
“What was that?” Hale asked.
“‘The man who loves the wire needs the net,’” Gabrielle translated, then read Hale’s blank expression. “It means—”
“Leave us,” Eddie told Hale and Gabrielle.
“But…” Gabrielle pointed to the skillet and the bacon and the eggs.
“Now,” Eddie snapped, and a second later Kat was alone at the kitchen table.
There was no doubt the room was different. Uncle Eddie might have been back at his stove, but his absence was every-where—from the calendar that hadn’t been changed, to the suitcase by the door. But the only thing that really mattered to Kat was the newspaper that lay on top of all the others, the same headline still screaming in the room, calling out for all to see that the Cleopatra was on the move.
“We are very much alike, Katarina.”
It should have been a compliment, the highest praise. Kat could think of at least a dozen people who had been working for those very words their whole lives, but not Kat. Kat knew there was far more to the story.
“I was once a brilliant young thief…who wasn’t nearly as brilliant as I thought.” He took a deep breath. “It is a shame to see history repeat itself.”
“Excuse me?” Kat rose to her full height and then regretted it. It felt like far too little, far too late.
“It seems as if you don’t approve of the family business, Katarina.” He shrugged. “Or of me. But these chances you take…these things you do…this is a dangerous life to live…alone.”
Kat couldn’t help herself; she thought about Rio and Moscow and the look in Gabrielle’s eyes when she’d warned that a person can get drunk on this life—on these highs—and when that happens, Kat knew, there was bound to be a long, long way to fall.
But Kat was smart and careful, and there was not a doubt in her mind when she stepped toward him, threw her arms out wide, and said, “Look at where I am, Uncle Eddie. I’m back. I’m here. And I’m not alone.”