Heist Society

“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.