Heist Society

Kat felt the envelope slide against her stomach. She could have sworn she heard it scrape against the denim, as loud as a scream in the quiet room. But it was her ears playing tricks on her. Her mind. Maybe her cool was one more thing she’d lost at Colgan.

“Oh, I’m fine, Kat,” Gabrielle replied to the unasked question with a dramatic wave of her good hand. “I’m sure the burns on my feet are going to heal in no time.”

But no one else said anything. They all just looked at Kat, none of them wanting to be the bearer of bad news.

“What?” Kat asked, looking around the room.

“Simon,” Hale said, dropping onto one of the leather couches and propping his feet up. He gestured for the boy to begin.

“The paramedics were quite sure the dizziness would subside eventually,” Gabrielle offered from the couch. Everyone ignored her.

“Well,” Simon said slowly. Three different laptops were spread out before him. The small device he’d carried through the Henley was plugged into one, and a three-dimensional schematic flashed across the screens. “It’s”—Simon looked as if he were trying to recall the right technical term—“complicated.”

“They gave me this wonderful ointment for the scalded tips of my fingers,” Gabrielle added. No one heard.

“Do you want the bad news or the good news?” Simon asked.

“Good,” Kat and Hale said at the same time.

“The Henley has spent the last six months updating all of its security features—which were already good. I mean Henley good—so the new stuff is—”

“I thought you said this was the good news,” Hale said.

Simon nodded. “A change like this doesn’t happen overnight, so they’re doing it exhibit by exhibit, starting with the most valuable rooms, and . . .”

“The Romani Room isn’t the top of the list?” Kat guessed.

Simon shook his head. “Not even close. So if the Henley is vulnerable anywhere, this is it.”

Kat had spent hours wondering why that room of that museum. She knew it hadn’t been random. There was a reason a thief like Romani would pick that exhibit over the Renaissance room or any of the Henley’s other crown jewels, and this was it. She smiled. Somehow the world was starting to make sense again.

“And the bad news?” Hale asked.

Simon shrugged. “It’s still the Henley.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in—for everyone to realize the magnitude of what had to be done. Success in Kat’s world depended so much on details that the big pictures were frequently lost. But Kat knew what they were doing. And as the moment stretched out, everyone else seemed to remember too.

“It’s totally a closed-circuit feed,” Simon went on, a moment later. “There’s no way we’re hacking in from the outside. But we knew that already.”

“Why don’t you skip to the parts we don’t know?” Hale said impatiently.

“Right,” Simon said, pointing at Hale as if that were a brilliant idea. “They’ve already updated all the wiring in the whole building. Really state-of-the-art stuff. I mean, it’s awesome—”

“Simon,” Hale snapped.

“Well . . . that’s the bad news,” Simon finished. “There’s no hacking it. Even if I could tie into the mainframe, I couldn’t override their system.”

“I’m really hoping there’s good news,” Hamish added.

Simon smiled. “Remodeling old buildings like the Henley is . . . awkward,” he said, his eyes shining.

“And . . .” Hale prompted.

“And so sometimes when they put new systems in . . .”

Simon started, but Kat was already nodding.

“They leave the old systems right where they are,” she finished. She looked at Hale, and together they said, “Like the Dubai job.”

Simon nodded. “I’m not saying I can get it up and running, but if I can get into a high-security room for fifteen minutes, and if I’m right . . . that’s our way into the Henley’s inner sanctums.”

“Do it,” Hale said, then stopped. He looked at Kat and waved, an after you gesture.

Kat turned to her cousin. “So, Gabrielle, what did we learn?”

Gabrielle glared at her. “We learned that the next time you want to find out what kind of frontline defense mechanisms someone has in place, you can . . .” but she trailed off as she fell back on the pillow. “What was I saying?”

Kat looked at the brothers.

“Exhibit hall grates fell one point two seconds after contact,” Angus told her.

“The main hall was locked down less than five seconds after that,” Hamish added, crossing his leg. “We won’t be doing anything that requires a hasty break for the nearest exit, I can tell you that.”

“Yeah,” Angus agreed. “Those Henley guards didn’t look like the sort who would let us walk out the front door with five paintings under our arms in the middle of the day.”

“Even if they aren’t their paintings,” his brother said.

“Great,” Gabrielle said from the couch. “I ruined my nails for nothing.”

“Not for nothing,” Kat said. “Thanks to you, Gabs, we just figured out a half dozen ways not to rob the Henley.”

* * *

“Mary Poppins?” Hale suggested four hours later.

“Do you know a way to make it rain between now and Tuesday?” Gabrielle replied.

“Five O’Clock Shadows?” Hamish asked.