And something in his voice, or maybe just the moment, made Kat smile. She turned and leaned out of the vent one final time. “Why are you doing this, Nick?”
“Because . . .” He paused, searching for words. “Because I like you,” he said, but Kat didn’t believe him.
At that moment a new siren began to wail—a different, deafening sound.
“Kat,” Nick said again, stepping forward, reaching up for help, but in that instant, red laser lights flashed over the grate’s opening. The cool blue light of the Romani Room was replaced by a bright red glow. Nick glanced toward the doors as if he could hear the guards coming.
But Kat stared down at him and said, “Wrong answer.”
Kat tried to ignore the sirens that grew louder and louder with each inch. She squinted and crawled through the blackness. Focusing on a small square of light in the distance, Kat crawled closer and closer. Louder and louder the sirens wailed. And as badly as Kat wanted to stop and think about what had just happened, there was no room for thought at that point—no time.
When she finally reached the end, she could see Gabrielle beneath her, ripping off the skirt of her docent’s uniform, turning it inside out to reveal a burgundy plaid that matched Kat’s own. Simon was helping Hamish with his tie, the brothers’ blue jumpsuits now shoved deep into a wastebasket somewhere inside the Henley. And then she glanced down at the blazer in her hand. Nick wouldn’t be needing it. Not now. So she left it tucked inside the shaft and lowered herself to the floor through the glow of a whirling red light.
Laser grids were flashing angrily. In the chaotic wash of lights, she could barely make out the paintings on the walls— Renoir. Degas. Monet. She felt dizzy with the thought of being that close to so many masters. But then again, maybe it was just the thick gas being pumped into the room.
She thought of the oxygen mask that she’d left behind, but of course it was too late.
Through blurry eyes she saw the doors swing open, armed guards rushed inside.
“Henley security!” Kat heard the cry over and over, reverberating up and down the halls.
Kat’s head felt thick. She had already started to fall.
Chapter 34
From the backseat of Arturo Taccone’s Bentley, the entire world seemed to be falling apart. A small television showed live coverage of a correspondent who stood a mere twenty feet away. Taccone looked between the scene on the screen and the one unfolding in real life, and he wasn’t quite certain which showed the real picture.
“Things have taken a dramatic turn here at the Henley today,” the correspondent was saying.
“What do you want me to do, boss?” the driver turned and asked.
Arturo Taccone took a last look at the scene, then placed his sunglasses over his eyes. “Drive.” His voice was cool and free of emotion; as if another round of his favorite game were finally over. A bystander wouldn’t have known if he had won or lost. Arturo Taccone was simply happy to be able to play again another day.
He leaned farther back into the plush seat. “Just drive.”
The first men through the gallery doors that day were seasoned professionals. They had trained with the American FBI and the UK’s Scotland Yard. Most were former military. Their equipment was state of the art. The Henley staff took it as a personal insult whenever a great museum got robbed. Some might have said that their extreme security measures were overkill, a waste, but at this particular moment on this particular day, they seemed like a very good idea.
Ten men stood at the gallery’s entrance, tasers drawn, gas masks over their faces, as they watched doors swing open up and down the Henley’s halls.
Collectively, they represented one of the most highly trained private security forces in the world.
And yet nothing could have prepared them for what they saw.
“Wait,” the news correspondent said, and immediately Arturo Taccone turned back to the screen. “We are receiving the first, unconfirmed accounts that the Henley might be secure.”
“Stop,” Arturo Taccone said, and his driver pulled to the curb.
“Kids!” Kat heard one of the guards yell through the haze that filled her mind. “It’s a bunch of kids!”
She rolled onto her side and looked up through the fog as a man knelt on one knee and leaned toward her. “It’s okay,” he told her softly.
“Gas,” she mumbled and coughed. “Fire. The museum was on—” A coughing fit cut her off. Someone handed her a mask, and she breathed in fresh air.
There was more coughing around the room. From the corner of her eye she saw Simon holding a mask to his face. He was lying on the ground beside an empty artist’s stand, clutching a blank canvas. The guards were busy helping Angus and Hamish to their unsteady feet, so they never saw the smallest of the boys smile behind his mask. But Kat saw.
Lying on the floor that day, Kat saw everything.
“What is this?” Kat knew the voice. She had last seen the man disappearing into the crowd and the smoke, but this time Hale was not beside him. “Who are these children?” Gregory Wainwright demanded of the guards.
The guard pointed to the seal on Simon’s burgundy blazer. “Looks like they’re from the Knightsbury Institute.”
“Why weren’t they evacuated?” the director asked of the guards, but didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and snapped at the teens. “Why didn’t you evacuate?”
“We—” Everyone in the room turned to the girl with the long legs and the short skirt who was rising unsteadily to her feet. Two of the guards rushed to take her by the arm and help her to stand. “We had a”—coughing overtook her for a moment, but if Gabrielle was playing her part too fervently, Kat was the only one to think it—“had a class.”
She pointed to the bag at her feet. Brushes and paints were strewn across the marble floor where they’d fallen in the chaos. Wooden easels stood in a long line, facing the rows of art. No one stopped to notice that there were five children. Five easels. Four blank canvases. No one was in the mood for counting.
“We were supposed to . . .” She coughed again. One of the guards placed a hand protectively on her back. “They told us to wait here. They said this exhibit was closed so that we could try to copy those.” Gabrielle pointed from the blank canvases on their easels to the Old Masters that lined the walls. “When the sirens sounded, we tried to leave, but the doors were—” She coughed one more time and looked up at the men who surrounded her. Her eyelashes might have batted. Her cheeks might have blushed. A dozen different things might have happened, but the end result was that no one doubted her when she said, “Locked.”
Well, almost no one.
“What class? Why didn’t I know about any such class?” the director growled at the guards.
The gas was almost completely gone. Kat was breathing more normally. She smoothed the skirt of her uniform, feeling as if her balance had almost completely returned. Two and two were starting to equal four again as she turned and pointed to the sign on the open door, which read: GALLERY CLOSED FOR PRIVATE LECTURE (THIS PROGRAM MADE POSSIBLE BY THE W. W. HALE FOUNDATION FOR ART EXCELLENCE).
“But . . .” the director started, then turned. He ran a hand across his sweating face. “But the oxygen? The fire security protocols should have killed them!” He turned back to Gabrielle. “Why aren’t you dead?”
“Sir,” one of the guards cut in. “The fire was isolated in the next corridor. The oxygen deprivation measures wouldn’t have kicked in here unless—”
“Keep searching the galleries!” the director yelled. “Search them all.”
“The galleries are all secure, sir,” one of the guards assured him.
“We thought this gallery was secure!” Wainwright looked down, mumbling something to himself about oversights and liability. “Search them!”
“Sir,” one of the guards said softly, stepping closer. Kat savored the irony as he whispered, “They’re just kids.”
“Sir,” Simon said, his voice shaking so violently that Kat believed he was honestly on the verge of tears. “Could I call my mother? I don’t feel so good.”
And then one of the most brilliant technical experts in the world passed out cold.
The sound that came next was unlike anything Katarina Bishop had ever heard. It wasn’t the screech of an alarm. It was anything but the roar of sirens. One of the busiest museums in the world was like a ghost town, echoing. Haunting. And as the guards carried Simon into the grand promenade and its cleaner air, Kat half expected to see the shadow of Visily Romani hovering over them, telling her somehow that she’d done well, but she wasn’t finished. Not yet.
Through the Impressionist gallery’s open door, Kat watched Gabrielle slowly putting the blank canvases into the large carrying cases. Hamish and Angus hurriedly stuffed paintbrushes into backpacks. Kat moved to comfort Simon, but then she stopped. She listened.
A thud. An echo. A footstep.
She turned just as the man appeared at the end of the promenade. His arms pumped. His feet banged against the tile floor. And the whole world seemed to stop turning as he told them, “She’s gone.”
The words weren’t a cry, and they were far from a whisper. They held no trace of panic or fear. It was more like disbelief. Yes, that was it, Kat decided, although she couldn’t tell if it was his or hers.
“Leonardo’s Angel,” the man said again as the party made its way down the center of the grand promenade. The big double doors to the Renaissance room were standing open. A fireproof, bulletproof Plexiglas barrier still stood, sheltering the Angel from harm. Lasers shone red all around. But there was no mistaking that the frame at the center of it all—the heart of the Henley—stood empty.
“Gone?” Gregory Wainwright stumbled toward the Plexiglas barrier, reaching out for a painting that was no longer there. “She can’t be—” the director started, then seemed to finally notice that the frame wasn’t empty after all. The Angel was gone, but something remained: a plain white card and the words, “Visily Romani.”
If they had searched Kat, of course, they would have found a card exactly like it. If they had peeled back the top layer of canvas that covered the four frames Kat’s crew carried, they would have seen that Angel Returning to Heaven was not the only painting to leave the Henley that day, although somehow Kat imagined that only four walked out the front door.
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting was gone. The five children trapped in the mayhem were no longer a top concern. And so it was that Simon, Angus, Hamish, Kat, and her cousin walked out into the fading drizzle with four masterpieces secured in their artist’s portfolios, covered with blank canvas—a clean slate.
Kat breathed the fresh air. A clean start.
In the days that followed, no reporters would be able to interview any of the young artists who had been in danger that day. The Henley’s trustees waited for a call or visit from one or more attorneys, and word about what monetary damages there might be, but no such call or visit ever occurred.