He chuckled and watched her go. She was already out of the car when he said, “Good-bye, Katarina. Until we meet again.”
Kat stood beneath the awning of a shop and watched him leave the car and cross the street. The driver did not go with him. He walked through the apartment door alone.
Although she was not there to see it, she knew exactly what he found. Five priceless pieces of art.
Four paintings: one of Degas’s dancers and Raphael’s prodigal son; Renoir’s two boys; The Philosopher by Vermeer. And something else he hadn’t been expecting: a statue that had recently been stolen from the gallery next door.
Kat often wondered what he must have thought as he looked through the dusty, abandoned apartment at the paintings that he loved and then at a small statue that he had never seen before.
She wondered if he turned and watched the door. Perhaps he heard the Interpol officers as they rushed down the wet street and stood poised outside the apartment windows.
Did Arturo Taccone know what was going to happen? Kat would never know. It was enough for her to stand in the damp air and watch the uniformed officials swarm into the place where she had put Taccone’s paintings, and her father had stashed his stolen sculpture.
It was very much enough to stand there and watch as Arturo Taccone’s driver sped away, which was just as well. Interpol was more than willing to give his boss a ride.
“Are they in there?”
Kat shouldn’t have been surprised to hear the voice, and yet she couldn’t fight the shock in seeing the boy.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Nick smiled. “I’m not in prison, by the way,” he told her. “Just in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.” For a moment he looked almost hurt, so Kat added, “No one arrests a cop’s kid for being in a room where nothing was stolen.”
But something was stolen at the Henley. They stood there for a long time, not talking, until Nick finally said, “He used us . . . or, I guess . . . you. This Romani guy used you for a diversion, didn’t he?” Kat didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Nick stepped closer. “A con within a con.” He looked at her. “Are you mad?”
Kat thought about the Angel of the Henley, who was, at that moment, probably winging her way back to her rightful home, and she couldn’t help herself. She shook her head. “No.”
And still nothing could have surprised her more than when Nick smiled and said, “Me neither.”
“Are you flirting with me?” Kat blurted.
Kat thought it a valid, scientific question until Nick inched closer and said, “Yes.”
She stepped away from him—from the flirting. “Why’d you do it, Nick? And why don’t you tell me the truth this time?”
“I thought you’d help me catch your dad at first.”
“And then . . .” Kat prompted.
Nick shrugged and kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk. It skidded into a puddle, but she didn’t hear the splash. “I wanted to impress my mom. And then . . .”
“Yes?”
“And then I thought I could catch you—stop a robbery of the Henley, be a hero. But . . .”
Kat stared into the rainy street. She shivered. “I don’t take things that don’t belong to me.”
Nick gestured across the street to the pair of officers who were leading Arturo Taccone from the apartment in handcuffs. “You took from him.”
She thought of Mr. Stein. “They don’t belong to him either.”
A moment later another car pulled through the crowd that was quickly growing across the street. A beautiful black-haired woman stepped from the backseat. If she saw her son beneath the awning, she did not wave or smile or question why he’d ignored her instructions not to leave their hotel without permission.
“You really are good, Kat,” he told her.
“Do you mean good as in skilled or just . . . good?”
He smiled. “You know what I mean.”
Kat watched Nick walk away, until the police car carrying Arturo Taccone pulled out into the street, blocking her view. As far as she knew, Nick never looked back. Which wasn’t fair, Kat thought. Because, from that point on, she was going to be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life.
Kat sensed more than saw the black limo that pulled slowly to the curb beside her. She heard a smooth whirling sound as the dark glass of the back window disappeared and a young man leaned out.
“So that fella there is the one who robbed that nice gallery?” Hale asked, his eyes wide as he pointed to the disappearing police car.
“It appears so,” Kat said. “I heard he actually slid the statue through a hole in the wall and into that vacant apartment.”
“Genius,” Hale said with a tad too much enthusiasm.
Kat laughed as Hale opened the door, and she slid inside. “Yes,” she said slowly. “In theory. Except robbing a gallery tends to make the police spend a lot of time at the gallery. . . .”
“And then how does a guy get his statue?”
Kat knew it was her turn—her line. But she was tired of playing games. And maybe Hale was too. Maybe.
He glanced down the street where Nick had disappeared. “You’re not leaving with your boyfriend?”
Kat eased her head back onto the soft leather. “Maybe.” She closed her eyes and thought that perhaps this flirting thing wasn’t so difficult after all. “Maybe not . . . Wyndham?”
She heard Hale laugh softly then call, “Marcus, take us home.”