Perfect Scoundrels

by Ally Carter

  Through it all, Hale said nothing. Then, finally, he smiled. “I’m afraid I’m all out of goats at the moment, but I’ve got some ruby cuff links you can have.”

  “No.” Bobby shook his head. “It’s goats or nothing.”

  “Sorry, Kat.” Hale shrugged, disappointed. “It was fun while it lasted.”

  “Don’t look at me.” Kat threw up her hands. “I’m officially ignoring all of you.”

  “Seriously, kid.” Bobby extended a hand, and Hale took it. “I don’t know whether to say congratulations or I’m sorry.”

  “Hazel was a great lady,” Eddie added from the other side of the room.

  “I wish I’d known her,” Bobby said.

  Hale flashed his easy grin. “You would have liked her. Everybody liked her the instant they met her. Isn’t that right, Marcus?”

  The butler stepped forward. “It is indeed, sir. Mrs. Hale was, if you’ll pardon the term, a charmer.”

  “So she could have been an inside woman, huh?” Bobby asked.

  “The best,” Hale said, and for a second, that thought filled the room. Hale wasn’t the boy who’d lost a fortune in that moment; he was the kid who’d lost his grandmother. And that made all the difference.

  “So”—Bobby slapped the table—“I hear someone needs to rob the Superior Bank of Manhattan?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hale said.

  Bobby pulled out a chair. “Have a seat.”

  How many times had Kat seen Hale at Eddie’s kitchen table? Too many to even count, she was sure. But right then she was holding her breath, hoping everything was going to be okay.

  “Just to back up a moment…” Hamish said. “So that I’m clear, we are supposed to run a dead con on someone who knows that we’re conning him.…”

  “Well, not him, exactly—my family,” Hale said. “But pretty much. Go on.”

  “And we’re supposed to set up a Big Store with no money,” Hamish said.

  “And rob the Superior Bank of Manhattan with no time,” Angus finished.

  “And then break into the U.S. Patent office to swap out the fake plans for the real plans…” Hamish said. “Or something like that.”

  Kat looked around the room. If she could have chosen any crew in the world, it would have been them, but she didn’t feel any peace.

  “You’re right, Hamish, I don’t have any money,” Hale said. “But I have some things we can sell.”

  “No, sir,” Marcus chimed in. “I have savings, which I will happily contribute to—”

  “No!” Eddie’s fist banged against the table. “You think this is supposed to be easy? In my day we had to work for what we stole. We didn’t fly around on private jets. No one wrote us a check and bought us a Big Store. We made our own luck with our wits and our hands. Now, you two.” He pointed at the Bagshaws and shuffled toward the door. “You boys find me a Big Store. You find it fast.”

  “But…” Angus started.

  Eddie glared. “Go.”

  And with that, Angus and Hamish were up and out the door.

  Eddie looked around at the rest of them. “Why are you sitting here? We have work to do.”

  “Well, what do you think?” Angus squinted through the bright sun, staring up at the big abandoned building behind him. There were boards on the windows, a rough patch on the roof. Even in spring, the wind felt straight from the North Pole, and Kat shivered on the high bluff with the view of the icy Atlantic waters.

  “This is the place?” Gabrielle asked. “We’re supposed to believe a member of the Hale family has spent the last fifty years living…here?” She followed Kat through the front doors, past crumbling stairs and dirty windows, and didn’t try to hide her disgust. Birds nested in the rafters. A squirrel ran across the floor.

  “Is it cheap?” Kat asked.

  “It’s free.” Angus gave a self-satisfied grin.

  “Then it’s perfect,” Kat told him, and walked on.

  “Hey, Kat!” Hamish yelled from the second story. “Don’t worry about the lights. Dad had a…uh…supply of generators. We’ll have the whole place lit up by tonight.” He was running down the stairs, but then he hit a loose step, stumbled, and fell the rest of the way.

  “We’ll fix that,” Angus told Kat.

  “Good idea,” Gabrielle said.

  Kat walked on through the empty foyer. “What was this place again?”

  “I don’t know exactly.” Angus shrugged. “The really old house of a really old rich dude, I guess. Felix found it. He ran the Monte Cristo here once. No one comes this far up the coast this early in the year, so we’ve got twenty square miles to ourselves.”

  “Good.” Kat nodded her approval and headed down the hall, past someone carrying a massive stack of board games. “Is that Guido Romero?” Kat asked.

  Angus shook his head. “Guido’s having a little Interpol situation, so we got Antonio.”

  “Hey, Antonio!” Kat yelled, and she and Gabrielle and Angus walked on, past Uncle Ezra and Uncle Felix, who were engaged in a serious argument regarding a pair of fuzzy slippers.

  “Do I want to know what that’s about?” she whispered.

  “No,” Angus said, then led them into a room equipped with an upright piano, three Ping-Pong tables, and a massive aquarium. Angus took them through a library, which had been recently outfitted with every textbook Uncle Marco had stolen from the Cornell Medical School in 1983. There was a commercial-grade kitchen being cleaned by the Bagshaws’ cousin Buster, a dining room being transformed into a parlor by the two DiMarcos who weren’t currently in jail, and two Hungarian sisters who owed Uncle Eddie a very large favor were arguing over the best way to apply bars to the exterior windows.

  “What’s upstairs?” Gabrielle asked.

  “Bedrooms,” Angus said. “We’ll try to keep them off-limits, but we’ll have one ready to go if we need it.”

  “Good,” Kat said.

  Everywhere they walked, Kat smelled fresh paint and new two-by-fours. There was the constant humming of drills and banging of hammers, and Kat imagined she was backstage on Broadway, but judging by the butterflies in her stomach, she wasn’t ready for the curtain to go up.

  “Can we do something about the smell?” Gabrielle asked.

  “We’re running fans twenty-four hours a day, and in the morning we’ll hit the whole place with that.” Angus pointed to a pile of cleaning supplies in the corner. “We’ll have it lemon-fresh by showtime, don’t you worry.”

  “If they ask for paperwork?” Kat asked.

  “Uncle Charlie is forging it personally,” Angus said. “Should have it here by tonight. It’s a shame we couldn’t get him to bring it himself. We could have used the help.”

  “He’s Uncle Eddie’s identical twin, not his clone,” Kat reminded him. “The paperwork will be enough. I hope.”

  They were almost back to the front door, and Kat was almost satisfied, when Hamish yelled, “Fire in the hole!” from somewhere on the second floor. Lights flashed. The roof shook. A fairly large bird’s nest dislodged from the rafters and hit Gabrielle on the head.

  “That’s it,” Gabrielle said. “I’m out of here.”

  “There may be a few kinks still,” Angus admitted.

  “Will you be ready?” Kat asked.

  “Not a problem, Kitty,” Angus said with a defiant nod.

  “Angus…” Kat said, the word a warning.

  For the first time since Kat had known him, Angus grew serious. “We won’t let Hale down.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But, Kitty…” Angus ran a hand through his hair. Whatever he wanted to say was a struggle. “About ol’ Hale…I was thinking that after what happened at the gala, maybe Hamish and I could keep an eye on him.”

  “Hale will be fine.” Kat tried to wave the worry away.

  “Will he?” Angus asked.

  “Of course,” she said, remembering that the biggest lies you tell are for yourself.

  Kat wasn’t surprised when she wasn’t ab
le to fall asleep. There was the stress, of course. Gabrielle’s snoring never helped. But more than anything, Kat couldn’t turn off her mind. There were too many things that could go wrong, and they kept playing one after another on a perpetual loop through her mind, so finally she gave up and went downstairs.

  The thick railing was smooth beneath her hands, the rugs lush and soft beneath her bare feet. And Kat was content to creep through the big old house, just another ghost, right up until the point when she realized she wasn’t alone.

  “Some tea, miss?” Marcus said as soon as Kat stepped into the kitchen.

  “Marcus, I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Your uncle and I had a…cram session.” He struggled over the slang, but didn’t let it stop him. “I will be accompanying him in the morning. It is a very big day.” He reached for the kettle and brought two cups to the table. “Cream or sugar?”

  “You don’t have to wait on me, Marcus,” she told him. “Technically, this time, you’re the client.”

  He smiled but didn’t agree. “If you’ll forgive me, miss, it is either work or worry. Work feels far more natural.”

  Kat found her favorite chair. “I know the feeling.”

  Marcus busied himself with the kettle and the cups. His hands shook a little in a way Kat had never seen before. He didn’t face her when he asked, “Can he do this?”

  “Uncle Eddie once pulled the Anastasia on a duke in Edinburgh. Trust me. If anyone can—”

  Marcus shook his head. “Not your uncle.”

  Kat read his eyes, the set of his jaw, and she knew that Marcus’s worries went far beyond his sister. She thought about the teenager who had gotten drunk and risked everything at the gala, the angry kid who had stormed into Garrett’s office without a plan. She’d tried to tell herself that Hale was fine—he was good. But then there were the flashes of sorrow and rage, and Kat knew that he wasn’t okay. He was just trying to con himself into thinking that he was.

  “I’ve never seen Hale like this.”

  “If I may, miss…” Marcus gestured to the seat beside her.

  “Please, Marcus. Sit. Talk to me.”

  He took the seat, but never really rested there. His back stayed straight. His hands stayed folded. Marcus was a man clinging to honor and responsibility, to family pride and the satisfaction of doing something very few people in the world still did well.

  Kat totally knew the feeling.

  “Has Mr. Hale ever told you how I came to be in his employ?”

  “Yes.” Kat laughed a little. “About a hundred times. I’m still waiting for the truth, though.”

  “I was the personal valet to Mr. Hale the Second. Marianne, of course, was a ladies’ maid for Mrs. Hale. The two of us had been in those roles for as long as we could remember. I didn’t know any other life.”

  “What happened?”

  “When young Mr. Hale was six years old, his parents decided to sail around the world. Two days after they left, the nanny resigned and the cook quit. His parents knew this, of course, and yet they stayed away for six months and they left that child alone with a gardener.”

  He drew a deep breath, then talked on. “When his grandmother heard, she sent me to the country house to find him, and then she asked if I would consider caring for the boy myself. And that was where I stayed until the day you came for him.”

  “Technically, I didn’t come for him,” Kat said. “He’s just what I left with.”

  “And I, for one, believe you got the better of that trade.”

  He stood and pushed in his chair.

  “Marcus,” Kat said, stopping him at the door. “If we fail—”

  “I don’t care if we lose the company, miss. But I would care a great deal if we lost the boy.”

  Kat nodded and let him go. There was nothing else to say.

  By two o’clock the following afternoon, the cast members were in their places and the stage was finally set. Kat found herself on an overturned crate in a tiny upstairs room, sitting beside Simon and staring at the myriad of screens that covered the wall—the backstage of the con.

  When the trio of dark SUVs pulled down the winding lane, Kat saw them from the window. Uniformed drivers stepped out and reached for the rear passenger doors, and Kat said, “Okay, Simon. The Big Store is open for business.”

  No sooner had she said the words than the front doors swung open and an old man yelled, “Come in!”

  “Reginald!” Bobby yelled, chasing after Uncle Eddie. “Reginald, we talked about how the cold is bad for your leg.” Bobby reached for Eddie’s arm, but Eddie jerked away.

  “Can’t you see my family is here, doc?” Eddie glanced at Garrett, who stood wordless amid the throng. “All except that one. I don’t have a clue about that one.”

  “I see that, Reg,” Bobby said. “And I’m very much looking forward to meeting everyone…inside.”

  “I don’t know why,” Eddie said. “Bunch of worthless freeloaders. Never showed up before…” He spoke under his breath, the ramblings of a crazy man.

  “Come on, Reg.” Bobby gestured for the door. “Let’s go in.”

  Slowly, the group made their way onto the rickety porch and through the big front doors. The stairs creaked. The floor moaned. And Kat’s father just kept smiling, clipboard in hand.

  “Now, Reginald, won’t you introduce me to your friends?” Bobby asked.

  “They’re not my friends. They’re my family.”

  Bobby gave a hearty laugh. “Oh, Reg, you are the life of the party.”

  A nurse walked by, and Eddie winked at her. The expression on his face was exactly like the one Reginald had worn in the family movies, and Kat must not have been the only one to see the similarities.

  “Hello, Reginald,” Hale’s aunt said very, very slowly. “I’m Elizabeth. I am Hazel’s daughter. That makes me your niece.”

  “I’m crazy, Liz,” Reginald said. “Doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

  “No. No.” Bobby gave a hearty laugh. “As you’ll see, your uncle is in very good health for a man with his history.”

  “And who are you, exactly?” Hale’s father puffed out his chest and looked skeptically at Bobby, who never wavered.

  He just held out his hand and said, “Sorry about that. I’m Dr. Nathaniel Jones. I’m your uncle’s primary physician.”

  In the dim, quiet room upstairs, Kat whispered to Simon, “And the real Dr. Jones…”

  “Has a Ph.D. from Harvard and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins, but recently decided to retire on a blissfully quiet beach in Belize.”

  “Perfect,” Kat said, and kept her eyes glued to the screens.

  Senior was walking through the foyer, staring at hastily patched walls and out-of-date fixtures. “What is this place?” he asked.

  “This is your uncle’s home.” Bobby looked at W. W. Hale the Fourth as if he didn’t know how a man could be so insensitive. “In fact, we’re home for dozens of people like Reginald. People who have special needs. People for whom life in mainstream society might be stressful or even dangerous. For our residents, this isn’t just a house—it’s a haven.”

  “So it’s an institution?” Senior said.

  “Well…” Bobby hesitated, but then finally admitted, “that term is appropriate, but we do not prefer it.”

  “I would have preferred not to think my uncle was dead for five decades, but no one asked me.”

  “Would you like a tour?” Bobby asked, sweeping the clipboard out wide.

  “I want some questions answered.” Hale’s uncle stepped forward. Kat watched the way his eyes cut around the room, taking everything in. “Such as, why hasn’t our family physician ever heard of you or your facility?”

  “Oh, well”—Bobby gave a throaty laugh—“we cater to patients who, shall we say, place a premium on discretion.”

  “What does that—” Senior started, but Hale cut him off.

  “He means rich people.” Hale looked at Bobby. “Isn’t that what you’re saying? This
is where the über-rich send their über-embarrassing, über-crazy branches of the family tree?”

  Bobby lowered his gaze. “We’ve been entrusted with the care of some very special patients through the years. And we guard their privacy as ardently as we’ve guarded your uncle’s.”

  Bobby gave a glance toward a series of photographs lining the walls. Bobby with a retired, reclusive senator. A member of the royal family playing dominoes with Uncle Eddie in the game room.

  “Uncle Charlie forged those?” Kat asked.

  “Uh-huh.” Simon nodded, but Kat didn’t feel any better.

  “They’re not buying it.” She watched Garrett, who was still silent, almost bored, going through the paces of someone else’s con. “He’s going to squeal on us,” Kat said.

  “If he were going to squeal, he would have done it by now,” Simon said. “He doesn’t care about this. He just wants to sell his prototype and disappear. Now be quiet.”

  The tiny room that Simon had transformed into the communications base felt crowded, and Kat finally knew what was harder than running the long con: sitting on the sidelines and watching your long con go on without you.

  “I’m hot. It’s hot in here.” She was all nerves and sweat, and spoke rapid-fire, fanning herself with an old magazine. “Is the computer room always so hot?”

  “Sometimes the computer room is in an outhouse. In Mexico. In July. So, stop squirming.”

  Kat did as she was told. She didn’t say a word when Simon picked up a microphone and said, “Uncle Felix, it’s time.”

  Somewhere in the depths of the building, there was a cry, and then a very old, very naked man ran down the hall.

  “Was it just me, or did we agree on underwear?” Kat asked.

  “You know Felix,” Simon said with a shrug. “He likes to improvise.”

  Downstairs, Felix was running circles around the Hale family, and Bobby was yelling, “Orderly!”

  “On it!” Angus said, chasing after Felix with a robe.

  “Sorry about that, folks,” Bobby told his guests. “Never a dull moment around here, I can assure you. Now, where were we?”

  “My brother and sister were trying to explain to you that this is quite a shock,” Senior told Bobby.