Perfect Scoundrels

by Ally Carter

  “Oh, Felix? Don’t worry about him. He’s harmless. He just thinks the Nazis are tracking him through his clothes, or so he says. Really, he just likes being naked.”

  “Not…that.” Hale’s father gestured at the wrinkly blur that flashed across the end of the hall. “My uncle was dead, doctor. He was dead and gone, and now we are supposed to believe that he…isn’t.”

  “I see how that could be quite a shock.” Bobby nodded gravely. “Reginald has been with us for a long time, and—”

  “How long?” Elizabeth wanted to know.

  “Well, I’m afraid Reginald’s medical records are private.”

  “I’m the man’s next of kin—if he is who he says he is,” Senior spat. “I demand to know.”

  “Reginald,” Bobby asked, “what do you say to that?”

  “Tell them what they want to know.” Eddie eased closer to Hale’s mother. “Your eyes look like K2 at sunrise.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said.

  “Doctor,” Senior said, trying to regain control.

  “He’s been here longer than I have. As you know, your uncle was quite the explorer. When he was thirty-five, he was in a terrible plane crash. It shattered his leg and left him near death for many months.”

  “That’s why he has that limp?” Senior asked.

  Bobby nodded. “It is. The crash was in a very rural area. Local doctors did their best, but the leg never properly healed, and…” Bobby trailed off, looked at the floor. His voice softened. “And, in many ways, your uncle never truly recovered.”

  “The ladies love a limp,” Eddie said with a wink.

  “Yes they do, Reg. Yes they do.” Bobby patted Eddie on the back. “We’re very fond of your uncle, Mr. Hale. He’s been here for a very long time, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that he has been among strangers. Sometimes, people make their own family.”

  Kat didn’t want to read too much into things, but she couldn’t help thinking that her father was speaking about her Hale. Her family.

  “Do you know, doctor…” Hale’s father paused and then began again. “Do you know who this man is? Who he claims he is? And what those claims would mean?”

  “Oh.” Bobby laughed. “Reg has claimed to be a lot of people through the years. Haven’t you, Reg? Let’s see…sometimes he says he’s descended from a duke. Then he’ll tell anyone who will listen that he was the first American to scale K2. Why, just last week he told me he discovered a tribe in the Amazon—”

  “That’s true,” Hale said, whispering. “All those things are true.”

  “You don’t say?” Bobby asked, then looked at Eddie like he was seeing the man for the very first time.

  “A name!” Senior spat. “Did you know his name?”

  “Of course. He said his name was Reginald Hale.”

  “And you didn’t think it was odd that Reginald Hale is supposed to be dead?” Hale’s aunt asked.

  Bobby tilted his head. “To tell you the truth, I was under the impression that the family knew Reginald was here.”

  “Why would you say that?” Senior asked.

  “Why…” Bobby’s eyes went wide in disbelief. In the dark, quiet room, Kat felt herself hold her breath. “Because of the checks, of course.”

  They’d reached a set of double doors, and Bobby pointed to the gold plaque beside them, stating that they were about to enter the Hazel Hale Recreation Room.

  The Hale family stood speechless.

  “I was very sorry to hear of her passing,” Bobby told the family.

  “Why…” Senior stumbled over the thought. “Why are you contacting us now? My uncle has been gone for half a century. Why didn’t he stay gone?”

  Bobby removed his glasses, and when he spoke, he couldn’t hide the guilt in his voice. “I guess that’s because the checks…stopped.”

  “If he is who he says he is, he’ll have to prove it,” Senior told them.

  Bobby looked at Eddie. “I’m sure Reginald wouldn’t mind. Would you, Reg?”

  “I climbed K2,” Eddie said in response.

  “So he has no family?” Hale’s uncle asked.

  Bobby looked confused. “I thought you were his family.”

  “He means heirs,” Hale said. “What about it, Reg? When you die, who’s going to get your half?”

  “Scooter!” Elizabeth said, feigning offense. “But I wonder, Uncle Reg, do you have any children?”

  Eddie took her in. “Maybe I’ll adopt you.”

  “If you’d like us to perform a DNA test, I can recommend a very good facility not too far—” Bobby said, but Hale’s father’s laugh cut him off.

  “A billion-dollar corporation is on the line,” Senior said. “We’ll find our own lab, thank you very much.” Then he spoke to the lawyer. “You’ll take care of that, won’t you, Garrett?”

  Until then, the trustee had stayed at the back of the group, glancing at his watch, staring at the walls. Mentally, the man was already far away, on an island with his stolen fortune. Reginald didn’t matter to his plan. This was nothing more than a delay. An annoyance. And whatever became of the Hales, both long-lost and not, would be none of his concern in a matter of days.

  If Kat hadn’t hated him so much, she might have warned him he was making a classic newbie mistake.

  “What’s that?” Garrett asked.

  “The DNA test,” Senior said again. “You will handle that, won’t you?”

  “Oh,” Garrett said. “Of course. Right away.”

  Then he walked purposefully down the hall, past a very naked Felix running from a very frustrated Hamish, and into the cold.

  The rest of the Hale family delegation wasn’t far behind, but at the doors, Hale stopped briefly. Simon had placed cameras at each entrance, standard for any facility of the kind. And Hale looked squarely into one, mouthed the words Bye, Kat to the girl he knew was watching.

  And then he was out the door. And then he was gone.

  “What do you think, Kat?” Simon asked, turning to her.

  “I think we’re ready for phase two.”

  “It would have been easier just to let the Bagshaws kidnap Garrett,” Simon said.

  Kat sat there silently, not wanting to admit he was right.

  When Kat walked into the lab, it was decidedly different from the first time she’d seen it. Before, there had been dust and grime, a smell of disuse and old chemicals, and it had felt a little like walking into a tomb. But now, everything was alive. Music boomed from the back room (classic jazz); spotlights cut through the dark. There were at least a dozen whiteboards lining the walls, each covered with the same kinds of formulas and checklists she’d seen in Silas’s original lab.

  Kat felt fascinated and out of her depth, but that was nothing compared to the magnetic pull of the small device that sat on a tray in the center of the room, bright lights shining down upon it.

  “Hello, Miss Bishop.”

  Kat pulled away from the prototype as if Silas’s voice were a warning, and she’d been caught.

  “You can touch it,” he told her. “It won’t bite.”

  Kat smiled, embarrassed. “Sorry. I just…I don’t understand any of this.”

  “That’s okay,” Silas told her. “I don’t understand what you do. From where I’m standing, that makes us even.”

  “So how’s it going?” She was almost afraid to ask, but she had to know.

  “Fine.” Silas took a seat on a stool and eyed his design. “I think. Maybe.”

  Kat totally knew the feeling.

  “How was your Big Score?” Silas asked.

  “Our what?” Kat asked, then had to laugh. “Oh, the Big Store? It went as well as could be expected. It bought us a little more time, at least.”

  A wide smile spread across the old man’s face. If Kat didn’t know better, she would have sworn he was having the time of his life.

  “I’m glad to have my assistant back.” Silas pointed to Simon, who was dragging computers and cables into the back
room.

  “I thought you had help?” Kat asked.

  Just then, Simon’s father came into the lab and yelled, “Hey, Kat!”

  “Hi, Uncle Henry. Thanks for coming.”

  “No problem,” Henry said, then returned to work.

  “The father is good,” Silas said. “But the son is… special.”

  Kat stole a glance at Simon, who was sorting through the cables and the cords, lost in another world. “Yeah. He is. So, Silas, really…” Kat touched his hand. She searched his eyes. “How is it going?”

  “We’re close,” he said, then took off his glasses and looked down at the device on the table. “Just not quite close enough.”

  “How long do you need?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “I wish I could say.”

  “That’s okay, Silas. Just do your best. We’re working on Plan B.”

  “Kat!” Simon yelled from the back room. “I think you need to hear this.”

  “What is it?” Kat asked as soon as she reached the office that Simon called his own.

  His eyes were wide and his breath was labored as he told her, “Our guy has company.” He pulled the cord that connected his headphones to his computer, and instantly, voices came through the laptop speakers, filling the room.

  “What are you doing in my office?”

  Kat watched Garrett through the cameras that she and Hale had installed on their visit to the thirty-seventh floor. The lawyer was up and moving around his desk. For a moment he blocked the camera, but the voice that came through the microphone was one Kat had definitely heard before.

  “I thought perhaps it was time I paid you a little visit.”

  That voice. That accent.

  “Ms.…”

  “Montenegro,” the woman supplied her name, assuming, Kat supposed, that Garrett would have forgotten it. “You haven’t called me, Mr. Garrett.” She pouted. “If I were a different sort of woman my feelings would be hurt.”

  “Really, Ms. Montenegro, this is not the time or the place.”

  She looked around. “It seems the perfect time and a…somewhat acceptable place.” She bent forward in a way that afforded the man a glimpse of cleavage. “Don’t you want to hear my offer?”

  “I have a buyer.” Garrett rubbed his hands together nervously and looked toward the door.

  “A buyer who can have the money in your account by the end of the day? Where do you want it? Switzerland? Cayman Islands?”

  “No. No.” Garrett tried to walk away, but the woman deftly cut him off.

  “The only thing I don’t understand is why you haven’t sold it yet. Are you getting soft, Garrett? Or…no. Wait. Don’t tell me the Chinese are holding off until the Hale model proves faulty.”

  Kat could tell by the look on Garrett’s face that she was right. The woman must have seen it too, because she talked on.

  “My employer can afford to be far more…flexible. We don’t care if the Hales claim copyright infringement. What’s a little piracy between enemies?”

  She rose and strolled around the small office, eyed the paperwork piled on the desk.

  “But if you want to stay here, keep on keeping up appearances, being the good little worker…” The words struck a nerve, and she saw it. “Oh, you must hate them so.”

  “I appreciate your coming, Ms. Montenegro. But I’m afraid I already have a buyer.” He stood up straighter, as if forcing himself to literally be strong. “Now, I think you’d better leave.”

  Long after the door was closed and the screen was vacant, Kat could still hear herself breathing.

  “Kat…” Simon said her name carefully, cautiously. It sounded like he was afraid she was sleepwalking and didn’t know how to wake her. “What do we do now?”

  “What else can we do? We get ready to rob the most secure bank in the world.”

  The Superior Bank of Manhattan was not the largest bank in the city. It wasn’t the most famous. What the Superior Bank of Manhattan was was infamous, so Kat couldn’t quite steady her nerves as she walked through the front doors, even with her father by her side.

  “So this is what you do now?” Bobby asked, but Kat just made a mental note of the position of the cameras.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s what I’ve always done.”

  “Yeah, but before you had parental supervision.” Kat gave her father a questioning look, so he shrugged. “Parental proximity,” he conceded. “Anyway, this is nice.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Almost like old times.” He gave a squeeze, and Kat realized how much she’d missed him.

  She sank into the hug, rested her head against his shoulder, and said, “Dad…”

  “What is it, sweetie?”

  Kat felt especially young that day, walking through the massive lobby, her father at her side. But she couldn’t bring herself to say so, so she glanced at the security cameras and asked her father, “Are those the nine-sixties?”

  “You know perfectly well they are,” he told her. “Now, what is it?”

  She didn’t have a lie that would work, so she settled on the truth. “This job is different.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t think we can do it. And I’m not sure we should.”

  Kat felt the lobby around her beating like a pulse. Employees hustled from desk to desk. People stood in line at the teller windows. A few VIPs were escorted to and from private offices in the back. And, through it all, armed guards stood at every entrance.

  Hale Industries sat on the bank’s east side, a police station on the west, and beneath it all, a custom-designed bank vault that had never before been cracked. Inside that, there were one thousand safety deposit boxes, any one of which could have held the prototype and plans.

  Simon was the genius, but even Kat knew enough not to like that math.

  “So what are you thinking, Kat?”

  “I’m thinking it’s impossible.”

  “Now, that’s not the daughter I raised. Nothing is impossible.”

  “No.” Kat shook her head. “No. It is.”

  “What about the Fiddler on the Roof?” her father asked. “We could always—”

  “What, Dad? What could we possibly do that’s going to make this right?” She looked slowly around the building, her mind racing with the things she didn’t have to say.

  Uncle Felix was reaching out to a source he had in the bank fraud division of the FBI, and the Bagshaws were convinced there was a way to tunnel in from an old subway station that hadn’t been used since World War II, but in her heart, Kat knew it was all useless.

  “He’s a step ahead of us,” Kat told him. She could feel it in her bones, and she hated it. “He has been from the beginning, and now…”

  “You know what you do when something’s in your way?” Bobby asked, testing her.

  “Go around,” Kat said with a roll of her eyes.

  “Exactly.” Bobby flashed a wide, bright grin.

  He made it sound so easy. He always did. But it wasn’t easy, and Kat knew it. “It’s just…”

  “What?” Bobby asked with a jerk of his head, as if trying to pull the question out.

  “What if I can’t do it this time?” Kat admitted.

  “The whole family’s working on it, kiddo. You’re not in this one alone.”

  “What if it’s too late? I mean, the wrong plans are on file at the patent office. Even if we get the prototype, Hale Industries can’t use it without—”

  “One job at a time, kiddo. One job at a time.”

  Her father was right, and Kat knew it. But she was also a little mad that he’d broken off a perfectly good pity party with logic. Kat didn’t want a way to rob the Superior Bank of Manhattan. She wanted a way for it to be over. All of it. She just didn’t have a clue what that way might be.

  Then she heard her name echo through the lobby.

  “Kat!” Natalie called. “Oh my gosh. Fancy seeing you here.”

  “Yeah,” Kat said, her mind whirling. “Fancy that. What are you
doing here?”

  “Funny.” Nat gave her a smile. “I was about to ask you the same thing.” Then she shifted her attention onto Bobby. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Robert Bishop.” Bobby extended his hand. “I’m Kat’s father.”

  “Natalie Garrett,” Natalie told him, then gave the slight swoon that Kat had become accustomed to women giving in her father’s presence. Natalie eyed his dark suit and power tie and said, “What kind of business are you in, Mr. Bishop? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Acquisitions,” Bobby said.

  “How fascinating,” Natalie said with a bat of her eyes.

  “It has its moments,” Bobby said. “Okay, girls, I’ll leave the two of you alone.”

  “You’re leaving?” Kat asked.

  “Yeah, sweetheart. I really should get back to work.”

  “But…”

  “I’m going to go find a way around,” he told her, then planted a kiss on her cheek. “Love you,” he said and walked toward the doors without a single glance back.

  “So, your dad’s hot.”

  “Thanks. He was that way when I met him, so I can’t really take credit.”

  “That’s too bad.” Natalie popped a piece of chewing gum into her mouth, offered the pack to Kat, and said, “So is he the one who stuck you in Knightsbury?”

  Over Natalie’s shoulder, the service entrance opened and two guards came out, changing shifts. Kat noted the time: four-fifteen.

  “Hello,” Natalie said, annoyed. “Earth to Kat.”

  “Colgan,” Kat said, distracted. “First, I went to Colgan.”

  “So you met Scooter there?”

  “Uh…no,” Kat said. “He was already gone before I showed up. And got kicked out.”

  Natalie laughed. “No! Really? You got kicked out of Colgan?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Cool,” Natalie said, finally impressed. She blew a big bubble then popped it with her finger. “Oh, I’m sorry. Was there something you needed to do?”

  “No. I just came in for some cash,” Kat said, pointing at the ATM.

  “Oh. Cool.”

  Walking with Natalie, out the front doors of the bank and onto the busy sidewalk, Kat felt especially alone.

  “Well, I guess I’ll see you around, Kat.”