Double Crossed(16)

And then Macey McHenry flashed Kat a million-dollar smile. She looked like royalty as she asked, “What are you doing next?”

Kat shrugged. “I might go to Rome. There’s a Raphael there I kind of need to…acquire.”

“That’s funny.” Macey laughed. “There’s an ambassador’s son there I kind of need to kidnap. Maybe we’ll see each other around.”

“Yeah,” Kat said. “Maybe we will.”

But as Macey and Hale walked across the lobby, Kat was certain that no one was going to see Macey—the real Macey—on first glance. And Kat smiled at the fact. She totally knew the feeling.

“So, Kat,” Abby said slowly. She looked Kat squarely in the eyes and it was like the lobby went still. Abby had that effect on people and places, Kat had realized. Of her many secrets, one of them had to be that she had the power to make time stand still. “It was a pleasure working with you tonight.”

“You too,” Kat said. “Without you…”

“You would have been fine,” Abby said; then she seemed to realize the weight of the words. “I mean it.”

“Thanks. But we might not have gotten this.” Then Kat reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a diamond necklace so bright and pure and brilliant that it seemed like the entire city of New York had to stop and watch it shimmer.

“Is that…” Abby started slowly. She seemed almost afraid to reach out for the stone.

“Oh,” Kat said. “This is the real thing, all right. Here.” She held the necklace out for Abby to take, dangling ten million dollars away from her like she was worried the temptation might be too much. “See that it gets back where it belongs, okay?”

“So you did swap it out for the fake?” Abby said as if part of her had been wondering.

“Of course,” Kat said. “Hale and Macey slipped me the fake and then I left that for Reagan and his crew just in case. Plan D,” Kat said by way of explanation.

“Tell you what, Kat, I’ll trade you,” Abby said, taking the necklace and slipping a piece of paper into Kat’s small hand. “It’s my card.”

“‘The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women…’” Kat read. “It’s a school?”

“Part school.” Abby cocked her head, considering. “Part sisterhood.”

“And you’re a teacher?” Kat didn’t try to hide the skepticism in her voice, but Abby didn’t seem offended.

She just let her gaze drift across the room, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Something like that.”

Kat tried to read Abby’s expression, but like so many things about her, it was shrouded in secrets. Still, Kat was certain there was far more to the story. She glanced from Macey to Abby and back again. “Exactly what kind of school is the Gallagher Academy?” Kat asked.

“The kind that would welcome you in a heartbeat.”

Abby folded Kat’s fingers over the card and turned to leave. Neither of them spoke again. Neither of them had to. There was a subtle understanding already coursing between them.

Maybe Macey was right and they would meet again. Then Kat thought about her new friends on the right side of the law and wondered whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing. But in the end she merely shrugged, knowing at the very least it would be interesting.

Knowing, in her gut, it might just be the beginning.





No one knew for certain when the trouble started at the Colgan School. Some members of its alumni association blamed the decision to admit girls. Others cited newfangled liberal ideals and a general decline in the respect for elders worldwide. But no matter the theory, no one could deny that, recently, life at the Colgan School was different.

Oh, its grounds were still perfectly manicured. Three quarters of the senior class were already well on their way to being early-accepted into the Ivy League. Photos of presidents and senators and CEOs still lined the dark-paneled hallway outside the headmaster’s office.

But in the old days, no one would ever have declined admission to Colgan on the day before classes started, forcing the administration to scramble to fill the slot. Historically, any vacancy would have been met with a waiting list a mile long, but this year, for some reason, there was only one applicant eager to enroll at that late date.

Most of all, there had been a time when honor meant something at the Colgan School, when school property was respected, when the faculty was revered—when the headmaster’s mint-condition 1958 Porsche Speedster would never have been placed on top of the fountain in the quad with water shooting out of its headlights on an unusually warm evening in November.