Double Crossed(3)

She wasn’t a thief; of that much Hale was almost sure. But she wasn’t your typical society girl either. Her steps had too much purpose; her blue eyes moved around the room with too much precision. She reminded him far more of the girls in the world he’d chosen than the girls in the world he’d been born to, and that was why he knew that he shouldn’t let her study him too closely. That maybe she might see a little too much.

It didn’t matter anyway, Hale realized. He wasn’t going to stick around to find out. He looked down at his watch: 9:45. Then a man in a dark gray suit caught Hale’s eye and started his way.

“Yes, sir?” Marcus asked. Hale had often wondered how Marcus read him so well. He was supposed to have a good poker face, after all. But it didn’t matter how good an inside man Hale was supposed to be; Marcus was a far superior butler.

“I think I’m in the mood to leave, Marcus,” Hale said, scanning the room. He saw his father chatting up a business associate by the bar; his mother was busy looking over an antique clock that was a part of the silent auction. He wondered exactly how long it would be before they realized he was gone. If they’d ever realize…

“What’s our exit strategy?” Hale asked.

“I believe the stairs by the balcony are mostly vacant,” Marcus told him.

“Perfect,” Hale said, and without another word he started toward the other side of the room. When his phone rang, he had to dig through his pocket to find it, and his fingers brushed against a pair of tiny earbuds he and Kat had last used in Monte Carlo. Hale smiled a little, realizing he hadn’t worn the tux in ages. It was just one of many ways his life had changed in the years since a girl named Katarina Bishop crawled into his window and into his life.

“You’re late,” Kat said as soon as Hale put the phone to his ear. She wasn’t the kind of girl to wait for hello.

“What can I say? Macey McHenry has been throwing herself at me….”

“See, that’s the kind of thing that would make me jealous if she weren’t way out of your league.”

“You know, if I had feelings, that might have hurt them.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Now come on down. There’s a Raphael in Rome that has our name on it.”

“I don’t know…” Hale started. “It might be hard to get away from Macey. It looks like she works out. And you know how crazy I drive the ladies.”

“Crazy is an understatement.” Kat took a deep breath. “Am I going to have to come up there? Because I will. I have no objection to stealing people, you know.”

Hale started to laugh. He wanted to tease. But right then he saw something that seemed a little out of place in the elaborately decorated ballroom. Behind the stage, covered in canvas, lay a device, a piece of metal sticking out at such an angle that only Hale could really see it.

Kat talked on, but Hale was no longer listening as he crept closer to the narrow gap between wall and stage, looking. Thinking.

“Hale?” Kat’s voice sounded in his ear. “Hale, are you listening to me?”

That was when Hale noticed a hotel employee standing beneath the security camera that was trained on the dance floor, an odd bag draped across his arm. On the other side of the room, a sign that read that the elevators were temporarily out of service made Hale’s mind come to a terrifying stop.

When Hale saw a man lingering near the elevators, he had a sudden sense of déjà vu, remembering a particularly intricate operation in Denmark.

Another man, in an ill-fitting waiter’s uniform, was moving to the stairs by the veranda, and Hale thought about a long night spent near a garbage chute in Belize.

“That settles it.” Kat sounded annoyed by Hale’s silence. “I’m coming up.”

“No, Kat!” Hale shouted, but she was already gone. “Marcus, I need you to go downstairs. Now. Stop Kat.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And, Marcus,” Hale called after him. “Just…tell her I have these.” Hale reached into his pocket and found the long-forgotten earbuds.

It is a testament to both Marcus’s demeanor and the oddities of Hale’s new life that the butler didn’t say another word. He didn’t ask a single question. And Hale was left with one other thing to do.

“There you are,” Hale told his mother when he found her.

“Oh, darling, do you know Michael Calloway? His mother is the event chair. We’ve just been arguing over whether he is going to let me outbid him for this gorgeous antique clock,” Mrs. Hale said, but her son didn’t care.

“Sorry,” Hale told the man in the tux with the small bits of sweat gathering at his brow. “I need her,” he said, pulling his mother from the table and toward the bank of elevators on the far side of the room, the ones that appeared to still be operational.