Perfect Scoundrels (Heist Society #3)(33)

Hale neither moved nor spoke for a long time, until finally he asked, “What does he want?”

Kat took a fresh look at the room around her. It was far smaller than she would have expected. The desk. The shelves. Even the view seemed less impressive than the one just a story above.

“He’s not decorating like a man who wants to be top dog,” Kat said.

“No.” Hale reached for the painting behind the desk, slid it aside to reveal the wall-mounted safe hidden behind it. “He’s decorating like a man with things to hide.”

Three minutes later, Kat was still working on the lock.

“Come on, Kat,” Hale said. “Can you get it, or—”

“Got it,” Kat said, standing back and letting the safe door swing open. She reached into the safe and pulled out a stack of accordion-style folders.

“Bingo.” She tossed the folders onto the desk. “Oh, Garrett, you have been a bad, bad boy.”

“Not him,” Hale said, staring into a folder. “Us.”

Kat couldn’t help herself. She reached gingerly for another one, saw the name Elizabeth written on it in big black letters.

“What is it?” she asked.

“There’s a folder here for every member of Hazel’s family,” Hale said. He reached into one, pulled out a black-and-white photograph, and tilted his head. “That’s my uncle Joe,” Hale said. “And that is not my aunt Olivia.”

Kat picked up the folder labeled Senior. “What are these, bank records?” She did a double take, looking at Hale. “Did your dad really pay two million dollars to the campaign to elect Ross Perot?”

“I…” Hale said, stumbling for words and thumbing through another file. “Wow. Well, I guess my cousin Charlotte isn’t actually my cousin.”

“Don’t worry,” Kat said. “It looks like there might be a kid in Queens who is.”

“Do I want to know why Garrett has a news clipping from a hit-and-run on New Year’s Eve 2001?” Hale asked a moment later.

“I don’t get it,” Kat said. “How does he know all this? Some of these go back decades.”

“His dad,” Hale said softly. “Cleaning up Hale family messes has been the Garrett family business for fifty years. He knows everything.”

When Kat finally reached the bottom of the stack, she stood for a long time, staring at the final folder, the one labeled Scooter.

“Well, let’s see what skeletons I have in my closet,” Hale said, and Kat prepared herself for anything. Nothing at all would have surprised her except for the sight of Hale holding the file upside down. “Empty.”

It shouldn’t have scared her, but it did. Not that Hale had a file, but that Garrett had seen fit to empty it at some point in time. And as Kat replaced the files in the safe and tidied up the desk, she couldn’t help but wonder what other secrets might lie out there, waiting like a trap that was set to spring.

“You know what this means, Hale,” Kat warned as she took one last look around the office to make sure their tracks were clean. “You know we have to be careful.”

“I don’t want to be careful.”

“There!” Kat snapped. “That’s why I didn’t tell you what was going on. That’s—”

But a voice came seeping through the door, cutting Kat off, saying, “Hello, Mr. Garrett.”

The small light on the panel next to the door flashed green. The door began to open. And Kat knew that they had been caught.

“Oh, Mr. Garrett,” said another voice from outside, and the door stopped. “We need to talk about the launch.”

Kat glanced around the room. Paneling hid a pocket door and, behind that, a tiny closet.

“In here,” she said, pulling open the closet door and pushing Hale inside. They stood squeezed together, but there wasn’t room to shift, much less slip away.

“What can I do for you, Foster?” Garrett asked.

It’s Silas, Kat realized, but she couldn’t move or think or breathe. The office door opened, and there was the sound of footsteps entering.

“The gala is next week.…”

“I know,” Garrett said.

“I came to ask you…to beg you…to put it off.”

Garrett laughed. “Why would we do that?”

There was a long pause. Kat could imagine the look on Silas’s face as he said, “Well, Mr. Garrett, we’re supposed to unveil Genesis to the public that night. And the prototype didn’t work.”

“No, Silas,” Garrett said. “It didn’t. But if we delay, Hale Industries’ stock will drop another twenty points.”

“Show up with a faulty prototype and twenty points will be a drop in the bucket. If we just push the gala back a few months or—”

“Months? Are you insane? This launch has been in the works since before Mrs. Hale passed, and in Mrs. Hale’s honor, we will—”

“Don’t do this.” Silas’s voice was hard. “Don’t pretend you’re doing this for Hazel. Give me time to fix the prototype. Give me time to make this right.”

“You’ve had time. You’ve had years. And now we have to go on as planned.”

“Listen to me!” There was a loud slap, as if Silas had banged his hand against the desk. “Something is wrong. I’m begging you. Give us time to fix it.”