Perfect Scoundrels (Heist Society #3)(37)

“Kat?”

She pivoted on the sidewalk, knowing exactly who she was going to find.

“Hey,” Natalie said with a smile. “I thought that was you.”

“Natalie, hi,” Kat told her. “What are you doing here?”

“I live there.” Natalie pointed to the building Kat had been staring at for most of the day.

“Wow,” Kat said. “Small world. I was just on my way…” But Kat didn’t bother to finish, because Nat was already crossing the street.

“You wanna come up?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Kat said. “I’d love to.”

It wasn’t the first time Kat had been invited inside a place she was trying to rob. Part of her knew she should have felt guilty about the invitation, but she couldn’t quite summon the emotion.

Standing in the elevator next to Natalie, it wasn’t hard to see her as Hale saw her. She had an easy smile and a nice laugh, and Kat could imagine her as a little girl, running with a little Hale through Hazel’s big old house. Two children bringing life to that half-dead building. That is, before Kat came and took Hale away.

“So…” Natalie seemed almost afraid of the question. “How is he?”

The elevator doors slid open and Kat followed the girl toward apartment D, acting like she’d never been in the building before.

“I’m not sure.” Kat shrugged. “He still seems…sad.”

“Yeah.” Natalie put her key in the door but didn’t turn it. “Hazel was awesome. Scoot is awesome. And they seemed to be the only people in the whole family who knew that about each other. You know?”

But Kat didn’t know. Hale’s family was an enigma. She’d never met Hazel. And “Scooter” was a stranger Kat couldn’t even start to reconcile with the boy she knew. She thought about the night before, about Hale’s arms around her, the way his fingers played with her hair. And she prayed she never had to. She hoped that maybe Scooter might be gone for good.

“Oh well,” Natalie said. She pushed open the door and rushed to punch out a nine-digit code on the keypad.

“Wow,” Kat said. “That’s a lot of numbers for a security code.”

“Tell me about it. My dad is totally paranoid. He’s probably got cameras watching us right now,” Natalie teased, and Kat took a surreptitious turn around the room. She didn’t see any of the usual models, but in a private residence, with so many hiding places, a person could never be sure.

“So, this is a nice place,” she told the girl.

“It’s not mine,” Nat said. “It’s my dad’s, and he’s…well…we’re looking for some new school to take me.” She stretched out on the sofa. “Do you want a drink or something?”

“No thank you.”

“You’re so polite, Cute Kat. It’s sweet. Your mother must be very proud.”

“She’s dead,” Kat blurted the words. It was so weird to talk about her mother with a stranger that she honestly didn’t know how. “I mean, she died. When I was little.”

“I’m sorry,” Natalie said, taken aback. “Mine’s in Florida. Remarried.” She had the look of someone who thought her own mother might as well be dead but didn’t dare to say so.

So Kat just kept studying the room. There was a utilitarian couch and chair. There were prints on the wall by American artists, a TV ten years out of date, which Kat guessed was never used.

“I know why you’re here.”

The words came quickly, like a slap. And Kat reeled with them for a moment until Natalie went on. “I don’t think you were just passing by, were you? I think you were hoping to run into me.”

Kat blushed. “I guess maybe I was.”

“I think you wanted to ask me about Scooter.” Nat placed her legs on the coffee table and crossed them. When she smiled, she had a particularly devious look in her eye. “After all, I know where all the bodies are buried.”

Natalie laughed a little, but Kat just thought about the folders in Natalie’s father’s office. She wondered what the folder labeled Scooter might have had to say.

“So there are bodies, are there?” Kat asked.

Natalie nodded. “Lots of them. Poor guy couldn’t keep a pet if his life depended on it. That rose garden has got to have at least a half dozen gerbils.”

Kat smiled at the thought. She herself had never had a pet, unless you counted the time the Bagshaws’ father had needed her to dog-sit Queen Elizabeth’s favorite corgi.

“You want popcorn?” Natalie asked, standing up. “I want popcorn.”

“Sure,” Kat said, moving on to a bookshelf full of classics, eyeing every one in turn; but nothing about the books was fake. The prototype was small. Portable. Great for hiding, hard for finding. At least now that Kat had the security code she could always come back later.

“Butter?” Natalie called.

“Absolutely!” Kat said.

“Make yourself at home,” Natalie said, and Kat did as she was told, helping herself to the bathroom, joining Nat in the kitchen, then walking back to the living room, positioning it all within the framework of everything she knew.

Garrett was a meticulous man, and as a result, he kept a meticulous house. In the bathroom, the towels were perfectly straight. What little food there was in the kitchen was carefully labeled. The whole apartment smelled of Windex and Lemon Pledge, and Kat could imagine that he’d spent so much of life cleaning up other people’s messes that he didn’t know when or how to stop.