Perfect Scoundrels (Heist Society #3)(38)

The only thing slightly out of order was a stack of papers on the coffee table. Kat could imagine him dropping them there after work one night. Some junk mail and a takeout menu, phone bill, bank statement…

Passport.

“Natalie,” Kat said, reaching for it, “are you going back to Europe already?”

“What? Oh that.” Natalie glanced at the passport and pushed the thought aside. “No. That’s my dad’s. Has some business trip tomorrow.”

“That’s cool. Where?”

“Hong Kong,” Natalie said, then crinkled her nose. “I think.”

And Kat couldn’t help herself: she peeked at the piece of paper tucked inside the small blue booklet, at the word Aviary circled in red. And the time: eight o’clock.





Kat had never felt at home in Hong Kong. Sure, she and her father had lived there for eight months after her mother died. The two of them had spent hours walking through the massive tide of people that ebbed and flowed, beating like a pulse through the city’s center. But no matter what, her mother’s memory followed them everywhere. Despite their best efforts, they were never quite able to lose her.

That was the thought that kept pounding in her head that afternoon. Gabrielle was at her back, Hale fifty feet behind her, and the three of them stayed on the crowded sidewalk, following the man in the hat. She kept her eyes forward and her pace steady. Gabrielle split off and took the other side of the street while Kat stepped out of the way of a bicycle. She got jostled by a food vendor moving a cart full of very strange-looking oranges. But she kept the man in her sights until, finally, he turned off the busy street and into Hong Kong Park.

“Kat?” Hale’s voice was in her ear. “Where is he? Did you—”

“She didn’t lose him,” Gabrielle said.

“Where is he going?” Hale asked.

“We don’t know.” Gabrielle sounded annoyed. “That’s why we’re following him.”

“But—”

“Hale, does someone need to go back to the hotel?” Gabrielle scolded him as if he were a little boy.

But Hale didn’t answer, and Kat walked deeper into the park. Concrete gave way to mossy grass. She moved from the shadow of buildings to the shadow of trees, and a cool breeze blew across her skin, carrying with it a sound that was growing louder and louder with every step.

“What’s that noise?” Gabrielle asked.

“I don’t know, Gabs. I think…” But Kat trailed off as soon as she saw the massive net suspended within the trees and finally knew exactly what she was seeing.

“Birds.” Kat thought of the note in the man’s apartment. “Garrett is going to see the birds.”

That was as far as Hale could go, Gabrielle said, and Kat couldn’t argue with the logic. There was a reason clients never went on jobs, so Gabrielle waited outside with Hale, and Kat followed Garrett into the aviary alone.

As Kat walked down the winding paths, the sound was overwhelming. Birds chirped and sang, filling the air. Kat couldn’t hear anything over their cries. Not the crunch of the gravel beneath her feet or even the sound of Hale arguing with Gabrielle in her ear.

She was utterly alone in that huge faux forest until the trees parted, and she saw Garrett. He gripped the wooden railing of a footbridge, staring up at the skyline that peeked through the canopy of trees.

“Okay, guys,” Kat said into her comms, “I found him. Looks like he’s waiting for something or…” She paused as another man stepped onto the bridge. “Someone.”

The man greeted Garrett with a bow. He wore a dark suit and dark glasses, but their words were lost to Kat beneath the cries of the birds around them.

A smaller path branched away from the main walkway, twisting through the trees and passing beneath the footbridge overhead, so Kat crept toward it. The birds squawked above. A brightly colored pair flew away when she approached their perch, but the men didn’t seem to notice, because they talked on, and eventually Kat could make out the words.

“You have the device?” the other man asked.

“I do.”

“May I see it, please?”

Garrett huffed. “I don’t have it on me, of course. But it’s someplace I can access very easily when the time comes.”

“And it’s secure there?” the man asked. “The Hales are powerful people. If they suspect what you’ve done, they will try to retrieve it, will they not?”

Garrett leaned against the railing and stared out through the net at the skyscrapers that loomed not far away and laughed. It was a cold, dry sound. “Oh, I assure you, the Hales have never bothered with the business before. I see no reason for them to start now. And, besides…I have placed the prototype in a place where nothing has been stolen. Ever. So, yes, it is safe.”

“And you can get it?”

“Sir, it is right under my nose. So close that it could be yours as soon as you pay my asking price.”

“And have the Hales reveal their prototype at the gala next week?” Now it was the buyer’s turn to laugh. “I don’t think so.”

“The Hales won’t be a problem,” Garrett told him.

“Perhaps. But a wise man is a cautious man. I will wait to see what becomes of the Hales and their prototype. As soon as the world knows they have not mastered the Genesis technology, then—and only then—you and I will have a deal.”