Perfect Scoundrels (Heist Society #3)(58)

“Kat!” Simon yelled from the back room. “I think you need to hear this.”

“What is it?” Kat asked as soon as she reached the office that Simon called his own.

His eyes were wide and his breath was labored as he told her, “Our guy has company.” He pulled the cord that connected his headphones to his computer, and instantly, voices came through the laptop speakers, filling the room.

“What are you doing in my office?”

Kat watched Garrett through the cameras that she and Hale had installed on their visit to the thirty-seventh floor. The lawyer was up and moving around his desk. For a moment he blocked the camera, but the voice that came through the microphone was one Kat had definitely heard before.

“I thought perhaps it was time I paid you a little visit.”

That voice. That accent.

“Ms.…”

“Montenegro,” the woman supplied her name, assuming, Kat supposed, that Garrett would have forgotten it. “You haven’t called me, Mr. Garrett.” She pouted. “If I were a different sort of woman my feelings would be hurt.”

“Really, Ms. Montenegro, this is not the time or the place.”

She looked around. “It seems the perfect time and a…somewhat acceptable place.” She bent forward in a way that afforded the man a glimpse of cleavage. “Don’t you want to hear my offer?”

“I have a buyer.” Garrett rubbed his hands together nervously and looked toward the door.

“A buyer who can have the money in your account by the end of the day? Where do you want it? Switzerland? Cayman Islands?”

“No. No.” Garrett tried to walk away, but the woman deftly cut him off.

“The only thing I don’t understand is why you haven’t sold it yet. Are you getting soft, Garrett? Or…no. Wait. Don’t tell me the Chinese are holding off until the Hale model proves faulty.”

Kat could tell by the look on Garrett’s face that she was right. The woman must have seen it too, because she talked on.

“My employer can afford to be far more…flexible. We don’t care if the Hales claim copyright infringement. What’s a little piracy between enemies?”

She rose and strolled around the small office, eyed the paperwork piled on the desk.

“But if you want to stay here, keep on keeping up appearances, being the good little worker…” The words struck a nerve, and she saw it. “Oh, you must hate them so.”

“I appreciate your coming, Ms. Montenegro. But I’m afraid I already have a buyer.” He stood up straighter, as if forcing himself to literally be strong. “Now, I think you’d better leave.”

Long after the door was closed and the screen was vacant, Kat could still hear herself breathing.

“Kat…” Simon said her name carefully, cautiously. It sounded like he was afraid she was sleepwalking and didn’t know how to wake her. “What do we do now?”

“What else can we do? We get ready to rob the most secure bank in the world.”





The Superior Bank of Manhattan was not the largest bank in the city. It wasn’t the most famous. What the Superior Bank of Manhattan was was infamous, so Kat couldn’t quite steady her nerves as she walked through the front doors, even with her father by her side.

“So this is what you do now?” Bobby asked, but Kat just made a mental note of the position of the cameras.

“I’m pretty sure it’s what I’ve always done.”

“Yeah, but before you had parental supervision.” Kat gave her father a questioning look, so he shrugged. “Parental proximity,” he conceded. “Anyway, this is nice.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Almost like old times.” He gave a squeeze, and Kat realized how much she’d missed him.

She sank into the hug, rested her head against his shoulder, and said, “Dad…”

“What is it, sweetie?”

Kat felt especially young that day, walking through the massive lobby, her father at her side. But she couldn’t bring herself to say so, so she glanced at the security cameras and asked her father, “Are those the nine-sixties?”

“You know perfectly well they are,” he told her. “Now, what is it?”

She didn’t have a lie that would work, so she settled on the truth. “This job is different.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think we can do it. And I’m not sure we should.”

Kat felt the lobby around her beating like a pulse. Employees hustled from desk to desk. People stood in line at the teller windows. A few VIPs were escorted to and from private offices in the back. And, through it all, armed guards stood at every entrance.

Hale Industries sat on the bank’s east side, a police station on the west, and beneath it all, a custom-designed bank vault that had never before been cracked. Inside that, there were one thousand safety deposit boxes, any one of which could have held the prototype and plans.

Simon was the genius, but even Kat knew enough not to like that math.

“So what are you thinking, Kat?”

“I’m thinking it’s impossible.”

“Now, that’s not the daughter I raised. Nothing is impossible.”

“No.” Kat shook her head. “No. It is.”