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"What’s wrong with you?" Hale asked Kat’s arrasp as he pulled her to a dark and quiet corner of the room

"I’m fine"

"Yeah" He stepped closer "That’s my point This is serious, Kat"

"I know"

"This goes off the tracks and we et it back"

She looked at hiot conned…So you’re huh his hair and took a step back "So you’re ain "Is that so bad?"

"What are you saying?"

"I’o anywhere We could do anything" He brushed a stray piece of hair behind her ear "We don’t have to do this"

It wasn’t often that Kat wished she could go back in time The world didn’t work that way, after all There was no such thing as a second chance But even as Hale said the words, she knew they were true--they could board a jet and disappear, haul up anchor and be in Casablanca before anyone even knew that they were e thesaid she had to ain And for a second, she felt herself teetering, fighting the urge to run

Run

To boarding school and Moscow and Rio

Run

To a snowy cabin at the top of the world

And right then, Kat knew it hadn’t begun with a lie in a diner in the rain--that the chase hadn’t lasted weeks--but decades And the job that had started in Montreal had to end in Monte Carlo

"Hale," Kat said, but before she could finish, Si into position Kat, did you copy?"

"Don’t worry" She looked at Hale "I hear you"

And then the lights went out

CHAPTER 35

To say that Katarina Bishop was at home in the dark wouldn’t be entirely correct She did not have sonar like a bat Her eyes did not process light and shadow differently, like a cat’s But if Hale was at hone and caviar, then Kat herself was perfectly at ease standing in the shadows of the ballroom, surrounded by jewels and wallets and other people’s hts flickered on, bright beah the ballroo on the s, needing to knoas about to happen

"Kat?" Sih her ear "It’s time"

No one saw her say it All of Monaco was too busy staring at those two cases and theout over the crowd,his entlemen," Pierre LaFont addressed the crowd, "thank you so reatest cultural find of the twenty-first century" Polite applause filled the roole whoop echoed out, and Kat made a mental note to have a ith Harateful to Monsieur Oliver Kelly for generously allowing us to share with you…" He paused for dramatic effect, and then swept his arht and cried, "The Cleopatra Emerald!"

There was no applause, only a faint but steady clicking sound so slight it would have disappeared entirely in any other , and yet the case itself seereen stone froasp in the crohen it came to the surface, but the silence returned almost immediately in its wake

And the crowd stood--waiting

People are all the same, as every decent con man knows They have the same needs The same wants Every person in that room wanted to touch history To feel fame To hold love--hold it in the palms of two hands

And that hy they stood in silence, watching, waiting for Pierre LaFont to say, "And now, ladies and gentleive to you for the first tiain there was the whirling sound, the sight of so inside a protective case But no one seeht the second stone and the platfor the Cleopatra and the Antony on a turn around the ballroo on the two cases gave any clue that what the croas seeing wasn’t a e The stones were identical Perfect Priceless and pristine

They’re here They’re real And they’re together, the whole room seemed to think

But not Kat Kat stood silently in the center of the crowd, thinking, Charlie is a genius

As the e the casino in a kaleidoscope of green, and yet it was nothing compared to the look in Hale’s eyes as he stood across the crowded rooht at Kat

She felt like just another girl at the ball in thatit to be real--a romance that had spanned two thousand years A love that had overcoraphy and class and time

She wanted to believe in that She looked at Hale and kneanted it too

On the stage, LaFont was still speaking; the croas still staring It was a , but it was also a moment built on a lie, and as badly as Kat wanted to believe it, she knew better than to trust the con

"Sih the small comms unit in her ear

"Haus?"

"We’re in position, love," was Angus’s reply

"Gabrielle," Kat said, "what about Kelly?"

"Covered," her cousin whispered