Perfect Scoundrels (11 page)

“And how do you enjoy Knightsbury, Katarina…or is it Kat? Which do you prefer?”

For all that she had done in her short life, Kat was not used to playing inside. She didn’t know how to smile and flirt, cajole and confuse someone into believing something was their idea (especially when it wasn’t). No, Kat was a thief, not a con artist, more her mother’s child than her father’s in at least that one respect. So it was with a pounding heart and sweaty palms that she told the woman, “Most people call me Kat.”

“It is a lovely name.” When Hale’s mother smiled, Kat felt a pang of familiarity. Hale was built like his father, with the same broad shoulders and tall frame. But right then Kat knew that Hale was actually like his mother. They had the same easy smile and bright eyes. Charm. They were both charmers. And Kat found herself liking the woman just as, years before, she hadn’t been able to help liking the boy. It felt a little like she was cheating on Hale. With his mother.

“Isn’t that something?”

Kat glanced at Genesis and nodded. “Yes. It really is.”

“It’s going to be quite impressive when we unveil it at the gala next week. You are coming to the gala, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I…” Kat looked at Hale, but his mother talked on.

“You simply must. It’s such an important night for Scooter. He and his grandmother were very close. Did you know that?”

“Yes,” Kat said. She didn’t admit that she’d learned it a little too late.

Hale’s mother smiled. “The company means a lot to my son, and if I’m correct,
you
mean a lot to my son. I’m the first to admit that he and his father and I have been slightly…estranged. He was a challenging boy. But now he’s a man, and I want to know him. And I believe it’s also important to know you.”

“It is?” Kat asked.

Mrs. Hale laughed. “There will be lots of girls who are interested in him now. There were many before, I’m sure, but now…well, let’s just say this kind of inheritance changes things.”

“Not for me,” Kat said, and she meant it.

“And that’s why I hope that we will be very close, Kat.” Hale’s mother smiled.

Kat’s head was buzzing. No. That wasn’t it. The buzzing was reverberating from the center of the crowd.

“The device shouldn’t be making that noise,” Silas said from across the room.

Kat was more than a little surprised at the speed and agility the old man showed as he raced toward the prototype. There was a loud pop just as he reached it, a burning, hissing spark that sputtered and flamed in a bright arc. Smoke filled the air.

“Foster, what is the meaning of this?” Hale’s father snapped as if Silas were deliberately wasting his time.

“I’m not sure,” Silas said. “I’ve personally tested this a dozen times in the past two weeks, and…I’m not sure.”

Kat looked around the lab at what, if Mr. Foster was correct, was one of the biggest days in the history of Hale Industries. Of the Hale family.

But she couldn’t see her Hale anywhere.

Marcus was coming toward her, a tray of shrimp puffs in his hand. But the look in his eyes was enough to stop Kat cold.

“Where is he, Marcus?”

“He’s gone to his office.”

“Where is it? Please tell me. I have to talk to him.”

“No, miss.” Marcus took her hand and squeezed. “You have to stop him.”

K
at wasn’t sure what was going on then, but she’d spent too much of her life as the girl with the plan to sit on the sidelines of whatever was happening. She pushed through the halls of Hale Industries, the cubicles and conference rooms spiraling out like a maze, and she didn’t know where to go. So she stopped, heart pounding. And listened.

“Gloria, red looks good on you,” someone said.

And there he was. Hale was strolling easily down the center aisle, slapping a man on the back and asking, “Hey, Jones, how’s the baby?”

“Hale,” Kat said, struggling to catch up. “I need to talk to you.”

“Go home, Kat,” he told her, never breaking stride until he finally came to rest in front of the woman who sat stoically guarding the corner office.

“Mr. Hale,” the woman said, a little too much emphasis on the word
Mister
for Kat’s liking. “I was not expecting you today.”

“Hello, gorgeous.” Hale smiled and sat on the corner of the woman’s immaculate desk. “I tried to stay away—I really did. But I knew
you
were up here, and I just had to come say hi.”

“Delightful,” the woman said. “And you brought a guest.”

She slid her icy glare from Hale to the girl behind him. Kat shifted and was acutely aware of the fact that the skirt Gabrielle had chosen for her was too short. She wanted to rappel down the elevator shaft and disappear.

“I had to show off the empire. So, have you missed me?” Hale reached down to polish the Hale Industries Employee of the Year plaque that sat beside the woman’s computer. “I’m sure you must have missed me.”

“It was a struggle, sir. But we’ve managed.”

“Glad to hear it.” Hale winked, then he walked toward the wide, sweeping stairs that led to the floor above.

“Go back to the launch, Kat,” Hale said once they reached the thirty-eighth floor. This time there was no receptionist, no guard. So Kat and Hale walked, unbothered, to the big mahogany double doors that read
W. W. HALE V
in gold embossed letters, and Kat recalled what Marcus had told her.

“So, this is your office?” Kat pointed to the words; but then Hale turned the doorknob, pushed, and bumped right into the heavy wood.

“Or not,” Kat said when, again, the door didn’t budge.

“Seriously, Kat. You can go. Now.”

“Not until you talk to me.”

Hale pulled a small leather-bound tool kit from the backpack he carried, and two seconds later, the door was swinging open.

“I’m through talking.” He pushed inside a room with plush couches and tall windows, silk curtains, and an oil painting of an English manor. It didn’t look like the heart of a cold, corporate world. It was more like a sitting room. A parlor.

Hale walked to the empty desk, plopped the backpack down on top of it, and rummaged inside.

“I like your office,” Kat tried again. She couldn’t bring herself to face him, so she reached out to let the curtains run through her fingers. “Did you use a decorator?”

“Yeah. My grandmother,” Hale said, and Kat went still.

She hadn’t thought about exactly where they were, but the reminders were everywhere. The tall bookshelves behind the desk were covered with family photos and books, plaques from assorted charities, and mementos of a life well lived. But only one frame sat on the desk. Kat reached for it, looked down on a fourteen-year-old Hale in a uniform she recognized, a burgundy cardigan over heavy gray trousers.

“I don’t miss those sweaters,” she said, remembering the way the wool itched against her skin during the three months that she had run from her world to Hale’s.

Hale took the photo from her, placed it facedown on the desk. “I don’t miss anything from Colgan. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a small window and a lot to do.”

“What, Hale? What are you going to…” But Kat trailed off when she saw what had been in the backpack. Cable and harnesses, a small device used to open windows. Kat’s heart began to race.

“Hale, when you said you had work to do, did you mean
your
kind of work or
our
kind of work?”

“What’s the matter, Kat?” Hale ran the cable through its harness and secured the other end to a load-bearing beam in the corner of the room. “Don’t you like being out of the loop? I know I did.”

“Hale, don’t—”

“Look at this place, Kat. Look at it!” He reached for a file drawer, threw it open. “Empty,” he snapped and moved on to the next one, which was just as hollow. “Nothing. I’m the CEO without any files, the grandson without a clue, and the boyfriend without the whole story.”

He moved around the desk until there was nothing between the two of them but secrets and disappointment, and Kat was tired of their weight.

“No one tells me anything. Remember? I’m the guy
every
one
keeps out of the loop.”

“That’s not fair, Hale,” Kat said. “I tried to talk to you about the will.”

“When? When did you try?” Hale shouted in frustration. “For crying out loud, Kat. This is my
family
.”

“Exactly!” Kat said. “It is your family. And that changes everything. You lose perspective and…you can’t think straight. When it’s personal, Hale, it’s dangerous. Trust me.”

Kat didn’t know what he was doing, she just knew she had to stop him. Or help him. She couldn’t let him go alone, even when he opened the office window and climbed onto the ledge. Sloping steel descended beneath him like an icy cliff.

Then Hale hooked the harness around his waist and said, “Look, Kat, you can leave. Or you can help. It makes no difference to me.”

And then he spread out his arms. And jumped.

“W
hose office is this?” Kat asked the moment she was inside.

“Guess,” Hale said, but she didn’t really have to. There was a photo of Garrett and Natalie on the corner of the desk, but even without it, Kat would have known.

“Hale, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Really? Because I think it’s my only idea,” he snapped, then softened. “You’re right, okay? I’ll say it. Something is wrong. Now, let’s find out what.”

“Then why don’t we come back later—get Simon and Gabrielle and… Hale, let’s just think about this.”

“I’m through thinking, Kat. Garrett is at the launch
for
now
. So the way I see it, we’ve got fifteen—maybe twenty minutes to do this. You can help, or—”

“What do you want me to do?”

The to-do list was simple enough. They’d spent enough time with Simon to know how to bypass the man’s password and access his computer. They could plant their video cameras in the heating vents, and after a few minutes with the phone system, they would be able to overhear every call he made or received on the company line. The fax number could be cloned and the Internet piggybacked. It all should have been easy enough, but Kat could feel Hale’s presence, hear his breath. He was still the boy who had stormed off in London, and even in that tiny office, it was like there was an ocean between them.

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.”

“The prototype
looks
fine, Silas,” Garrett said. “It will be fine.”

“Hazel never would have done this.” There was a new edge to Silas’s voice. “She never would have compromised the future of this company out of pride.”

“Yes. But, unfortunately, Hazel is dead.” Kat could have sworn she felt Hale’s heart beat faster. “Now, you do have a point,” Garrett went on. “The prototype doesn’t work, and that does have to change things.”

“Of course it does,” Silas said.

“So I think I should probably let the man responsible go.”

“Excuse me?”

“Clean out your desk, Silas. It’s time for you to retire.”

“The board—”

“The board acts in an advisory capacity. And given what they’ve just seen, I’m certain they would advise me to show you the door. So there it is.”

“If you want to fire me, Mr. Garrett, I suppose I can’t stop you, but this is a mistake.”

“You’re right about one thing. You can’t stop me.”

A door slammed, and a moment later, Kat heard Garrett say, “Louise?”

“Yes, Mr. Garrett?” The assistant’s voice boomed through the office on speakerphone.

“Please let Human Resources know that Mr. Foster is no longer with Hale Industries. And call security. Tell them to be on the lookout. We don’t need any uninvited guests walking around.”

Kat tensed.

“Very well,” the woman said. “I have some forms that need your signature. Shall I bring them in?”

“No. I’ll come out there.”

The door opened and closed, and for a few seconds they were alone. Hale’s breath was warm on Kat’s skin. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, and she wanted to kiss him, hold him, breathe him in. She wanted to go back to Argentina. For a split second, he looked down at her, and she knew he was feeling that way too. Anger and grief pounded together. There were too many emotions for such a small space, and the result was electric.

“Kat…” he sighed her name.

“I’m sorry, Hale. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. And I’m sorry…I’m just sorry, okay?”

He didn’t say it was okay. He didn’t tell her she was forgiven. He just sank to the cold, hard floor and pulled his knees to his chest, like a little boy hiding in his father’s closet.

They couldn’t leave without being heard, couldn’t turn on a light without being seen, so Kat joined him on the floor and whispered, “What do we do now?”

“We wait.”

Over the next several hours, they heard Garrett typing on his keyboard. He made a series of overseas calls and spoke badly accented Chinese and French, a little German that Kat was able to pick up. But mostly she just sat, waiting.

Eventually she felt herself leaning against Hale, and he didn’t protest. The night grew longer, and Kat’s head grew heavier, and at some point she must have rested on his chest. She closed her eyes. Hale’s arms were warm and comforting around her, and there was no place else she wanted to be.

“Kat.” Hale’s whisper broke into her thoughts, but she didn’t stir. “Kat.” He shook her shoulder. “I think he’s gone.”

Part of Kat knew she should have felt foolish for falling asleep on the job, but another part was so happy to have Hale’s arms around her, to feel his breath on her skin.

“Hi,” she told him.

“Hi, yourself,” he said.

Still half asleep and groggy, Kat squinted up through the shadows of the tiny space and into Hale’s eyes. It was the closest they’d been in weeks. Whatever had stood between them was lost in the shadows, and Kat felt Hale’s mouth press against hers. His fingers wove into her hair, holding her close, gripping her tightly. It was the hungriest kiss she’d ever known, and Kat let herself get lost in it. Forget. Tell herself that there was nothing they couldn’t do as long as they were together.

But, then again, they were currently trapped in a closet on the thirty-seventh floor of a well-secured high-rise in the middle of the night, so perhaps her judgment was lacking.

“Sorry,” Hale said, breaking the kiss and pulling away.

“No, Hale,” Kat said one more time, “I’m sorry. I should have told you about the will as soon as I heard.”

“Let’s just get out of here, okay?” He struggled to his feet and pressed an ear against the door. A moment later he was pushing out into the dark cold office and gesturing for Kat to follow.

The door was monitored by security, so they found a ceiling vent and made their escape that way, crawling until they reached another grate. Hale jumped down onto a desk below, and when Kat dropped, he caught her, held her there.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

“So what happens now?”

It was an excellent question, and Kat wasn’t quite sure how to answer.

“I think we’re going to need someone who knows more about the company than we do. Someone inside. Maybe your parents? Your mom seemed nice.”

“My mom’s a better con artist than I am.”

“What about Silas? We could tell him.”

A small light flickered on. “Tell me what?”