“I should welcome you to my home, Katarina,” he told her, tipping his head slightly. “I must say, this is a surprise. And I like to consider myself someone who is not easily surprised.”
“Well,” Kat said slowly, “I was in the mood for spaghetti.”
Taccone smiled. “And you’ve come here alone,” he said, but it was really a question.
“Now, I could say yes, and have you think I’m lying.” She took a step forward, ran her hand across the baby-soft leather of a wingback chair. “Or I could say no, and have you think I’m bluffing. So maybe I’ll just say . . . no comment.”
He pushed back from his desk as he studied her. “So you have—as you Americans say—backup?”
“Not really.”
“But you’re not afraid, are you?”
She was in Arturo Taccone’s favorite room, but in every way that really mattered, Kat was back on her home turf. “No. I guess I’m not.”
He stared at her. After an excruciating pause, he asked, “Perhaps you don’t think I’d hurt a little girl?”
For reasons Taccone would never understand, Kat was surprised at the words. It was strange to hear herself referred to in such a way. Little, she supposed she couldn’t deny. But girl was odd. Woman or lady wouldn’t have been any better. She had simply been so long inside boys’ clubs that she forgot sometimes that, anatomically at least, she was not a younger, smaller version of the men who sat around Uncle Eddie’s kitchen table. That she was, from a biological standpoint, very much like Gabrielle.
“That’s a lovely piece,” Kat said, pointing at a Louis XV armoire near the fireplace.
The man raised his eyebrows. “Did you come to steal it?”
“Darn it,” Kat said with a snap of her fingers. “I knew I should have brought my big purse.”
Scary men do scary things, but for Kat, nothing was as terrifying as the sound of Arturo Taccone laughing. “It’s a shame we didn’t meet under different circumstances, Katarina. I think I would have enjoyed knowing you. But we did not.” He stood and walked to a cabinet, poured himself a glass of something that looked very old and expensive. “I take it that you do not have my paintings.”
“That’s kind of been my story all along.”
“If you’ve come here to ask for more time, then—”
“Like I told your boys in Vegas, I’m working on it.” She glared at Goon 2, who had slipped inside and was standing like a statue by the door. “Or didn’t you get the message?”
“Yes, yes.” He took a seat on the leather sofa in the center of the room. “You have indeed been making some interesting inquiries. Your great-uncle’s home in New York . . . that, I could understand. Your uncle is the sort of man who should be consulted. But the trip to Las Vegas”—he leaned back and took a sip—“that came as a surprise. And then I learned that we had visitors this evening. Well, you can understand if I’m perplexed.”
“I told you everything in Paris,” Kat explained, her voice steady. “My father didn’t steal your paintings. With a little time and a little help, I may be able to tell you who did. I may even be able to arrange for them to be returned—”
His smile widened. “Now that is an interesting proposition.”
“But first . . .”
“Help?” the man guessed.
She nodded. “You say my father did this.”
“I know he did this.”
“How?”
“Oh, Katarina, surely any half-decent thief would know that I have taken . . . precautions . . . to protect myself and my belongings.” Arturo Taccone raised a hand, waved at the opulent surroundings.
“The Stig 360,” she said with a smile. “Nice. Personally, I prefer the cameras in the 340 models. They’re clunkier, but they have more range.”
Outside the villa, the rain was falling in torrents, but inside, Taccone’s voice was as dry as kindling. “I had hoped you would take my word that your father has done this terrible thing, Katarina. But if—”
“Look.” Kat’s voice was sharper than she’d thought possible as she stepped closer to the man at the center of the room. Goon 2 made a move toward her, but Taccone stopped him with a wave. “It’s not a pride thing. Or a trust thing. It’s an information thing. You’re a man who makes careful decisions based on the best information possible, are you not, Signor Taccone?”
“Of course.”
“Then help me. Help me get your paintings back. You’ve got proof, you say?”
Taccone held his drink to the light as if toasting Kat and her courage. “Of course.”
Kat smiled, but her expression held no cheer. “Then show me what you’ve got.”
There would come a time—although Kat didn’t know it yet— when her conversation with Taccone that evening would be told and retold around Uncle Eddie’s kitchen table a thousand times. When the story of her crossing the drawbridge would involve not rain but bullets; when the tale of her asking Arturo Taccone for his help would include threats and windows and something involving a pair of antique dueling pistols (which, according to legend, Kat would also steal).
But Kat herself never told the story. Hale and Gabrielle lay in the darkness, staring down at the grounds when the drawbridge lowered and Kat left of her own free will, taking her sweet time.
As she walked through the rain and darkness, Hale and Gabrielle didn’t notice the way she kept the small disk from Arturo Taccone tucked under her arm. But, of course, they would see it eventually.