“It’s okay, Katarina. Nick is fine. He sends his love. Or he would”—Agent Bennett gave another shrug—“if he knew that I was here.”
Gabrielle and Kat shared a look and then moved to the table. Possibly because they had been raised to keep Interpol agents on their good side. But more likely because they were hungry and the food smelled wonderful and looked hot and Kat still hadn’t gained back the feeling in her frozen fingers.
So the three of them sat. So the three of them ate.
None of them mentioned the suitcase.
Gabrielle had slid it wordlessly under the well-worn kitchen table when they walked in, but Agent Bennett glanced at it, as if to make sure the girls knew that she knew they hadn’t been Christmas shopping in the middle of the night, but she wasn’t going to ask about whatever the two of them might have been doing earlier this evening.
Agent Bennett passed the bread. “I’m not going to ask where your uncle is, though the reappearance of that Italian count after a thirty-one year absence from the Riviera is puzzling to some. And I’m not even going to ask you about that—” she glanced at the case beneath the table. Gabrielle nervously toed it farther out of view.
“Okay,” Kat said, reaching for a fork. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to eat,” Nick’s mom told her. “And you’re going to join me. And then I’m going to tell you a story.”
The bread was flaky, and the pasta was good and for a moment, Kat just let the food warm her from the inside out. Agent Bennett might have broken into Eddie’s house and taken over his oven, but there was no SWAT team assembling in the alley; to the best of Kat’s knowledge, there were no Interpol agents searching the upper floors.
But Kat knew that nothing good could have brought Amelia Bennett to New York City two weeks before Christmas, no matter how tasty the pasta.
“Is Nick okay?” Kat asked again when the room became too silent.
“Nick is fine,” Amelia said. “No doubt he’ll be angry when he hears I came to see you without him, but he’s my son, and he’ll get over it. Time was of the essence.”
“Well, if it’s so essential…”
“Gab,” Kat tried to warn, but Agent Bennett shooed the word aside.
“No. She’s right. I suppose I should tell you. It’s time.”
For a moment, there was only the sweet smell of the pasta sauce and the butter melting on the bread. Everything was quiet and warm in Uncle Eddie’s kitchen. A safe place for thieves and secrets. Just like a million other nights except in one incredibly obvious way.
It seemed to take Amelia Bennett a moment to realize that and say, “I know who you are, Kat Bishop. And I know what you do. But, most importantly, I know why you do it. That’s one reason why, professionally speaking, you and I have been able to…agree to disagree. On occasion, as you know, we have even been on the same team. I like those times.”
Agent Bennett smiled, and Kat felt a pang of regret deep in her heart. It was a pang she often felt this time of year. The deep and aching hurt that comes from knowing you will never again see your mother on Christmas morning.
“Me too,” Kat said, meaning it.
Amelia Bennett was on the other side of the law but on the same side of justice as Kat and Gabrielle, who said, “Am I right in assuming that this is one of those times?”
For a woman who had flown across an ocean and broken into a brownstone to have this conversation, Agent Bennett seemed, momentarily, uncertain of her answer. She put down her fork and dabbed at her lips with a napkin. It was like watching her take off a mask, so smoothly did she slip from Mother to Agent as she said, “I suppose that depends.”
“Depends upon what?” Kat asked, skeptical at best.
“Depends upon whether or not I’m wrong,” Agent Bennett said.
Kat couldn’t help herself; she laughed. “You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who is wrong very often.”
“Oh, I want to be,” Agent Bennett hurried to say. “This time, I want to be wrong very badly.”
Gabrielle was many things. A natural grease man, a fabulous honeypot, and the best Jack the Jack and Jill long con had ever seen. What she wasn’t, was patient.
So Kat wasn’t surprised to hear her say, “Tell us.”
Amelia took a drink, then a deep breath. “I’m stationed in London again. I don’t know if you girls knew that…”
“No,” Kat said, then admitted, “I haven’t talked to Nick in a while.”
“Well, I am,” Amelia said. “I’m Deputy Director of UK Operations, something of a promotion, they tell me. Even though it feels a lot more like a punishment. Sitting behind a desk is an acquired taste, but…I digress. Last week I got a call from an old friend who manages a London-based charity.”
Kat and Gabrielle sat in silence for a moment, knowing that this mattered. That the new Deputy Director of UK Operations for Interpol would not have flown all the way to New York if this were a problem that could be fixed over the phone.
Agent Bennett drew a weary breath. “Are you girls familiar with the Magi Miracle Network?”
The answer was supposed to be yes, Kat could tell from the look in Amelia Bennett’s eyes, but neither she nor her cousin had any kind of reaction, so Gabrielle had to say, “Are we supposed to be familiar with it?”
“Perhaps…” Agent Bennett began but trailed off again.