“Agent Bennett, maybe if you—”
“It was robbed, girls,” Amelia said.
“They didn’t do it!” Kat and Gabrielle blurted in perfect unison, the response so ingrained in them that it was instinct now, a habit they had been taught in the cradle.
“Who didn’t do it?” Agent Bennett asked.
“Whichever relative of ours you think did it. They didn’t.”
Agent Bennett looked as if she almost wanted to laugh. “You sound sure.”
And, amazingly enough, they were.
“If you knew Uncle Eddie, you’d be sure, too,” Gabrielle said. “Charities are a no-go. Trust me. Anyone who steals from orphans, or widows, or…nuns—especially nuns—gets a one-way ticket to Siberia. Sometimes literally. Sometimes metaphorically. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just as cold either way. Trust me. If someone knocked over a London charity, it wasn’t one of us. I promise,” Gabrielle said with a definitive nod.
Kat glanced at Agent Bennett who smiled and said, “I know.”
“But you just said…” Gabrielle started.
“I know it wasn’t someone born to your family,” Agent Bennett clarified.
“But…” This time, it was Kat who was confused.
It seemed almost hard for Agent Bennett to ask again, “Are you sure you’ve never heard of the Magi Miracle Network?”
Kat knew she expected a different answer. She just didn’t know why.
“It’s not a huge charity,” Agent Bennett went on. “It isn’t especially famous. Yet. I’m here because I’d very much like to keep it that way. A charity is only as good as its reputation, after all.”
“How much did they get?” Kat asked.
“The question isn’t how much, I’m afraid. The question is what.” Agent Bennett turned to the two girls, studying them anew. Kat knew what she was seeing: two teenage girls, too tired and too weary and way too far from normal. Which was exactly why Amelia Bennett was sitting with them and not across the table from her colleagues at Interpol.
“A few months ago, my friend was approached by a prominent British figure—the Earl of Greymore. The title goes back to Henry the Eighth. It’s five hundred years old, and the current earl is aging as well. Some even say he’s dying. Others believe he is simply going insane. But, no matter his reasons, the earl’s attorney contacted my friend early this fall and offered to donate an item which, once auctioned, would probably fund their work for years. Decades maybe. The item was to be auctioned two days before Christmas—Christmas Eve eve, if you will.”
“So twelve days from today?” Kat asked.
Amelia nodded. “Exactly.”
“What kind of item?” Gabrielle asked, and Kat knew exactly how much the answer to that question mattered. Jewels were one thing. Art was another. Value was a spectrum along which a whole host of possibilities and difficulties were strung. Kat needed to know exactly what kind of tightrope they were walking.
“An egg,” Agent Bennett said. “A Fabergé egg, made for the Romanovs themselves.”
Kat and Gabrielle nodded, impressed. As loot went, it was enviable but not unheard of. Small. Portable. Common enough to be enticing to collectors, rare enough to be valuable as well. Doable, would be Kat’s father’s assessment of such a job. So she wasn’t surprised at all that someone had done it.
“Okay. A Fabergé egg. Great. I guess—”
“No,” Agent Bennett said before Kat could finish. “I’m sorry. I should be clear that this is not a regular Fabergé egg. Unlike most eggs of the Romanov era, this one wasn’t made for Easter. No. This particular item was one of three nearly identical eggs, part of a set made for Christmas, thus the timing of the auction.”
Agent Bennett could have talked for five more minutes. For five more hours. It wouldn’t have mattered because all Kat heard after that was the word Christmas.
She felt her cousin turn to her. Kat’s heart began to pound. The worse kind of dread is the kind you can feel but can’t quite pinpoint, and Kat was full of it then, knowing her life was getting ready to turn in a very unsatisfactory direction.
“So it was one of the Eggs of the Magi?” Kat asked, her voice cold.
“Yes.” Agent Bennett gave a slow nod, as if she’d been expecting this moment since long before she left London. “A most fitting gift for the Magi Miracle Network, don’t you agree? Elizabeth was thrilled. The press. The money. It would have been a massive coup, except…”
“Someone stole it,” Kat filled in.
“It wasn’t us!” Gabrielle exclaimed again, but Amelia turned to her, every inch the Interpol agent.
“It was an inside job, girls. Almost certainly.”
“How can you be so sure?” Kat asked.
“For starters, word of the donation hadn’t been made public yet. That was going to happen this week. No one aside from my friend, a few loyal staff members and the charity’s board of directors even knew they were getting the egg. It’s hard to steal something if you don’t know who has it.”
“Okay,” Gabrielle said. “So I guess that brings us back to why are you here? Aren’t you the head of UK Operations for Interpol?”
“Deputy Director,” Agent Bennett corrected, but Gabrielle went on.
“I seem to remember you people being pretty good at this kind of thing?”