Free Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter Page A

was a much harder thing to part with.
    “You were right, Kat.” There was a weight to Hale’s voice. A gravity. “I should go.”
    Don’t go.
    “I know you still have to deliver the package, but…it’s not like you need me.”
    But maybe I want you.
    His hand was resting on the door handle. He took a deep breath and moved.
    “Hale—”
    “You could come,” he said, spinning toward her.
    The rush she’d felt before turned to panic, and Kat was frozen, no clue what to do or say.
    “Your dad’s already there. Gabrielle says Irina is coming. I mean, I know it’s no Cleopatra job, but you could come. You could come if you wanted to.”
    “I want to, but I don’t…steal…anymore, Hale.”
    His voice was part whisper, part sigh, as he turned to the window and said, “You could have fooled me.”
    Before Kat could protest, Hale was reaching for a button on the limo door and saying, “Marcus.” The car slowed and the center partition slid down. “Take her wherever she wants to go.”
    “Hale, wait!” She reached for him, but the car stopped, and he was already opening the door, stepping out onto the busy sidewalk.
    “You be careful out there.” He pulled the large duffel onto his shoulder as if it weighed nothing at all. “I mean it, Kat. Take care.”
    Her hand was in his, resting gently. “Hale…”
    “Good-bye, Kat.” His voice was almost lost against the sound of honking cars and distant sirens. And just that quickly, he was gone. Out onto the street, coat collar turned up, disappearing into the traffic and the crowds.
    It did not look like a clandestine rendezvous, not with the old woman and young man on the park bench and the teenage girl walking toward them, looking as if she’d just lost her very best friend.
    “Is it true?” the woman asked.
    The first time Kat had seen her, she’d guessed her age at somewhere over eighty, but that day Constance Miller looked younger by at least ten years. Maybe twenty. Her face was full of something. Kat breathed out, watched her breath fog in the chilly air, and knew that something was hope.
    “Do you have it?” Constance Miller asked. “Is that why you called?”
    “No, Grandmother. A theft like that would have been on the television.” The man reached awkwardly for the old woman’s hand.
    “TV is overrated,” Kat said, pulling the envelope from her pocket and tossing it onto the man’s lap.
    He stared down as if it were a tiny bomb and might explode. Only the woman dared to reach for it—carefully, tentatively.
    “Is it really…”
    “You can look,” Kat said, glancing at the two uniformed police officers who stood twenty feet away, sipping coffee. “But I wouldn’t touch.”
    “Oh, I believe you,” the woman said, grabbing up the package and holding it tightly against her chest. “It’s in here. I know it. I can feel it,” she said, and Kat knew she wasn’t talking about the weight or shape of the heavy stone in the padded envelope. She hadn’t felt it with her fingers—she could feel it in her soul. Kat knew that sensation. She’d found it once on a school bus in London with four priceless paintings. She had seen it in Mr. Stein’s eyes every time she returned one of the missing Holocaust pieces to him so he could take it on the final leg of its journey home.
    “Oh, thank you, Katarina. Thank you. If it hadn’t been for you and Mr. Hale—” The woman stopped and looked around. “Where’s your friend?”
    Kat couldn’t help herself; she looked too.
    “I’m afraid he had another obligation.”
    “Oh,” Constance Miller said. “Do thank him for me, please. I just can’t tell you how much…” But the words got caught.
    “Grandmother, are you all right?” The young man’s hand was on the woman’s shoulder as it shook and she cried, clutching the precious package to her heart.
    “I’m fine,” the woman choked out. “I’m perfect.”
    The job was over. Her work was done. So Kat turned and started through the