He gave her a smile. “America could do worse.”
The music was louder than Macey remembered when she walked with Hale back to the ball. And for one brief moment, he looked like a code she really wanted to break, a language she couldn’t quite understand.
“I suppose I could try to pull some high-class heist,” he told her. “You know…just to spice up your evening.”
“Really? Well, I’m pretty sure Lady Darlington was wearing emerald earrings when she got here.”
The boy looked impressed. “Yes. But Her Ladyship put her earrings in her handbag ten minutes ago.” He shrugged. “Besides, I have a bad history with emeralds.”
“What about canaries?” Macey scanned the crowd and pointed to the one jewel that stood out from all the others as it dangled around the neck of the woman of the hour.
“The Calloway Canary? Oh, very tempting…” He looked longingly at the necklace that seemed to catch every bit of light in the room. “Twenty carats if the rumors are true. A perfect canary diamond surrounded by flawless white stones…Nope. Sorry.” Hale shook his head and pulled another shrimp from a passing tray. “Besides, it’s a fake,” he told her with his mouth full.
“No, it’s not,” Macey said. “I assure you, old lady Calloway is rich enough to buy any diamond she wants. There’s no reason for her to have a fake.”
“Oh, I’m sure the Calloway Canary is very real,” Hale told her. He grabbed another shrimp and pointed with it across the room. “I’m just saying that’s not it.”
Was he lying? Maybe. But then again, Macey realized, maybe not.
“So are you the Hale who was institutionalized or the one who burned down the planetarium at Colgan?”
The boy shrugged and smiled, looked at her with that thousand-watt grin. “Who says they can’t be one and the same?”
“Seriously.” Macey felt herself growing impatient. “Where do you go to school?”
“Knightsbury. Why? Where do you go?”
“It’s a girls’ school,” Macey told him.
“So? I know lots of girls.”
“Not like these,” Macey said with a shake of her head. “Why don’t I know you?”
“Does anyone ever really know someone else?”
“You think you’re cute,” she told him.
“You think you’re gorgeous. But I’m the one guy here who knows better.”
“So I’m not gorgeous?” Macey challenged.
“Of course you are.” He started away, turned back at the last minute. “But I’m the guy who figured out that’s not all you are.”
Chapter 2
FROM THAT POINT FORWARD, W. W. Hale V knew two things for certain. First, the party was far more interesting than he’d been expecting. But the second (and more important) thing was that he should not talk to Macey again. Since the day a little over two years before when he had crawled out his window and out of his world, Hale had lived with the fear that someday someone in his old life might find out about his new one, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that Macey was very much up to the challenge.
She wasn’t a thief; of that much Hale was almost sure. But she wasn’t your typical society girl either. Her steps had too much purpose; her blue eyes moved around the room with too much precision. She reminded him far more of the girls in the world he’d chosen than the girls in the world he’d been born to, and that was why he knew that he shouldn’t let her study him too closely. That maybe she might see a little too much.
It didn’t matter anyway, Hale realized. He wasn’t going to stick around to find out. He looked down at his watch: 9:45. Then a man in a dark gray suit caught Hale’s eye and started his way.
“Yes, sir?” Marcus asked. Hale had often wondered how Marcus read him so well. He was supposed to have a good poker face, after all. But it didn’t matter how good an inside man Hale was supposed to be; Marcus was a far superior butler.
“I think I’m in the mood to leave, Marcus,” Hale said, scanning the room. He saw his father chatting up a business associate by the bar; his mother was busy looking over an antique clock that was a part of the silent auction. He wondered exactly how long it would be before they realized he was gone. If they’d ever realize…
“What’s our exit strategy?” Hale asked.
“I believe the stairs by the balcony are mostly vacant,” Marcus told him.
“Perfect,” Hale said, and without another word he started toward the other side of the room. When his phone rang, he had to dig through his pocket to find it, and his fingers brushed against a pair of tiny earbuds he and Kat had last used in Monte Carlo. Hale smiled a little, realizing he hadn’t worn the tux in ages. It was just one of many ways his life had changed in the years since a girl named Katarina Bishop crawled into his window and into his life.
“You’re late,” Kat said as soon as Hale put the phone to his ear. She wasn’t the kind of girl to wait for hello.
“What can I say? Macey McHenry has been throwing herself at me….”
“See, that’s the kind of thing that would make me jealous if she weren’t way out of your league.”
“You know, if I had feelings, that might have hurt them.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Now come on down. There’s a Raphael in Rome that has our name on it.”
“I don’t know…” Hale started. “It might be hard to get away from Macey. It looks like she works out. And you know how crazy I drive the ladies.”
“Crazy is an understatement.” Kat took a deep breath. “Am I going to have to come up there? Because I will. I have no objection to stealing people, you know.”
Hale started to laugh. He wanted to tease. But right then he saw something that seemed a little out of place in the elaborately decorated ballroom. Behind the stage, covered in canvas, lay a device, a piece of metal sticking out at such an angle that only Hale could really see it.
Kat talked on, but Hale was no longer listening as he crept closer to the narrow gap between wall and stage, looking. Thinking.
“Hale?” Kat’s voice sounded in his ear. “Hale, are you listening to me?”
That was when Hale noticed a hotel employee standing beneath the security camera that was trained on the dance floor, an odd bag draped across his arm. On the other side of the room, a sign that read that the elevators were temporarily out of service made Hale’s mind come to a terrifying stop.