Macey rolled her eyes again and told him, “Half the power players in the city are sitting on this ballroom floor.”
“Yes,” Hale agreed with a little too much vigor for Macey’s liking. “And as you pointed out, four out of five gunmen aren’t in the ballroom. So,” Hale said slowly, “whatever they want, it isn’t in here.”
Macey was just starting to argue when Abby asked, “What can you tell me about the gunmen?”
“They’re amateurs,” Hale said at the exact time Macey told her teacher, “They’re pros.”
Hale shook his head. “Just because you do something professionally doesn’t mean you’re a professional. And, trust me, these guys are just the type to get someone hurt.”
Abby was talking in Macey’s ear, going on about emergency extractions and contingency plans. She’d warned Macey to sit tight, not to blow her cover. But the clock inside Macey’s head was ticking, Hale’s words washing over her.
And she was tired of sitting on the floor, doing absolutely nothing about it.
Macey would have given anything to have her best friends with her, but Cammie and Bex were in London on not-so-official CIA business and Liz was…Well, Macey reconsidered. Perhaps having the most accident-prone girl in the history of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women far, far away from the men with the assault rifles was a good thing.
“What about lover boy up there?” Abby asked. “He’s walking around with a pair of comms units in his pocket—could he be useful?”
Macey looked Hale slowly up and down, then whispered, “I highly doubt it.”
Hale huffed and mouthed the words I can hear you.
Macey just eyed him. “But I guess he’ll have to do.”
The man in the Bush mask looked bored, or as bored as anyone with his face covered could possibly look. He kept his weapon on his hip and walked around the wide circle, staring down at the captives.
This man wasn’t the brains, Hale knew. He held no authority, made no decisions. He was there to wear a mask and hold a gun. And hopefully, Hale thought, make a key mistake.
“You should get us away from the windows,” Hale said when the man walked by.
“Shut up,” he ordered, his voice husky and deep and vaguely European.
“They’re gonna have snipers out there,” Hale said. “I watch movies. I know how this ends. We need to get away from the windows. Look, that one door is even open.”
“I said shut up.”
“Okay.” Macey took up the argument. “If you want to get shot coming over here to check on us, fine, but my debutante ball is this spring and I can’t show up with scars and stuff.” She cast a weary glance toward the massive wall of windows and French doors. “Besides, I’m cold. The least you can do is close that door.”
Hale watched the man consider this. His posture changed. His feet shifted. And when he turned and started for the window, Hale dared to whisper, “Kat, you hearing this?”
He didn’t get a reply, but as soon as the gunman reached the open door, a bullet burst through the glass, shattering it into a million pieces, spraying it across the floor.
It missed the gunman, though. It was supposed to. And what followed was chaos. Hostages bolted to their feet and ran. Others crawled across the floor, over stray bits of glass, struggling to free themselves from that place and that terror.
And when the dust and the panic settled, nobody even noticed that the boy and the girl who had mentioned the windows in the first place were gone.
Chapter 5
WALKING DOWN THE ABANDONED HALL, Hale went through the list of all they had to do.
“First, we have to find out where they’re going and what they want. And keep your eyes peeled,” Hale ordered. “If we find a way of sneaking out some hostages, we should do it. And, Macey,” he said, stopping to catch her full attention, “don’t get caught.”
It was good enough advice, but Macey McHenry seemed to have other things on her mind.
“You’d better not be planning on looking up my dress.”
“I won’t look up your dress.”
“Because if you look up my dress, I will hurt you.”
“Yeah.” Hale laughed a little. “You can try and—”
But before Hale could finish Macey spun, knocking him against the wall. She had her fingers around his neck and his head poised to snap. It was all he could do to choke out the words “I won’t look up your dress.”
“Good boy,” she said, and let him go.
Without another word, the two of them eased down the narrow hallway that ran along the back side of the ballroom. Carts of food sat, abandoned. Bucketsful of ice were melting.
It felt to Hale like they were walking through a ghost town. And Hale couldn’t help himself—he worried. The whole job felt wrong. Too overt. Too obvious. Too physical and dangerous and risky. Whatever it was that had brought the men in the masks there, he didn’t like it.
“What are you thinking?” Macey tilted her head and studied him.
“It’s not a Gab and Grab—they’ve been here too long and they’ve gotten too entrenched. They’re big and they’re organized, but they aren’t set up for the Queen of Sheba.”
Macey looked at him oddly, so Hale added, “To run that con you need a set of triplets and a goat.” Then he shook his head and talked on. “They’ve got hardware and hostages, and that means…”
“What does it mean, Mr. Bored Billionaire–slash–Amateur Thief Guy?”
“I don’t know. I’m usually the heister—not the heistee. And I don’t work this way.” He walked a little faster. “You take hostages at a bank—someplace with lots of cash and lots of exits. And you only do it after you mess up and don’t get out. Seriously, no one in their right mind intends to take hostages. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless they intend to use them.”
The words washed over both of them, neither of them moving. Neither of them spoke until Hale glanced up at the air vent that opened overhead, and held out his hands in the universal signal for let me give you a boost. “Now I promise I won’t look up your dress.”
Macey wasn’t the type of girl to have regrets, but as she crawled through the dirty air vents that ran along the top of the Athenia’s highest floor, there were a number of things she would have changed about that particular evening if given the opportunity. First, she would have gone with the black gown instead of the red. (In those situations, you really need a dress with straps.) She absolutely would have brought one of the little travel-sized tear gas canisters her roommate Liz had perfected the previous semester. And perhaps most importantly, she would have done more than a little reconnaissance on W. W. Hale V before the evening took its covert turn.