“Knightsbury,” Hale said, gripping Kelly’s hand. “It’s nice to see you again. Big day. Big day.”
“Indeed,” Kelly said with an impatient look at his watch. “I presume Mr. Jones is here to…oversee the transfer?”
“Oh, no, sir,” Hale said. “Mr. Jones was so impressed with your security that he sent me along with one of our junior associates. This is Ms. Melanie McDonald. Ms. McDonald has just joined the team. Since company policy dictates that two employees must witness—”
“Hello.” That’s when it became utterly obvious that even though Oliver Kelly the Third was accustomed to great beauty, tea sets and scepters were no match for Gabrielle. “It’s so nice to meet you, Ms. McDonald,” he said.
“Call me Melanie.” Gabrielle extended one delicate hand. “It’s so very nice to meet you, too.”
There were at least a dozen people crowded in the halls. Gemologists and Egyptologists in white coats and tweed jackets; lawyers and very large men with very large guns strapped into shoulder holsters beneath the blazers of subpar suits.
Hale looked at the crowd, but not Kelly. Kelly simply looked at Gabrielle.
“Well, shall we go?”
Of all the pristine places inside the Kelly Corporation that day, Hale couldn’t help but think that the room they saw next would make most hospitals jealous.
A stainless-steel table sat beneath bright lights. Assorted tools lay across cotton towels. There were microscopes and lasers, goggles and gloves. Every single person in the very crowded room stood in total silence as the doors opened and four uniformed guards entered, surrounding a man with a red bow tie and the thickest glasses Hale had ever seen. The wooden box he carried was small, and yet when he placed it in the center of the steel table, he sighed as if it held the weight of the world itself.
“Have you met my cousin Pandora?” Gabrielle whispered to Hale. She gestured to the center of the room. “That is her box.”
People should have noticed, but no one heard anything beyond the squeak of the rusty hinges. And not a soul—not the appraisers or the guards—not even Oliver Kelly the Third himself could do anything but watch as the director of antiquities, in his crisp bow tie and white cotton gloves, reached into the box.…
And retrieved the most valuable green stone that the world had ever known.
Hale had seen pictures, of course. He was a well-traveled young man, an educated child of means. A thief. Everyone who was at least one of those three things had seen pictures. But pictures did not capture the essence that comes with ninety-seven karats of pure, flawless green the color of Ireland in springtime.
Curse or no curse, the man was right to hold the stone gently as he moved it to the table. The experts rotated around the emerald like planets circling the sun, scanning, measuring, and weighing—working wordlessly. It was almost like a dance, Hale thought. Like a con.
Beyond the hushed questions and answers of the experts, no one spoke until ninety minutes later, when a short woman—the leading gemologist in the world, flown in from India for the occasion—stepped away from the stone and wiped her brow, and Oliver Kelly said, “Well?”
The whole room waited, watched as the woman cleaned her glasses and said, “Congratulations, Mr. Kelly, this is the new home of the Cleopatra Emerald.”
She held the stone toward its owner and motioned to the velvet-covered pillow on which it was supposed to sit. “Would you like to do the honors?”
If anyone expected Kelly to rush to take it, they were disappointed. Instead, he stood staring at the massive piece of green as if he had been secretly hoping it was a forgery.
A fake Cleopatra Emerald, after all, had never hurt anyone.
“Mr. Kelly?” the woman asked again.
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” Gabrielle spoke at Kelly’s side. “I can’t imagine holding such a thing.”
Kelly laughed. “Well, now’s your chance…” He motioned for her to go ahead and take the emerald—to take history, quite literally, in the palm of her hand.
It wasn’t an act, Hale knew, when Gabrielle reached carefully for the stone and looked as if she’d been waiting for that moment her entire life.
It almost broke his heart to have to say, “Again, Mr. Kelly, I must remind you that the Cleopatra Emerald is a high-profile target.”
“I know that,” Kelly snapped.
“And we at Chamberlain and King would hate to see you take unnecessary chances with a stone of such…unique…cultural significance. Its propensity for…shall we say…coinciding with unfortunate events and—”
“It’s not cursed!” the man insisted one final time with entirely too much force. He swung his right arm, gesturing wildly, completely unaware of Gabrielle, who was walking past, hands outstretched, with the Cleopatra Emerald resting gently on her palms.
When Kelly’s arm crashed into her, she stumbled onto the polished floor and watched the emerald tumble out of her hands. Shame and terror filled her face as she lunged after the stone, sliding, calling, “I’ll get it! I’ll—”
But her hand struck the stone again, sending it skidding toward a small vent that no one in the history of the Kelly Corporation had probably ever seen. But by then it was too late, and Oliver Kelly the Third, the director of antiquities, and the authentication department—not to mention the greatest experts in the world—had no choice but to watch as the most precious emerald in history disappeared.
Only Hale and Gabrielle seemed to be capable of moving. Together they rushed to the small vent that opened into a larger shaft that ran to the roof.
Hale leaned down. “I think I can reach it,” he said, rolling up his sleeve, but Gabrielle was already on the floor beside him, her long thin arm reaching easily into the tiny space and grappling in the darkness for what felt like an eternity.
The lights still shone brightly in the pristine room, but it was as if a shadow covered them all as they thought about how emeralds can be easily scratched or chipped.
As they thought about curses.
But then the girl moved, and smiled, and pulled her hand from the grate—a gorgeous green stone clutched tightly in her grasp. It was covered with dust and cobwebs, but it was uncracked and unharmed.
And, of course, completely fake.
* * *
There was a lot that the people of the Kelly Corporation would never know about the Cleopatra Emerald. Like how it had truly come to Oliver Kelly so many years ago. Most likely, very few could comprehend the humiliation and pain that it had brought to the thieves of the world ever since.