April didn’t quite know what to think or feel or believe. She just knew that Colin was keeping his gaze trained on the foyer and he was . . . laughing?
“Bet you ten quid this one says he’s in the Alps. They love saying that. I guess they figure he’ll have a beard and make his own clothes out of animals he’s killed or something. So Alps are the odds-on favorite. But they also love small islands in the South Pacific. Sadie has a fiver riding on the islands. What do you think?”
“What do I think about what?” April asked because, really, she wasn’t sure what she thought about anything by that point. Almost dying in a fire, getting saved by an urban legend, and going to live in the home of a presumed-dead billionaire would do that to a girl.
“What do you think she’s gonna say?” Colin asked.
“What is who going to say?” April asked, but then there was the clicking of shoes on the floor in the foyer below. Smithers’s back seemed especially straight as he opened the door and ushered a young woman inside.
“Her,” Colin said with a grin.
The new woman and Smithers spoke in words too low for April to hear. When Smithers led the woman away, Colin pushed up from the floor and whispered, “Come on.”
Then he bolted up the stairs and down the hall and through a sliding door that April hadn’t even realized was a door at all. For a moment, she stood on the threshold, trying to let her eyes adjust to the dim light while Colin bobbed and weaved among stacks and stacks of—
“Ow!” April stubbed her toe and heard something fall to the floor.
“Shh,” Colin whispered. “Hurry up. You’re missing it.”
Books. April was surrounded by books. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she eased toward the light and the outline of the boy, who was lying on his stomach again, looking down at the library below.
“I’m Gabriel Winterborne’s fiancée,” said the stranger. She was pretty, April had to give her that. But she was dressed like someone who had googled billionaire’s girlfriend and just bought everything that came up. Glitzy earrings. Leather gloves. Tall boots.
“Is that right? Well, congratulations,” Ms. Nelson said, but her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“He said that if anything should ever happen to him, I should come here.”
“Did something happen to Gabriel?” Ms. Nelson asked.
April thought that was a perfectly reasonable question, but the fiancée bristled and looked Ms. Nelson up and down.
“Who are you?” The stranger sounded annoyed.
“I’m Isabella Nelson, the director of the Winterborne Foundation.”
“Then I believe that’s Mr. Winterborne to you.” The woman actually looked down her nose at Ms. Nelson, and Colin laughed.
“Ooh. She’ll be regretting that, she will.”
Smithers stepped forward then. “May I offer you tea, madam? Or coffee?”
“No, Smithers. It is Smithers, isn’t it?” she asked. Then she smiled. “It seems like I know you. Gabriel speaks of you so often. No.” Her voice cracked. “Spoke.”
“Not bad,” Colin said, but April could tell that Ms. Nelson wasn’t impressed.
She asked, “Where did you meet . . . uh . . . Mr. Winterborne?”
“Gimmelwald? Do you know it?” the woman said. “It’s a small village in the Swiss Alps. Gabriel had a cabin nearby.”
“Told you,” Colin whispered, but he didn’t even glance in April’s direction.
“Had, you say?” Ms. Nelson said.
“Yes. Well . . .” Then there was a handkerchief in the woman’s hand and she was walking toward the windows. When she spoke again, her voice was so soft that April barely heard it. “There was a terrible storm—”
“What’s the meaning of this?” It took April a moment to recognize Evert Winterborne without his giant scissors, but there he was, striding into the library like he owned the place. And maybe he did.
“Hello, Evert,” Ms. Nelson said. “It seems Gabriel has a fiancée. A new one.”
The stranger recoiled a little, and April watched her realize that maybe she wasn’t the first fiancée who had shown up since Gabriel went missing. But she didn’t bother trying to convince Ms. Nelson.
“She’ll go for the men, you watch,” Colin whispered, and sure enough, the stranger rushed to the uncle, tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Uncle Evert! We have to find him!”
But Uncle Evert simply asked, “Gabriel Winterborne has a birthmark. Where is it?”
“His arm,” she said after a moment and pointed to a place just above the bend of her left elbow.
“My nephew is allergic to what food?”
“Asparagus,” the woman said, finally getting the hang of the game.
“Where did you meet?”
“At an inn. I was passing through. He’d come for supplies.”
“I see,” the uncle said. “When was this?”
“Two years ago. We fell in love.”
“And you’ve been together ever since?”
“That’s what people do when they’re in love.” The stranger gave a haughty look in Ms. Nelson’s direction.
“But you don’t know where he is now?” the uncle asked.
“We were separated in a storm. But he said if anything ever happened to him I was supposed to come here—that his family would take care of me.”
“Does this happen a lot?” April whispered and Colin shrugged.
“Every couple of months. This one’s pretty good. Most never make it past the guardhouse. Evert needs to get a new question, though. Anyone who’s ever googled Gabriel Winterborne shirtless knows about that birthmark. Not much test for a grifter. And she’s a fair grifter.” He gestured to the woman below.
“Maybe she does know him,” April said.
But Colin looked at her and tilted his head. “Aww. You’re sweet,” he said even though April didn’t feel sweet. At all. And she was just about to say so when Colin said, “At least this one didn’t bring a kid.”
“They do that?”
“Sure they do,” Colin said. “Oldest grift in the world. Course, these days, it won’t stand up, with DNA and all, but DNA takes time, don’t it? And if you’ve got a family who wants someone back real bad, sometimes you can dangle ’em on for a few days. At least a good grifter can. And she’s good.” He gestured to the woman, then shrugged. “But I’ve seen better.”
Something in the way he said it, April had no doubt he had. Down below, Smithers was guiding the newest future Mrs. Winterborne to the door, but April couldn’t take her eyes away from the boy beside her.
“Colin?” she asked slowly. “Who’s the best grifter you ever saw?”
He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, the words were soft and low. “One woman came here about a year ago. Dressed real normal, see. No rags. No furs. Just a pretty lady with a boy who looks like the dead guy. That’s the key. That and knowing what people want to see. And hear. That one they asked to stay awhile.”
“What happened to her?” April asked.
“She ran off. Cleaned out the silver and the safe and was gone by morning.”
“What happened to the boy?”
Colin grinned. And shrugged. And said, “Nice to meet you.”
“Colin!” Ms. Nelson’s voice echoed up from the floor below. “I’m assuming you’re up there.”
He scooted closer to the light and the railing, and yelled, “She was good, wasn’t she? But not good enough.”
“No. She wasn’t good enough. Come on, now. You too, April,” Ms. Nelson said. “I’m starving.”