Atlantis Betrayed Read Free

presenters delighted in spouting breathless and inane theories as to her identity while showing the cards in their full silver-and-scarlet glory.
    The Scarlet Ninja was setting fashion trends, even though everyone thought she was a he .
    “Sorry, Dad,” she murmured, glancing out the window into the uncharacteristically clear night sky, as if he might be looking down at her from heaven. Spring weather was wet, wet, and more wet, but she’d planned this little outing for the one night this week that the meteorologists had promised would be dry. So unpleasant to plan impossible heists in the pouring rain, after all.
    The expected knock came, and she heaved a sigh. “I’m not decent, Hopkins, please go away.”
    The door opened and the man who was the nearest thing to a grandfather she’d ever had walked in, carrying a tray. “I prefer indecency in both women and foreign films. Chocolate?”
    Fiona sighed again and tried not to grit her teeth at the sight of his perfectly combed silver hair and his perfectly proper black suit. It was after midnight, for heaven’s sake. “I don’t have time for chocolate. And I’m not a little girl anymore, whom you must coddle out of her nightmares. You should be in bed, wearing your lovely pajamas that Madeleine gave you for your birthday. You look like a butler, Hopkins.”
    “I am a butler, Lady Fiona,” he responded, exactly as he had a billion or so times since they’d started this verbal dance more than twenty years ago, when her father died. “I was your father’s butler, may he rest in peace, and before that your grandfather’s butler, may God rot his vicious soul.”
    “You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead.”
    “I said far worse when he was still alive,” he said dryly, raising one silver eyebrow. He whipped the cover off the silver pot of chocolate, and the aroma teased her senses. “Furthermore, should you ever catch me wearing silk pajamas decorated with tiny barnyard animals, please feel free to commit me to a home for the senile.”
    “They’re sheep, Hopkins.” She clamped her lips together to keep the laugh from escaping. “You know, for counting sheep? It’s a sort of joke. Also, when will you drop the ‘Lady’ and start calling me Fiona?”
    “Undoubtedly at the same time I begin wearing the barnyard animal nightclothes.” He poured the rich chocolate into a delicate china cup and handed it to her.
    Fiona took the chocolate. It was just easier to go along on the little things. “She means well.”
    “Faint praise, indeed,” he pointed out. His brilliantly blue eyes sparkled with amusement, though, and she wasn’t fooled. She’d caught him bringing chocolate to Madeleine just that morning.
    “Down to business, Lady Fiona. Do you have your un-traceable phone?”
    “Always.”
    “Is it charged? When you broke into the British Museum—”
    “How long are you going to hold that against me? I came out of that with an entire collection of jade figurines, including Tlaloc.” She pulled out the top drawer of the Louis XIV bureau until the faint depression in the wood bottom of the drawer was in sight. A muffled click signaled the opening of the hidden compartment, and she removed one of her scarlet hooded masks and a single glossy silver card.
    “Yes, Tlaloc. The rain god. The wettest autumn in recorded history after you brought that home, if I recall. Thank you so much. We certainly needed more rain on our property,” Hopkins managed to say with a straight face. “A clean handkerchief?”
    She froze, slowly turning her head to stare at him. “A clean handkerchief? Are you actually making a joke, Hopkins?”
    He carefully folded her unused cloth napkin, its white linen folds as spotless as the gloves he still insisted on wearing, before he looked up and met her gaze. “I never joke. If an employer of mine is planning to steal one of the most famous gems in history from the Tower of London itself—which is, mind you, absolutely