Summary
A luminous spiderweb of deception glimmers inside George Flanbaugh’s gilded boardroom: Kate Westhanger, velvet-gloved puppeteer of a clandestine syndicate, slips between ledgers like a poet inserting clandestine metaphors into a hymnal, harvesting itineraries of bullion while her smile stays chastely pinned. Her crew—shadows stitched from dockyard fog—believe the heist will birth their retirement; Kate, meanwhile, savors the artistry of the con itself. Enter Michael Pretherson, quixactic criminologist with ink-stained cuffs and a gaze that files every flutter of an eyelash into evidence. Their pas de deux is half courtship, half duel: she taunts, he misreads; she filches, he footnotes. When a midnight train groans beneath its auric cargo, Kate choreographs larceny on a Wagnerian scale—only to discover her acolytes would rather butcher the orchestra than play the encore. Betrayal ricochets; bullets write cursive across warehouse walls; love, that most unreliable of narrators, flips the final page. Gold restored, guns cooled, Kate steps from the rubble absolved, marriage license in hand, the ink still wet as fresh blood.
Synopsis
Although she is the mastermind of a gang of crooks, Kate Westhanger's talents are unknown to those outside her circle, thus enabling her to infiltrate George Flanbaugh's gold syndicate. While ostensibly working for Flanbaugh, Kate actually is compiling information on a large gold shipment. One day, while working, Kate meets young criminologist Michael Pretherson, and although finding herself attracted to the sleuth, she laughs at his detective work and challenges him to stop her. He fails, and after successfully robbing the gold shipment Kate is enraged when she learns that the gang has decided to disband. Her actions inflame the crooks, who capture both Kate and Michael and are about to kill their prisoners when the police arrive, igniting a fight in which all the criminals except Kate are killed. Realizing that her love for Michael has extinguished her desire for crime, Kate returns the gold, is exonerated and weds Michael.
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