Alex’s grandfather had stopped. Rain blurred in the binoculars’ lens. With a curious combination of movements, he lifted one leg and slammed a foot down, then repeated the action. Alex heard no alarms, yet he felt them going off. Then his grandfather was simply gone, having dropped down through the hole he’d made.

“Three minutes,” Harry muttered, checking his watch.

Alex glanced around. Harry was clearly going through every moment of the job along with Alex’s grandfather, acting out the movements. His head nodded silently as he counted off the footsteps from the place where the old man had landed to the wall where the painting hung.

From the corner of his eye, Alex caught a change across the road. Lights had come on behind the crazy window of the museum’s foyer. Shadows flitted inside.

“Uh-oh.”

“Eh?” Harry looked up, then dismissed it. “No worries. Two minutes twenty.”

Continuing his mime of the robbery, Harry lifted his hands, turning them as though working with some tool.

“Hurry up,” Alex whispered.

Harry ignored him. He slipped off an invisible harness, worked to secure it to the invisible painting, then pulled it back on. He paused, motionless for several beats, then started nodding again, marking each step of Alex’s grandfather’s return to the point where he had broken in.

“Here we go,” Harry murmured happily. “Back out any second. And still a minute left.”

Alex trained his binoculars on the museum again, trying to locate the right place. A distant siren sounded. Rain stirred restlessly.

“Do you see something?” Kingdom’s concerned voice suddenly sounded over the phone.

“Where?” Harry said gently and seriously, lifting his binoculars.

“On the roof. Wait. Maybe it was just the rain.”

The siren was getting closer.

“Metz?” Harry said.

“No sign of anything here.”

Alex shifted his glasses frantically. The only movement was the steely shiver of rain—then he tracked back. There was something else, behind the rain.

“Oh no,” Kingdom breathed.

A dim, massive figure rose from a crouch and stepped stiffly toward the broken place Alex’s grandfather had gone in.

“Bloody Nora,” Harry whispered.

“What’ll we do?” Alex said.

“Too late.”

Alex lifted his binoculars again in time to see his grandfather come springing up through the hole in the roof, wearing the painting like a flat turtle-shell on his back. The old man landed lightly and bowed theatrically in their direction. The tall man came forward, fast, lashing out.

Alex’s grandfather must have heard something. He ducked, not quite far enough. The swiping stab caught him on the shoulder, sent him spinning, tripping toward the roof’s edge.

Alex threw open the door. “Grandad!”

Up there, his grandfather recovered, balanced, then jumped, springing from the high roof to a flat section beneath, where he instantly leapt again to escape the dark figure bounding down behind him.