Mind Games

by Heather W. Petty

  He lifted his hand to wave at me again as I backed out of his room, and I was pretty sure I’d just unwittingly added matchmaker to my list of accomplishments.

  Chapter 20

  The train ride to Church Street was only eventful in that we spent most of it arguing about who we thought would be holding the mysterious burner phone when we found it. Sherlock was obviously refusing to see reason.

  “It’s not about reason. It’s about objectivity!” Sherlock punctuated his point with a finger in the air that I kind of wanted to rip off his hand.

  “So you’re saying I’m incapable of being objective.”

  “I’m saying your guilt is keeping you from looking at the most likely suspect.”

  The man in the seat across from mine pretended to be reading something on his mobile, but his shifty eyes made me lower my voice. “Why in the world would I feel guilty toward—”

  “Lily Patel.”

  “You are fixated on Lily Patel.”

  “I’m fixated on the evidence.”

  “If Lily hated me, she could torture me at school. If she had any evidence against me or my father, she’d go directly to the prosecutor. She obviously has someone there updating her about the case, because she knew about the police finding the sword and that I’d been accused of throwing it in the lake. She doesn’t need to make anonymous calls and resort to magazine-collage threats.”

  “Maybe.” Lock grabbed my hand. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  I was trying to decide whether to let him continue to hold my hand or whether to use it as a counterbalance to toss him into the aisle when my mobile rang. I used it as an excuse to pull free.

  “Mori, where are you?” It was Alice. “Tell me where you are.” She was crying. “It’s Michael. He’s been hurt.”

  “Hurt how?”

  “It’s bad, Mori. We’re at Charing Cross.”

  • • •

  I’d thought I’d never have another reason to enter Charing Cross, but after Alice’s call, I couldn’t seem to get through the doors fast enough. I followed the signs toward the emergency room and found Alice, Freddie, and Sean sitting vigil in front of two giant doors covered in warnings that only hospital staff were allowed beyond.

  I turned to Alice. “Is he in there?”

  Alice reached for the hand I’d used to gesture at the doors and held it like she was afraid I’d run through them if she didn’t. “He’s in surgery. His arm is broken and there’s pressure on his brain.”

  Something inside me cracked in half, but instead of pain or fear or anger, I just felt numb. “His brain?” I sank down onto the bench next to my brothers. A broken arm would heal, of course, but my mind spun with all the ways a head injury could change Michael’s life forever.

  Alice sank down next to me, but Lock kept standing, still holding my hand. “They said he should be fine, but they won’t know—”

  “Until they relieve the pressure on his brain,” I finished for her.

  She nodded, though I wished she had argued with me, told me there was no chance that my sweetest, most gentle little brother might have brain damage. I closed my eyes and an image of his scared face streamed through my thoughts. All of the numb turned to heat in my chest, so that by the time I spoke again, my words came out shaky and low.

  “Who?”

  Alice’s free hand came up to hold my arm. “Calm down and I’ll tell you what happened.”

  “Who? Who did this?” I was feigning calm, or attempting to. But I imagined even a complete stranger would have noticed the way every muscle in my arms and shoulders was tensed. I was a cat ready to pounce.

  Alice glanced between Lock and the boys, then stood up suddenly, pulling me to my feet as well. “Come with me.”

  We left Sherlock behind with an ashen-faced Freddie and a glaring, angry Sean. Alice pulled me past the elevators that led to the wards and into the dimly lit staircase. The light was flickering above us as she sat on a step and I leaned back against the cold concrete wall.

  Alice started to speak, but I cut her off. “If you don’t tell me everything, I’ll leave right now to find out for myself.”

  “We need you here. Those boys out there have done nothing but ask for you since we got here.”

  “WHO DID THIS TO HIM?” My shout echoed through the stairwell so that everything seemed especially quiet just after. I took a breath that did nothing to calm me down. “Tell me what happened!”

  Alice paused, and then in her most quiet voice, she said, “Someone tried to take Sean when we were walking back from the market.”

  “What do you mean, ‘take’ him?”

  “A black van pulled up just in front of us, and when we walked by it, some big guy jumped out and grabbed Sean. Freddie and I managed to fight him off, but when the driver jumped out too, Michael panicked and ran out into the street.”

  Big guy, black van. It was just what Michael had described before, and back then Officer Parsons was sitting behind the wheel. Of course he panicked.

  “I was so focused on keeping Sean and Fred away from the van, I didn’t even realize Michael was gone until someone screamed.” Alice closed her eyes and hung her head. “Another bystander shouted to call for the police and the guys in the van ran for it, which is when I saw Michael lying out in the street.”

  The image of that only fueled my anger. “Did you recognize either of the men from the van?”

  “No. They were wearing masks.”

  “Did Michael recognize them?”

  “I don’t know,” Alice said, but then she paused. “He did say something when the van first pulled up.” She stopped to think again, then shook her head in frustration. “No, I don’t remember. I was so focused on keeping the other boys from being taken.”

  I slammed my fists against the wall and Alice stood.

  “I have something else to tell you,” she said. “But first, promise me you won’t run out of here.”

  I didn’t say a word, just stared at her, and after a while she sighed. She put her hands on my arms. “Okay, so that petition your dad put in to question my guardianship rights? He was denied first thing this morning.”

  “He lost,” I said, staring up at the underside of the stairs that led to the floor above us. “And then he sent Parsons to steal the boys from us.”

  “You don’t know it was him.”

  I jerked my arms free of her and slammed my fists back again. “Michael saw Parsons last time. Michael ran because it was happening again!” I yelled the last word and Alice jumped. I took the opportunity to step toward her, but her eyes seemed more fascinated than frightened. “Get out of my way.”

  She shook her head. “Mori, stop. What can you accomplish by going to the police station?”

  “Get out of my way!”

  “No.” Alice grabbed my arm with both of her hands and pulled me in close to her.

  I reached up with my free hand and grabbed her around the neck, pushing her up against the wall. Her eyes only challenged me, but her fingers were like vices on my arm. She was afraid of me.

  I immediately let go and stepped back, running my hands through my hair as if I couldn’t trust them to have nothing to do. I wasn’t really mad at Alice; I was mad at myself. This was my fault, in the end. I’d let the threats against me distract me from protecting my brothers. I’d forgotten all about my father—trusted his cage to hold him, when I’d already had proof that it wouldn’t. And now Michael was injured and it was my fault for failing to see the greater threat.

  My voice shook when I spoke again. “Do you think he’s done, my father? Because I don’t. He just lost guardianship of the only people he cares about in the world to a woman he blames for the death of his sainted wife. He will not give up until he has those boys hidden away from us and is out of prison to be their dad again.”

  “I won’t give up on the boys either. Or you.” Alice spoke with the conviction I’d seen when she’d come to free me from Mallory’s interrogation. And I believed sh
e cared. Despite how little time she’d spent as our surrogate guardian, she seemed to care about my brothers. She would protect them as well as she could. But even if I were to include Sherlock, we were two high school students and a con woman against police officers hiding behind masks and the law.

  “Do you really still think you can protect us from him with a handful of lovesick middle-aged men?”

  “Not without you here.”

  We were weak together. We were useless alone. I knew that. But I had to find a way to keep my brothers safe without me, because my father wasn’t my only enemy. I knew for sure that whoever was clutching a burner phone in a shop on Church Street wasn’t going to stop just because I was stuck in a hospital waiting area. I wasn’t the safety Alice assumed I was. And I couldn’t figure out who was trying to get me thrown in jail from the hospital. If my new threatening enemy was successful, if they really could somehow blame my father’s crimes on me, I’d be locked away. Helpless. And worse, my father would be free.

  But the moment I opened my mouth to explain all that to Alice, her mobile rang. She held a finger up in front of me as she answered. “Yes? Mallory, this is hardly the time.”

  I grabbed the phone from her and tapped the screen to put it on speaker.

  “. . . isn’t something to put off. Can you locate her?”

  “Mori is here with me. We’re at the hospital. Her brother was hit by a car.”

  The pause on the other end was perhaps one or two seconds, and then Mallory sighed heavily into the phone. “Which one?”

  “What do you need from Mori?” Alice asked.

  “Constance Ross is coming to the station first thing in the morning to make a statement.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be just as coherent as the last one.”

  “I’m told the woman has been medicated and is still claiming to have witnessed Mori disposing of the murder weapon.”

  Alice and I exchanged panicked stares, but she recovered more quickly than I did. “She’s probably just mixing fantasy and reality in her memory. Surely—”

  “That might have been the case if we hadn’t found the sword right where she’d said it would be. There’s no way around it. Mori’s going to have to come in for more questioning.”

  I started to shake my head, and Alice placed a hand on my shoulder to calm me.

  “Can’t it wait until we know her brother came out of surgery okay?”

  Mallory paused again, then said, “Twenty-four hours. It’s all I can give her. Then she has to come to the station.”

  “Twenty-four hours,” Alice echoed, then ended the call.

  Our eyes met and then I said, “I can’t stay.”

  “I know. Take your boy with you.”

  I shook my head. “No, he can be here to help you.”

  Alice suddenly grinned. “I’ll make do. If I can’t turn a couple of hospital security guards into my soldiers, what good am I?”

  This is exactly why my mother loved you, I thought. But aloud I said, “Thank you.”

  • • •

  I practically ran into Sherlock on my way back to where we’d left him with my brothers. Mrs. Hudson was there, pulling Seanie and Freddie into a hug.

  “Oh, my special boys! How I’ve missed you.”

  “We used to be her special boys,” Mycroft said, from somewhere behind me. “I might need to spend a little more time with the old girl to win her back.”

  I spun in place to face him. “I’ve an opportunity for you, then.”

  Mycroft immediately caught on to my scheme. “Leaving us so soon?”

  I ignored his question to ask one of my own. “Did Sherlock call you?”

  “No,” Lock said, stepping up beside me. “I didn’t.”

  And yet there was Mycroft, with Mrs. Hudson. With the distance he had to travel to leave his work and collect her, he would have had to have found out about the accident before I did.

  Mycroft’s expression fell and his voice was gentle when he asked, “How is Michael?”

  “We don’t know yet. How did you know he was injured?”

  He glanced at Lock and then back to me. “I heard about the accident through . . . channels, and—”

  “And you dropped everything to come here?” Lock asked. “I don’t think so.”

  Mycroft pulled at the cuffs of his shirt and looked past me to where the boys were sitting with Mrs. Hudson. “There was nothing pressing.”

  Lock made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a cough. “What do you know?”

  “I know that Mori needs answers to much more important questions than yours.”

  He was right. I squeezed Lock’s hand to keep him from voicing the protest I clearly saw in his expression, and then asked Mycroft, “How long can you stay here and look after things for me?”

  Mycroft checked his mobile. “Four p.m. tomorrow.” He seemed amused at my surprise and said, “I came prepared to stay.” His eyes drifted down the hall to where two men in black suits sat, one reading and the other playing a game on his mobile. But their eyes followed every passerby until each was clear of the bench where my brothers sat. “I came prepared for a lot of eventualities.”

  “Why?” I asked. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t helped numerous times before. But this time was different. This time he came without my request and brought backup. Not only that, Mycroft was grieving himself, and here I was asking him to spend the night in the place where he’d just lost his mother.

  “I’ve grown rather fond of your brothers,” he said. “You promised me that man would never get his hands on them again. I plan to hold you to that.”

  I stood there dumbly, because I didn’t know what to say. I suddenly didn’t even know if I could leave, now that I was faced with it. Could I just walk away, not knowing how Michael was or if he’d even survive? Could I live with myself if he woke up for a short time and found I’d abandoned him?

  Alice must have seen my inner fight somehow. “Go. I’ll call with news.”

  I glanced between Mycroft and Alice and then made myself leave. Sherlock followed along like a good soldier for a few strides, but we’d barely made it halfway across the lobby when he resisted enough to stop me.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’ll explain on the way.”

  He pulled me back toward him. “Maybe you should stay here as well. What if your father sends someone after you?”

  “Then I should be as far away from this place and my brothers as possible.”

  “You’re more vulnerable out there. What if someone hurts you this time?”

  “Better me than them.” I looked directly into Lock’s eyes when I spoke again, and somehow, despite the boiling heat I’d felt rise in me at the mere mention of my father, I managed to keep my voice steady. “Let him. Let him hurt me. Let him kill me in their place if it will make him stop.”

  Lock paused then said, “It won’t.”

  He stepped closer to me again, and I didn’t move away this time. He wouldn’t keep me from leaving, but I needed him to focus on what was important, not on what could possibly happen.

  “You’re right that he won’t stop. While he breathes, wherever he is, he will come for those boys. This will happen over and over again, and if I am in his way, he will cut me down to get to them.” I met Lock’s gaze, moving closer still so that all he could see was my sincerity. “Maybe you don’t understand the level of my priorities when it comes to those three boys, because I’m not good at being their sister most days. Perhaps if they had better . . .”

  Lock adjusted his hand to lace his fingers through mine, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Do you understand what I would give up for them?”

  He didn’t answer again. I didn’t need him to. All I needed was for him to come with me. To focus with that beautiful brain of his and see what I couldn’t see. It took him a few beats, but his expression finally shifted from worry to determination. “To find the black van, then?”

  “No.” I
held up my mobile, which was already running the app Jason Kim had loaded onto my phone. “We’re going to follow this.” I took Sherlock’s hand in mine. “And whoever’s at the other end of this burner phone is going to wish they’d never heard my name.”

  Chapter 21

  Sherlock and I got off the bus at Regent’s Park and wandered through the closest entrance. We followed paths I’d never seen before, trying to get my little red dot closer to the blue dot that was supposed to be the burner phone. But the blue dot didn’t stay still, and the app didn’t work well on the unmapped expanse of park. Sometimes the dot would disappear altogether only to reappear in a place far from where it had been. I was so turned around by the time the dots were almost on top of each other that I didn’t realize where we were until I heard overly boisterous laughter followed by a voice I recognized. “Cheers to that as well! Cheers to that bloody woman you married!”

  It was Lily Patel, kneeling in the mud and facing the tree where her father’s body had been found. Behind her, the clearing was cluttered with the scattered remains of a mixed-flower bouquet and four crumpled, empty beer cans. She poured a bit of liquid onto the ground from the can she held, then drank deeply, not coming up for air until foam was escaping from the corners of her mouth.

  “Cheers!” she cried again, crashing her beer can against the tree trunk so hard, it sprayed up a bit onto her head. She took turns laughing and coughing.

  “Looks like I was right,” Lock said quietly.

  I looked down at my phone, which showed the blue dot moving in weird stuttered circles around my dot despite the fact that we were both being relatively still. But it didn’t matter what the app said anyway, because if it was Lily, there was one way to find out for sure. I shoved my phone into my pocket and pushed through the brush toward Lily right as she lost balance and started to tip over in slow motion.

  I caught her before she fell completely and righted her. “Okay, let’s be done with this, yes?” I pulled the beer from her hand, which was practically empty, but she grabbed it back with both hands and scowled at me.