Mind Games

by Heather W. Petty

  A scar. And I’d be able to reach it once it healed over. “What’s its shape?”

  Sherlock didn’t answer at first. He covered the area with a square of gauze and taped it in place. He rested his hand just below the bandage. His fingers curled around my side. “I’m telling you your wound might permanently scar, and you want to know the shape?”

  He brushed his thumb lightly over the top of the bandage and I shivered.

  “It’ll be my memento of this night.” I turned slowly until I was facing him, and suddenly I felt shy. Maybe it was the affection I saw in Lock that his concentration couldn’t mask. Or possibly the affection I felt for him, compounded by our closeness. He glanced down at my lips briefly.

  “You want to remember tonight?” He moved so close that my vision blurred trying to take in his whole face.

  “I want to remember every night I’ve spent with you.” And tonight will be our last. I wanted to say the words aloud, but I didn’t need to. His eyes were so sad. He knew the truth already. When he retreated from me, I felt the pain of it so acutely, I brought a hand up to my chest.

  He cleared his throat and said, “One last thing and I’m done. It may hurt.”

  I nodded, thinking it couldn’t possibly hurt more than the twisting and tugging I’d already endured. But when he cascaded antiseptic down my back, I couldn’t keep from crying out. After the initial sting, everything started to throb, but by the time he’d closed all the larger wounds with butterfly bandages and covered the lot in gauze and plasters, the stinging had mostly subsided.

  When I stood, my entire body ached. I had to rely on Sherlock to help me to the bed, and then I didn’t even have the strength to put my clothes back on. I pulled my towel tight around me and got under the covers. He didn’t turn off the light or say anything else. He just crawled onto the bed next to me.

  After a bit, he reached up to push some hair back from my forehead and said, “I’m ready to hear who did this to you now.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell you.”

  “I didn’t expect you would.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and I could hear a trembling in my voice. “I’m sorry.”

  He traced the scratch on my cheek with his thumb. “No need.” He leaned forward to kiss my forehead, then held me close to him. And being able to hide my face against his shoulder let me say all the things that were tripping around my mind just then.

  “You can’t help me anymore after this,” I said. “I need you to stop trying. I can’t keep fighting you off. I don’t have the will.”

  “Shhhh. Just rest right now. We’ll talk about all that later.”

  It couldn’t have been much past three or four in the afternoon, but sleep sounded like the very best idea, so I let myself fall into it. “Later,” he’d said. Yes. Everything I needed to say could wait until then.

  Chapter 29

  I woke up to sunlight streaming onto my face and my mobile buzzing. I still had my eyes closed when I answered.

  “Where are you?” It was, of course, Alice.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m safe,” I lied. I probably wouldn’t ever be safe again.

  “Where? I need to know.”

  “I’m at Sherlock’s.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  My heart sank. I looked around the room, but there wasn’t any sign of Sherlock. There was a note on the little desk by the door, however.

  “I’m at a hotel. It’s not like I could go back home.”

  Alice sighed. “You can. I had the place cleaned out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the woman and the vandalism. It’s all been taken care of, so go home.”

  “What does that mean, ‘taken care of’?”

  Alice was quiet for a long time, but I wasn’t going to give her an out, so I waited. “Please go home. I can’t protect you when I don’t know where you are.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me,” I said. “You just focus on protecting the boys.”

  “Do you remember last time, when you asked what I would do if your father came for us and we needed real muscle to keep us safe?”

  I paused, then said, “Yes.”

  “I made that call. But it’s all for nothing if I don’t know where you are. So tell me or go home where I can find you.”

  I thought about it. Alice had managed to protect me all this time with her contacts. She was just doing it again. I should’ve been grateful. But something about her voice made me think that this time it would come with a cost. “I’ll think about it.”

  Alice cursed and then lowered her voice. “Think fast. Your dad’s getting out day after tomorrow, and—”

  “I know he is. That’s why I’m here and not there. That’s why I don’t want you to know where I am. That’s also why I don’t need your protection.”

  “Mori, you’re being a stupid little girl right now.”

  I’d thought Alice had been angry the night before, but that was nothing to the anger I could hear in her voice just then. There wasn’t even a hint of the playful, sarcastic Alice that I knew.

  “You think your mother never wanted him dead? You think she never tried? If someone like Emily couldn’t take him down, you never will. Go home. Someone will be waiting there to bring you to the country house. We’ll find another way.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “And I can’t let you throw your life away over that piece of human trash.”

  We both went quiet, so that I could hear my own breathing echoed through the mic of my phone.

  “Okay, kid. If this is what you want, I’ll find you on my own. And you’ll come with me, whether you want to or not. I’m not leaving you behind again.” She ended the call, and I stared out the little window in my strange room—a window that had been covered with a curtain when I went to sleep last night.

  I sat up and immediately regretted it. My body felt like it had been pummeled thoroughly as I slept, and all my wounds were aching and throbbing. I wondered how many days I’d have to rest to be fit to face my father. Too many probably. And I wouldn’t have the luxury.

  I somehow managed to stand and wobble over to the desk where the note waited for me, but I fell back to sit on the bed as soon as it was in hand. I recognized Sherlock’s handwriting right away, but instead of a short note telling me he’d gone out for coffee or an errand, the writing filled most of the page.

  You didn’t wake up for our late-night fight over whether or not you still needed my help, so I’m forced to write it all out here. Lucky for me, you can’t argue with a letter. I suppose this means I’ll win no matter what. Well done, me.

  I could easily imagine the expression on his face as he congratulated himself in writing, and the image lightened my mood instantly.

  You’ll notice I’m not there right now. It was difficult to leave you in such a vulnerable state, but I knew I had to do the right thing for once. I’m not wrong in wanting to protect you when you’re vulnerable; still, I knew you needed to think about things without me there to muddy the waters.

  But I’m not the wrong one right now.  You are.

  I laughed and said, “Of course I am.”

  I’ve been thinking about what you said to me yesterday, that you didn’t trust me to help you. I don’t think you were being honest about that. I’ll not betray you. No matter what you think, I never have. I’ve maybe been stupid in my decisions in the past, but you have the singular ability to reduce a great mind like my own to that of a Neanderthal. You know that.

  You also know you can trust me, so that’s not why you keep pushing me away. I know you think you’re attempting to protect me, but you forget sometimes how well I can take care of myself. How my choices are mine to make. How I can sometimes see things in a way you can’t. How you see things in a way I can’t. How well we see when we look together.

  What I’m trying to say is that I want to be with you. I don’t care about any of the rest of it. I just want to be at y
our side. I won’t stop you. I won’t get in your way. I just want, if you’ll allow me, to occupy that space next to you.

  And your allowance is the key, isn’t it? I can’t force myself into that space, can’t keep following you around like some kind of resentful mutt who’s been domesticated despite myself. I can’t do any of that and still be of any use to you. And you need me at my best just now.

  So it comes to this.  You take a think, and I’ll be waiting for you at the bandstand when you’ve decided. Don’t make me wait too long?

  He signed off the letter with a giant S. I traced the curve of it with my finger and then set the page back on the table.

  It was perfect, his letter. Arrogant and reckless and lovely and full of him. And it shattered me in a way I didn’t expect. I’d built this wall made up of all the excuses I’d given myself and him for why I should push him away, why I should separate myself from the one person I wanted with me. But Lock had managed to shatter my weeks and weeks of wall building in just eight paragraphs. He’d done it with hope.

  I wondered if he knew how much I needed his hope. I’d spent so much of these past weeks resigned to my fate—to my need to stop my father for good and the sacrifices I’d have to make to do it. I’d hoped the police would keep my father in jail. I’d hoped his police brothers would stop letting him use them as his weapons. I’d hoped my brothers could stay safe and that we’d somehow manage to wring a successful life out of the ruins of our family. But the idea that I wouldn’t eventually be alone? I hadn’t dared to hope for that.

  And as if that weren’t enough, he’d left the decision in my hands. He’d trusted me in a way I hadn’t expected he ever would. Eight paragraphs all culminating in his willingness to wait for my decision meant that he trusted me with something precious to him. He trusted me with our future, and then asked me to trust him as well.

  And for the first time, I could see it, our future. I could believe in a future of us together. No more thoughts of temporary. No more thoughts of false nobility. No more thoughts of anything but my Lock waiting for me in the park.

  I left the hotel a few minutes later, my bag slung across my body in the least painful way possible. Getting dressed, packing up, and checking out had all felt like separate eternities now that I had somewhere to be. I willed my body to be less broken so that I could get there faster.

  But something about being out on the streets and among the people of London made me start to second-guess everything. In that hotel room, all alone, Lock’s letter had seemed the starkest truth in the sea of my empty concerns over what could be. And with strangers all around me, laughing and arguing and rushing this way and that, the dim, clean comfort of the hotel room felt more like a total fantasy. My hope, an exercise in wishful thinking.

  Still, I forced myself on. Lock was waiting, and I could see it, our future—even if it was only a year from now, I could see it.

  It wasn’t until I reached the very center of York Bridge that I stopped walking. I wanted to move forward, but my thoughts buzzed with “what if” scenarios, the most prominent being, What if keeping him with you gets him killed?

  I closed my eyes in an attempt to bury the thought. Needless worry over something that wasn’t even a remote reality.  Within four minutes I could be walking into Sherlock’s embrace. I could have a partner, an ally. Maybe I could even protect him from being corrupted by me. Maybe if I held him close enough . . .

  I took another step to cross the bridge, but I was stopped again.

  What if loving you ruins him?

  Because I couldn’t afford to engage in wishful thinking. Lock saying he wouldn’t get in my way didn’t mean he could stand by and watch me end my father’s life. Or that he should have to. And that was what I’d be asking of him, if I met him at the bandstand.

  But he’d said that his choices were his to make, and I had to respect that if I wanted him to let me make my own choices as well. I couldn’t get angry at his incessant need to tell me what was for my own good, only to turn around and tell him the same. I wouldn’t do that to him. Not anymore.

  So I took a few more steps, and thought I’d make it all the way to the end of the bridge, only to be stopped again, this time by my father’s voice.

  What if he can’t love who you really are?

  That one hurt more than the others, because I believed it. Perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps, as I’d told Mycroft all those weeks ago, I’d be the one who was broken in the end. But that wouldn’t change my decision that day.

  Because I loved Sherlock Holmes. Was that a good enough reason to war with myself in the middle of a bridge?

  I stood there, on the edge of the bloody bridge, because he was mine. Sherlock was mine and I wanted him. I loved him, and maybe it was wrong, or twisted, but I couldn’t be swayed. Not again.

  I paced off   York Bridge toward Regent’s Park lake. I went to Sherlock because he was my hope, and I needed him. Because he was right. We always did see things better together. I knew my crimes would taint him the way they’d taint me. I knew he’d feel the pain of my destruction, but still I walked the path, past the rubbish bin where the wallet man used to search for recyclables, past the bench where the Lady Constance used to rest with her bags. I was almost to the bandstand. I could see the silhouette of my shadowed man, waiting there with nerves that made him stand stock-still.

  I smiled, but before I could move more than a step farther, I was stopped again, this time by hands that came out of nowhere, pinning my arms to my sides and stuffing something over my mouth and nose. As my world turned gray and then black, I could still see Sherlock just up ahead, but I couldn’t make a noise. Couldn’t move. And then I couldn’t see him anymore at all. Right before everything went black, I saw someone hurl my mobile down at the ground and heard feet stomp it to bits.

  Chapter 30

  The pain woke me up. My head felt like someone had beaten on it with a bat. Everything smelled weird. The minute I tried to move, my shoulder screamed at me to stop. I groaned aloud but made myself sit up, which made my hip join in on the pain party.

  “You’re awake.”

  I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t figure out where I was or what had happened.

  “Alice. I think my dad tried to attack me.”

  “It wasn’t your dad,” she said.

  I forced my eyes to open, despite the pain, and thought I was seeing things at first. I was sitting on a bed, but the floor was covered in straw. And I could see Alice sitting in an old leather recliner across the way, but there were silver bars between us. I tried to look around, but moving my head made me feel like I would vomit.

  “Just keep your eyes closed, Mori. You’ll recover faster if you keep them closed.”

  “Where am I? What is this?”

  “You’re safe,” she said. “You’re at the farm.”

  I sighed and squinted my eyes open again to gain some sense of where I was. The room I was in looked like it had been converted from a horse stall. And there was a door to my right that was open just enough for me to see a small bathroom beyond. But instead of a door to get out of the stall, there was an opening with silver bars.

  “You have a jail cell on your farm?”

  I closed my eyes again, but I couldn’t ignore the pain in my shoulder and brought a hand up to hold it.

  “I have someone on the way to treat those. Was that caused by that woman in the house?”

  I nodded. “What is this?”

  I heard rustling, and when I opened my eyes, Alice was standing at the bars holding a white card between them. “This should explain things.”

  “Not really in the mood for show-and-tell.” It took me a while, but I lay back down gingerly, shifting until my back stopped stinging. “Just tell me what I have to do to get out of here.”

  I heard the card flop onto the straw somewhere close to my cot. “You’ll want to see this. It’s your third sin.”

  That got my attention, but sitting up took me much long
er than it should have.

  “What drug did you give me?”

  Alice smiled. “Several. You had a long trip to take.”

  I grabbed the card and stared at the silver embossed THANK YOU on the front for a few seconds. “You sent the cards,” I said. “That’s why they didn’t have stamps.”

  “Clever girl. Just asking that question now, though? I almost ran them through the post just to make it perfect, but I needed them to come to you at set times. And who can trust the post office?”

  “But Mrs. Greeves . . . ,” I knew what had happened as soon as I’d said her name. “She sent the collage threat. It had a postmark.”

  Alice sneered a little and rolled her eyes. “She sent twelve of those stinky envelopes. I had to intercept them, which was a trial with all of you home from school.”

  My second sin smelled like the model glue because Alice had probably held them together, not because they were both from Greeves. I’d been stupid to think that meant something.

  My stomach rolled and I squeezed my eyes shut against the nausea. “Why?”

  Alice didn’t answer, and when I looked up, she was back in her recliner, staring at the rafters of the barn. She was clearly not ready to answer my questions, leaving me just the one avenue of information.

  I opened the card. This time the frame was a plain oval, and there was just a rough sketch of the head of the man that usually peeked in, but inside the frame was another frame—this one a window. In front of the window stood a woman who was clearly meant to be Mrs. Greeves. Just like she’d said, she stood outside our kitchen window and watched me hold a knife to my father’s neck.

  “That Greeves woman saw you.” Alice spoke up to the rafters.

  “I know.”

  “She heard from Constance Ross that you’d thrown the sword into the lake, then she saw you holding a knife to your father’s neck and decided that meant you were the guilty one.”

  “I said I know. She told me herself. She’s probably telling the police right now.”

  Alice stood and walked to the bars again. “She’s not. You can thank me for that.”