by Eva Chase
Marten blustered something about taking care of things internally, and the CFO slunk over to see what was going on, but I let the officers usher me off to the side where neither of the company’s employees had to be part of the conversation. With much dramatics, I explained the supposedly missing money. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all sorts of people,” I finished off with. “Ripping off their stockholders left and right. It needs a full investigation.”
As the woman reassured me that someone would look into it, the man with her got a call. He turned away from us to answer it and swiveled back a few moments later with a bemused expression.
“You’ll never believe it,” he murmured to the woman. “There’s been another incident about this just now.”
“Stay here in case we have any more questions, please,” the woman said to me, and went off with the man to get the details. I exchanged a triumphant glance with Sherlock. At the same moment, my own phone buzzed.
It was a text from John. All went well. Your man put on quite the show. Everyone’s talking now. Couldn’t have asked for a better blow-up.
A smile curled my lips as I sent him a thumbs up in response to indicate our own part of the plan had gone off successfully despite its momentary hitch. A sense of satisfaction settled over me, tinged with not a little relief.
One major obstacle removed; one potentially horrific threat demobilized for long enough that we should be able to clear out his supernatural support and end whatever the shrouded folk had intended to accomplish here. We’d won the battle—now it was time to win the war.
Chapter Seventeen
Sherlock
I jerked awake with a wrenching sensation around my limbs. In the dark room, I yanked against my apparent bindings instinctively. It took my exhausted brain a few seconds to register that I wasn’t tied up by anything other than my twisted sheet.
I sank back into the mattress. The air conditioner whirred, turning my skin clammy with the sweat that had broken out over it in my sleep. In my sleep, and in the middle of whatever dark, ominous dream had sent me jolting out of slumber in a panic for the fifth time since I’d taken to bed last night.
The contents of those dreams eluded me. I had no idea what in them had been so terrifying. All I was left with when I woke up was the racing of my heart and the cold sweat on my skin—and the distinct impression that something essential was slipping from my grasp far too quickly.
It wasn’t a sensation I enjoyed. I breathed slowly and deeply, taking my mind through the paces of a few simple meditation exercises, but my nervous system remained on high alert.
I should have had better control over myself. I normally did.
No doubt it didn’t help matters that my sleep had been so broken. I might have gotten four hours of truly restful sleep, if that much, across the past nine of trying. Each time I’d woken up in this state it’d taken me a long time to settle myself enough to drift off again.
I stared up at my plaster ceiling, tracing the familiar paths with my gaze. My eyelids felt heavy and my head muggy, but my heart thumped on and my thoughts were whirling. Morning sunlight was seeping insistently past my curtain. I wasn’t sure there was any point in trying to add to my rest for the day. If I wasn’t up soon, John would become concerned, and that would only add another layer to my difficulties.
I’d functioned on less sleep before. I could manage one day like this.
And I wouldn’t think about the possible causes of my nighttime disturbances. It wasn’t as if I could tackle them directly as it was.
There were other things I could tackle if I got out of this bed. I shoved back the covers and methodically changed into suitable clothes for the day. Then I reached for my phone and texted Garrett.
Any additional word on the proceedings regarding Tillhouse?
I set the phone down, not expecting an immediate answer, but it rang a second later with an incoming call. Apparently Garrett had gotten into the office early—or he was monitoring proceedings from afar.
“You’re not going to like this,” he said grimly when I picked up. “The bastards are releasing him. He’s convinced them that it’s impossible he ‘engaged in any wrongdoing’.”
My stomach plummeted. No. It didn’t make sense. It shouldn’t have been possible. We’d set up everything within the accounts to make an airtight case.
“How could he possibly have done that?” I demanded.
Garrett let out a huff of breath that expressed nearly as much frustration as was coursing through me. “I haven’t got a bloody clue. I can’t get a straight answer—no one’s keen to talk about it. But after everything we’ve seen… I wouldn’t be surprised if Jemma’s shrouded folk had a hand in it.”
That possibility brought a sour taste into my mouth. Yes, why wouldn’t Jemma’s creatures be involved in influencing events around this case if the man was tied up in their schemes? He had to be awfully important for them to have taken a gamble on someone outside their cult.
But if that were the case… was he simply untouchable?
“There has to be a way we can make something stick,” I said, the words coming out more vehemently than they might have if I’d been properly alert.
“Maybe Jemma will have some ideas. I’ll keep prodding the detectives involved about how exactly he turned the tables. Or possibly we’ll be able to circumvent him completely, if he’s going to be this much of a pain in the arse.”
We both knew we couldn’t simply ignore Tillhouse, though. He represented the largest violation these monsters had made within our world—their most blatant grab for power. Damn it.
“I just got off the phone with someone at the station,” Garrett said. “I was going to check in with Jemma, and we’ll go from there. I expect you’ll hear from me again before much longer.”
“Yes, keep me apprised of the situation.”
I tossed the phone onto my bed, walked toward the bedroom door, halted, and walked back again. Where the hell was I going? Where the hell could I go? For fuck’s sake, the blasted shrouded folk could be in this room right now and I’d never know it. They left no traces, no clues I could easily decipher.
I came to a stop by the dresser with one of Jemma’s mathematical sequences laid out across it. She’d brought decorative stones to give her patterns a more appealing look, as if I cared much about whether the things were easy on the eyes as long as they worked.
They didn’t, clearly, if the creatures were sabotaging my very sleep.
The clink of dishes sounded from the other side of the door. John was moving about the common room now, making his breakfast no doubt. I couldn’t summon a spot of hunger myself. And as I listened, he started humming—a slightly off-key but buoyant tune that would have made me smile fondly most other days. Today, my gut clenched in resistance.
I wasn’t going to be good company for him in my current state of mind. His optimism would only irritate me, and I wasn’t certain I had the capacity to completely hold my temper. Better I kept to myself as I normally did when I had a problem to work through.
A thought passed through my head as clear as my own voice. So you finally met a case you can’t crack, Sherlock.
“I’ll crack it,” I said under my breath. “I just need more time.”
How much time have you had already? They’ve gotten the better of you—there’s no other way of looking at it.
It wasn’t unusual for me to talk to myself while I was working my way out of a problem, but my sparring partner in those internal conversations wasn’t normally so hostile. My frustrations had obviously seeped all through my consciousness.
“I’m not beaten.”
Oh, no? You look an awful lot like you are. What exactly are you accomplishing right now?
My teeth gritted. “There has to be something I’ve missed. I will find it. Every crime leaves a trail behind—supernatural ones can’t be any different.” I refused to allow them to be.
I jerked open my work drawer on my dresser and g
rabbed the various printouts, clippings, and reports I’d gathered over the course of the case. The folders felt far too light in my hands. I fished out paper after paper and laid them all out across the bed, pausing just for a moment to jerk straight the covers.
There were enough pieces that they had to overlap. I squinted at them, rearranging them into clearer patterns, scowling at them when nothing new immediately emerged.
Patience. I could have patience. One at a time, read them over, study every picture. There would be a clue in there. I only had to piece it together.
Reading took longer than usual. My fatigued mind tripped over the words here and there. I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus more intently.
When my phone chimed with an incoming text, I ignored it. Whoever wanted me, they could wait. Nothing was more important than this.
By the time I’d made it through the spread of papers at one corner of the bed, an ache was building behind my eyes.
John rapped his knuckles on my door. “Sherlock? Are you up?”
“I am. Just going over some notes.”
He paused. “Garrett said he told you the news. I can’t believe they’re ready to let Tillhouse off without even a full investigation.”
“It is a rather ridiculous turn of events,” I agreed. His voice made my headache pulse harder.
“I don’t know if you saw—we’re going to meet up to discuss next steps. I could tell everyone to head over here—”
“No,” I said, quickly and emphatically. “I’m going to bow this one out, and I can’t have any disruptions. I’m—I’m close to the answer. I can feel it. Arrange your meeting elsewhere and make whatever plans you can. I won’t have anything constructive to contribute until I work my way through this.”
John didn’t disguise the concern in his voice. “Are you sure? Your insight is always going to be valuable—”
“I’d like that period without disruptions to start now.”
“Ah. All right then. I’ll leave you to it. If you need any of us, you know how to reach us.”
I’d expected to feel relief at his leaving. I stood stock still until I heard the thump of the outer door shutting and the click of his key turning the lock. Then I turned back to my spread of papers—the mess of papers, really, because it couldn’t be called anything like orderly at this point—and a wave of utter hopelessness rolled over me. It pressed down on me like a boulder, heavier than I’d ever felt this sort of uncertainty before.
It wasn’t the same sort of uncertainty at all, was it? Before I’d only been dealing with the habits of human beings, predictable as long as you could ferret out all the facts. Now I was dealing with the completely unknowable.
I’d pulled back the curtain to let in the sunlight, but in that moment the whole room wavered darker. The gloom had descended on me so thickly it was shadowing my vision. I was drowning in it, in dark water closing over my head. My lungs constricted as I dragged air into them.
Who was I, if I didn’t have a mind sharp enough to penetrate this problem? What use was I at all—what point was there to all the studies I’d done and the exercises with which I’d honed my senses, if I couldn’t stand up to the first truly expansive threat I’d ever faced?
For an instant, my throat closed up completely. Doubt suffocated me. A chill of fear prickled after it, penetrating right down to my center.
I wasn’t going to think through anything when the depression settled over me this heavily. That was what the creatures would want, wasn’t it—to see me incapacitated by my frustration? But I had tools they couldn’t have anticipated. I could shock myself out of this state.
I had to.
John was long gone, but I still glanced around the common room when I came out, noting the absence of his walking stick, which he normally left by the umbrella stand next to the door, and his favorite hat gone as well. Wherever they’d ended up arranging their meeting, he shouldn’t be back for some time. I could jumpstart my mental faculties in a matter of minutes and get down to work as I was meant to be doing.
I took a freshly washed glass from the dishwasher and brought it back to my room. Then I retrieved the locked box from my closet, along with a jug of distilled water. With careful precision, I poured some of the water into the glass and took the baggie of white powder and a measuring spoon from the box.
One of these spoonfuls was the dosage I’d decided on. I’d already taken it twice in the last week, and it’d only partly and briefly stirred me out of my dark state. I glanced at the scattered papers on the bed, and resolve gripped me.
I’d set that limit in consideration of the way I’d abused the substance in the past. It had been decided out of extreme caution, nowhere near any level that should be considered dangerous. What was bloody well dangerous was letting those monsters and the man they were backing roam free while I wandered in this hapless daze.
I dropped one spoonful into the glass and dug the instrument into the powder again. If there was going to be any point in taking this route, I needed to set caution aside and go all in.
Anything it took to break me free of this rut and win the day after all would be worth it.
Chapter Eighteen
Jemma
Bash set a hand on my arm, and I looked up from my laptop’s screen. Beyond the windshield of the car we were staked out in, an elderly woman was picking her way rather nimbly across her front yard between the rock garden and the ash tree. She didn’t glance our way. Really, there was no reason for her to be suspicious of an old station wagon parked one house down on the other side of the street. I went back to my work.
“Do you think she knows?” Bash asked.
The woman was Tillhouse’s mother. His parents had been living in this house since shortly after they’d all changed their names and gotten the heck out of dodge some forty years ago.
“About the details?” I said. “Hard to say. But even if they don’t, there could still be something telling in here.”
With advice from one of my particularly computer savvy contacts, I’d hacked into the house’s home network and from there gotten access to the email accounts of the senior Tillhouses. Thank the Lord they were technologically inclined, or we’d have had to resort to digging through their literal trash.
Instead, I’d skimmed back through several years of saved emails and was now checking the spam folders.
Bash’s phone dinged with a text. He glanced at it. “John says they’ve finished their visit to the local police station.”
“Tell them to go back to that diner where we got lunch, and we’ll meet them there in a half hour or so. I’m almost finished here.” So far I hadn’t turned up anything that looked all that useful, although I’d copied all the emails between the MP and his parents over to my hard drive for further perusing later.
There had to be something somewhere that could knock Tillhouse down—or at least remove him from the picture for long enough that we could make a real move on the commune that must be most directly supporting him. Our further investigations over the last couple weeks hadn’t turned up any clearer patterns of activity in the country other than the ones we’d already identified. We’d taken down one sect, and another had fled. That only left our enemies in the Highlands to deal with.
Too bad there were a hell of a lot of Highlands, and apparently not all that many people in Scotland who were willing to lend us a hand.
Children laughed where they were playing somewhere down the street. I sank deeper into my seat, propping the laptop’s screen against the wheel. Amazing how many junk mail messages you could manage to get in a month. None of them had anything constructive to offer, though.
My last place to consider was the digital trash. In there, I found more spam that hadn’t been properly filtered and not a whole lot else. Tillhouse’s parents didn’t get a whole lot of expected electronic communications. I’d sucked my lower lip under my teeth, my gaze slipping down over the list of subject lines, when I stopped with a jolt of excitement.
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A perfect deal for another fantastic Scottish vacation!
Bash shifted in his seat as I clicked the email open, alert to my change in mood. “Did you find something?”
“Maybe.” I scanned the email’s contents, and a small smile curled my lips. “Yes. It’s not definitive, but—apparently the parents had a little Scottish vacation sometime last year. A country resort ‘nestled in the Highlands.’ It could be totally unrelated, but from what I’ve seen, their son pays for any luxuries they have. If he was buying them a vacation, he’d probably pick an area he’s familiar with. They might even have their own part to play with the commune.”
“Does it fit with the patterns of behavior the Londoners found before?”
I switched to the map and checked the resort’s location. “It’s within the broad area we were looking at. That could narrow things down quite a bit. At the very least, we can make a more focused effort around those parts now.”
I flicked through the rest of the trash folder just in case, not really expecting another prize. Then I closed the laptop, tossed it in the back, and started the engine. “Let’s see what our detectives scrounged up.”
John’s car was already parked in the lot of the diner where we’d eaten. A trace of berry sweetness from the tart I’d finished my lunch off with still lingered in my mouth. Maybe I’d grab another of those while we talked.
This road trip had been a rather impromptu one. We’d been discussing Tillhouse’s release in frustration, and Garrett had made a comment about delving into the guy’s history directly, and somehow we’d all ended up deciding to come up here and check out the area where he’d spent his later formative years.
Well, all of us except for Sherlock, who was apparently absorbed in some brainstorm he hadn’t bothered to give even John any details about. I’d been tempted to nudge the consulting detective with a text and find out where his thoughts were headed, but John had forbidden any contact.
