“Do go away,” I said.
“Yes, do,” Lock said from the hallway.
Mycroft scowled a bit but covered his irritation with a flourish of his arm, directing his brother into the room. “I was just going to offer to come and get you, dearest of all my brothers.”
Lock sighed wearily and brought me a mug of tea. I thought for sure Mycroft would say his one last thing, but when I looked back toward him, the door was shut and he was gone. Lock sat on the corner of his bed, staring at me. I’d had just about enough scrutiny for one night. I sipped my tea and then set it aside.
“How’s your mother?” I asked, but he wouldn’t be so easily distracted.
“Where did you go?”
“Is she feeling better at all?”
Sherlock pursed his lips and crossed his arms. I turned to stare back out the window.
“Where is she?” I felt a pressure in my chest even referring to Sadie, and I had to clench my teeth to force it to pass. “What did you do about her?”
“I called the police anonymously and stood guard at the bandstand until they came for her, then acted the perfect shocked bystander when they asked what I’d seen.”
I made some kind of noise not even I could recognize, but when Sherlock stood and took a step toward me, I curled further into myself and strained to keep my eyes on what little I could see of my house from his window. “What ridiculous theories did they come up with this time?”
“Not a one. They were at their very best.”
“Really?”
Sherlock nodded. “Yes, in that they didn’t even open their mouths.”
He moved closer, and I thought he might sit across from me on the window seat, but instead he grabbed his violin and started to play. I didn’t know the song. The melody was simple and repetitive, but haunting. Like a lullaby, maybe, if it weren’t played so plaintively. Something that might, on any other night, have soothed us both. But that night, the pleading of his violin became the sound track of my plan. From the first note, it seemed, I knew exactly what I would do to take my father’s life. I even knew how I would get away with it. It was perfect. Seamless.
We sat silently after the final note of the song was played, Lock, with his violin still resting beneath his chin, and I, still leaning against the window, trying to see my house from his.
“You’re not going back,” he said, as if he’d suddenly decided and I was to abide his will.
I caught myself before I grunted out more than half a laugh. “I have to stop him.”
“We call the police.”
I shook my head.
He said, “They will believe us now. If nothing else, the boys are our evidence.”
“They are my brothers, not the boys, and certainly not your evidence.” I stared down at my fists and watched my knuckles turn white. “We’ll not parade their humiliations in front of uncaring strangers while you try to make your case. You don’t know the police like I do. They’ve seen it all before, on those boys. They’ve looked into their eyes, seen the marks on their faces and bruises on their bodies. And they walked away and left us with that . . .”
Lock started to reach for me, but his hand still held the bow.
“They won’t help. It’s left to me.”
He walked over and placed his bow across a small music stand in the corner. “And if you can’t?”
“I can. Just trust me. I’ll stop him, and this will all be over.”
If only he’d left it there, I might have spoken only the truth that night. But my Sherlock was a lifter of stones. He couldn’t resist peering beneath them, and so he asked, “How?”
“Money.” It was a lie, but it was a beautiful lie. Even I, as resolved as I’d become to take the bastard’s life, believed it could work. “It’s all he cares about. And it turns out I’ve got loads. But he won’t see a cent of it if he kills one more person. I’ll send him away with money and Alice will come—”
“—to care for you and the boys,” he said, stepping from the corner until he was right in front of me.
“Yes. She’ll come to care for us after he’s gone—”
“—and we’ll all be here, together.” Sherlock was perfectly still, except for the fingers of his left hand, which seemed to tick with the forms of chords against the strings of his violin. He was thinking. He was following the contingencies, making sure my solution had a chance at working. But his expression made him seem less than assured.
“It’s the only way.” I pushed as much sincerity into the words as I could, but I didn’t meet his eyes, because I knew there was another way—the one way to forever remove the stain of my father’s existence from our lives, from the world.
I stood, forcing myself away from the window, and suddenly Lock’s room felt too small. We were too close. And every time I looked up at him, he would stare into my eyes, searching for something I could never let him find, forcing me to turn away. I needed to distract him.
“What did you play just now?” I walked to his bed, kicked off my shoes, and shrugged my jacket off my shoulders to pool in my hands.
He set down his violin and followed me, his fingers drifting up the bared skin of my arms to trace the straps of my top. “Offenbach.”
“Is it a lullaby?”
He kissed my shoulder and turned me toward him. I couldn’t stand his eyes just then, so I focused on his lips. “It’s a barcarolle, a boat song, like the gondoliers sing in Venice.”
“I’ve never been to Venice.” Sadie always did want to go to Italy. I closed my eyes tight against the thought, leaned into Lock’s arms.
He pressed his lips to my forehead, and I held my breath as his lips brushed down my temple to press against the skin of my cheek. He whispered, “Me neither,” into my ear, then kissed his way up my jawline so that his lips found mine open and waiting. I needed this, needed him, but he wasn’t close enough, not even when I pulled him down on top of me. His kisses were too gentle, his hands too reverent.
I wrapped myself around him, kissing every part of him that I could reach and pulling at his clothes and hair until we were tangled in his bedding, breathing hard, clinging to each other, almost like he was as desperate to keep me there as I was to stay. And it hurt, the wanting, because I knew I had to leave, and I knew he might not want me back after.
Maybe it was that thought that set off the others, but it was as though someone had overturned a basin in my mind and all I could see was Sadie in every memory I had of her, all spliced together with the way I’d seen her last, slumped in the dirt. Dead, because she knew me. I clenched my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut, but I’d already let it go too far. It was true, though. She was only doing what I’d asked. The more I tried to stop the path of my thoughts, the more out of control I felt, until I fisted Lock’s T-shirt and buried my face in his chest and fell apart in a way I couldn’t have done before then.
Lock didn’t speak, he just held me as I shook and gasped and whispered that I’d sent her to her death, how stupid I’d been to bring her into that house, how she’d died for being my friend. He kissed my forehead and temples as I confessed and, when I calmed some, pulled his shirt off to dry my face. And, just when I felt the sadness shift to anger, just before I could promise aloud that my father would pay for taking her from me, Lock’s fingertips brushed against my lips, hushing the words back within.
His expression was almost relieved, but he was looking at me in this new way—perhaps like I was new, like he didn’t recognize me for just a moment. But then he kissed me and I kissed him, and I could almost believe that everything was back to normal. Only, I couldn’t seem to lose myself to the moment. There was too much to hold inside. Too much I couldn’t let him see.
Lock was different too. He moved slowly, lingered in his touches and kisses, stopped to stare at me, like he was trying to take in every detail. I couldn’t stand the wa
y he stared. There was too much in his eyes. I turned in his arms, pulling them around me so that he surrounded me like a blanket, and I could feel his warm breath filtering through my hair to my neck.
“Don’t leave,” he whispered when his breathing started to get deeper, more regular.
His words tore at me, so that I had to compose myself to answer him.
“Just this once more,” I said. And then I repeated my ridiculous promise, because I knew he needed me to. “I’ll always come back.”
His arms tightened around me as he drifted off, only to droop when he was finally asleep.
Not long after that, I stood by the bed and watched him with only the dim light from the street lamps to illuminate the room. He slept peacefully, even after all that had happened that day. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed beside him and sleep myself. But sleep would have to wait. Just a little while longer.
Chapter 21
I sat in the dark for almost an hour before my father got home, running the plan through my mind over and over until I could perfectly trace the path of it, account for every contingency, answer for every variation. I sat at the kitchen table, as though I were waiting for him to start eating dinner. Maybe I was. I had two glasses and a half-drunk bottle of whiskey set out in front of me—his dinner of choice—and when I heard the stumbling stomp of his shoes on the front steps, I poured myself a glass and watched the swirling liquid settle into a glassy smooth pond of amber.
My father flicked on the kitchen light and stopped when he saw me. He gave me a hard look through narrowed eyes. I wanted to lift the glass and take a sip, but I hadn’t been prepared for how my body would react to seeing him. I felt practically every muscle contract, my hands in fists, my jaw set. The faces of his victims played through my mind like a mantra, pausing on Sadie’s lifeless face every time, just long enough for me to grip the seat of the chair I sat in and keep from launching myself at him.
“Boys upstairs?” He didn’t slur as much as I thought he would after a night at the pub.
“No.” I forced myself to take a drink and was surprised at how sweet the liquid tasted, despite the burn of it.
“What are you playing at? Put that away.”
I met his eyes over the rim of the glass and took another deliberate sip. Some kind of expression flashed across his features, but I didn’t catch it before they settled into his familiar scowl.
He purposely slowed his words. “Where are your brothers?”
I grinned and stared into his eyes, unflinching. “I’m here to buy them from you.”
He took three strides and was only a step away from me when he slammed his fist down on the table. The empty glass clinked against the bottle, and with a slightly shaky hand I managed to slosh some whiskey into the tumbler for him.
“Drink?” I asked, and even in that one word, I could hear my control slipping. I didn’t want him to be this close to me.
He spit words at me through clenched teeth. “You will bring them home now!”
“Or?” I took another sip, but this one tasted bitter. “Will you call the police? Beat their location out of me?” I pushed his tumbler toward him and sat back in my chair, tried to calm the snarl in my voice. “Will you kill me? Like you did the others?”
Did his eyes go wide? Or was that just what I expected to see? I studied his face as his expression barely flickered from possible surprise to definite scorn.
“You know nothing.” He turned his back on me, and it was all I could do not to draw the knife I’d been sitting on and sink it into his back. I could picture me doing it, every step, even the feel of the blade sliding through his flesh, and the relief of knowing he was erased from the planet.
But that wouldn’t do. That wasn’t the plan. I had to stick to the plan. I cleared my throat and dug my fingernails into the wooden tabletop.
“I know everything. But more importantly, I know that you are done.”
“Done?” He laughed and turned slowly back to me. My right hand fell to grip the hilt of the knife. “Who’s gonna stop me? Some pathetic little girl playing tough?”
“So, you admit that you have been killing people.”
His eyes narrowed again, and he started looking around us. “You playing spy, little girl?” With a speed I didn’t know he had, my father’s sweaty face was mere inches from mine. I’d barely had time to move my arm up between us. “You recording this conversation?”
I shook my head and smiled as I scraped the edge of the knife up the stubble of his neck. His eyes were definitely wider then, and his surprise turned to fear when he straightened and I matched his movements exactly, keeping the knife to his neck. When his back was to the wall, I let the edge of the blade slide into his neck just slightly, barely a cut and still blood filled the slice. He flinched and his head banged against the wallpaper. It was like a shot of adrenaline through me; I suddenly had a hard time standing still, and my breathing quickened.
“I thought about recording this, but then I’d have to play a part.” I slid my knife around to rest against his pulse point. “And I’m done playing parts around a piece of rubbish like you.” Again I sliced just deep enough to break his skin and he hissed. “Besides, I don’t need your murderous confession for this to end my way. I just need you gone.”
Dad thrust his chin forward and glared down at me. “Gone where?”
I pushed out a laugh, but it didn’t sound like me. The sound was cold, bitter. “I suppose I could pay you to run, but I’m not sure you deserve that.” I leaned into him, pressing the flat of the blade against his skin so his tiny slices dripped blood down his neck. The sight of his blood flowing was another shot—this one burned through me, releasing all my rage. I clenched my teeth. “I am so done giving you chances.”
I forced myself to step back from him, to stab the knife into the table as hard as I could, to focus on the plan and not on the way it would feel to slice deeper, to watch his life drain from his face, to let my fingers run through the warm blood as it pulsed from his neck. It might have been the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life to step back, especially knowing what came next.
The back of his hand crashed into the side of my face, jerking my whole body to the side. “YOU STUPID BITCH!” he roared, backhanding me again just as soon as I’d righted myself. I felt blood fill my mouth, and when he grabbed my hair and forced my face up close to his, I spit it at him.
He stumbled back to wipe it from his eyes but never let go of my hair. “You’ll pay for that,” he growled into my ear, before throwing me down to the ground. It was almost too easy. He was so completely predictable. I scrambled to my hands and knees and back-kicked at his knee as hard as I could, which sent him to the floor and allowed me to run into the hall.
I pulled all the coats down from the rack by the door and flipped open the bolt and latch. By the time he made it out after me, I was scratching my nails down through the paint of the door, making sure there were chips under my nails. He might have put together what I was doing if he weren’t drunk and blind with his rage. Instead, he slapped me away from the door and threw me on the stairs. I spit again, this time toward the carpet.
He was limping as he came toward me, giving me just enough time to brace myself against the step. When he was in range, I kicked out as hard as I could for his same knee, then scrambled to get into his room. Before I made it past, he grabbed my foot and I went down barely an inch short of banging my head against the corner of his bedroom doorway. I kicked at his hand with my other foot until I got free and managed to crawl into his room and shut the door before he could reach me.
I clicked the lock shut and then stood, taking a few seconds to catch my breath and wipe the blood from my mouth. I looked down and smiled at the rip in the knee of my jeans. I pulled at the seam of my shirt as well, until the thread gave and it ripped up the side.
He was already banging
his shoulder against the bedroom door when I got the knife I’d hidden under his bed. Two more slams and the weak wood of the door gave way. He smiled when he stormed through it. Smiled. Arrogant prick. He was so sure of his victory, he never saw me in the shadows of the doorway, holding a knife to his throat before he made it another step inside.
There was no fear from him this time, only rage. He actually bared his teeth at me as I walked him back against the wall, both of us trying to catch our breath.
“You played your part perfectly,” I hissed at him.
He only grunted, but I pressed the point of the knife into the hollow of his throat, freeing his words. “Now what?”
“Now?” I forced out another bitter laugh. “You haven’t figured it out yet? Now you pay for what you’ve done.”
“Killing those slime? I did the city a service getting rid of that crew. You don’t know—”
“I know everything!” I sank just the tip into his skin and barely stopped myself from pressing it home. But he would know what he’d done. “I know all about the robberies and about the money.”
His eyes were wide again, whether from the blood pulsing from his wound or from what I’d said, I couldn’t tell.
“You don’t get to pretend you’re some vigilante copper, ridding the world of some great criminal ring, especially when your wife was the mastermind!”
“There’s things you don’t know.” His voice pitched higher with his panic, which sent a buzz of adrenaline through my entire body. “Like the money—you know what that money could’ve done for your mom when she was sick? I begged for the money, so we could try that new treatment, but she wouldn’t tell me.”
“She knew you couldn’t be trusted,” I said through my teeth. “And she didn’t want that treatment.”
“That’s a lie! She’d just given up, is all. And I knew, if we just had the one more chance, she could make it. So when she started talking high about the money and the crimes and making with her names, I tracked one of them down, but he wouldn’t help! He had her cure in his hands and he wouldn’t help!” He snarled out his next words. “And I told him if she died, so would he.”
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