“It’s not about Alice or the money. It’s my legacy.”
I shook my head. “You don’t have the people to pull it off, and you can’t trust anyone connected to her. Promise me you won’t.”
Lily looked away from me and started fiddling with the strap on her handbag. “You have somewhere to be?”
I gave her a few more seconds of my attention and then disappeared down the stairs. I couldn’t take on her troubles. I had plenty of my own, and only a short time to pilfer the things that I needed.
Pretty much every part of the theater basement that wasn’t Lock’s lab was storage for the school’s ancient relics. A good half of those were boxes of costumes and other sundry accessories from past theater productions. It took nearly the entire hour to sift through the mothball-scented polyester and chiffon. Still, I managed to find a couple of wigs and a long black coat that would disguise the shape of my body as well as most of my clothing. That, together with the newer box of stage makeup I found near the door, gave me all the tools I’d need to get ready for that night.
I paused briefly in the basement hallway to stare at the closed doors of Lock’s lab. And for just that one moment, I felt a tug somewhere inside of me to step closer. Even when I turned my back, even when I walked resolutely for the stairs, I felt so drawn to the far end of the hall, I couldn’t seem to force myself up one step. And when I turned back, I was flooded with memory—of Lock’s eyes, bright with discovery as his experiment surprised him. The rosy pink of his cheeks when he caught me staring. The sound of his chair wheeling toward me across the carpet. The scent of him surrounding me as his thumb traced my cheek and his lips touched to mine.
I found a smile on my own lips, but when I closed my eyes against the ache of that, I could only see the brokenness of Lock’s expression standing in a derelict nursery school, the blood spatter on his hands. Even now, I could picture him sitting in the dark among all his experiments and equipment and books, but I couldn’t guess what he’d be thinking. Was he forming a plan to catch me and turn me in to the police for what I’d done? Was he afraid of me? Was he trying to figure out why I’d made him a witness to my crime?
Did I know why myself?
I walked up the first five steps to escape that question, and then ran the rest of the way until I was out the side door and away from that basement for good. I didn’t have time for nostalgia or regrets. I had to focus on right now—on whoever was trying to blackmail me and how I could end this mess to reunite with my brothers. That was all I could afford to think about. Everything else was for later.
I was perhaps being too cautious, but every time I mentally ran through my plan to find out who had sent me that note, my mind would spin out a dozen contingencies, which made me exceedingly uncomfortable. But it would work. It had to work. And I needed only one more piece to bring it all together.
So I sent another text, this time to the most brilliant hacker I knew.
• • •
I returned to the hotel with two hours to spare and a smile on my face. Jason Kim was as charming as ever, and his growing romance with Kay, the girl who’d almost gotten him kicked out of school over a mobile phone, made him an exceptionally worthwhile resource.
“It’s on me,” he’d said when I’d tried to offer him money for his services.
“Let me at least pay you for the phones.”
“Nope. I couldn’t pay you back if I tried. The very least I can do is give you a couple of old phones.”
“Equipped with your clever tracker.”
He grinned. “So, who’s the target this time? Another nefarious police matter?”
“That’s top secret, I’m afraid. And it’s nothing so exciting as last time. I promise.”
Jason paused. “And you’re doing it all on your own?”
I did my best to keep my expression neutral. “Yes, well, some things are best handled alone, don’t you think?”
He considered that, but it evidently didn’t change his mind. “He missed you.”
“I doubt that.” I looked out the window. I didn’t doubt. I knew. But Sherlock wouldn’t want anything to do with me ever again. My father would prove to be right after all.
“I was helping him, you know. To find you while you were gone.”
“I know he searched. But things have changed. Neither of us are the people we were before.”
Jason crossed his arms and shook his bangs out of his eyes. “He still is. He called me just last night to see if I could locate your new phone.”
“Don’t tell him,” I blurted.
Jason’s brows came together.
“I can’t let him be a part of this. I’m protecting him. You understand that.”
He nodded, though I was sure he’d relent to Lock’s requests eventually. Jason Kim was the prince of romantic gestures, after all. And being in love makes people think everyone else should be as well. It also turns most people into idiots.
“This is how you can repay me,” I said before I left. “By not telling Lock that you’ve seen me. Promise me that and we’ll be even.”
“We’ll never be even,” he said with a smile that showed off his perfect teeth. “But you have my word.”
I wanted to believe he’d keep it. At least for the night. The very last thing I needed was for Sherlock to show up and ruin everything. Or maybe he wouldn’t recognize me either, I thought, as I gathered my costume pieces and supplies on my hotel bed.
I started with the ginger wig. It was cheap, which meant it had all the realism of a clown wig, despite the relatively natural color of the hair. I took an hour or so to update the cut, using an old brown mascara to darken the roots at the part and some dry shampoo to dull the plastic shine of the hair. I put my own hair up in a loose bun that would allow me to tuck it under the wig, and could be easily taken down once I removed it.
Next was clothing. Nothing recognizable, no logos or brand names. I wore a black T-shirt and my plainest jeans, then white trainers—the kind that could be purchased almost anywhere. No jewelry that might fall off, no perfume that someone might remember later, and then the large trench coat. I wore dark brown gloves, heavy makeup, and fake glasses with thick enough frames to help obscure the actual shape of my eyes.
I didn’t put the wig or glasses on until I was off my bus in Harrow. I waited until I was mostly alone on the street, then ducked down a side alley to finish my disguise. I turned on the tiny burner phone Jason had provided and pocketed it to make it easily accessible. And when everything was as ready as it could be, I made my way back to the one place I thought I’d never show my face again.
I saw the glow of the work lights illuminating the site before I crested the hill. I’d been right about the number of civil servants surrounding the place. What I hadn’t counted on was the level of chaos at the scene. Unlike all the crime scenes I’d seen in London, this one wasn’t taped off nicely, nor was there a decent perimeter of officers to stop the public from wandering too close. I was trying to decide if this would work in my favor or not when I spotted my blackmailer.
He made it too easy, really. We were a good forty-five minutes and at least three boroughs from West End Central Police Station, which meant I shouldn’t have recognized any of the police on the scene. But the officer who was trying to push the crowd back from between two fire trucks wore an unmistakable sneer—Officer Parsons, the man who had stalked and terrorized Michael and caused his accident.
My body shifted very naturally into my fighter’s stance, and I felt my hands ball into fists just at the sight of him. It took almost a full minute of focus to keep from launching straight at him to make him pay.
But I had to wait. I had to be smart about it. Take my time.
And when it was time? I would see him beg for mercy.
I stepped forward to test myself, stopping when I felt my jaw clench. Then I moved closer still, to acclimate to the sound of his pathetic voice. I had to control everything about myself, from my shaking fists balled at
my side to the twitch in my lip that was threatening to curl and reveal my rage. I had to be neutral to approach him, and I had to do it quickly and get out of there.
When Parsons was done lecturing a kid Freddie’s age about how he should be home in bed, I moved in. I slid my burner phone into the pocket of his coat while he looked at the site. When he turned back toward me, I held a card between us, my properly drawn M on the side facing him. Which meant the message side was facing me.
The payment you requested is waiting for you on your front porch.
He snatched the card from me, and I took the time he spent reading the back to escape into the crowd. I managed to find a place to hide just in time to watch him step out from behind a sloppily hung piece of crime scene tape to search for me. And when he couldn’t find me, he checked his watch and then grinned. As I walked to the street to catch a black cab, I checked my phone to make sure his little blue dot moved slowly away from the nursery school. He was heading home, and I would see him there.
Chapter 15
Officer Parsons lived in a terraced house in Hertfordshire. I thought I was angry when I saw his sneering face at the burnt-out nursery school, but something about his tall, expertly manicured hedge and the row of lovely flowering bulbs near his front door made me clench my jaw as I crossed the street. I didn’t see him until I was almost to his front walk. He was waiting for me, looking like he’d already won. It was the expression my father wore when I’d gone to visit him in jail, the same he’d had when he sauntered into the nursery school to take his punishment.
And it stopped me on the threshold of Parsons’s front garden.
“Who’s this, then?” he asked.
I pulled off my wig and glasses and slid the trench coat from my shoulders.
“You?” The word was formed as a question, but felt more like an accusation. “I don’t remember requesting you.”
I dropped the wig and trench coat just inside the hedge, and then I paused. It wasn’t that I couldn’t move forward, it was that I knew when I did, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself again, and something about the recklessness I felt made me wait.
“All right, then. Where’s this payment of mine? Give it over.”
His lips stretched in a wide, confident grin, and I wondered, was that how he’d smiled at Michael when he’d followed the boys home from school? I could see it in my head, Parsons donning this expression just as he stopped the van to grab Freddie and Seanie off the street. In my vision, he watched Michael run off into traffic. He could have stopped it. He could have stopped all of it.
That scenario and a dozen more like it tainted my thoughts like ink in water until they were all dark and dim. He didn’t seem so imposing in this residential paradise, in his uniform, with that grin. But here was the monster who had driven my brother to flee in panic. He was the one who’d stolen away the brother I knew and left a vacant, smiling boy in his place. He was the cause of Michael’s pain, his seizures and shakes, his night terrors.
He’d hurt Michael.
“It’s right here,” I said through clenched teeth, and then I took a step forward.
The pure hatred I felt must have shown on my face, because Parsons reached behind to open his front door like he would escape inside. My amusement at his fear didn’t seem to quell his worries.
“What’s right here? You stay there and tell me.”
I paused. “Me. I’m your payment.”
I didn’t hear what he said next. My rage roared like a storm in my ears, pushing me forward, always forward. I must have moved faster than he expected, because he’d only backed a few steps into his house when I reached him. I used my momentum and swung my clasped hands right for his temple. I thought for sure he would block the hit, but he looked confused when it connected, like he hadn’t seen it coming. He stumbled a few steps to the right, then reached a hand out to steady himself against a wall. I ran up to strike again, but he recovered more quickly than I’d guessed and shot an arm out to punch me in the stomach.
I was winded but still managed another blow to his face, which knocked him into the edge of a shelving unit in the hall. Whether from my fist or the wood, he got a small gash above his eye, but that didn’t stop him from fighting back, and soon he managed to pin me to the wall, his hand at my throat.
He wasn’t confused anymore. Though when he brought his face close to mine, I could see he was having a hard time focusing his eyes. “You’re in trouble now, girly. You shouldn’t have come here.”
I scratched at his hand, but he held firm and slammed me back against the wall again. I kneed him in the groin and he tossed me to the ground. I spun away as quickly as I could to avoid any possible kicks or stomps, but he wasn’t coming for me. He staggered to the side, giving me just enough time to recover into a crouch. I couldn’t let the opportunity pass, so I jumped up and slammed my fists down on his shoulders as hard as I could, pushing him to his knees. I jumped on his back, wrapping my arm around his neck, and held as tight as I could. He tried to yell, but the sound came out strangled. He tried to pull at my arms, but I didn’t give an inch. He even tried to reach back for my face, but I didn’t let go; I leaned back, choking him harder and escaping his clutching fingers, until we both fell to the floor.
It took a long time for him to stop moving, much longer than it had taken with Lucas through the bars all those months ago. But even after he went limp in my arms, I didn’t let go. He’d hurt Michael, and making him pass out didn’t seem like enough punishment for his crime.
Still, I held on.
I held on when the roar quieted, when I could hear my own heavy breathing again, when I could feel my arm ache from the exertion. And when I finally let go, my whole body shook for a few long seconds, like I was quaking with cold, only I was still heated from the fighting. I pushed his dead weight off me with a whimper and turned to look out through his front door at an empty street. No one had seen or heard. Not yet.
I got up and started for the door, but when I reached for the doorknob, I thought about fingerprints. I looked back at Parsons’s prone form and tried to relive the fight just as it had happened. I’d really only been in the hall, and I hadn’t touched much, but I needed to be sure.
The texture on the wall would probably have kept my prints from showing there, but I grabbed a rag from under his sink to wipe them down, being careful to use the sleeve of my shirt to open and close things. I found one of those dust mops with a cleaning sprayer and wiped down the floor, then I retrieved my phone from his pocket and used the rag again to wipe around his neck and face and the skin of his hands and arms. I even scraped my skin from under his fingernails.
When I was putting everything away, I found his mail scattered on his kitchen table, with a messily drawn M postcard right on top.
You’ll be paid well for your services, it said on the back.
I knew what it meant almost immediately. He’d gotten a postcard too, which meant he hadn’t sent the card to me. I’d been played. And there was one person I knew who’d done this to me before, only that time was with thank-you cards and elaborate drawings of all my sins.
“Alice.” I whispered her name into the empty house, but it still didn’t make sense. Alice was dead, or at least the person talking to my dad had told him so. And the gunshot? And the blood on Trent’s jacket?
If she’d somehow survived and was exacting her revenge, why would she want me to face down Parsons? He wore a uniform. He wasn’t some well-placed detective who could make trouble for her down the line. This definitely wasn’t her attempt at revenge on me. She had to know I wouldn’t have paid off anyone related to my father. And after my training with Trent, I wasn’t going to be bested by some bobby.
Regardless of why—if Alice was using me as her tool to get my father’s crew out of her way, what could I do about that? And did I want to do anything at all?
Our escape from the farm had been relatively easy, I knew that, and I’d decided to believe in my own cleverness rather than h
er treacherous hand. But it was possible she’d set me up, maybe from the beginning, and I’d fallen for it. In my zeal to get my own revenge, I’d let her use me the way she had always intended.
But was she really using me when I was getting what I wanted?
I pocketed the M postcard and glanced over my shoulder at the dead body of Officer Parsons. If Alice knew the names and addresses of all of my father’s most trusted, maybe I’d let her use me as a sword—for now, anyway.
Chapter 16
My suspicions about Alice were confirmed the next day.
I couldn’t sleep much of the night. I kept shaking myself awake out of nightmares about being chased or falling through the floor or not being able to remember something I needed to know to survive. So in the early morning hours I walked back to my house, sat in my mum’s room, and went through the boxes my father had brought down from the attic. I didn’t know if I was looking for keepsakes or answers or what.
Not that I was particularly nostalgic. But my father had destroyed so much of my mum already. He’d kept her things from us, and I needed to own the rest of it. I wouldn’t allow him to succeed in hoarding her all to himself. Plus, it felt wrong, somehow, to leave it all behind without knowing what was inside. Especially because I knew how lovingly my mum had packed it all away. This was what she chose to keep. This was her legacy. And I couldn’t leave it to be tossed away by strangers.
I almost changed my mind after the fourth box of baby clothes that I stacked in the rubbish pile. You would have thought my mum had hand sewn these clothes herself for the way she hung on to them. I wasn’t sure what part of our childhood was worth remembering so fondly, but I chalked it up to the sentimentality of motherhood and moved on.
I packed photo albums into a nice moving box but stopped short of putting my mum’s scrapbook about my father’s police achievements on top. I couldn’t seem to toss it into the rubbish pile either. It had her handwriting in it. Her work. It was as much a piece of my mum as it was about her husband, though I still couldn’t put together why she’d spent time on it at all.
Final Fall Page 10
