Final Fall

by Heather W. Petty

  “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  I tried to keep my voice as neutral as possible. “Tonight.”

  “Don’t come back.”

  With only three words, he inflicted yet another pain on me that I wasn’t allowed to show him. I hated him for that. He got to be the naive, entitled child pouting over his lost play friend, and I had to carry the weight of our loss on my shoulders and act as though I were light as a feather.

  “You haven’t given me much choice.”

  He jerked his head up to scrutinize my expression—still playing his little-boy games.

  I said, “I know you called the police.”

  “You told me to stop you. How could I do that on my own?”

  He looked so sincere when he asked, but I didn’t answer him. We both knew he couldn’t. Not by force, anyway. Maybe not at all.

  “It’s not like you would have stopped just because I asked.”

  My voice was much more calm than I felt inside when I said, “You never asked.”

  His brow furrowed. “That is why you left? Because I called the police?”

  “No. I had somewhere to be. But you should call them again. Tell them you found me in the park.”

  I was grateful I couldn’t make out his full expression in the dim lamppost light, because his voice was strained when he said, “If I do that, you’ll. . . we’ll. . .”

  “Be enemies? We’re already enemies.”

  “Are we?” he asked.

  I felt a tear slip down my cheek.

  He cleared his throat. “Just because we’re on opposite sides of the law? Haven’t we been that all along?”

  I stared up at the moon. It was late and I had so long to travel before I could sleep again.

  Sherlock answered his own question. “Maybe not. How would I know? I’m blind when it comes to you. I can’t see reason or find my way through logic. That’s the only explanation for it.”

  “For what?”

  He looked down at his feet, and I did the same. There were bits of grass all around our shoes. “I still believe you can find who you were before and become that again. But I know you won’t do it. Not unless you’re caught.”

  “So in this little imagined world of yours where everyone gets a happy ending, mine starts with prison?”

  “You have to face what you’ve done. You can’t keep pretending it’s right.”

  I stood and glared down at Lock. “Justice is what I’ve done. And I wouldn’t have had to if your precious police force had an ounce of integrity.”

  “Not every—”

  “Stop talking. I can’t bear the sound of your voice.”

  He opened his mouth to speak again, but I walked over to the fountain before he could. No one was on the path just then, so I placed my whole hand on the Tree of Life and tipped it forward, then ran around to the other side to twist the lucky clover. I pulled all my belongings out of the chamber, including the envelope that held my mum’s old fake identities. I didn’t want to leave anything behind.

  I paced away to shove everything into my bag, and when I looked back, Sherlock was toying with the fountain plaques like he’d found a new case to solve. “My final gift to him,” I whispered. Then I turned and started walking away.

  I barely made it ten steps when Lock called, “Not yet.”

  I clenched my fists at my sides, but I didn’t slow down. I needed to catch the first train, which meant getting to Charing Cross Station as soon as possible. I didn’t have time for him.

  Not that it stopped him from coming up beside me. “Why does it have to be tonight?”

  “Does it matter?” My quickest way was to catch a cab, which mostly meant completing the circular path around the gardens and crossing York Bridge to leave the park.

  “Where will you go?”

  I stopped. “Why ask when you know I won’t answer?”

  He started to reply, but I cut him off.

  “Why are you here, Lock? I left you safe and in your house. Why did you end up in my way again? Why are you always in my way?!”  When he didn’t answer, I took a breath and started back down my path.

  “The police are at my house,” he said. “The boy has given his statement, and once I bring you in, they’ll want mine as well.”

  “You aren’t bringing me anywhere.”

  “You know I have to.”

  I stopped again but didn’t turn around. “Will you call them now?”

  “Do I need to?”

  I stared at the ground, wondering how to answer him. I wouldn’t be going back to his house with him, but would he believe me if I said I would? Would he try to force my hand? Did I have it in me to fight him—to truly fight, even if that meant beating him unconscious?

  I decided not to say anything, and instead kept heading toward the entrance of the park. I did, however, pull my phone out of my pocket and type a text as I walked. Lock caught up to me, forcing me to put my phone away before I could be sure the text had sent. He kept a distance between us, though—like he was making himself walk farther away from me than he wanted. I shouldn’t have cared or noticed, but I was grateful. It was getting harder to think clearly with him so close.

  “Where will you go?” he asked again. “If not with me.”

  “Dover.” I shouldn’t have told him, even though it was only half the truth. “I’ll take the ferry to France and then a plane to America.” That was a lie, but he believed it. I needed him to because I couldn’t let him follow me. But I did have to go to Dover to make sure Trent didn’t follow me either.

  “I’ll go with you. Just to Dover.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Then I’ll chase you to Dover to bring you to justice.”  The way he said it—like he was suggesting we go to a café for a snack—made me hate him again. My struggles had always sounded trivial when he described them, my problems so easily solved by his version of justice. The world must be such a simple place when all can be parsed into rights and wrongs.

  I shook my head and spotted a black cab parked on the other side of the bridge, almost like it was waiting for me. If I believed in luck like my mum had, I might have invited Lily to help me rob a bank that night. Then, at least, she’d get her heist. “Go home, Lock. Go back to your house and your police and tell them you saw me in the park.”

  He put his hand on my arm to stop me, and I shook him off. “Come with me.”

  I turned to face him, my mind desperately searching for that one thing I could say that would make him stop trying. I was saved from the task, however, by a man leaning against the nearest lamppost. And when I tried to focus on Lock instead of the man, I saw the flash of a lens just to the side of his head. That was how I knew my text had gone through, how I knew they were there—the government men. And I had never been more grateful for Mycroft Holmes.

  Failed my mission, was the text I’d sent just minutes ago. In the park now. Come and get him before the police find us together.

  But this was too fast, even for the mysterious Mycroft. I had to wonder if Sherlock knew he was being followed. Could they really have evaded his notice all this time?

  “Tell your brother I said thanks.” I nodded to the man leaning up against the streetlight to our left. The light blinked off just as I did, and the space around us went pitch black. In the next second, I heard a muffled shout from Sherlock, and then nothing. I felt an arm brush across my back, and I spun around, grabbing my assailant’s wrist and twisting it up and back until I heard a grunt and something fell onto my shoe and bounced away. I didn’t wait to let whoever it was recover. I leveraged the hold I had to push my attacker off balance and then ran for my cab. I couldn’t afford to let them take me, too.

  I dropped my phone and stomped on it just before I jumped into the backseat, dragging my bags in behind me. “Charing Cross Station, as quickly as you can.”

  The driver nodded and we were off before I could catch my breath. We’d barely driven two minutes when the driver looked at me in the rearview mirr
or and said, “You are Miss Moriarty?”

  I wasn’t sure whether to answer that or not, but the longer I took, the more obvious the answer was. So I finally said, “Yes.”

  The driver slipped me a white postcard through the divider. It had a slashed M on the back.

  “Like it was waiting for me,” I mumbled. “I suppose that means Lily’s bank robbery is off.”

  “What was that, miss?”

  I let my shoulders sag. “A man told you I’d be coming out of the park?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  I sighed and looked at the front of the postcard.

  Bring the money before the noon ferry, or your friend will be in jail before dinner.

  I stared at the address he’d written at the bottom for a few minutes, and then pulled out my last burner phone. I tapped in the number before I could talk myself out of it.

  “Yes, hello. I would like to leave a message for Detective Inspector Mallory.”

  Chapter 22

  The address Trent had given me was for a warehouse off Jubilee Street in Dover. The place was abandoned that day, for no reason I could discern, as it seemed to still be active and full of bins and pulleys and carts, all with no one around to push them. I’d gone straight to the warehouse the moment I reached Dover, save a quick stop at an open-all-night shop for some supplies. I had to be sure I’d get there first, and for good reason. No one was supposed to see me there that day. I was to be an observer only.

  So I spent most of the morning hours looking for my hiding spot. It took me a bit, but eventually I found a space high up on a ledge that looked down on the warehouse floor. And when I got up there, I found a little door, just big enough to push a larger box through, that would give me a way to escape to the outside without getting caught or stuck up there for a full warehouse shift should the workers return. And then I waited.

  Trent arrived at half past eleven and stood in the center of the concrete floor, watching the main door. I had a weird longing to climb down from my hiding spot and confront him head-on, bare my teeth as it were. But I didn’t, because I knew that was what he wanted, to posture and banter and possibly even toss me about and get in a few good punches before it was over. And because the minute I’d seen Trent’s final postcard, I’d remembered something Alice once said to me: Why actually do the deed when you can just move all the pieces into place and watch the game play out on its own?

  Yes. It was a lesson I needed, and it had taken me far too long to learn it. I was sure Alice had learned it from my mum, the master thief, who used a handful of crooks to take millions from ancient establishment coffers. Trent knew—he’d used me as his deadly queen to take out his opponents. And now I had moved the pieces into place that would take care of  Trent on my behalf, and punish him for ever thinking he was a worthy opponent to me.

  And I’d do it all while sitting up in my perch, hiding behind a group of boxes, and eating the tea and sandwiches I’d purchased at the store.

  At exactly noon, I saw the panic on Trent’s face as we both heard the screech of tires out front. And then the warehouse was flooded with flashing blue-and-white lights, followed by uniformed police. Mallory stormed in behind them, calling out orders and directing his men to seal off the room. Trent tried to run, but in the end he was pushed down to his knees in front of Mallory, his eyes wildly scanning through the endless crowd of officers for me.

  “Where is she!?” Trent demanded.

  But Mallory ignored him and started in with his police caution, “Barnaby Trenton, you are under arrest for the murders of Officer William Parsons, retired Officer Stanley Gareth, and Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Day. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned, something which you later rely on in court.. . .”

  As I predicted, Trent was more outraged by my absence than he would ever have been by anything I could have said to him in person. And it was fun to watch. A moment of triumph, perhaps, after so many months of playing other people’s games. I was having a bit too much fun, as it turned out, and I failed to notice the boy who entered the warehouse after Trent was dragged out. He, of course, noticed everything, my Lock. Even the fact that I was sitting up in a storage area among the boxes.

  Our eyes met, and for that one second I wondered what would happen if I stayed where I was. Would he call out to his police friends to come and get me? Would he come up here himself? Would I have to hurt him to get away?

  I couldn’t take the chance. And I knew I didn’t have much time, so I jumped up to use my escape before he figured out how to block it. I ducked through the cargo door and ran across the catwalk that connected this warehouse to another larger one next door. I sped across the roof and opened the hatch, then climbed down the ladder into an office, knowing I was ahead of Sherlock, but not by enough. So I took the extra minute to look around for a weapon of some kind—something I could use to subdue him without injuring him too badly.

  I found a wide-brush shop broom outside the door of the office, and had the handle removed before he stepped foot in the warehouse. I briefly toyed with the idea of dropping my stick and making a run for it. Through the open warehouse doors on the far side, I could see the dock for the ferry that would take passengers from Dover to Calais, France. I knew the path I had to take to sneak through the fence and reach it in time. I also knew that Lock could easily catch up with me and there would be nothing I could do to keep him from chasing me to France.

  Only I wasn’t going to France, and he had to believe I was. They all needed to believe that. So I swung my stick around to get a feel for it while I waited for Lock to find me, then I turned to face him, trying very hard not to betray any of my emotions. I failed. I was sure of that. He jogged up, focused on the stick in my hand, obviously amused by it. But once he glanced up at my face, his amusement dropped away. Was he mirroring me? His expression was full of all the pain and loss and emptiness I felt.

  Tears formed in my eyes and I looked away with a curse. I couldn’t afford to give in to base sentimentality just then. I had to get out of there, follow my plan, and find my brothers. I’d promised them I’d be there. I couldn’t let anyone stop me from keeping my promise—especially not Sherlock.

  So I twirled the broom handle around my hand and focused on the fighting. I set my stance and pushed all the feelings aside, so when I looked back up at him, I could see only the opponent he was, not the boy I’d once cared for.

  “Go away, Lock.”

  He’d come armed as well, with some kind of helper stick that had white-coated hooks on one end and a single nasty-looking metal hook on the other. Any hope I’d had to deal with him quickly vanished when I saw the determination in his eyes. “Not without you.”

  The ferry horn sounded and I checked over my shoulder to watch it pull into the dock. I was losing time.

  “Let me take you to Mallory. We’ll clear your name of the crimes you didn’t do.”

  “And confess the ones I did?” I heard some yelling in the distance and peered around Lock out the other set of doors. A few uniformed officers were running in and out of spaces, like they were looking for something.

  “Why are you here?”

  “After the little stunt in the park, Mycroft told Mallory that I’d almost caught you there but you’d drugged me to keep me from following you. After I woke up, Mallory called me late last night to ask if I could come with him to Dover in the morning.”

  “Why in the world would he do that?”

  “To find you.”

  “To find me,” I echoed. “Because you know me better than he does.”

  Lock grinned. “Exactly. Only now we can go back together and tell him—”

  “No. We can’t.” I grabbed the end of the stick and spun it behind my back to rest against my arm.

  He held his stick in both hands like a sword, with the vinyl hook pointing out at me. “Just come with me so I don’t have to hurt you,” he said.

  I bit back a smile, a
nd he struck first. He swung the stick around and sliced it down through the air at me, but I easily fended off the blow, bringing up my arm and using my broomstick as a shield. He tried again and again to lunge at me with his weapon, but I deflected every attempt. I pivoted out of the way of his final blow and slapped the stick from his hands with mine. He tried to leap after it, but I brought the end of my broom handle under his chin and then jabbed him in the stomach once to push him away.

  I kicked his weapon aside and leaned against mine as he recovered. “Are we done playing sword fight?”

  The voices were getting louder. The officers were getting closer. And my heart sank as I realized what I was going to have to do to keep my word to Mycroft.

  Lock still had his hands on his knees when he said, “Just listen to me—”

  I grabbed him by his arms and righted him between me and the door the police would come through when they found us. They had to find Lock. I couldn’t leave until I knew they would. “No, you listen. I’m not going to back to London. I don’t want to.” It was a pathetic lie, but I sold it as best I could.

  Sherlock started to speak as I peered around him. I thought I heard an officer call his name, but no one was coming our way just yet.

  “Don’t talk. Just hear me. Trent has been the one pulling my strings and sending me those postcards like the one you found. He’s set this whole thing up and managed to capture evidence on both of us. You know what that means.”

  Of course he did. And the knowledge hardened his expression almost instantly. “This was all to keep him from following you?”

  I saw a police officer peering into our warehouse, then talking into a radio. They’d found us at last. And that meant it was time. The thought of what I was about to do made me feel like I couldn’t breathe right. “I needed a head start.”

  “And his evidence against me?”

  “It won’t matter. Because you’ve been trying to stop me all along.”