The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(44)

I wasn’t looking for reassurance from her, but I also wasn’t looking for her to join in to that particular chorus. “Right, then,” I said. “Your brother wouldn’t, I don’t know, call me and ask me to leave?”

“I’m sure he appreciated the theatrics of it all. Lavender air freshener? That sounds wretched enough to be him.” She took one of my arms by the wrist and peered at my palm. “These are fairly minor abrasions. I’ll call down for some bandages, and we can get back to it.”

“Back to what, exactly? How have you spent your afternoon?”

“Picking apart that screen.”

“I didn’t realize you’d started up an AV club in my absence.”

She frowned at me. “That was the security feed we were running. It stopped working. I’m fixing it.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”

“Stop acting like one, then. How was Marie-Helene?”

“How do you think she was?”

“Stupid enough to find your little act charming.”

“She isn’t stupid.”

“Really,” she said. “I consider myself to be fairly intelligent, and right now I find both you and Simon obnoxious. How do you square that?”

I kept my voice cold. “I made out with her until she showed me a floor’s worth of forged paintings. They were done as assignments for a Sieben class taught by Nathaniel Ziegler. I didn’t see any of Langenberg’s work, but I didn’t get through the whole building. It doesn’t matter. We have enough to know this is the connection Leander was exploring. I know this isn’t exactly my mission or anything, but if I were to guess, I’d say that Leander was just trying to track down the intermediaries. Figure out how the money was changing hands. You always follow the money, right? It’s like hot potato. Whoever’s left with the cash in the end is the guiltiest one.”

I’m not stupid. I’ve never been stupid. I got good grades. I paid attention when someone was teaching me something, and I made it a point to learn it fast. Fine, I didn’t have Holmes’s training or her aptitude, but just because I wasn’t a genius didn’t mean that I wasn’t smart.

And no, this wasn’t my mission. It was our mission. Her uncle was missing, but he was my father’s best friend, and I had as much of a right to be there as she did. I was done taking a constant backseat. Taking bullshit from strangers who hauled me off the street at gunpoint to dress me down. I was done with the way August was looking at me, even now, with the kind of indulgence you showed to a well-behaved Chihuahua.

“You want this solved by midnight?” I said, rubbing my shoulder. “Then I’ll get my father to give up the IP addresses on Leander’s emails if he won’t give us the emails themselves. Your uncle had to live somewhere while he was conducting his investigation. Let’s go there. Shake it down. Someone run Nathaniel Ziegler through Milo’s criminal databases. Can we get some known associates? It was smarter to send me on a date with an art student while you played mechanic here at home?”

Holmes stared at me. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

“Your uncle is missing, Holmes.”

“Jamie,” August said, a warning.

“Whatever. I don’t care. August, you’ve been here all afternoon? Haven’t hijacked any black cars today?”

“No,” he said, inflectionless.

“Then what have you been doing?” It was hard to keep from shouting. I needed to see some answering anger flare up in her face. Any reaction at all.

August stepped forward to put a hand on her shoulder. They looked at each other. He shrugged; she nodded. It was the kind of wordless back and forth I was used to having with her.

“My mother,” Holmes said at length, “is now in a coma.”

“A coma?” I stared at her. “I thought the poisoning was an isolated event. I thought—”

“We thought wrong.”

“Shouldn’t this be our priority?” I asked, starting to pace. “Shouldn’t we put the rest of this on hold? Go back to England? Your mother’s life is on the line here.”

She regarded me evenly. “No.”

“You’re sounding kind of heartless right now. Just so you know.”

“These things are connected, Watson. My mother? Leander? If I solve one, I’ll solve the other, and I’m so sorry if it offends your delicate sensibilities if I happen to love my uncle more.” Visibly, she swallowed. “I love her, too, you know. But—I need to prioritize. My mother can take care of herself.”

“From her coma.”

Behind Holmes, August glared at me.

Her expression was a mirror of his. “I’ve only heard about this from my brother’s intel. My father hasn’t told me anything at all.” Annoyed, she gestured to the screen. “Milo is beaming me footage from Thailand so I can review it for myself, but no one, and nothing, has entered the house that wasn’t there yesterday. Milo just fired the whole staff, as a precaution. The only people—” With a sigh, she raked back her hair. “My father and the doctor are tending to my mother. That’s all I can tell.”

“And Lucien?” I asked.

“Moriarty hasn’t made any kind of move. Not that Milo can tell. Nothing that he can stop.”