The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(53)

“What are you going to do?” I climbed up and got under the covers.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Plan B. Whatever plan B is.”

“Don’t stay up too late.”

“I won’t.” She stared up at me, one hand on the ladder. She’d undone the top three buttons of her shirt, and I could see the white line of her collarbone. “I might be—tired later.”

“Okay,” I told her, as cautiously as I could. “I might still be here.”

Did I want her to climb into bed with me? Did she want to? Would knowing the answer to either question change what we were going to do?

Across the room, she rummaged through her suitcase for her pajamas, then called out that she was changing. I turned my back, trying not to listen to the rustle and slip of fabric, trying to remind myself how tired I was. I was tired, I realized with some wonder. I’d been exhausted and unable to sleep for so long.

Honestly, I’d never forgotten what Lucien had said to us in Bryony Downs’s apartment. It’s good to know what matters to you, he’d told Holmes. So very little does. My brother didn’t. Your own family doesn’t. But this boy . . . Meaning me. The pressure point. The weak point. A thought I tortured myself with on the nights that I stuffed my head under the pillow and tried not to feel the dot of a sniper’s rifle on my back.

The door open and shut softly. Holmes had slipped out, and my eyes were already closing. Before I passed out, I took out my phone. We’re closing in, I texted my father, though I didn’t think it was true. Will you please reconsider sending Leander’s emails? I won’t read them. I’ll have Milo skim them for what we need.

Pretense, all of it. He knew I’d read every word, just as Milo knew that Lucien was targeting his parents, and I knew, for a certainty, that neither Holmes or I knew what we wanted at all.

When I woke, it was hours later; I could tell even in that windowless room. My stomach was growling, and someone was speaking. A male voice. I sat up, too quickly.

“Lottie, I’m fine. I’ll see you soon.” The voice again, tinnier this time, and then broken into pieces. “Lottie, I’m fine. Lottie, I— Lottie, I’m fine.”

Holmes sat in a small oasis of light. She was cross-legged on the camp bed with a laptop, a lamp beside her, and her hair hung in her face as she hammered on the keys. “Dammit,” I heard her say. “Goddammit.”

“How’s it going?” I asked, and she jumped.

“Watson,” she said. “One of the techs showed me how to peel apart a recording into layers, to isolate background noise. I’ve been working with Leander’s phone message. What time is it?”

“I have no idea.” I checked my phone; it was ten in the morning. “Did you find anything?”

“There’s something. An echo . . . the kind that—” She went to play it again, and then, without warning, she slammed her laptop shut. “Shit,” she gasped, exhaling through a hand. “Shit.”

“Come up here.” I didn’t know if the thought would be at all comforting, clambering up into bed with me. From the look she leveled me with, she was skeptical, too. “Not like that. Just—come here.”

She climbed up the ladder and sat next to me, our backs against the wall, surveying her little kingdom.

“Lena’s been texting me,” she said.

“Any news?”

“Why are we in Germany, Germany is lame,” she said, in her quoting voice, “and also Tom has started wearing that Nuclear Winter body spray, which has Lena simultaneously turned on and disgusted.”

“Sounds about right,” I said. She smiled. We both knew that she adored her roommate, and that we would never mention that fact out loud.

“Every room you settle into looks like this,” I said instead. “The clutter. The weird textbooks. Where do you even get those textbooks? And the lab table. Always with the lab table and the blowing things up. It’s like all of it stays in some little box inside you that . . . bursts open when you take a moment to settle down.”

“That’s precious, Watson.”

I grinned. “It’s true. You know it is. You’re like a turtle with your world on your back.”

“There’s not a lot you can control, you know. Where you’re born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it’s important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity.” She smiled, ducking her head. “So I blow things up.”

“Did you hear that? You almost said something profound. You came so close.”

She pushed her sock feet against the edge of the bed. “Leander liked to talk about the importance of control. No one would ever guess it. He’s famously lazy, you know, he lives like an absolute sloth. Goes from one house he owns to another, violin in tow, picking up the odd crime when it suits him. Living off his trust fund, eating out in restaurants. Going to parties.” She said the word with such disdain that I choked on a laugh.

“Parties! You know what they say—first, the parties. And before you know it, they’re on to the murdering.”

She rolled her eyes. “Watson. Some people don’t like to read. Or they don’t like sport. They don’t like the routine of it, or the slow pace, or the fast pace, or the noise. Whether it seems too intellectual or too base. But I’m an anomaly if I don’t like parties or restaurants? It’s wrong if I don’t like the idea that there are a demanded set of responses and that I’ll be judged on how well I can provide them?” Putting on a little-girl voice, she said, “‘Yes, please, I’d like the salmon, it looks lovely! Could I bother you for another soda? Ta!’ I hate the idea of performing a role when I haven’t written the script myself. I need more of a purpose than I want to get a chocolate pudding without the waitress calling the police on me.”