The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(61)

From his pocket, he pulled a lighter. Not a metal-plated one, as I’d expected, something precious and small, but a plastic one, the kind you bought at the gas station.

“No,” I said. “No, no—no, absolutely not—”

“Or he could just buy himself another war,” Alistair said, squinting at the small fire in his hands. “I swear, that boy has more influence than I’d ever dreamed of—”

I kicked my feet against the floor, skittering my chair back. I was yelling now, wordlessly, an endless stream of sound.

And then something on the stairs, something hollow-sounding, a knocking, almost, and I wasn’t sure if I was seeing right when Hadrian Moriarty came around the corner. He didn’t say anything. He just grunted, and did something with his arms, and then Alistair Holmes was laid out cold on the floor.

Hadrian bent and picked up the lighter, then pocketed it.

“Hi,” I said, dumbly.

He jerked his head, a greeting.

“I thought you’d—run.”

“I did,” he said. “Behind the hedges by the house. It’s best to stay close for as long as you can, before you make a break for it.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“I smelled the petrol,” he said, by way of explanation. “Here,” and he pulled a bowie knife from his pocket. Flicked it open.

I wrenched myself away from him, panting. From the spit to the fire—

He rolled his eyes. “No, kid. Stop,” and he got to work sawing the rope off. “Next time this happens to you, you shimmy. Like you’re dancing, okay? He didn’t even tie your hands.”

“Next time. Okay.”

“Yeah.” He tossed the ropes to the concrete floor. “Get up,” he said, “and get lost.”

On the ground, Alistair Holmes was already beginning to stir.

I rubbed my arms, trying to coax feeling back into them. “Why did you help me?”

Hadrian looked down at Alistair. “He deserves to rot in a cell. He doesn’t get to pick his ending. He doesn’t get to burn down the house I’m hiding in, either, even if it is his own.” With that, he spat on the ground. “As for you—”

I waited for him to say it. You’re just a dumb kid. You’ve been conned. Used. You’re in over your head. Go home to your mother. The things that had been scrolling through my head since we landed back in the UK.

“You’re not done yet,” he said, and tossed me the knife. “Now get out of here.”

The detective said later she found me wandering outside, dazed and covered in gasoline, holding a blade in my hands. I told her someone had done it to me, that I didn’t know who. I don’t know why I lied. Maybe I couldn’t face the idea of more of this day, this week, unending, stretching out into court dates and arguments. More battles in this war.

Maybe that was what you did—bent the truth open until it made a big enough hole for you to escape.

They asked me to describe him, the man who’d tied me up. I said I couldn’t. I said it wasn’t a big deal.

I still don’t know why they believed me. Maybe they thought I’d done it to myself.

They kept me at the hospital overnight, for shock. Alistair’s diagnosis had been correct. I stayed another half day there, my mother sleeping in the hard plastic chair by my bed, and then after another round of interrogations, my father arrived, and they released me to London into my parents’ care.

What haunted me most wasn’t the ropes, or the chair, or the gasoline, though those played recurring parts in my nightmares. It wasn’t Alistair, or Hadrian’s crisis of conscience. It was that we’d had the time, Holmes and I. Three long minutes before the police made it to us, enough for her to turn to me and say, This is what you have to do, and why you have to do it.

No, what haunted me most was that I knew, had I confessed to August’s murder there on the lawn, Holmes would have found a way to clear my name. But she was letting her brother walk free for his mistake. She’d given up Bryony Downs to God knows what fate. She’d played judge and jury for Hadrian and Phillipa. And now she was letting herself be led away for a crime she didn’t commit, and she would walk away from it unscathed, and there would be no one doing time for August’s death.

It wasn’t hers to decide. It wasn’t mine, either. Charlotte Holmes had told me once that she wasn’t a good person. That day I’d begun to believe it.





Twenty


Charlotte


WILL YOU BE THERE? AT THE PARTY TONIGHT? I TOOK A breath, and sent it.

A minute. Then: Yeah.

Watson, I thought. Something was buzzing in my head. He was there. He was talking to me. Even now, he was typing— He’s watching me. I have to go.

I asked four times for a follow-up. Received none. I hesitated, then switched the phone back off.

Watson, I thought, and Lucien Moriarty, and I turned the volume down on what I was feeling until I couldn’t hear it anymore.

“Put your shoes on,” Leander was saying. “I hope you two are all set to kiss and make up.”

“Uncle.”

“Where did I put my jacket?”

“Uncle. I think Lucien’s at the party.”

“Cold feet?”