The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(76)

It wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

I hadn’t wanted information on his personal life, or I’d told myself I hadn’t. I only wanted to know that he was safe. I was on the cusp of writing my awful older brother for help when I’d received a call on an October afternoon. I’d answered only because it came from a blocked number—I had hoped that my uncle Leander might be calling. I always hoped, with him.

“I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Elizabeth? From last year. I got your number from his phone.” She hadn’t had to say who “he” was. “I get that this is weird, me calling. But I think he misses you a lot, and it would help him out if you got in touch. Even to tell him good-bye.”

I didn’t respond. I was sitting at a table in my favorite café by the Thames, and the water was quite loud, and I had nothing to say to this girl.

“Do you even care if he’s okay?”

“Of course I do,” I snapped.

“She speaks,” Elizabeth said with a lonely sort of laugh, and that was when I knew that if she wasn’t dating him, she would be soon.

But if she wouldn’t tell me that, I’d pretend I didn’t know. It was more convenient for my purposes, which were taking shape as we spoke. “I need time,” I’d told her. “I want to come and see him in the new year, and I’ll tell him good-bye then. But for now—could you text me every now and then and tell me how he’s doing? Make sure that there aren’t any more incidents like what happened with Bryony Downs?”

Useful for her: an end date for her boyfriend’s psychic misery. Useful for me: a regular word or two on Watson’s well-being.

At first that was all it was. A line here, about where he was applying to college. A line there, about how the rugby team was doing. There was nothing useful about this information, really, and still I craved it. I reread her messages in transit, at my desk, in bed when I woke in the morning. Jamie has a cold. Two days later: He’s better. Prosaic things. Things no one would care about.

I found I cared immensely.

What was she getting in return? I had always loathed psychology, but I began to think these messages gave her a sense of control. Her boyfriend was still upset about a girl in his past; ergo, by managing that girl’s knowledge of him, Elizabeth could feel as though she had control over her relationship.

It was untrue, of course. You couldn’t control how someone else felt. You could hardly control how you felt most of the time. And so the holidays came and went. New Year’s came and went. Elizabeth pressed me for plans to visit, to finally have it out with Watson, and I provided her with none. This week, when I began getting messages that said I’m worried about Jamie, I think bad things are happening to him and he’s not telling me, and He’s getting hauled in to see the dean, and I think he’s suspended, I thought I knew why. Her plan was to force my hand. If I wouldn’t come to help ease Watson’s mind, I would perhaps come if I thought he were in danger. If she had to manufacture the danger herself, so be it.

It seemed a petty reason to delete someone’s school presentation, but then, I was the girl desperately rereading text messages about Watson’s new shoes.

But Elizabeth Hartwell (Hartwell, of course that was her name) was nothing if not a survivor. Watching her walk away now—watching the darkened hallway where I could hear her walk away—I realized I had given her too little credit. She had been put into a situation where her family was in danger; she had been blackmailed into going along with Anna Morgan-Vilk’s plan; she was forced into hurting Watson, a boy she clearly cared for, and in response she had called in the one person she thought could help, knowing full well that person was me.

The text on my phone read, I don’t know if you’re coming with Jamie tonight, but you need to be careful. Lucien Moriarty and his daughter are in the tunnels. The police are everywhere.

I knew that was what it said, because Watson dragged me into the now-unlocked prayer room, shut the door, pulled the phone from my hands, and read it out to me in a voice shimmering with anger.

“‘Jamie seems like he’s forgiven Tom,’” he said, scrolling up with his thumbs. “‘Jamie’s dad keeps picking him up to go somewhere.’ ‘Jamie is rereading His Last Bow. He looks sad.’ ‘Jamie and I had a picnic today’—what the hell is this, Holmes? How long has this been going on?”

“Keep your voice down,” I said. What else could I say?

“My voice. You’re worried about my voice. Jesus Christ, this is—this goes back for months. This goes back to homecoming. To when she asked me out. Did you have some kind of plan, the two of you? God—” He spun around, and the light from my screen strobed up and down the cinder block wall. “I thought it was bad when you disappeared. I thought it was the worst thing. The worst thing. But this—this is worse.”

“I told you I was keeping tabs on you. I needed to know you were safe.” It came out small. “I needed to know Lucien wasn’t coming after you.”

“Yes, he does really love to ruin picnics, doesn’t he. Rugby games. My shoes. He just loves to ruin my shoes. All of that was necessary information. It wasn’t you washing your hands of me and then getting to keep being my friend by proxy.”

“What you saw out there—she’s being coerced. She’s not working with Anna because she wants to.”