A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)(64)

The worst part? I’d almost known. I’d made an educated guess, that night in the diner, and she’d let me believe it was the whole story—that she was sent to America because of her drug problem. Never mind the Moriarty at the center of it all.

If any of this was true, August would have a million reasons to want to bring Holmes down. I racked my brain to remember what Lena had said that night at poker. If she was right that Holmes was upset about August her freshman year, it was further proof that she did actually have a heart, and a conscience, despite her protests. (Honestly, if I were Holmes, I’d be worried he was living on a street corner somewhere.) Milo had come to visit and said . . . what? That he’d take care of things. But Lena hadn’t known how, only that Holmes had been happier after Milo left. At the time, I’d thought, oh, drone hit. And now I just wanted to know how much it had set Milo back to pay August off. I hoped August had been given a sizable check, maybe a little house by the sea. A book-lined study where the poor bastard could continue doing his math on his own terms.

It would’ve been one thing for a Holmes to fall in love with a Moriarty, I thought bitterly. In fact, it’d be sweepingly, crushingly romantic—and on cue, my imagination began to color it in. Charlotte and August, our star-crossed lovers, locked in a constant battle of deductive wills. Missile codes swapped via elaborate games of footsie. Having veal cutlets in the garden while debating whether to annex France. Et cetera, ad nauseam.

The thing was, Charlotte Holmes didn’t fall in love.

And even if, somehow, she had (my stomach roiled again), she’d f*cked him over in the end. Jesus, Holmes had screwed a Moriarty. A whole family of art forgers and philosophers and blue-blooded assassins sitting in their ivory towers, connected to the lowest reaches of the underworld by the gleaming strands of their ambition. Sure, they weren’t all bad, but enough of them were, and after this business with August, every last one would have reason to be out for Charlotte’s blood.

I tried to yank myself back from the brink. I could be doing that same thing I did in the diner—seeing ninety percent of the story, but missing the ten percent that actually mattered. Maybe I was all wrong. For one thing, the Daily Mail wasn’t exactly known for their journalistic integrity. And maybe August really had encouraged her habits—maybe she was the innocent one.

Then why was he trying to kill her?

Well, I thought, as long as I was being awful, I might as well go ahead and be petty with it. I opened my father’s computer and, half-covering my eyes, put Moriarty’s name into an image search. He was a dork, I told myself, a math nerd; he probably had gelled hair and an overbite.

The page loaded slowly. The pictures came up, one by one.

He looked like a Disney prince.

I shut the laptop hard.

FOR ANOTHER HOUR I SAT THERE, PARALYZED IN MY DELIBERATIONS. When I finally reached a decision, I didn’t feel any better. I spent an hour on Google, trying to dig up what I needed—but as I suspected, it was nowhere to be found.

All right, then. This had to get even more personal.

As silently as I could, I unlocked the study door and crept into the hall. All was still. Downstairs, I heard the lonely, spectral sound of Holmes’s violin; she was safely occupied. In the guest room, her dirty clothes were gone from the edge of the bed, but her phone was sitting out in plain view.

A few weeks back, she’d decided to give me the passcode—for emergencies, she’d said. Her eyes had glittered as she rattled it off.

“I thought it was supposed to be a random string of numbers,” I’d protested. It was a weak protest: I’d been thrilled. Birthday, snow day, Christmas Day thrilled.

Holmes had graced me with her half-second smile. “If someone can get their hands on my mobile, I’m either dead, or close to it. In any case, you’re the only other person I’d want to use it. So I thought I should choose a key code you can remember. Surely you can remember this.”

I typed it in quickly, hoping it was still the same, hoping it wasn’t.

0707. July 7.

My birthday.

With a heavy sigh, I scrolled through her contacts. There were only four of us on the list: home, Lena, me. And Milo.

“One of the most powerful men in the world,” she’d told me. And the only person she’d listen to, if she wouldn’t listen to me.

I stabbed out the text one letter at a time. Milo, this is James Watson.

“I’ve been solving crimes ever since I was a child. I do it well,” she’d said to me. “I take pride in how well I do it. Do you understand?”

Your sister is making a massive mistake, one that might cost her life. I need your family’s help.

“They don’t believe I can do it anymore.”

Come if it’s convenient. Even if it’s not . . . just get here.

I sent it. Then I deleted any evidence that I’d sent it. It was a futile gesture: God knew it would be a moment’s work for Holmes to sniff out my betrayal. I debated trying to make good on my original lie, to get some sleep. But I didn’t see how I could. We weren’t simply being framed anymore. We were being hunted. If we weren’t going to be thrown in jail, August and his accomplice would make sure we’d die instead.

And who was to say he wouldn’t make an attempt on our lives while we were here? I froze. How hadn’t I thought of that before?