And even if, somehow, she had (my stomach roiled again), she’d fucked 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?
Malcolm and Robbie, I panicked, and dashed down the stairs to find my father.
He was at the front entrance, waving to Abbie and his boys as the minivan backed down the driveway.
“Oh,” I said.
“They’re going back to her mother’s for a few days,” he told me, shutting the door. “Charlotte made quite the compelling case for it, and now I feel remiss in not already having sent them away myself.” He sighed. “Detective Shepard’s in the kitchen, if you’d like to speak to him. Did you find what you needed?”
“Is that Jamie?” Shepard called. “Ask him what the hell Forever Ever Laffy Taffy is.”
But Holmes’s violin was still crooning. I followed the sound as if in a dream. There, in the family room. Dressed again in her usual clothes, all the way down to her trim black boots. Against the bright window, she was like a shadow gone abstract, the instrument tucked under her chin. She moved the bow with exquisite slowness. A high note, and then a languorous descent.
She paused, midnote, like some beautiful statue. It wrecked me, watching her.
“Watson?” she asked without turning.
I plodded forward as if I’d been summoned to the judge for sentencing.
“I just spent a good hour telling the detective about the explosion. As if I knew anything he didn’t. Oh, and your father said that your assigned time to get your things from the dorm is at ten thirty tomorrow. So I might toss Nurse Bryony’s place alone.” She held the Strad up to examine its strings and plucked one, listening. “Is that all right?”