“Does it keep you from forgetting?”
I ignored the question and pulled my hand free. It was jarring to have him in my room, seeing what no one else could see. But worse was how comfortable I was with him there. Knowing this. Knowing me like this. I glanced around my room, wondering what else of me was on display for his deductions—what else he’d seen already.
The pictures of friends that I’d shoved into the frame of my mirror to make my mom happy. Did he know that I only knew half the names that went with the faces there? Notice that none of the pictures was of me standing with them, except for the pictures of Sadie Mae and me from last year? Did he notice that the only picture of my mother in the room was the one on the front of the program? Did he gain some insight from how tidy I kept the room? From the colors?
I turned back toward Lock, only to find he hadn’t seen any of it. He still stared at the program. It occurred to me that perhaps he was wondering how long it would be before he had one of his own. I should have said something reassuring, but all I could think was that I didn’t want him to touch it, and we had to get out of the house still, and I wanted to see my brothers, to let them know that I was all right.
“It’s probably safe to leave,” I blurted before his fingers could brush even the corner of the pristine blue paper.
He nodded and stood, tearing his eyes from the program just long enough to sweep them around my room, saving the image for later, I was sure.
We didn’t speak again until we were half a block from the house.
“Maybe we could go and see my brothers. Just so they know I’m okay.”
Sherlock paused before he said, “It’s the middle of the night.”
I glanced up at the sky and furrowed my brow. It wasn’t that I hadn’t known, exactly. It just hadn’t seemed relevant until I thought of a little old lady refusing to answer the door at four a.m.
Sherlock stepped in front of me to stop our walking. “And perhaps you don’t want them to see you like this.” He traced a finger down the side of my cheek, so that I covered it with my hand. “Give it a day or two for the swelling to go down.”
I stepped around him. “Tonight is an anomaly. We cannot stay gone from the house. He can’t know we’re gone.”
“You can’t go back,” he said firmly, taking my hand, as if he thought I might run back right then if he did not. “It’s not safe.”
I stopped at his door and spoke quietly. “It’s never been safe.”
Sherlock took a short pause before following me inside, just long enough for me to hide the way my face crumpled at my words.
Chapter 15
It wasn’t true, what I’d told Lock. I didn’t sleep any more that night, thinking about what it used to be like in my house—how safe I used to be. I remembered listening as my dad had walked the halls, remembered watching as he looked in on the boys asleep, pretending to sleep when he looked in on me. Or maybe those were someone else’s memories too, like grandparents who weren’t mine and a blue house with a garden I’d most likely never seen. It seemed impossible for that man to be the man I knew now.
I stared into the darkness, exhausted. I was tired of thinking. I felt like all I’d done in the past few weeks was think and work on this game of Lock’s.
That wasn’t true either. I’d been lazy, letting Lock run all the errands and do all the searching while I kept all the secrets. The only evidence I’d managed to collect had been a worthless police file. The collective of everything I’d done had only managed to end with me getting tossed around our patio.
All of that had to stop. It was time for me to step up.
Problem was, I didn’t know what that meant, exactly.
I could turn my father in, though it didn’t take much to deduce the eventualities of that choice. If they believed me, a detective serial killer would go viral, infecting all the screens in England. We’d be celebrities. Labeled. Separated. In the system. And every plan I’d ever made for my life would evaporate.
Worse, and the more probable outcome, they wouldn’t believe me. They’d send Mallory and Day back to my door to assure me and shut me up. They’d pat me on the head, make apologies to my father, and leave. I’d be stuck in a house with a killer who knew I knew he did it, and my chances of living through that . . .
Don’t turn him in? I knew he had only one more target. I also knew he was deteriorating. If he couldn’t find her? If her death wasn’t enough to quell whatever it was that made him take a sword into Regent’s Park . . .