I wasn’t sure if he was speechless in exasperation or just had nothing else to say, but he threw himself back into the seats. I felt suddenly exhausted and might have slumped back into mine if he’d kept his mouth shut. But as always, he was incapable.
“You weren’t alone. Because I was always there, ready to fight with you. You chose to be alone. You chose it.”
I shook my head. Had I actually expected him to understand? “You’re right, aren’t you? Always right. And here you can be right again. You and your pathetic mind games. How brilliant is the ever-right Sherlock Holmes.”
I turned toward the door to stop looking at him, and he reached for my arm. It was such a small space, I couldn’t seem to get far enough away to escape his touch. But the very moment his fingers closed around my wrist, I shook him off and turned on him.
“Don’t touch me.”
He lifted his hands in the air and leaned back, but his expression fell to nothing. He was blank again, even in his voice. “Don’t leave.”
“What do you want from me? Do you want me to say it aloud? My father is a killer. A serial killer who hunts down my mother’s old friends and slaughters them in Regent’s Park. Does that make it better for you?” I wiped at my cheeks and slid into my seat again, careful not to allow our knees to touch. I couldn’t stand the thought of any part of me touching him right then. “Did you just need to hear me say it?”
He folded his hands in front of him and stared at me, like he was forcing himself not to look away. “No.”
“Then what do you want, Lock? If I had said it yesterday? The day before? Would that make it better?”
He didn’t answer, and for some reason that made me unreasonably angry. “Do you think I want this? I live in that house. With him and my brothers. And every moment I’m with you is a moment that I’m not there to protect them. I’m the only one they’ve got left, and there’s nothing I can do about that or about him. So what would you have me do about it? Because I’m doing everything I know how to do and there are no answers. So you tell me, Lock. What do you want me to do?”
He was so silent, we could only hear the train noises and the sound of my breathing, which was heavier than it should have been.
The blank of his expression broke right before he spoke, and it pierced through me, so that I had to look away and couldn’t in the same moment. “I want you to trust me.”
“I wanted to protect you.” I responded so quickly, I didn’t really have time to think about what I was saying. But it was true. “I had to protect you from this. I had to protect us all as best I could.”
“By doing nothing?”
His words slapped out at me and I had to pause until the sting of it faded. “Not nothing. I did everything I could. I found out who he was killing. I found the woman who was to be his last victim and warned her so that she could hide. And I lived in that house, even when I never wanted to step through the door again, even when every second I had to share the same bloody air as him was torture.”
“You could have gone to the police.”
“He is police!” I covered my eyes and slumped in my seat so that the backs of my hands almost touched the table in front of us. “The police won’t help. They never help. And they won’t believe it anyway. I’ve covered his tracks.”
“That day you went to the park without me.”
I ignored that. I didn’t want to think about what an idiot I’d been that day in the park. “I took the sword away from him. He can’t use it anymore.”
“I saw you leave.”
I dropped my hands from my eyes and made myself look at Lock again. I should’ve been surprised, probably. Mad, maybe. But I was just tired and sad. I was stupid enough to believe I could escape this moment, but it was always coming. “They will never believe he did it without even the weapon he used.”
“It doesn’t matter. You can tell them what you did. They can find it.”
“I already told them I was with him when the last man was killed in the park.”
“You gave him an alibi. Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t planned—”
“Planned!” Exasperation must have made Sherlock forget himself, because he lifted his hand to rest it over mine and then stopped himself.
A simple gesture, but it took its toll on me. “I didn’t mean to do it, is all.”
“Well, it won’t matter either. We can still prove it. We’ll convince them with logic. I figured it out.”
“And then what? If we do manage to convince the cops that all these killings have been done by one of their own—which will never, ever happen—then what?”