“Fine.” I waved Day away from me with the word and moved out of the room without looking back. “Restroom,” I said, when I heard him following me up the stairs.
I ran ahead and quickly escaped into the nearest ladies’ room, but barely made it into a stall before everything crashed over me. I’d let him do it to me again. He was behind bars and I was free, and still he was the ogre growling and I was the little girl putting on airs. I tried to tell myself he was as wrong about me as he was wrong about everything else, but all I could see in my mind was the blank look on Lock’s face when he’d pictured who I’d be without the law.
Am I more afraid of you or myself? he’d asked.
I couldn’t see anything but Lock’s fear as he asked the question, even as my father’s voice came back to haunt me with another. You think someone’ll love you if they know the truth about who you are?
“No,” I whispered aloud. “I don’t expect he will.”
I swiped a few tears from my cheeks and tried to focus on the fact that my brothers were safe at home. None of them would be hiding away when I got there, waiting for me to patch up their wounds. And my father would be stuck in a cage for the rest of his life.
That had to be enough for now.
Chapter 8
I was still shaky when I ventured from the ladies’ room and out into the echoing hall. I expected to be confronted by a harried DS Day but instead came face-to-face with the calm, disinterested gaze of Detective Inspector Mallory, who stood awkwardly in the middle of the hall with his hands pulled behind his back. He was even flanked by two uniformed policemen, making him look every bit the prisoner he deserved to be.
“Were you crying, Miss Moriarty?”
“What do you want?”
“You are being detained.” He nodded to the officers, who started toward me from either side.
I backed up until I was against the ladies’ room door. “What are you talking about?”
Mallory didn’t answer, so when one officer reached for me, I made my sidestep as natural as possible, then walked forward, out of reach of the second, but all without seeming to dodge them. When I was mere inches from Mallory, I quietly said, “Call them off. I’ll go with you, but I won’t be manhandled over another of my father’s stupid games.”
Mallory was just as quiet when he said, “This has nothing to do with your father.” He released his arms from behind his back and held a sword in front of me. My mother’s aikido sword, or at least an exact copy. “We got a tip from someone claiming that you threw this in the Regent’s Park lake.”
It took everything in me not to react, but I perhaps allowed too much of a pause before I said, “That’s ridiculous.”
“Not completely ridiculous. We found it right where the witness said it would be.”
“And by ‘witness,’ you obviously mean my father.”
“Do you blame him for everything?” Mallory motioned to his goons and then turned down another hall that held more interview rooms.
As soon as I sat at the interview table, Mallory joined me, placing the sword on the table between us. He cleared his throat and one of the officers came in, glaring at me and placing a file folder in front of Mallory. Mallory waved him out. I waited patiently, even when the inspector took an obviously long time to peruse the papers in the folder. He finally looked up, but the minute he opened his mouth, I pressed call on my mobile, holding it to my ear before he could object.
“Yes, Aunt Alice? The police are attempting to question me without my legal guardian present.”
“What happened?” Alice asked. “Where are you?”
“I understand. That’s what I thought you’d say. I’ll just stay here at the West End station until you come for me.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Of course I won’t answer their questions until you get here.”
I hung up, placing the phone in front of me. Mallory tried his best not to reveal his irritation, but I watched his jaw clench and unclench, and his lips flattened when he reached to snatch my mobile off the table. He left without a word, leaving me to sit at the interview table, with nothing to do but think. The very last thing I wanted just then.