“And Mrs. Patel only handed seven to the bag lady. The five used to make your letter were missing.”
I frowned and let my mind drift a bit. “What is the point, though? What possible reason would someone have to send me a drawing and a threatening letter? What do they want?”
“They want you to confess.”
“To what end?”
He shrugged. “Two possibilities. They think you’re a conspirator with your father and want you to go to prison with him.”
“Or?”
“Or they think you’re the culprit.”
“And want my father to go free?”
He was quiet, but my mind reeled. Suddenly, Mrs. Greeves’s picket signs and screaming all felt more sinister. “You recognized our protester?”
Sherlock nodded and sat back in his chair again, steepling his fingers and resting them at his chin. “She has access to the magazines.”
“And wants my dad free, though I’ve no idea why.”
“She’s older though. Too old to have a son who builds models. And I don’t think she’s our witness or artist either.”
“Why?”
“You said she wants your father freed. Does she strike you as the kind to wait for your confession? I say she’d just go directly to the police if she had witnessed the act herself.”
I pushed my fingers into my hair and rocked back in my theater seat. We’d gone from no suspects to too many in the space of an afternoon, and there were too many variables and not enough real data to find an answer that meant anything. It was all just randomness. No pattern.
“Have you heard of Ulam’s spiral?” I asked.
“No.”
“It has to do with prime numbers. There’s not supposed to be a pattern to primes. They’re distributed through the integer string seemingly at random. But when this mathematician named Ulam doodled numbers into a spiral, the primes started to line up diagonally.”
“Line up?” He smiled at me like I was about to tell him the most fascinating of stories.
“It doesn’t matter which number you start with at the center of your spiral or how many numbers you use. It doesn’t even matter what shape your spiral is. If you write integers in a spiral pattern and circle the primes, you will have a diagonal line of circles. A pattern from randomness.”
“A pattern from randomness? Is that what you see here?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. But it has to be there, doesn’t it? If we just manage to circle our primes.”
Lock stared at me and waited for me to speak again. When I did not, he asked, “Tell me what you’re thinking?”
I focused on Lily, who sat down on the spot-lit stage, alone for once. Then I followed a taped-off line that came from under her uniform skirt and crossed the stage diagonally until it was interrupted by a knee—a knee that belonged to her Watson. I wondered then if he knew he’d done it. If ?Watson had connected them on the stage on purpose or subconsciously, or perhaps it had been a mere coincidence. Just two people sitting on a large plane with an accidental line drawn between them. A pattern from randomness.
“I wonder who will be at the end of my diagonal line,” I said. I leaned on the armrest between us and tried my best to lighten my tone to hide the darker turn of my thoughts. “When the random reveals its pattern, who will emerge?”
Sherlock turned in his seat until we were face-to-face, suddenly closer than we’d been even the day before. “Don’t turn away,” he said quietly.
I still felt the need to put more space between us, but I resisted. Had the turning away just become habit? Was I thinking too much?
He started to speak a few times, taking small breaths, then huffing them out. Finally, he said, “No matter who is facing you at the end of your line, I will be next to you. Do you believe that?”
I wanted to believe, wanted to dismiss the way my brain screamed it wasn’t true, couldn’t possibly be true, that he’d only ever stand on the side of what he thought was right regardless of where I’d be standing. My thoughts fell into a blaring turmoil as I held Lock’s gaze. And I was so tired of the noise of it. Of the unending mental noise whenever what I knew of the world warred with what I wanted. What I needed.
Lock reached up, and I almost flinched. He must have felt it somehow too, because he slowed the movement of his hand. And the very moment he rested his palm against my cheek, the noise stopped. My mind fell blank. Or maybe it was just that I suddenly became hyperaware of the rush of blood to my heart.
He traced my cheekbone with his thumb. “Can you believe that?”
I shook my head slightly, but covered his hand with my own so he wouldn’t pull away. I wasn’t sure I could take it if he stopped touching me just then. “Make me,” I said. “Make me believe you.”