“Can’t it wait until we know her brother came out of surgery okay?”
Mallory paused again, then said, “Twenty-four hours. It’s all I can give her. Then she has to come to the station.”
“Twenty-four hours,” Alice echoed, then ended the call.
Our eyes met and then I said, “I can’t stay.”
“I know. Take your boy with you.”
I shook my head. “No, he can be here to help you.”
Alice suddenly grinned. “I’ll make do. If I can’t turn a couple of hospital security guards into my soldiers, what good am I?”
This is exactly why my mother loved you, I thought. But aloud I said, “Thank you.”
? ? ?
I practically ran into Sherlock on my way back to where we’d left him with my brothers. Mrs. Hudson was there, pulling Seanie and Freddie into a hug.
“Oh, my special boys! How I’ve missed you.”
“We used to be her special boys,” Mycroft said, from somewhere behind me. “I might need to spend a little more time with the old girl to win her back.”
I spun in place to face him. “I’ve an opportunity for you, then.”
Mycroft immediately caught on to my scheme. “Leaving us so soon?”
I ignored his question to ask one of my own. “Did Sherlock call you?”
“No,” Lock said, stepping up beside me. “I didn’t.”
And yet there was Mycroft, with Mrs. Hudson. With the distance he had to travel to leave his work and collect her, he would have had to have found out about the accident before I did.
Mycroft’s expression fell and his voice was gentle when he asked, “How is Michael?”
“We don’t know yet. How did you know he was injured?”
He glanced at Lock and then back to me. “I heard about the accident through . . . channels, and—”
“And you dropped everything to come here?” Lock asked. “I don’t think so.”
Mycroft pulled at the cuffs of his shirt and looked past me to where the boys were sitting with Mrs. Hudson. “There was nothing pressing.”
Lock made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a cough. “What do you know?”
“I know that Mori needs answers to much more important questions than yours.”
He was right. I squeezed Lock’s hand to keep him from voicing the protest I clearly saw in his expression, and then asked Mycroft, “How long can you stay here and look after things for me?”
Mycroft checked his mobile. “Four p.m. tomorrow.” He seemed amused at my surprise and said, “I came prepared to stay.” His eyes drifted down the hall to where two men in black suits sat, one reading and the other playing a game on his mobile. But their eyes followed every passerby until each was clear of the bench where my brothers sat. “I came prepared for a lot of eventualities.”
“Why?” I asked. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t helped numerous times before. But this time was different. This time he came without my request and brought backup. Not only that, Mycroft was grieving himself, and here I was asking him to spend the night in the place where he’d just lost his mother.
“I’ve grown rather fond of your brothers,” he said. “You promised me that man would never get his hands on them again. I plan to hold you to that.”
I stood there dumbly, because I didn’t know what to say. I suddenly didn’t even know if I could leave, now that I was faced with it. Could I just walk away, not knowing how Michael was or if he’d even survive? Could I live with myself if he woke up for a short time and found I’d abandoned him?
Alice must have seen my inner fight somehow. “Go. I’ll call with news.”
I glanced between Mycroft and Alice and then made myself leave. Sherlock followed along like a good soldier for a few strides, but we’d barely made it halfway across the lobby when he resisted enough to stop me.
“Where are we going?”
“I’ll explain on the way.”
He pulled me back toward him. “Maybe you should stay here as well. What if your father sends someone after you?”
“Then I should be as far away from this place and my brothers as possible.”
“You’re more vulnerable out there. What if someone hurts you this time?”
“Better me than them.” I looked directly into Lock’s eyes when I spoke again, and somehow, despite the boiling heat I’d felt rise in me at the mere mention of my father, I managed to keep my voice steady. “Let him. Let him hurt me. Let him kill me in their place if it will make him stop.”
Lock paused then said, “It won’t.”
He stepped closer to me again, and I didn’t move away this time. He wouldn’t keep me from leaving, but I needed him to focus on what was important, not on what could possibly happen.
“You’re right that he won’t stop. While he breathes, wherever he is, he will come for those boys. This will happen over and over again, and if I am in his way, he will cut me down to get to them.” I met Lock’s gaze, moving closer still so that all he could see was my sincerity. “Maybe you don’t understand the level of my priorities when it comes to those three boys, because I’m not good at being their sister most days. Perhaps if they had better . . .”