My accuser.
I couldn’t seem to move from where I stood, but I could see the future so clearly. Someone would call the police, if they hadn’t already. And then the press. And there I’d be, the nasty daughter of a killer, who’d slaughtered the only witness to her own crimes. Maybe, just maybe, Mallory would believe that I wasn’t stupid enough to kill a person at my doorstep. But he couldn’t be counted on to rescue me from this. He never could.
This story would be a whisper of doubt about my father’s guilt that could only grow into a scream of accusation against me. In the press? I could become the real Regent’s Park Killer by the end of the week. No mere detective inspector could keep me out of jail when there was a body lying at my feet. And my father? There was no world in which he wouldn’t jump on the opportunity to point all fingers at me—to claim it’d been me all along and he was merely protecting me as best he could. And with the help of his few remaining lackeys, I was willing to bet they’d find key pieces of evidence against me within hours. And then it would take only a judge’s signature to free him.
They couldn’t possibly pin it on me forever, of course. It was an obvious setup—one more piece of paper to add to Mallory’s file of proof that I had an enemy. But it wouldn’t take more than a day of my father’s freedom and my imprisonment for him to steal away my brothers to somewhere I could never find them again.
I didn’t know how long I’d been standing in the doorway, staring down at a dead woman, but that thought—the thought of me in prison and the monster free to torment my brothers—that thought was what finally made me move.
I grabbed a bag, Alice’s scarf, and one of Freddie’s baseball caps from the hooks near the door. Mallory would have to take me in on suspicion of murder, and I’d have to endure it. But first I needed to talk to Alice. She needed to get my brothers out of town, and it needed to be now.
I tried to call her, but her mobile was turned off, as was Freddie’s. “Because they’re in the hospital,” I said aloud. And every extra second I spent in this house made it more likely I’d be taken into police custody before I could even find out if Michael had woken up, if his surgery had been a success. So I pulled the cap down low on my brow, wrapped the scarf around my neck to cover some of my face, and ran from the house.
“Who is that woman?” An older woman, whom I recognized as a neighbor from two houses down, stood at the bottom of our stairs, a look of pure terror on her face. “The police will be here any minute.”
My escape route was cut off by this neighbor—a woman who never seemed to notice the banged-up kids coming out of our house or hear the drunken rantings of our father but managed to see a dead woman sprawled across our stoop. Of course she did.
As if on cue, I saw a couple of cars with flashing blue lights coming down the street, which meant I was out of time.
“Free our sergeant! Free Moriarty!” Mrs. Greeves came stomping down the street from the other direction.
“God,” I whispered, for the first time hating that woman with every fiber. I no longer cared about her agency or attitude. I just wanted Mrs. Greeves to see reason. More important, I wanted to know how she knew to come to my house at all.
A small crowd of people gathered around me as I stood there. My senses became overwhelmed as they shouted, flashed their mobile phone cameras at me, and pushed in closer. I tried to break away from them, but it was as though the crowd moved with me and reformed no matter which way I went. And then I saw some news vans zoom around the corner.
A hand reached out from the throng, grabbing my wrist with a grip made of iron. I couldn’t shake it off or break free. All I could do was duck and weave around bodies as the hand pulled me through. Soon, I was pulled up alongside a body that smelled of clove cigarettes and felt like my Lock. He pulled my hood over my cap and smashed my head against his chest so that I was walking in awkward sideways steps and trusting him to help me maneuver.
He guided me into the backseat of a town car and shoved people out of the way to close the door behind us. One last flash went off before he could, and I heard words that echoed through the silence long after we’d pulled away.
“Aren’t you Sherlock Holmes? Where are you taking her?”
Sherlock Holmes. The crowd had named him, which meant it was only a matter of time before he was named to police and to the press. And because he came to my rescue, he’d now be tainted as that kid who lied for the real killer.
“Are you okay?” the question came from the driver’s seat, which was occupied by Mycroft.