“Screen’s cracked,” she said, tossing it to me.
“I’ll charge it to him.” I scrolled through my contacts. “Here. Hold on.”
“Detective Shepard.”
“Shepard,” I said into the phone. “I—”
Lucien shoved hard against me; two seconds later, Holmes had her gun trained on him again. Check him for weapons, I mouthed to her, and she started patting down his legs. “Hi.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Well. No,” I said into the phone, as Holmes pulled a sheathed knife out of Lucien’s sock. “We’re in the men’s bathroom at Arnold’s restaurant in New York City. Lucien Moriarty married my mother, and now I have him pinned to the floor, and Holmes is here with a gun, and someone’s called the cops.”
“You—you what?”
Holmes darted in around me and yanked a gun out from inside his blazer. Then she pulled out his wallet and his mobile and his passport, one two three, with the clean skill of a pickpocket. Her other hand was steady on the gun.
The hammering on the door was getting harder. “Police!”
“Like I said. Listen, Shepard, I want you to know that we’re going to have to leave him here—”
“Police!”
“—but I can give you the full story when I see you.” Holmes made an all-clear sign with her hands. I nodded.
“This isn’t my jurisdiction,” Shepard was saying.
“I sort of thought you should know anyway.”
“Fine—then get down to the station.”
“Later. We’re kind of busy.”
“Jesus, Jamie, get down there now—” But I’d already hung up. Holmes was stuffing Lucien’s things into her tiny bag.
“Police! We’re opening this door!” Someone throwing their shoulder against it. A splintering sound.
The adrenaline was starting to make its way out of my system. The glow of it, the sudden clarity, the confidence, it was going, and when I got up off Lucien Moriarty I had to wince when I kicked him to stay down.
I was going to do jail time, I realized. It wasn’t even a question anymore.
Holmes nodded to the window. I clambered up onto the sink, then pulled her up next to me, and for a moment, she was flush against me, warm, her hair just under my nose, and I bent to make a cradle with my hands to hoist her up, the way I did when we first met, when I was helping her climb into Dobson’s dorm room. We were better at it now. On the first push up she had the window open; on the second she was out, and reaching a hand down to help me.
The bathroom door cracked, like lightning striking a tree. Lucien Moriarty was stumbling to his feet. Outside, people were screaming.
But I grabbed Charlotte Holmes’s hand, and I scrabbled up the wall with my shoes, and she pulled me out onto the corner of Broadway and Prince. The second we got to our feet, we started to run.
Twenty-Four
Charlotte
WE NEEDED A BOLT-HOLE, SOMEWHERE WE COULD HIDE. They would check the trains. They would check the taxis and the toll stations and the rental cars. They would check the airports now too, and so I supposed if going to London tonight had still been on the docket, it wasn’t anymore.
Possibilities:
Return to the Green apartment.
Fall on my sword in front of Hadrian Moriarty, ask for sanctuary.
Locate an empty Airbnb, break in.
Hide temporarily and call DI Green for assistance.
Leander might be back at the Green apartment; we might lead the chase back to his door. I didn’t dare contact him in case he was currently being questioned. The second option was suicidal, and the third, if we misjudged even slightly, would involve us waking up vacationers by breaking into their rental. That meant more police. The fourth—the fourth had possibility.
I dragged Watson into an alley, down behind a Dumpster at the far end. A moment passed, and then a police car raced by. The next one got stuck behind a snarl of traffic. Its siren bayed on and on, like a hound.
“I’m calling the Yard,” I whispered. Watson nodded.
It was the middle of the night in London, but DI Green was awake. “Hi, Stevie,” she said.
“Yes. Hi. I need a bolt-hole in Lower Manhattan.”
“What did you do to Lisa’s apartment?”
“Nothing. We just—we had a physical altercation with Lucien Moriarty in a public restroom in SoHo.”
“We who?”
“Watson and I.”
“Yes. Brilliant. Well done.”
“Help or don’t,” I hissed, “but spare me the smart remarks.”
“I hear sirens,” she grumbled, but I could hear her typing. “Fine. Listen, I meant to speak to you anyway. We made contact today with a new source.”
“Who?”
“Merrick Morgan-Vilk. He’s in your area. I’ll call him to say that I’m sending you to him. Here, I have an address, do you have a pen handy?”
Watson made a horrible strangled sound. A rat had made its way out of the Dumpster and was now crawling across his shoes.
“No,” I said. “But I have a fairly good memory.”
Twenty-Five
Jamie
I REALIZED, AS WE WERE USHERED IN THE BACK ENTRANCE of the Morgan-Vilk residence, that my shirt was covered in Lucien Moriarty’s blood. Or maybe my own. It was hard to tell. Holmes, who was always so fastidiously clean, was filthy. Her red dress had gone brown and ragged at the bottom, and her legs below it were all-over cuts and dirty-looking bruises. She and I stood together in the kitchen like a pair of murderous orphans in the thick of the Black Plague.
The kitchen itself was unremarkable—cabinets, table, a stainless steel sink. From what I could tell from the stairs leading upstairs, Morgan-Vilk was renting the bottom two floors of a brownstone.
The girl who let us in eyed us warily. “Mr. Morgan-Vilk has just gone to get some documents.”
“Yes,” Holmes said. “Fine. Who are you?”
“My colleague,” said Milo Holmes, sitting at the kitchen table, as his assistant exited quietly. I jumped about a mile. I hadn’t seen him there. From the way that Holmes’s eyes widened, then narrowed, she hadn’t seen him either. Which was a first, as far as I could tell.
Maybe it was because Milo looked nothing like himself. A tracksuit. A massive beard. No glasses, and his hair long, tied up in a knot on the top of his head. An empty glass in front of him, and a bottle.
“No,” Holmes said, edging back toward the door. “No, absolutely not,” and for a hysterical moment I thought she was talking about his man bun.
“Sit,” he said, and I was shocked to hear a slur on his words, as though he’d been drinking. “Sit, or I’ll drag you back into this house and tie you to that goddamn chair.”
I’d always been afraid of Milo Holmes—it would be stupid not to be—but in that moment I was terrified.
Holmes was impassive, but she sat down across from him slowly, as though he might lunge at her. “DI Green sent me. I’m here for Merrick Morgan-Vilk.”
“You always assume I don’t know these things,” Milo said. He splashed more whiskey into his glass. “You never learn, do you.”
I swallowed. “Why are you here, Milo?”
“Jamie,” he said, with extravagant scorn. “I’m being so rude, forgive me. Perhaps you’d like a change of clothes? Either of you?”
“No, thank you. Milo—”
“Stop looking at me like a pair of frightened rabbits.” He brought the glass to his lips. “I wanted you here. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Holmes watched his throat as he swallowed. “Are you in touch with DI Green?”
“Detective Inspector Green was the one who reached out to me, girl.” That, from a voice booming down the stairs. “Hold on, hold on. Yes, hello.” Merrick Morgan-Vilk was a bit out of breath. He had a document box balanced on his well-fed waistline, and he greeted us with a politician’s smile. By habit, I jumped to my feet. Holmes extended her hand up from her chair.
“Merrick,” Milo said. “Miss Holmes would like to know what’s ‘going on here.’” The air quotes were almost visible.
He dropped the document box down on the table. “Our friend Milo here—”
Milo saluted.
“—has introduced me to his friends on the United Nations Security Council. I’m here working with an exploratory committee.”