“But it got muddy, didn’t it. It got muddy when he came to work for my family. All this began there. Not with the drugs in the car, not with my stupid crush. It started when August walked through our front door. When he started playing politics. Because it was a political decision, wasn’t it? He wanted a favor from my father. My father, whose last name made him nobler than you, no matter what terrible things he’d done. In the eyes of the world, you and your family would always be less than. Because you were a Moriarty.”
“Brilliant,” Lucien said, hoarsely. I wished I could see his face. “How much did you pay for that psychology course?”
“I’ve had quite a bit of time to think about it,” Holmes was saying. “I’ve had some time to put it together. I know, for instance, why you’ve turned a corner since August has died. Oh, sure, fucking with me was your hobby, but before his death it was never your full-time job. Bryony Downs? You encouraged her with a few phone calls, then let her do the rest. Hadrian and Phillipa? You don’t trust either of them enough to tie your shoes, much less kill me. And poisoning my mother—that you arranged on your own, I’m sure of it, but you didn’t stir yourself to do it. But look at us now. All together, one happy family. Honestly, Lucien—marrying Watson’s mother? Kidnapping his sister? That’s grandstanding, and you know it.”
“Grief does that to a man,” Lucien said. I couldn’t believe that he was still standing there, listening to her; I couldn’t believe I was still alive.
“Of course you’re grieving,” Holmes snapped. “Grief doesn’t make you chuck over your whole life to go hunt down a teenage girl at her boarding school. No, it’s more than that.
“I think you were happy when you thought August was dead. I think you were relieved. You could put him back up on his pedestal—no more of his pesky little life choices, clouding up the narrative. You could make him a saint again.
“And when he died the second time, on the Holmeses’ estate, by a Holmes’s hand, you saw a way to rewrite the story. A girl like me? A villain like me? I was an opportunity. What if the Moriartys were the victims all along? What if—horror of horrors—they were the heroes?”
“Shut your mouth,” Lucien snarled, and I knew, then, that she’d won.
And that her victory didn’t matter, not at all.
Because he was going to kill me, quite literally, at her feet. To make a point. As though I were a bag of garbage he needed to spill out on the ground.
I guess I won’t be going to prison, then, I thought. I wanted badly, then, to look up at Holmes, to see what she was thinking, but I was too afraid to move my head.
A SCUFFLING SOUND. A DOOR OPENING. “GIRL,” LUCIEN was saying, and I could make out a small figure next to him, a bag over her head. “Come here.” When she didn’t move, he said, again, “Come,” and for a moment, his flashlight beam blinked off, and we were in darkness.
“Faster,” Lucien was saying.
The world sharpened slightly around me. Something had changed. Something small. A click. Where had it come from? From behind me?
Was it just wishful thinking?
Maybe it was, because Lucien hadn’t heard it. “Take the gun from the holster on my hip,” he said to the girl, and he clicked his flashlight on, its light trained on the floor.
Why did Lucien need two guns?
In that small moment of distraction, Holmes dropped something small and hard onto my legs. The backs of my calves, specifically, which were out of Lucien’s sight. She tapped her foot on the floor, once, in confirmation. She wanted me to know that she had done what she had done on purpose.
“Bring the gun to Charlotte,” Lucien told the girl, and she did. Slowly, with dragging steps, and as she came closer, I could feel my vision start to go. I had assumed, dully, that he had dragged out Anna again—but this girl was smaller. Slighter. Was she? Was I just imagining things?
All I knew was that she had on a pair of gray Converses with mismatched laces—one pink, one green.
My sister, Shelby, had shoes like that.
“Holmes,” I said, low, and she said, “Watson. I know.”
“Shut up,” Lucien said, and I saw then that he was shaking. “Don’t talk! Neither of you says a word, or this ends the fast way. Now, Shelby.” Lucien lifted his gun so that it was pointed at Holmes. His flashlight ran over my face, my shoulders.
The backs of my legs.
I caught my breath.
Shelby paused. She paused. And she handed Holmes the gun and backed away, backlit, that gunnysack over her head like a girl playing a game, like a demon from a story.
“Kneel,” Lucien said. “Now, girl. At my feet.”
I couldn’t help it—I made a horrible, inarticulate sound.
“Charlotte. Keep the gun pointed to the ceiling. This is how we’re going to do this,” Lucien said. “You’ll follow my directions, or I’ll shoot the girl right here. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Holmes said, steadily.
“Take three steps to your left. Keep the gun pointed up. Good. Turn. Back toward the boy. That’s it. And the gun should be—ah, I see you’ve guessed it already. Clever girl. The gun should be pointed at little Shelby’s head.”
I couldn’t help it—I wrenched my head around to stare at Holmes. I needed the confirmation. Her pale face, the long line of her arms, the pistol at the end of them.
Lucien laughed, softly. “You’ve been so quiet, Jamie. You don’t have any questions for me?”
“Holmes,” I said. “Holmes—please. Lucien. You don’t want this. You don’t. You can just have her—you can have her shoot me.”
“You?” he asked, idly.
I swallowed and plowed on. “Wouldn’t that be worse? Her killing her best friend? Like, if you wanted to punish her—or me—”
“We are done,” Lucien snarled, “guessing at my motives. We only have a minute, you know. But you know? I’ll humor you. I am punishing you. How about, even if you get out of this, somehow, your life will still be utterly ruined? How about, you’ll spend every night wondering what you could have done to save your sister’s life?
“Try this—how about, how your mother is doing, back in the hotel room, crying over how her son is the kind of delinquent who beats up his new stepfather in a restaurant bathroom? No questions about what she’ll say when they find your body here and haul away your ex-girlfriend in irons for this? She’ll have no one to shelter her. No sympathetic parents, no brother, no Watsons to take her in. No money. No one but herself.” He hummed a little. “I’m hoping to use my influence to get Charlotte committed, you know. I know this wonderful little hospital in D.C. that might be able to help her—I’ve been setting up a room for her there. Not a lot in it, truth be told, but then again, she won’t need all that much—”
“No,” I said, my skin crawling. “I don’t have any questions for you.” I wasn’t going to go out listening to Lucien Moriarty monologue. And even if Holmes had come up with some kind of escape plan, if she had dropped a pistol or a knife or a bomb for me to use to get us out of this, I couldn’t reach for it without Lucien gunning Shelby down first.
Maybe I wasn’t brave enough to try.
That was that, then.
“Shelby,” I said, desperately, “it’s okay—”
“Don’t speak to her,” Lucien said, “or I will kill all three of you. You have a minute, Charlotte. James, you have permission to change your girlfriend’s mind. It’s Shelby’s life, or hers.”
I couldn’t see well, it was true. The light from the phone flattened the world out, made it bright, took its detail away. Holmes looked like an illustration. A black-and-white sketch. Her long black sleeves, her shaking white hands, the gun. She had pointed it right between my eyes.
I was close enough to see that she had bitten her lip through completely.
“Hey,” I said. “Hey. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” she whispered. “Of course it’s not.”
“It will be. You’re going to be okay.”
Holmes shook her head tightly. “Me? We are not talking about me—”
“We are,” I said. “We are. Holmes, I can’t make this decision. I’m not deciding between the two of you. I don’t—I can’t—whatever you choose—the hard part’s almost over.”
She was still shaking her head. “I knew this would happen. What’s the point of knowing if you can’t stop it?”
Shelby wavered back and forth on her knees.
“No. Hey. You couldn’t have changed this. Don’t worry—”