Mind Games

by Heather W. Petty

  I stroked my thumbs across his knuckles and met his teary eyes. “I promise. I won’t leave.”

  That didn’t seem to reassure him, but he didn’t ask again. Instead, he pulled me down onto his bed, facing him so he could keep watching me. I forced myself to be still and to watch him back, even when it was so painful, I thought maybe I wouldn’t be able to breathe soon.

  Still holding both my hands in one of his, he reached up with the other to trace the way my hair framed my face. “I sometimes think I’m losing you.”

  I said nothing. The word “temporary” was flashing through my mind again, and as much as I wanted to shoo those thoughts away, I wasn’t sure I could say the words he needed me to say right then—not confidently, anyway.

  “But then, I suppose you can’t truly lose something that never belonged to you. Can you?”

  I cleared my throat a little before answering. “No. You can’t.”

  “And if I were to tell you that you could lose me?” he asked.

  I wanted to answer that I knew I would. That as much as I wanted him to stay, I was sure he’d most likely hate me in the end. But instead I asked, “Could I?”

  He attempted a smile but failed. “You ask the question, but you don’t think you could.”

  I didn’t answer, even after his smile dropped and his hand came up to cup my cheek.

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  I looked up at the ceiling, traced a tiny crack that curved around one of the light fixtures and then out the door. “It was just a dream, Sherlock. I’m still here.”

  “For how long?”

  “For as long as you need.”

  He attempted another smile and then leaned in to kiss my forehead. “I wish that were true,” he whispered against my skin.

  I held my tears until he fell asleep, and when he did finally drift off, I couldn’t seem to cry anymore. I got up and went to the window. When I rested my forehead against the glass, I could just see my house from where I stood. It looked peaceful without me there. So did Sherlock, resting in his bed alone, finally at peace. All of this peace in the spaces without me. As if I was the reason for the chaos. As if maybe, if I just removed myself from everything . . .

  I really was the worst kind of person. All of Lock’s pleading for me to stay, and I suddenly could only entertain thoughts of running away, of the endless relief it would be to just escape and start over. I could use Detective Mallory’s theory as my excuse, that all the recent happenings were because of some enemy I’d made without knowing. I could leave behind a note that said my leaving would end the chaos.

  I could almost believe that, too, if it weren’t for one thing—my father’s obsession with my brothers. He’d never leave them alone, regardless of how far away I ran. I was nothing more than an obstacle to his prize when it came to those boys. And I could never leave them to him. Not while I still lived.

  I supposed that meant I hadn’t lied to Sherlock. I’d stay. But it also meant he was wrong. I knew I could lose him. And I knew my father would probably be the reason why. Just then, watching Lock from the window seat, I wished so much that I were a different Mori, from a different family—that I could be Lock’s Mori, the girl he wanted me to be. I wished I had the freedom to stay only for him.

  Chapter 19

  I woke up sitting in the chair by Lock’s bed, my neck sore and my body feeling anything but rested. Lock was up and dressed already and waiting for me in his window seat. He met my eyes briefly, then looked back out the window and took a long drag of his cigarette.

  I ran fingers through my hair and watched him for a bit before I asked, “Are you going somewhere?”

  “We are going to resolve my most pressing detective case.”

  There was a split second when I thought about telling him to go back to bed, to “let himself grieve” or one of the other hundred platitudes people had told me when I went back to school before it was deemed proper by whoever keeps track of those sorts of things. But I had gone back to school for the same reason Lock wanted to go finish his case. He needed something else to think about. Giving him that felt like the very least I could do.

  “And I get to watch the great Detective Holmes in action?” I stood up and stretched my arms to the ceiling.

  “I’m finished with the case of the stolen mobile phone.”

  “Sifted through the data already?”

  “The day you couldn’t go with me, I learned two facts I didn’t know before.” He twisted out the dark brown cigarette butt on the windowsill, then stood and reached for my hand without looking at me. I let him take it. “So, I’ll tell you those two truths, and you have until we reach the client’s house to come up with the answer.”

  “Very well. What are your facts?”

  “I found the missing SIM card in an odd place.”

  “Is that so?”

  “And I discovered that I’d been given inaccurate information about the state of the phone. Once those two facts came to me, it was all very simple, really. Had I known, I could have solved it in minutes.”

  I waited for the details, but he didn’t give them. Instead, he tightened his grip on my hand slightly and tried to pull me toward his bedroom door. I didn’t budge.

  “I have some new data for you as well, perhaps we could trade.”

  “About the mobile phone case?”

  I shook my head. “About my case. Or, to be more specific, about where I went with Alice the day that I couldn’t go with you.”

  Lock frowned and looked down at his watch, then back up to me. “Okay, we’ll trade. But you first, and you have to tell me on the way.”

  “Deal.”

  I told him about my little trip to the police station, the Lady Constance’s accusations, and Mallory’s sudden change of mind about my role in the murder case as we walked over to my house and while I got washed up.

  Lock’s eyes brightened when I got to the last part. “He showed you the evidence?”

  “Kind of. He showed me a photo, a statement, and a call log.”

  “Do you think he’d show you again? Or give us a copy?”

  My rueful stare did nothing to quell the hope in his eyes, and so I said, “He literally told me to leave this to the police and make sure you stay out of it.”

  Lock nodded. “Still, it’s good to know what we’re looking for.”

  “Looking for?”

  Lock only grinned and turned his back to stare out my window onto Baker Street.

  After a quick shower, I spent most of the time while drying my hair trying to figure out what evidence we’d be looking for and what facts he was still holding back on the mobile phone case. I didn’t actually ask, however, until we were walking toward the Tube station, but he only shrugged and said, “I’ll tell you on the train.”

  We didn’t say more than a few words to each other as we wound our way through the crowd to our train platform, but I was watching Lock, waiting for that break in his shield that would reveal the grieving I was sure hid just beneath the surface. But even as we stood on the platform silently, hand in hand, he acted like it was any other day. He seemed to be thinking something through but showed not even a trace of the emotions I’d expect to see from anyone else in his situation.

  I envied that—his ability to put things out of his mind for good and focus on the present. I couldn’t even seem to focus on Lock for long. The minute I looked away from him, my mind filled with the story of Lady Constance and her caretaker husband, imagining the life they must have had at Oxford when they were young, and the pain he must have felt every time he watched her Arthurian fantasy world torment her away from his reality.

  I looked down at the ground because no thoughts of my artist tormentor could pass through my mind without bringing Sadie Mae’s face from the drawing to the forefront. I couldn’t seem to scrub it from my mind no matter how hard I tried. I’d thought that seeing her dead was the worst kind of torment, but seeing the scene re-created on paper and not being able to reach
in and get my father away from her was far worse.

  My expression must have given me away. When Lock leaned closer to meet my eyes, he seemed confused for a moment, then concerned. I thought I was in the clear when he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and held me. I should have known better.

  “I want to know what is hurting you like this.”

  “Did you look at the second drawing?”

  He paused and then said, “Her death isn’t your sin. It’s his.”

  I had used my question in an attempt to deflect, and I couldn’t decide if I was angry at him or myself for letting him see right through me. “You promised once. Do you remember? We were just like this on a similar task, on a similar platform.” I pressed my cheek to his chest and continued, “You promised you wouldn’t try to solve me like one of your little games. Do you mean to keep that promise even now?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t say anything else, not until we were seated on the train. “The SIM card was in the phone owner’s desk, tucked into the back corner. And while the phone had been wiped clean of data, her home phone number and a note were added after.”

  I’d almost forgotten about the stolen phone. “What did the note say?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I smiled. “Of course it matters. It matters to everyone but you.”

  “But we know who did it without that information.”

  “Did you honestly not read it?”

  Sherlock shrugged and stared past me out the window as the train started to move.

  “She did it, of course,” I said. “The phone’s owner. Some bizarrely complex romantic gesture to make him call her. But the note would tell us why she felt the need to go to this length.”

  “Her motives are immaterial.”

  “But why would she say it was stolen in the first place?”

  “She didn’t. She asked to borrow a friend’s phone and then was too embarrassed to correct the assumption that her phone was stolen. She tried to explain it was just lost, but by then no one would listen to her. And when they found the phone in his bag, she couldn’t exactly say that she’d put it there.”

  “Her embarrassment was more important than his academic career. He’ll be pissed about that.”

  “Overjoyed, actually.”

  I stared at Lock and he shrugged.

  “Happiest I’ve ever seen him.”

  “But if you’ve already told him the happy news, why are we going to his house?”

  Lock grinned. “My most pressing case has always been yours. We still need to figure out who’s threatening you, and my client now says he owes me.”

  • • •

  The client’s name was Jason Kim, not-yet-convicted computer hacker. His room was almost a flashing neon advertisement for his unscrupulous hobby. No fourteen-year-old in London needed a setup like he had for anything casual. But instead of being rightfully suspicious of what his son was up to, Mr. Kim, the client’s father, spent the entire walk to Jason’s room bragging about his genius son.

  “Just brought him a few of the retired computer bits and bobs from work. He knew exactly what they were for, my boy. That’s my way of apologizing for the state of his room. Really can’t be helped, though. Genius is never tidy.”

  I smirked a bit, thinking of the state of both Sherlock’s lab and room and my brothers’ rooms as well. Perhaps it was truer to say that boys were never tidy.

  I was officially introduced to the back of Jason’s head first, silhouetted in front of a sea of white-blue monitor glow. Two of the monitors shifted from white-blue to black with green type dumping onto the screen much faster than any human finger movement could produce.

  “You’ve got visitors, son.”

  Jason nodded, and kept on with his typing, waving off his dad, who left quietly with a bright smile on his face.

  Once the door closed, Jason spoke without turning around. “Two minutes and I should at least have his login to the MPS website. As promised.”

  Lock seemed impressed. “Your text said it would take at least an hour only half an hour ago.”

  “What can I say?” Jason finally turned to face us, with his father’s same bright smile. “I’m just that good.”

  From the front, Jason was one of the more beautiful boys I’d ever seen. Creamy skin, dark, wide-set eyes, and perfect teeth surrounded by full lips. His thick-rimmed glasses tried to hide all that, to no avail, and when he swept them from his face, I couldn’t keep from staring. This boy had to be surrounded by girls everywhere he went, and he’d had his heart set on only one from his childhood?

  I was suddenly pretty sure of our mobile phone culprit’s motive. This was exactly the kind of boy that elicited bizarrely complex romantic gestures.

  My thoughts must have shown on my face, because when I glanced over at Lock, he looked thoroughly unhappy, which he quickly tried to cover by widening his eyes in a challenge. I shrugged at him.

  “You’re Mori, then? Sherlock tells me you’re more clever than he is.” Jason gave me a little wave, then crossed his arms.

  I didn’t wave back. “That’s entirely true.”

  Sherlock’s expression warmed a bit. “She asked me the same question you did.”

  “I guess I should just be happy that Kay wanted me to know her number.” Jason’s smile didn’t falter, but he did settle his gaze on me. “I’m told any further motive is immaterial.”

  “Oh, I can guess what the note said.” I glanced over at Sherlock’s unhappy face and gave him my best smug grin. “Regardless, I hope you call her directly.”

  “Shall I?” There was a bit of panic in Jason’s tone, and then he shook his head and stared down at the floor. “I’m not sure I could. Every time I try to talk anywhere near her, I end up sounding like a complete ass.”

  I stifled a laugh. “Do what you will. But why exactly are we here? And what is all this?” I gestured at the monitors.

  That question seemed to brighten Jason’s mood. He copied my gesture toward his monitors, but his seemed more flippant than mine. “This is all for show. Makes my dad think I’m a superhero and keeps me flush in equipment and upgrades. This, however”—he slid a small laptop forward from the mountain—“is where the magic happens. Gotta be light and portable. Just in case.”

  He threw me another bright smile that distracted me from my original question, though I was sure he hadn’t answered it. Thankfully, Lock came to my rescue.

  “He’s trying to get Mallory’s log-in so we can look at your case file,” he said, sliding his hand in mine.

  “Wait. MPS stands for Metropolitan Police Service? You’ve asked this poor boy to hack the police?”

  Jason answered. “Don’t need to. We just need to figure out how he logs in to the website, which is run by a third-party service.” Jason spun back around and started up his rapid-fire typing again. “That gives us an IP address for both his work and personal PCs and . . .”

  Watching the windows open and close on his laptop screen was both useless and a little bit dizzying. I had no idea what he was doing or how, but then he laughed and said, “It’s always so nice of them to leave their remote desktop software running for me.” And less than a minute later, he opened a window that looked like someone else’s desktop, complete with a rather arty-looking picture of Big Ben on the left side of the screen. Jason did a search for my name in the directory and copied the first few files that came up, then closed out of everything as quickly as he could.

  “Okay,” Jason said. “What are we looking for?”

  Sherlock leaned over the desk as Jason opened the files. “There should be something about a call log in there, with numbers from the anonymous tips.”

  “Okay, we have the phone numbers right here,” Jason said. “And . . .” He stood and reached behind his laptop to switch out a couple of cables and flick a switch of some kind. “We’ve got this to tell us who they belong to.” He patted a small black box next to him. “Dad works for Vodafone. He hand-delivered one
of their old servers over the weekend. With a little restoration and a backdoor to reconnect . . .” He typed for a few seconds and opened and closed a couple of screens, then seemed to find what he was looking for. “There. I’m in.”

  I leaned forward as well. “Who is it?”

  “One call was made from a high-end boutique on Church Street. And the other from what looks like a burner phone, though . . . yes! It’s still active!” He spun around and his eyes shone with his excitement. It reminded me a little of how Lock looked when he was closing in on something fascinating. “Hand me your mobile?”

  I nodded and pulled it out of my pocket.

  Jason snatched it from me and started thumbing through my screens with the same speed he’d used on his laptop. “As long as the phone is still on, you can track it.” He tapped the screen a few dozen times. “And whoever it belongs to happens to be at the boutique right now.”

  “Meaning both calls probably came from the same person.” Lock pressed his fingertips together and started to wander out of the room without even a good-bye to Jason.

  I wanted to apologize on his behalf, but Jason seemed more amused than offended. I reached out a hand for my phone.

  “Just a minute,” he said. “I’m setting up an app that will allow you to track the burner, in case the caller leaves the boutique before you get there.”

  “Thanks for doing all this.”

  “Anytime,” he said, handing back my phone. “I mean it too. You ever need anything, let me know.”

  I nodded and was about to leave, but at the last minute I said, “The note.”

  “You really think you know what it said?” He looked down as he blushed, then peered up at me through his bangs. “Would you tell me?”

  For the briefest of moments I thought I should meet this Kay girl, find out what made Jason adore her so. “It takes a good while to think of an elaborate and ridiculously flawed scheme like hers. A girl has to like her boy quite a lot to take those kinds of steps just to get him to notice her.”

  Jason hid behind his glasses again and ran a hand through his thick black hair.

  “You should call her.” I back-stepped to the doorway of his room. “And when she fumbles over her words and acts like a complete ass, try to be nice about it.”