Final Fall

by Heather W. Petty

  His accusation should have made me angry, but my mind was still so quiet, I couldn’t even manage to feel that. I just felt blank. “Go away, Lock. Nothing I do is any business of yours.”

  I started to walk away, but he made no move to follow me. He stood still, wincing at the building like he was waiting for it to explode. Despite my dismissive words, I couldn’t let him go inside, I knew that much. So I grabbed a handful of his coat and pulled him along with me, out of the main thoroughfare and down into the doorway of the convenience store next door. I let go of him by the rack of advertisements, paced away, then turned to stalk back toward him.

  “How are you here? How did you find me?”

  Lock reached into his pocket and withdrew the wrinkled, taped-together postcard. He’d retrieved the pieces from my rubbish.

  “Now explain why. Why are you following me around?”

  “I told you I’d have to stop you.”

  “And how will you do that?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted.

  “No. Never mind. I don’t want to know.” I ripped the postcard from his hand, stormed away down the alley, and kept on toward the parallel street just ahead. But thanks to stupid Trent and his stupid training, I knew that Sherlock was following me. I had planned on taking the Tube back to my hotel to make sure I was at the airport by eight. I’d planned on hiding myself away to finish my business so that there would be no more postcards, no more taunting from Alice. But if I couldn’t shake off Sherlock, she’d use him to find me, just like she’d done before.

  So I veered away from the station entrance and into the café on the right. I knew he would follow me in eventually, so I went to the counter and ordered a teapot and two cups, then sat down at a table in the very back corner, away from the window, away from the chandelier that lit up the center of the shop.

  Sure enough, Lock came in and sat across from me. He shrugged his coat off his shoulders, then stared at me expectantly, like he was waiting for answers. We sat in silence until well after the tea was delivered. I splashed some milk in the bottom of my cup and then placed a strainer and poured out the tea. I lifted the pot as a question, but Sherlock ignored me.

  “Who is Stan?”

  “No one for you to concern yourself with.”

  “But he’s a concern of yours?”

  I took a long sip of tea.

  “What did you do to him?”

  I should have said. Maybe, if I could have looked him full in the face and said the words, he would’ve been repulsed enough by me to walk away forever. Maybe that would have been the most merciful thing I could have done for Sherlock Holmes.

  But he didn’t need me to say it. Lock sounded in pain when he asked, “He would’ve hurt your brothers?”

  “And he killed a man, if the postcard’s to be believed. Does it matter? Does that make it all right?”

  He couldn’t answer that, but we both knew how he would. “Were those the only reasons? Who was he to you?”

  “What do you want to hear, Lock? That he was about to kill all the children of London? That he was an abusive guard during my imprisonment? That he took the last Crunchie bar at Boots and earned my revenge? What would make you drop it and leave me be?”

  Lock leaned back and studied my face for a second or two. “You were imprisoned?” Trust Sherlock to ferret out the one truth in the mess. “That whole time you were gone, you were locked away?”

  I didn’t answer. It didn’t matter now that we were firmly on opposite sides of his precious law. Nothing between us mattered.

  “So you didn’t choose to stay away? You didn’t hide from me while I searched all of England for you? You were taken and imprisoned?”

  I traced the lip of my teacup for a long minute before I spoke. “You almost found me.” I looked up. “The place where I was kept, it was marked on your map.”

  Lock reached for my hand, but I pulled away. He frowned at the table for a few seconds, then asked, “What happened?”

  “You were too late to save me. I was forced to save myself.” I furrowed my brow to mask the emotions that were threatening to surface. “Turns out I’m not very good at it. . . the saving.”

  There was this long pause after I spoke—a substantial, spinning kind of silence that felt like a tornado of quiet had landed between us. But I couldn’t tell if it was pushing us apart or pulling us toward its eye.

  “Am I too late?” he asked.

  He was so afraid when he asked that question. His voice was blank and cold, but I knew. And I was forced to look away, to hide my eyes.

  “I have to go.”

  I stood, dropped a few notes onto the table, and tried to leave, but Lock held my hand. That was all it took to stop me. He didn’t grab at me or even ask me to stay. He just reached out and took my hand.

  “If I had been able to find you sooner—”

  I closed my eyes, but it wasn’t enough to escape his question, so I turned my head away, even though he was behind me already.

  “If I had fought off your abusers and rescued you from your prison, could I have stopped—?”

  “No.” I said it quickly, to end his incessant talking. Every word he said felt like a weight on my chest, like my heart might stop if he said anything else. But it wasn’t enough just to silence him. I needed him to never ask again. “Because I delight in it.” I forced a smile into my voice, but I didn’t trust my expression to ring true, so I kept my back to Sherlock as I spoke. “The look of fear on their faces when they see me makes my heart race. The power I feel as I give them the justice they deserve makes me feel more alive than anything I’ve done since that first day my drunken father swung his fist at Seanie and I stepped between them.”

  I turned my head to let him see my profile and said, “You were too late to save me the day you met me, Sherlock Holmes. I was never meant to be saved by you.”

  I slid my hand free, letting my fingertips linger against his before I took my first step away. It took all my resolve to keep my walk from the café steady and calm, but the moment I was outside, I ran to the Tube station. I had this imagined fantasy of me jumping onto a train before Lock could catch me, but I didn’t even make it outside to the platform before he came up from behind and stopped me with his hand on my arm.

  “I’ve said all I have to say to you.”

  When he held me still, I batted away his hand and turned on him. “Does this make you happy? To treat me like I’m one of your mysteries? Are you on the case, detective?”

  “What about you? Have you found your happiness?”

  “Happiness.” I almost laughed. “Do you think this makes me happy?”

  “What’s the word you used? Delight?”

  “You think I get to be happy?! Can you not—”

  “Why then? Why do all this if you get nothing from it?”

  I struggled to take a breath, but the air only stuttered in and out. “For all your cleverness, you see nothing. You can spot the grass shards clinging to my feet, but nothing that matters. So tell me where I’ve been, Lock. Hm? Tell me where I’m going next. But never, ever try to tell me how I feel. You will never know.  You see nothing.”

  “I see you—”

  “Go away.”

  “I can’t!”

  I hadn’t heard him yell in a while—not since our train ride back from Lewes, when he’d finally realized all the secrets I’d kept. If only he knew how many more there were now.

  “I can’t because I have to find a way to stop you.”

  He said “stop,” but it sounded like “save” to my ears, and the cheek of that—that he would dare to think me another princess in a tower. I stepped up close to him and had to clench my jaw to keep my innate response in check. “Stop me from what? This world is a better place without those trash heaps in it. I’m cleaning house.”

  “That’s not your job.”

  I moved back as naturally as I was able. I couldn’t stay that close to him for long. “Whose job is i
t, then? The police? In case you forgot, those men are police.”

  “Were police.”

  I turned to look out the window just as the train whooshed up to the platform. I walked as quickly as I could for one of the doors. I couldn’t be left there with him for another long interval. And if I hurried—

  Lock grabbed my arm again when I was just about to board the train. “Please don’t leave. Don’t make me have to find you again.”

  I shook him off me and stepped onto the train before turning back to face him. “Don’t bother. Just call the police next time. You do believe in them so.”

  The doors shut between us, and I grabbed the nearest pole to help hold me up. To hold me together. Tears streamed down my face as we sped through a tunnel, and I’d never been more grateful for the dark. Despite everything I’d done, that boy still affected me. And I couldn’t let him. Not ever again.

  Chapter 18

  I reached Heathrow at 7:40 and stood under the purple-lit canopy of  Terminal 3 just ten minutes later. And I waited. A bubble of panic started to form inside of me at eight o’clock, so that by quarter after, I was pacing and frantic. By half past, I had almost given up when I decided to make one more phone call.

  “Mori, what’s wrong?”

  “Olivia?” I barely managed to say her name as the relief rushed out of me like an exhale. “Where are you?”

  She paused. “In the place we are staying until the school year starts. The place we agreed on before?”

  “Oh. Yes.” My relief was cut short by the realization that I’d been played again. Olivia and the boys were fine. They never were in any danger. I kept telling myself that, but I couldn’t settle my thoughts, because I had proof. I pulled the picture from my pocket and stared at it. Her scared face and not even Michael smiling behind her. “Did everything go all right in your travels?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “No run-ins with a stranger? Did you ever feel like you were being followed?”

  “Not since we left England. Why?”

  “What happened in England?”

  “It was nothing, really. We were accosted by a teen girl who ran up and took pictures of us on the train. Claimed it was on a dare, but then she wouldn’t give them over when I got angry. Gave me a scare at first, because I thought we’d been caught. But it was nothing in the end. And I didn’t think it’d matter if anyone knew we’d once been on the Southern Line. Not now that we’re out of the country and all. But really, it was nothing.”

  “Not nothing,” I said, but before she could ask what I meant, I added, “I’m glad you’re okay. I’m almost done with my business here. Shouldn’t be too long.”

  “You sound tired. Are you taking care of yourself?”

  Caretaking was evidently in Liv’s blood. Another sign that I’d been right to trust her. “I’ll rest when I’m done. Tell the boys I’m on my way?”

  I could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “And that you miss them terribly?”

  “Sure. That too.” I ended the call.

  It felt suddenly very cold standing under that canopy. Now that I knew my brothers really were thousands of miles away, I felt alone. Small. Like I might be swallowed up by the city, if I wasn’t careful, and no one would ever know what had happened to me.

  I had started back toward the Heathrow Tube station when a man in a suit walked up in front of me carrying a sign with my name on it. I thought about walking by, ignoring what was sure to be more of Alice’s game playing, but the mystery of it was too great. I had to know what it was all about.

  “I’m Moriarty,” I told the man.

  He looked at the state of me and raised a brow. I could hardly blame him. I was wearing all black and carrying a giant sack of a handbag, my thick eye makeup was probably in ruins, and my hair had been under a wig for much of the day. But still he directed me to follow him.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my car, miss.”

  “And where are you taking me in that car?”

  “I’ve been instructed not to tell you.”

  It was perhaps the stupidest thing I could have done, but still I followed him to the car, only pausing when it was time to actually get inside. I thought about walking away again, but the idea of trekking back across the airport to the Tube station just seemed so exhausting.

  “How much would it cost me to have you take me home?”

  The driver seemed to think about that. “Where do you live?”

  “Baker Street.”

  The driver’s amusement should’ve been a clue, but I was just so very relieved when he nodded that I climbed into the back almost right away. It wasn’t until we actually reached the house that everything came together. The light was on and the door was ajar. Someone was inside waiting for me.

  “So, this is where you were instructed to take me?”

  “Yes, miss. Sorry, miss.”

  “That’s okay. I hope she pays you well.”

  “Yes. Very well.”

  The driver opened the door for me, but I didn’t budge. I took a steadying breath and stared up at the ceiling. And then I stepped out onto the sidewalk. Again I was hit with the urge to run away. That made three times in just over an hour. I should probably have listened to my own instincts, but I didn’t. In the end, I walked up my stoop and into my house to face whatever I’d find there.

  It wasn’t Alice.

  That was all I could think as I pushed the door open farther to go inside. Alice would have been posed by the door, or would have left some kind of dramatic flourish waiting for me at the entrance. My first step into the house was silent. The house felt empty—or would have except for the sound of flipping papers coming from the kitchen.

  I pulled the door shut behind me and slid the bolt to lock it, then grabbed for the umbrella kept by the door, but it wasn’t there. I thought about searching for another weapon. I even indulged in images of my last fights in this entrance, of Mrs. Greeves dying on the floor because she believed a lie, of my own father tripping me up so I almost bashed my head against the door trim of the downstairs bedroom. Both times I’d been armed, but this time I shrugged it off and decided to trust my own abilities better than anything I could do with a stick.

  I peered into the kitchen while I was still far enough away to run, but the shock over who sat at my kitchen table made me forget every need for caution. He was the last person I expected to see, doing the last thing I expected him to do.

  “Detective Day,” I said.

  DS Day jumped in his seat and slammed my mum’s scrapbook shut. He obviously wasn’t the one who had hired the car to bring me home, which I supposed meant he was my postcard. Though I wasn’t going to follow the message of this one. Did Alice honestly think I would kill this man in my own house?

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “You first. How did you get in here?”

  He looked from the book and up to me, then across the entry to what had once been my parents’ room. “Was it you?”

  I knew what he was asking. I knew he was there to find out about my father. I also knew he couldn’t be trusted. “What are you doing in my house?”

  “I have a key!” He pulled it out and slapped it down on the table like that somehow gave him the right to be there. It didn’t.

  “I trust you’ll understand if I take that back.”

  He scowled at the key, and I thought for a moment he might snatch it up and hide it back in his pocket, but he didn’t. “Where’s your dad?”

  “How would I know something like that?”

  DS Day narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t be here if you thought he was coming back.”

  “Wouldn’t I? It’s my house. And that is my book. What are you doing with it?”

  “Did you make this?” he asked. He seemed almost relieved when I shook my head. I wanted to wipe that momentary reprieve from his face.

  “No. My mum chronicled all the crimes you committed with my father, not m
e.”

  “What do you mean by crimes?” He pulled the book closer to him.

  I walked farther into the kitchen to pull it out from beneath his hand. I sat across from him and opened the book. It naturally opened to the page about the Whitechapel street gang, only somehow the bottom of the article had come unglued from the page. When I flipped it up, there was writing underneath—my mum’s simple script spelling out a name.

  I looked from the writing up to DS Day. “Who is Barnaby Trenton?”

  He tried his best to hide his reaction to the name, but his skin paled a bit, giving him away. “Criminal element.”

  “Who you all couldn’t exploit?”

  Day tried his best to sound indignant when he said, “We chased them out of the neighborhood! Those people should’ve been grateful.”

  “Grateful enough to pay you what they were paying the gang?”

  He scowled and turned away. “Don’t matter now. We’ve got the goods on him. Trent’s not allowed back in London. That’s the deal we made.”

  “Did you say ‘Trent’?”

  Day ignored me, but it was too late. I’d already put it together—the blackmail that Alice had on Trent. The reason my father had always hated Alice. Probably even the reason Trent had auditioned to become part of Sorte Juntos. He wanted to go back to London, but he couldn’t if he wanted to stay out of prison. I wanted to know more, but the detective was back to asking about my dad.

  “Tell me where your father is.”

  “Go and find him yourself. You’re his friend. You’re probably the only one who cares about his whereabouts.”

  “That’s not true. He missed a bail check-in. They’ve sent us to find him. They’re revoking his bail.”

  I stood up from the table, resting my hand on the scrapbook. “So, my dad goes back in prison where he belongs? Good.”

  DS Day rushed me and grabbed both my arms. “Tell me. Tell me what you’ve done to him.”

  I ripped myself free and shoved him back from me so hard, he fell down onto the bench seat of the kitchen table. “Don’t you touch me,” I ground out.

  He flinched, and the look of fear on his face would have been delicious if I wasn’t so angry.