Final Fall

by Heather W. Petty

  “Get out of my house. And if I find you here again, I won’t ask nicely.”

  He got up and eyed the key, but I stepped between him and the table, begging him to try it with my eyes. He didn’t. Instead, he said, “Mallory will make the connection between your coming back to town and your dad’s disappearance. You won’t get away with it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I won’t be here much longer.”

  Day rallied back, crossing his arms to stare me down. “I won’t let you leave until I find out where he is, your dad.”

  I tilted my head and stared right into his eyes. “Are you sure you want to get in my way? That hasn’t worked out so well for anyone else.”

  I’d probably said too much. And I couldn’t seem to shed his threats even after he was gone. DS Day was dangerous for a lot of reasons, but I didn’t need to bother with him. Not if he stayed out of my way.

  That left me with only one more target before I could leave. I had to find Alice. Once she was gone, our lives could finally start over.

  Chapter 19

  I accidentally fell asleep at the house that night, and when I came out late the next morning, I instantly felt like someone was watching me. I walked up the street for a bit and stepped into a corner near a neighbor’s front steps so I could scan up and down Baker Street. But everything seemed normal. I couldn’t find anything amiss.

  I wasn’t even much bothered when a car pulled up outside my house, until a clearly rattled DS Day stepped out on the driver’s side. He ran shaking hands over his thinning hair and straightened his jacket while he scanned the street, and then he walked up to my front door and started fiddling with the lock while still glancing around. He was breaking in. It was almost like he was begging me to end him.

  I stayed hidden away at first, watching him, but when he got the door opened, I stepped out onto the sidewalk. I moved with purpose, not caring who saw. Let Day see me. Let him look in my eyes and know that he didn’t have much longer to breathe.

  A hand on my shoulder stopped me and I spun in place, glaring straight into the eyes of Mycroft Holmes.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  I forced my expression into a more passive state, but I didn’t answer his summons. Detective Day had already invaded my house, and I didn’t have the time or interest to hear anything that Mycroft might say to me just then, even if it was about Sherlock—as it was bound to be. So when a group of chatty girls in school uniforms started walking toward us, I shrugged at him and turned to follow them back toward my house. I had no real hope that Mycroft would give up and leave me to my new direction. Still, I thought if I could just reach the house, maybe he’d wander off, or at the very least, refuse to make a scene in front of the girls.

  And I was proved right for a few dozen steps. Or maybe it was that I had headed in the direction of 221, which made Mycroft think I was acquiescing to his request. Because the very minute I walked past his stoop, without even the slightest pause, he spoke up from behind me.

  “One way or another, you and I will talk.”

  The confidence in his voice set me off and I stopped to calm myself, but gave in quickly after, turning on Mycroft and stepping close enough that our faces were but a few inches apart. “I have nothing to say to you. We are strangers now. Do not act like you recognize me on the street. I no longer recognize you.”

  His grin, which never seemed to falter, widened a bit, though his eyes grew cold. “Streetlight. Second floor of building 211. Rooftop of building 218.”

  I stared into his eyes for a few seconds and then turned my head just enough to note that there was a man leaning his back against the street lamppost across the way, staring at his mobile. The rooftop of 218 Baker Street seemed unremarkable at first, but then I got the vaguest sense of movement near the west corner and saw a flash of something, like the sun reflecting off a lens. I didn’t bother to look up at the second floor of 211. It was a better use of my time to attempt to control my breathing before I murdered Mycroft on the street with my bare hands while his government friends watched.

  “Well, that’s not a pleasant look,” he said in an amiable tone that did nothing to lessen my rage.

  “What do you want?”

  “I haven’t seen Sherlock in days. I want to know what you’ve done with him.”

  “I’ve nothing to do with him.” The man across the street shifted his stance. “But what do you really want? I don’t for a moment believe you’d have brought your goons out on a fishing expedition for your little brother.”

  “I want your first statement to be true.” He reached a hand toward my head and I slapped it away. The man across the street reached inside his coat, but Mycroft waved him off. “Unfortunately, he has gotten into a bit of trouble that I assume is related to you.”

  “His troubles are his business and have nothing to do with me.” I turned toward my house and started back along the walk, but I’d only taken a few steps when a man got out of a car parked on the street and adopted an at-ease military stance while looking right at me. I sighed.

  “Sherlock was seen on a bus with a red substance smeared on his hands,” Mycroft said.

  I tried not to care, to cling to my rage and my purpose. I tried to tell myself that Lock deserved what he got, but Mycroft’s words pierced through me because I knew it was my fault. I’d brought Sherlock to the nursery school as part of my ruse. I’d killed in front of him and left him there to struggle his way out. I’d done the one thing I’d feared most when it came to Lock.. . . I’d ruined him. I was very glad not to be facing Mycroft just then. “So? What does that have to do with me? It was probably one of his silly experiments gone wrong. He works with fake blood all the time.”

  “I thought as much. So when the report came in, I quashed it until I could confirm the story for myself. Which is when I found blood-spattered clothes in his room.”

  I closed my eyes. “An experiment, like I said.”

  “Human blood, as it turned out. Human blood that belongs to a disgraced detective sergeant who was released from jail a few short months ago to await his court date.”

  I composed my expression as best I could, then turned to face Mycroft, though I didn’t say anything.

  He didn’t seem to mind my silence. “I hear they haven’t been able to identify the burned corpse found in a derelict nursery school in Harrow.”

  “Really? Burned beyond recognition?”

  “A superheating accelerant was used. It even melted the dental work away and shattered the teeth.”

  “And what has that to do with me?”

  Mycroft paused, and for a few seconds I thought maybe his expression softened toward me. But the cold returned just in time for him to speak. “You will fix this.”

  “You said you quashed it.”

  Mycroft huffed out a soft laugh. “You play the villain so well, I sometimes forget how young and naive you are.”

  “Yes, and you in all your aged wisdom—”

  Mycroft only took a step in my direction, but something about his bearing shifted so that even that slight movement interrupted my words. And then his expression became a smile that somehow appeared friendly but still felt like ice. “I am allowing you to fix your own mistake instead of taking you in, because I know you are the only person left to protect your brothers. I wasn’t lying when I said I care for them.”

  He closed the gap between us with two more steps. I thought he might try to question me or study me—try to suss out the truth of all that had happened over these last few days and how Sherlock was involved. But instead he leaned in and spoke quietly at my ear. “I am allowing you this one indiscretion because of them and because of the brokenness I see in your eyes whenever I mention Sherlock.”

  I felt pain in my chest and closed my eyes against it. “Stop.” I hadn’t meant to plead with him, but even I could hear the plaintive tone in my voice.

  Mycroft’s voice was much softer when he said, “Make the case that he�
��s your enemy, Mori. At least for show. It’s the only way. The police have to believe he’s been trying to stop you all along.”

  I released a shaky breath and opened my eyes. That wouldn’t do. I could spend weeks setting an elaborate trail of evidence that Sherlock and I had been pitted in a battle of wits from the start, but Lock would undo all that work in a moment following his unending commitment to the truth and to the law. I’d need his cooperation to make something like that work, and Sherlock didn’t seem to do anything just for show.

  But I knew what I needed to do. I even knew how. It was the only way. My determination must have shown on my face, because Mycroft’s expression shifted as well. I couldn’t tell if he was concerned or amused. “So you’ll do it?”

  I nodded. “I’ll make him hate me. I’ll make him my enemy for real.”

  Mycroft didn’t say another word. He turned to hide an expression I couldn’t quite define, and then strolled off down the street in the opposite direction from his house and mine, like he’d always meant to go that way. Anyone looking might have thought he had a skip in his step, but I knew better. I didn’t have to define his expression to recognize the sadness in it.

  Chapter 20

  By the time I got back to my house, DS Day was gone, but he’d managed to overturn all the boxes in my mum’s room and rummage through the wardrobe. I wasn’t too concerned until I realized the bed was shifted to the side, and then I realized what he’d come for. I’d hidden my mum’s scrapbook between her mattress and box spring, and now it was gone.

  It was a stupid thing to be angry over. I’d almost tossed the thing out myself. But it wasn’t his. It was my mum’s. That weak, nasty little man came into my house and stole from me. And when I went into the kitchen, I found that he’d left behind a note:

  I can’t let you have the book. He’s gone now, and I get a second chance to start over. So I’m going to destroy the book and with it the person I became when I took orders from your dad. I’ll smooth things over with Mallory if you just let me have this.

  “No,” was my simple response to his letter. And then I started to move.

  I was only going to his house to get my mum’s book back, but I found myself putting on latex gloves and brown driving gloves on top of those. I spent the entire bus ride reliving all those times DS Day had stood on our doorstep, assuring us things would be fine and ignoring the cuts and bruises on my brothers’ faces. How he would do this dumb little wave as he walked away, leaving us there with our abuser.

  When I reached the stop on his street, my hands were squeezed into fists and I could only seem to think about the part he played in keeping my father in our lives even after he was in prison. How he’d called me with messages from my father, insisted that I go visit, even while I was still recovering in the hospital from what my father had done to me.

  And then I was outside his house and I no longer cared about that bloody book. I just wanted DS Day to suffer at my hands.

  I think he knew why I was there. He knew the moment he saw me, which was why it confused me when he opened the door to invite me in. I stepped in slowly, keeping Detective Day in my periphery for as long as I could. He moved carefully around me—always at a set distance and never making any quick moves.

  It worked at first. There was even a second after I walked into his house that I felt sorry for the man. But then I realized he knew how to calm me because he’d spent so much time bowing and lowering his eyes in front of a monster. He played helper servant to my father so long, he’d learned how to handle his moods.

  But that realization was also my undoing. The very idea that he would treat me the way he treated that murderer, that he thought I could be charmed into keeping him alive somehow! After all that he’d done.

  He literally bowed a little to me when he said, “Come in. Have a seat.”

  And I couldn’t take it anymore. “Do you think I’m here for tea?”

  “No, but I—”

  “Did you think I’d come over and we would chat about old times, like how you covered for my father when he was beating up my brothers?”

  DS Day paled. “I have the book.”

  “Remember the time I called the police because I was afraid for our lives, and they sent YOU.” He flinched as I advanced. “And you left us there with empty promises and a violent drunk.”

  “You can have it b-back,” he said. But I didn’t want that filthy thing back. I didn’t want to see one more crime these police had committed in my city.

  I moved toward him and he stepped back. “I stayed up that whole night, sitting on the stairs, holding a knife, and guarding my brothers so they could sleep because you couldn’t be bothered to rescue us from that house!”

  We moved like that—me advancing and him retreating—until his back was up against the counter.

  “I didn’t know it was that bad. I didn’t!” He held his arms up, cowering from me. And all I could think was what a big strong policeman he was. How he had five inches on me and probably fifty pounds, but instead of standing his ground, instead of ordering me out of his house, he stood there shaking and whining, “I didn’t know.”

  I had a knife in my pocket, but that seemed too easy a death for DS Day, my father’s lackey number one. I wanted him to feel the pain my brothers felt. So I punched him as hard as I could, and he stumbled back against the edge of the counter before falling to his knees.

  “You knew!” I said, my voice shaking with my rage. “You SAW the evidence of his violence on the faces of those poor boys.” I slapped away his hands and punched him again. “You saw their eyes swollen shut and their split lips. You saw their blood and you did NOTHING!”

  “I didn’t know! I didn’t know!”

  He started to get up and I kicked him in the stomach.

  “Well, now you’ll know. You’ll feel every single pain they ever felt. And then, maybe I’ll do to you what you helped my father do to all those people in the park.”

  “Wait!” He held up his hands again and started to stand. I saw his hand reaching behind him and into a drawer even while he tried to distract me by holding my gaze. “I didn’t do those things! I just passed on messages. That’s all I ever did.”

  “Messages,” I growled through clenched teeth. “Like the ones he wanted you to deliver to me?”

  “To everybody. Just messages.”

  To everybody.

  I stopped and Day released a breath and sagged against his kitchen counter. Not just to me. Of course not. Detective Day passed on messages from my father to everyone. Like to the officer who’d brought my dad’s letter to Freddie’s bed. He probably brought messages back, too, like the information my dad had on Alice living with us, and how he decided to fight for custody. And Parsons. . .

  “Messages,” I echoed. “Like a message to Officer Parsons?”

  Day froze in place. He didn’t even breathe.

  “Was that you? Did you tell Parsons to go steal my brothers off the street?”

  Day shook his head, but I knew the answer was yes.

  “You told him to get a couple friends to help kidnap my brothers!”

  “No!”

  “And when they couldn’t get the job done, when they scared my brother out into the street instead, was it you who told my father that his son was hit by a car? Is that the kind of message you mean?!”

  “I had no choice!” Day shouted, pulling a large kitchen knife from behind his back and holding it out between us. “I’m a victim of your father too! He made me do it!”

  “No.” My lips twitched for a few seconds before I gave in to a smile. “You’ve never been the victim. But you’re about to be.”

  I hadn’t been allowed to train with knives in the barn with Trent, but we’d worked for hours on disarming opponents. Detective Day’s knife trembled as he pointed it at me, so much that he might have dropped it himself in a few more seconds. I didn’t wait.

  I took a step toward him to get him to slash the knife in the space between
us, and used his momentum to push his arm until the knife was pointed away from me. Then I grabbed his wrist and twisted until his grip loosened enough for me to bat the knife to the floor. He lunged after it, and I kneed him in the face. But he didn’t stay down. He came at me again while I was kicking the blade away, and when I swung to punch him, Day blocked me and then slapped me across the face. I smiled through the strike, which I could tell unnerved him, but he pushed me away before I could land another blow. His next swing was so easily ducked, I almost laughed. But I used the force of it to turn him around and kicked him in the back to move him into the hall.

  When he recovered, I punched him again, then again, and when he held his hands up to block his face, I punched him as hard as I could in his gut, making him fall to his knees once more. And I didn’t stop. I kicked him once, then struck him over and over, long after he fell to the ground. My arms started to ache, and my hands felt like they were bruised and cut, even in my gloves. But I kept going until I was exhausted and kneeling next to him on the floor.

  And when I did finally stop, Day moaned, “I’m sorry,” through swollen lips and I just wanted to shake him until he knew that it was too late. But instead I pulled the knife from my pocket and opened it.

  “Daddy?”

  The voice came from behind me—a tiny, squeaky voice that sounded so much like Sean when he was younger. I spun into a crouch, my knife at the ready, but I didn’t need it. The little boy in the hall wore pajamas with trucks on them. He started to cry at the sight of me, and he even looked like Seanie—only Seanie had liked dinosaurs more than trucks.

  “Daddy?!”

  He couldn’t be there, that child. DS Day lived alone. He wasn’t even married anymore. I didn’t know he had a son. It wasn’t possible.

  “Please,” the little boy said through his tears. “Please don’t hurt Daddy!”

  I was paralyzed by him. I knew what I needed to do—to finish off Day and get out of there—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do something like that in front of this little boy who looked so much like my Seanie. He was so afraid.