I’d been half-turned, watching the front window, and there they were—cars pulling up against the curb, like dark beads on a white string. “We have to go,” I said. “Now.”
“Those terms are unacceptable.” Phillipa sat back in her chair. “No, Charlotte. Remember that you fired the first shot. August will come to us in time.”
“Holmes,” I said, keeping my voice even, “they have guns.”
With a fingernail, Holmes dug the meat out of her oyster and dropped it onto her plate. She poured a draft of champagne into the empty shell. Tossed it back.
“There’ll be a time when you regret not taking my offer,” Holmes told Phillipa, and then she and I ran like hell.
Through the maze of tables, through the strangely bustling kitchen, and then instead of out the back door—“There’ll be men there, too,” she hissed—she dodged a surprised line cook and yanked me into the walk-in freezer, slamming the heavy door shut behind her.
“Your brother better be two seconds away,” I told her, coughing, “because that thing locks from the outside.”
“By key code,” she said, pulling out her phone. “Didn’t you see? This is a very fancy seafood restaurant, can’t be letting people see you freeze your Dover sole— Hello, Milo, could you please hack the walk-in freezer at Piquant? Watson’s stubble is starting to freeze. Change the code and then send someone to fetch us.”
She hung up. We looked at each other.
“Milo just told us this morning that there wasn’t any way that Hadrian or Phillipa had your uncle captive,” I told her. “So what was that all about?”
“Milo can be myopic. Thinking you know everything is dangerous,” she said. “I know the Moriartys are involved. I’m sure of it.” She said it so fiercely that I took a step back.
“Orchids?” I said, an attempt to defuse her. “That was your master plan? To poach away her orchid gardener?”
Her eyebrows were beginning to bead with snow. “She’s won several international awards for her flowers,” Holmes said. “I thought Milo could use some pointers. Grow a tree or two in his penthouse.”
“You are awful.”
“I know,” she said, and grinned.
“So all that, back there. It was just a pissing contest.”
“It was me giving her a final chance.” She sighed. “Sometimes I’m far nicer than I should be.”
“I’d hate to see you when you’re mean,” I said. “God, it’s cold. I think I can feel all my teeth. How long until your brother’s men get here?”
“I think they were on the roof. Just another minute or two. I don’t hear gunfire, that’s good.” She stomped her feet a little against the cement floor. “Watson?”
“Holmes?”
For a long second, she studied the ground.
“I left my coat back at the table,” she said, and when she looked up, I saw that her eyes had gone glassy and sad.
I took a step forward. “Hey,” I said softly. “What’s wrong?”
“Did you know that when my uncle goes away, he always leaves me a present? He didn’t this time. He didn’t . . . the last time he went, he left me a pair of gloves. They were black cashmere. Fingerless. Perfect for picking locks.” She looked down again, shoving her hands in her pockets. “I wish I had them now.”
Five minutes later, they opened the door. There was ice in my mouth and snow on my shoes, and Holmes had stopped crying. Though really, I guess she’d never started.
BACK AT GREYSTONE, WE BYPASSED THE SECURITY CHECKS by the simple expedient of telling them to fuck off, and rode the elevator back to our room. Holmes had that sort of deliberate silence around her that meant that she was brooding. Ten more minutes of this, and she’d start chain-smoking under an avalanche of blankets.
“I didn’t get to eat any lunch.” It was the sort of deliberately stupid comment I’d make to draw her out of herself. It also happened to be true. “I sort of wanted an oyster.”
“We’ll go,” she promised. “You can always get a sandwich from Milo’s penthouse. He keeps a spread in there, usually.”
“No one will snipe me when I get in there?”
“No one will snipe you,” she said. “Where’s your phone?”
“I left it here. Why?”
“We went to meet a Moriarty and you left your phone at home? What if we were separated?”
“We weren’t separated,” I said irritably. I really was hungry. “I still don’t have anything to tell my father, and he keeps texting me.”
“Check it now,” she said, sitting straight down onto the floor. After a quick once-over, she hauled a book out of one of the stacks beside her.
There it was, that familiar mix of dread and anticipation I always felt when she told me to do something like this. I climbed up to my loft and dug my phone out of the tangled sheets. I had a text from a number programmed in as FRENCH LOVE INTEREST. Simon, it read. Do you still want to get coffee this afternoon? I’d love to talk more about my paintings.
I swore. Down below me, Holmes smiled to herself, balancing her book on her knees. She must’ve dug my phone out in the night, but how, I couldn’t imagine—when I’d left that morning, she was starfished out in the same position she’d been in when she fell asleep. Still, she’d managed to send Marie-Helene the world’s most awful text: