Where All Paths Meet, page 17
part #3 of The Adventures of Holloway Holmes Series
“Your father—” Yazzie said, the words barely audible through the rush of blood in my ears.
“What is the meaning of this?” Blackfriar strode through the hall. He didn’t look at me, didn’t even glance. I was a zero, a cipher, in his universe. The only thing that kept me from launching myself at him, from trying to kill him right then, even though I knew he would kill me first, was Holmes.
He was trying to hold himself up, limping as he came toward the gathering near the front door, his face bloodless. Maybe that was because of all the blood soaking his sleeve. I ran to him, and I got an arm around him as he started to fall.
Hissing, Holmes pried at my hand. “My ribs.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, adjusting my grip, pulling him against me by the hips. “I’m sorry, H. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m so fucking sorry.”
He must have hated it, this moment of weakness. He was trembling, and his legs couldn’t support him any longer; it was all I could do to keep both of us upright. When I pulled him against me again, he pressed his face into my shoulder, and he shook once, hard. I cupped the back of his head with my free hand and held him.
“What’s going on here?” Rivera barked in his cop voice.
“What’s going on, Detective,” Blackfriar answered, “is that this is bordering on harassment. I told you that I had no interest in pressing charges, and I told you that I would deal with the boys.”
“I can see you’re dealing with them,” Rivera said, and his voice verged on a shout. “I can see exactly how you’re dealing with them!”
“I’d like you to leave, Detective, and you can be sure that I will be speaking to the sheriff—”
“Mr. Holmes,” Yazzie said, holding out a packet of paper, “we’re here to execute a search warrant. We’ll need you and your family to vacate the premises for the duration of the search.”
“That’s ridiculous. A search warrant?” He snatched the papers. “For what?”
“For evidence connecting you to the death of Lynnissa Baca,” Rivera said, but his gaze moved past Blackfriar again, coming to rest on me and Holmes. “Jack, what the hell is going on over there?”
Holmes trembled against me, and I held him tighter. For a moment, rage ate up all the oxygen in my lungs, and I couldn’t say anything.
Before I could recover, Blackfriar turned away from the detectives. He tossed the paperwork on the floor and strolled toward the hallway he had come from. “This is a joke. There will be no search of this property until my lawyers see that paperwork. You can wait outside until they arrive.”
Rivera started after him, shaking off Yazzie as she tried to catch his arm. “Mr. Holmes, you’re under arrest for the murder of Lynnissa Baca.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Blackfriar said. He was still walking toward us, and he still hadn’t looked at me, not once. “On what evidence, Detective? You haven’t even conducted this farce of a search.”
When Rivera caught Blackfriar’s arm, for a moment, the senior Holmes was charged with potential violence, a kind of living darkness that threatened to coil, strike. Then I watched Blackfriar suppress it, the way I’d seen Holmes do so many times before.
“I don’t need a search warrant to look in the windows of your Bentley,” Rivera said as he snapped the first cuff into place.
A smile creased Blackfriar’s face. “Good Lord, Detective, you’re going to lose your job for this.”
“We’ll see about that,” Rivera said as he locked the second cuff around Blackfriar’s wrist. “Meanwhile, a word of advice for the future: if you kill a woman, don’t leave her jewelry lying on the seat of your car.”
I might have been the only one to see Blackfriar’s face as Rivera delivered those words. Blackfriar’s back was to the door, where Noneley and Yazzie were standing, and Holmes’s face was buried in my shoulder. But I was looking straight at the son of a bitch, and I saw the moment, the instant, the flicker.
Shock. Then fear. Then the nothing of pure control.
But I had seen it: Blackfriar Holmes was afraid.
Chapter 18
Family
I watched from the front door of the Holmeses’ manor as Blackfriar was packed into the Tahoe and Rivera drove away. Yazzie watched, her expression sour, gripping the search warrant packet so tightly that the pages folded. Noneley didn’t move.
“What is going on?” Cecilia asked, emerging into the entry hall. Tom trailed after her, which meant either he’d gotten free on his own, or she’d heard him crying for help. He stared murder at me and then turned his attention back to the conversation. Cecilia’s gaze settled on Yazzie. “What’s happening?”
Yazzie told her, and after a moment, Cecilia indicated they should step outside, and she shut the door behind them. That left me, Holmes, Noneley, and Tom.
Noneley turned a huge, wide-eyed smile on us. A laugh bubbled up. “Oh my God, did you see his face?”
“A little help, please?” I said and tilted my head at Holmes.
“He’s going to be furious,” she said with another laugh, tipping her head back so the sound carried up to the high ceiling. “Arrested. By a local cop. God, he’s never going to live this down.”
“Noneley, some help?”
She shook her head, pressed her hands to her cheeks, as though fighting the grin spread there. Then she started off down the hall, and her laughter floated back to us.
I adjusted Holmes’s weight against me and tried to speak so only he would hear. “H, I’m going to help you lie down. I need to call an Uber, and then we’re going to get you to a doctor.” Holmes shook his head against me. “Yes, sir. No arguments.”
Tom watched us. He was still clutching the black doctor’s bag, but he let go of it with one hand long enough to push back sun-streaked hair. Then he took a nervous step toward us.
“Stay where you are,” I told him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tom said. “He needs help, and you can’t carry him yourself.”
“I can carry him,” I said. But I stayed where I was, holding Holmes to me, because the honest truth was that I could barely keep him upright. I might be able to get him over my shoulder, do a fireman’s carry, but with Holmes’s ribs injured, I had no idea what that might do to him. Finally, I ground out, “Fine. Leave the fucking bag over there and show me your hands.”
Tom looked frozen for a moment. Then he set the bag down, and he held out his open hands. I nodded, and he came over to us. Between us, we managed to get Holmes into the living room, and we stretched him out on one of the plush, rounded sofas.
“No doctor,” Holmes said.
“Why not?” I asked as I stuffed a pillow under his head. “Would it be bad press if everybody found out your dad beat the shit out of you?”
Holmes’s fingers bit into my wrist. “No. Doctor.”
“Yeah, no, no fucking way—”
“I can take a look,” Tom said, the words tentative, his gaze moving from Holmes to me. “I have training.”
“You’re in med school, Speed Racer,” I said. “You’re not a doctor.”
“I wasn’t referring to medical school. Watsons are trained to handle a range of emergency situations.”
What I wanted to say was something along the lines of I am so sick of hearing about the fucking Watsons. But if I tried to take Holmes to a doctor, he’d fight me every step of the way, and even if Tom was a potentially murderous psychopath, right then, he was offering to help.
Finally, I settled on “Let’s see how bad it is.”
Tom retrieved his bag from the hall, and I started unbuttoning Holmes’s shirt. He tried to tear my hand away, moaning and protesting and being, as per usual, a little shit about everything, but it was like wrestling with a puppy.
“Knock it off,” I told him as I yanked the shirt open. “Or I’ll drag your pasty ass to the ER.”
He mumbled something petulant and outraged, but when I took his hand, he let me. It was a shock, again, seeing the perfectly defined musculature of his torso: everything hard and strong, a topography of work and sacrifice and power. The little patch of silky gold hair between his pecs still took me by surprise, even though I knew it was there. Where the shirt was rucked back far enough, hints of darker gold suggested the hair under his arms.
The clink of metal came as Tom set down the doctor’s bag. He opened it, and I said, “Think about what you’re going to do next,” I said. “And think about doing it slowly and carefully.”
Tom’s face was grim, but he nodded. He drew items out one by one, slowly, like I’d suggested. Sterilized packets with needles and sutures. A hypodermic needle and syringe with a small prescription bottle. A brown prescription vial, where pills rattled. Sterilized bandages. Scissors. Antiseptic wipes. He cleaned his hands thoroughly, professionally, and some of the awkwardness that clung to him evaporated as his movements became controlled, clinical, skilled.
“I’m going to remove his sleeve.” Tom picked up the scissors. “Unless you’d rather help him out of the shirt.”
I made a face, mostly because I wanted to fight with Tom about everything, but I said, “It’d be murder on him to get him out of the shirt. Go ahead and cut it off.”
Tom snipped the shirt off Holmes in precise, economical movements. I helped him get rid of the fabric. Holmes’s chest and arms pebbled with the cold, and he made a faint noise of distress, blinked his eyes, tried to sit up. With my free hand on his shoulder, I pressed him back and murmured, “Easy, easy. Stay still.”
“The shot will numb his arm—” Tom said as he reached for the syringe.
“Let me see that.” I took the prescription bottle.
“Lidocaine,” Tom said. His expression was unreadable when I glanced up. “Does that meet with your approval?”
For lack of anything better, I grunted and held out the bottle. Tom administered the injection the way he’d done everything else while attending to Holmes, with a smoothness I hadn’t seen from him over the previous days. Holmes made another sound, but some of the strain in his face eased. I smoothed hair back from his forehead.
“Is he going to be ok?” I asked. It was a dumb question, I know, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Fine,” Holmes said and started trying to sit up.
“Cut it out.” He let me press him back down, his eyes half-closed. How hard had he pushed himself, I wondered, to end up like this? How much of that seemingly limitless reserve of energy had he burned through in the last few days, only to find himself drawing on it again today? He wasn’t a machine. He wasn’t even really a Holmes bot. He was a boy, and his shoulder was like spun glass under my hand, and for me, he had asked himself, one more time, to do the impossible.
What had I done for him over the last few days? Told him over and over again that I hated him.
“He’ll be fine,” Tom said as he prepared the needle and suture. “A few torn stitches. It’s exhaustion more than anything else, I think.”
I kept brushing Holmes’s hair back. I couldn’t stop myself. “He doesn’t sleep. I tell him he needs more sleep, but he doesn’t.”
Tom gave me a look I couldn’t read.
“He doesn’t eat, either. He’s like one of those air plants. Only one of those air plants that doesn’t sleep.”
“Jack,” Tom said slowly, “maybe you’d like to step outside.”
“No.” I clutched Holmes’s hand hard enough that he stirred, and I had to force myself to relax. “No, I’ll stop being weird.”
Tom frowned at that, but he bent and went to work. He was done with the sutures in a matter of minutes, and then he cleaned Holmes’s wound and bandaged it again. Holmes’s eyes were still slitted, but I thought he was tracking me as I followed Tom’s movements. I squeezed his hand lightly.
“I have some pills,” Tom said. “For the pain. Let me get him a glass of water.”
“No, I’ll do it. I’m not totally useless.” I started to stand, but Holmes protested wordlessly, and he made it hard to let go of his hand. “H, don’t you want some water? I’ll be right back.”
Finally, I got free of him. I checked the bar, but all they had was tonic water.
“That way,” Tom said.
I hurried in the direction he’d pointed, and it only took me two wrong turns to find the kitchen. It was about what you’d expect: acres of marble and maple, a pantry the size of a war room, a fridge that might technically have qualified as a studio apartment. I got a bottle of water and hurried back.
As I returned to the living room, Holmes made a noise that was an unmistakable mix of fury and frustration. Tom had taken my place on the couch next to him, and he was running his hands over Holmes’s side, where the red marks of blows were unmistakable against his fair skin. He did something, and it was like someone had flipped a switch: Holmes’s eyes snapped open. I couldn’t imagine what kind of resolve it took, but Holmes forced himself to sit up, and he caught Tom’s arm.
“Ow!” Tom said, trying to twist free.
“Do not touch me!” Holmes shouted.
“H, hey—” I began.
“Your ribs—” Tom said, still trying to break Holmes’s hold.
“I have told you I do not want you to touch me!”
By that point, I’d reached the couch. I touched Holmes’s arm, and he flinched and turned on me. For a moment, nothing registered in his face. Then recognition filtered in.
“Easy,” I said, rubbing his arm, working my way toward his fingers. I pried them loose from around Tom’s wrist. “How about you let Tom go?”
Holmes swallowed. He looked lost inside those starlight eyes, but he let me peel his hand away.
“Tom,” he said like it was a question.
“He was helping you.” I grabbed some of the cushions and shifted them around to prop Holmes up, keeping one hand on his arm the whole time. Tom scooted backward, reached the edge of the couch, and fell off. Which, to be fair, seemed kind of consistent for him.
After a few more deep breaths, Holmes seemed more aware, more awake. He rubbed his face and, in a low voice, said, “I have told him—”
By that point, Tom was on his feet again. A flush filled his cheeks, and he shook the sun-streaked hair out of his eyes.
“Sorry about that—” I began.
“I was trying to help!”
“I know. H knows too, but he got confused—”
“That’s what Watsons do. They help their Holmeses.”
“Tom, I’m sorry. H is sorry. Seriously.”
Tom began shoving the suture kit, the bandages, the syringe and needle, the prescription bottle, everything, back into the doctor’s bag.
“Thank you—”
“Everything was fine—” He yanked the bag from the table and clutched it to his chest. He sounded like he was about to cry. “—until you came back.”
He ran out of the room. In the process, because he was Tom, he managed to crash into one of the walls. It wasn’t even a little crash. It was a head-first, full-speed, total collision. He scrambled to his feet and sprinted away, and he left one shoe behind.
“If that’s the kind of help the Holmeses have been getting,” I said, “maybe it’s time to start hiring out.”
Holmes huffed his little breath.
When I turned back to him, his arms were folded across his chest, a futile attempt at hiding the marks that in the next day or two would turn him into a mass of green and purple bruises. His eyes were half-closed again, and he rocked slightly from side to side, unable to hold himself upright.
I touched his shoulder, and he shivered. “Let’s get you to your room, ok? Do you have a room? If you don’t, I found a million guest rooms. You need to sleep. Then eat. Then sleep. In between, I’ll allow some light pooping. Oh Christ, and when did you take your antibiotics?”
But he didn’t answer, not even that little huff of breath. He was shivering harder, uncontrollably. His face had become a fortress, that place of unbreachable walls, how he kept all his demons out. And, in the process, kept himself alone.
“H,” I whispered, and I ran my fingers through hair the color of aspens, followed the line of his neck, found the warm curve of his nape. I stopped because I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say, I saw. I couldn’t say, I know what you did for me. Because Noneley was right; he wouldn’t want me to know, might never forgive me for seeing him like that. I couldn’t even say, I’m sorry. The best I could come up with was “Are you ok?”
He shook his head, and a tear slipped out.
I sat still. I breathed through my nose. Blackfriar was in police custody, which meant murdering him was going to be more difficult, but I still thought I had a shot. Red pinpricks clustered at the edge of my vision. I was vaguely aware that I was clutching the couch cushion hard enough that my fingers ached.
And then, brick by brick, Holmes finished putting up his walls. He blinked his eyes clear. He looked at me. He still couldn’t pass for anything but exhausted, but the cold control was back. His voice even came close to normal as he said, “I’m sorry, Jack. I was disoriented; I took a bad fall, that’s all. I’m fine.”
I couldn’t help it: a wet laugh escaped me, and I wiped my eyes.
“I am, truly.” Holmes moved into my line of sight. For a moment, our gazes matched. Then his mouth quirked into a smile. Not the full one. Not the great, big dorky one. But real enough. Because he was worried about me, I realized. Because he knew he could give this to me.
I snuffled, and it threatened to turn into a full-out sob.
“Jack—”
“Are you finished?” Noneley asked, and I had to scrub at my face again before I could look at her. She stood in the hallway, grinning at us. “Whatever happened to your shirt, Hol?”
He scowled at her and folded his arms more tightly over his chest.
“Come along, then,” she said. “Family council and all that. Sorry, Jack, no Watsons allowed.”
