I recognized the second half of that statement, with its slightly antiquated sound, as one of Sherlock’s favorite sayings. I didn’t have to guess why Holmes was trotting it out now.

  “I’m not saying it was your dad—”

  Holmes shoved me hard enough to send me crashing into the filing cabinets. The surprise of it, and the force behind the shove, threw me off balance, and I lost my footing and fell. I had a disorienting moment in which I thought Holmes had been tricking me, that he’d been waiting for this the whole time—a chance to get away from me again. And then glass shattered, and the door crashed open, and the thud of bodies colliding filled the room.

  I pushed myself up. And then, for a heartbeat, I stared. Holmes, in his dumbass overalls, was a whirlwind of movement as he fought a figure dressed in black. Someone had broken the pebbled glass in the door, and the door hung halfway open, and the light from the hallway cut across the office in a rhombus. Holmes snapped out a punch that should have put our attacker on his ass, but somehow the man dodged it, and he darted forward. The blade of his knife glittered as he stabbed at Holmes.

  But Holmes had already moved out of the path of the blade. He was water and silk. He was a storm of light. Every movement was a grace. His foot caught the side of our attacker’s head, and the man grunted and stumbled, but when Holmes followed up with an elbow, the man had already recovered and moved out of reach.

  The office seemed too small for them to be fighting like this—too small for the fight to go on for more than a heartbeat. And, I realized, I was just standing there behind the desk. I might as well have been stepping on my own cock.

  When the man lunged at Holmes again, I picked up an old, heavy stapler—some millennial’s dream of Mad Men chic, a part of me registered—and chucked it. It caught the attacker in the chest, and it couldn’t have done much damage, but it was enough that he made an annoyed noise and threw a look at me, while Holmes drifted out of reach of the blade again.

  Throwing the stapler, I decided instantaneously, had been a mistake.

  The man in black hurdled the desk in a single, easy movement, and me, Jack Moreno, ultimate street fighter, I stood there, slack-jawed, and watched the knife come toward me.

  Then Holmes was there, sliding between me and the man with the knife. Holmes grunted, twisted, threw a punch that went wide. Our attacker pressed his advantage, slashing viciously at Holmes’s face. Holmes slipped past the blade once, then again. But his movements were slower. And the man with the knife seemed as fast as ever.

  And I was still standing there like a dumbass, so I picked up the desk phone and slammed it into our attacker’s face.

  He let out a pained sound of surprise, and Holmes delivered a heel strike that drove the man back a step. Our attacker shifted his weight, angled his body toward the door. Holmes lunged and caught his sleeve, but the man tore free—literally, leaving a scrap of his sleeve in Holmes’s hand—and threw himself across the desk. I glimpsed something on his forearm, dark ink, the suggestion of geometry. Then he sprinted through the open doorway.

  Holmes charged after him.

  Sirens moved towards us, but Holmes kept running.

  “H!”

  He pulled to a stop long enough to glance back. “Stay here—”

  “Police!”

  The sound of sirens grew. For a moment, nothing registered on Holmes’s face. His expression was a stranger’s: a frozen, murderous intensity. Then, slowly, the bloodlust drained away, and he shook himself and winced, favoring his arm.

  “Are you ok?

  “Pulled muscle.”

  “Do we—”

  “We must run, Jack. Now.”

  Chapter 8

  Thanks

  We flew out of the parking garage, the Dodge going so fast we bounced coming off the slight lip at the top of the ramp. Holmes grunted again, and when I glanced over, his face looked white in the ambient glow from the street. He shook his head before I could ask and curled up against the door.

  “H—”

  “Drive, Jack. Away.” He closed his eyes as though concentrating. “West.”

  So, I drove west, and we were half a block away before the flashing lights appeared in the rearview mirror. They didn’t come after us, though; someone must have called the police, maybe the DoorDash lady. I remembered the way she’d said, Excuse me, as she’d left the building. In hindsight, she must have been talking to the man who had attacked us as he passed her on the way in. He wouldn’t have been wearing a mask then, but there was no chance we could go back and check the security footage, even if the police hadn’t been swarming the condo building. Holmes had disabled the lobby camera.

  “He wasn’t our killer,” Holmes said out of nowhere.

  “He might have come back—”

  “And used the front door this time? No, Jack. He came for another reason. Like us, I imagine, he was trying to find Lynnissa Baca.”

  “Someone else wants to find her?”

  “Someone else wants to find what she stole.”

  I thought about that for a while.

  I was still thinking when Holmes said, “Turn here.”

  I turned, and we headed up into the foothills at the north end of Salt Lake. The capitol building glowed south and west of us, the stone luminous under the floodlights. The city itself spread out in a gold-dust glitter. And beyond that, the desert, the stars. But where we had turned, the road was wide, and the hills were dark.

  “Haven’t they heard of streetlights?” I muttered.

  “The residents don’t have much need of them,” Holmes said drily.

  That made me take a closer look. Thick, well-tended grass rolled away from us on either side, and headstones formed serried rows in the gloom. I would have noticed them earlier if I hadn’t been worrying about, I don’t know, super spies and thieves and a secret about my mom, and all the other shit from the last twenty-four hours. The Salt Lake City cemetery was one of the oldest in the city, where people had been buried—including a lot of the early Mormon leaders—since the pioneers had come into the valley.

  “Stop,” Holmes said. I stopped, and Holmes opened the door. “Wait here, please.”

  “H—”

  “I need a moment alone.”

  He slipped out of the truck without another word, and the door clicked shut behind him. He strode off into the dark, his pace even and smooth. He was cradling one arm.

  “God damn it,” I said to no one in particular.

  I got out and poked around under the seat until I found the first aid kit. Then the flashlight. Then I headed after him.

  He’d gone behind some trees, and by the time I found him, he’d rolled the overalls down, and they hung off his hips. Starlight made his shirt glow like it was under a black light—everywhere except where it was stained with blood.

  “Hey!”

  His head snapped up, and even in the faint light, red circles marked his cheeks. “Jack, please wait in the truck—”

  “You’re hurt?” I told myself, Don’t shout, don’t shout. My voice rose anyway. “You’re bleeding?”

  “The injury is superficial—”

  “Be quiet.”

  He opened his mouth to say something.

  “Do not fucking test me right now.”

  Holmes eyed me, but after a moment, he shut his mouth.

  By then, I’d reached him. “Let me see.”

  He hesitated.

  “You are determined to piss me off tonight, aren’t you?”

  A beat passed, and with a note of worry, Holmes asked, “May I answer that?”

  “No. I told you to stop talking.”

  Helplessness flurried across his face. He angled his blood-soaked side toward me. The sleeve of his shirt was rolled up, partially exposing a long, lateral slice across his biceps. It was still bleeding—not pumping blood, but a steady trickle.

  “I tried to remove my shirt.”

  “How is it possible that for someone who is literally a genius, you don’t understand what I mean when I tell you to stop talking?”

  This time, I got anger from him. That was good. I was pretty fucking angry myself.

  I got the scissors out of the first aid kit and dropped the kit on the ground. Holmes shivered when I took his arm. Or maybe it was a flinch. His breathing quickened for a single intake, and then it evened out again. His blood filled the air with the scent of copper, and this close, his breath reminded me of what he had tasted like when we kissed.

  After snipping away the sleeve, I cut up along the shoulder seam, then down his side. The shirt opened like a book, and Holmes helped me slip it off his uninjured arm. His chest was even more clearly defined than it had been a few months ago. He’d lost weight, not that he’d had any to lose, and he’d added muscle. The blond fuzz between his pecs was a darker gold, like the hair under his arms. Goose bumps rose on his chest. His skin was ivory hills and smooth swales of shadow.

  “This is going to sting,” I said as I produced a disinfecting wipe.

  Holmes nodded, his expression unreadable again.

  I cleaned the wound as best I could, and the edge of the alcohol mixed with his blood and the smell of the freshly watered lawn. When I’d finished, I wrapped a bandage around his arm and taped it in place. “It needs stitches.” I crouched to pick up the paper. The grass was still wet, and the cold was pleasant on my hands. I felt like I had a fever. Maybe I needed to yell at him some more. When I looked up, his eyes were silver, and shadows limned his cheekbones. “I’m guessing you’re going to say no hospital.”

  “It would not be safe.”

  I grunted. “Maybe we can find a vet who will do it.”

  “That is a workable alternative.”

  “Jesus Christ, H. That was a joke.”

  I’d gotten all the trash, so I stood. He was still looking at me.

  “Thank you.”

  I grunted again. But it felt like more was required, so I added, “It’s my fault. You got stabbed protecting me.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “It pretty much is. Unless you jumped across that desk for the fun of it.”

  “This is why I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to blame yourself. I didn’t want you to worry. You should not be inconvenienced or discomfited because of my incompetence.”

  I tried to wrap my head around that particular brand of Looney Tunes, but all I came up with was, “Well, that was a particularly stupid idea, wasn’t it? What were you going to do? Tear off a strip of your shirt and tie it with your teeth?”

  His silence lasted too long.

  “Oh my actual God!”

  “I was improvising.”

  From somewhere nearby came excited voices, and flashlights cut a trail in the distance The group took shape in the gloom. Excited voices. The rustle of paper. Laughter. They had to be young—they might have been our age, although they sounded so much younger.

  “President Monson’s next,” a girl said. “This way.”

  A boy launched into a song I didn’t recognize, some sort of hymn, and another girl began to harmonize with him. Mormon kids, I guessed. A scavenger hunt. A fun romp through the graveyard that felt safe and appropriate because it was church related.

  Their voices faded, and then Holmes and I were alone again, alone with the smell of the wet grass, damp soil, the water in a vase where the flowers had started to turn.

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  “I have an alternative to the veterinarian. If you’re willing to—to help me. A little longer, anyway.”

  He said it the way he said most things—his voice untouched and untouchable, everything a statement that had been weighed and considered. The only hint of how much it cost him was that tiny slip in the middle.

  I nodded. “Who is it? Some down-on-his-luck doctor who deals with gunshots for the mob? Or are we going another direction—a med student who’s got gambling debts, or an undertaker, something wild?”

  “My sister.”

  I managed not to say anything about that. Not out loud, anyway.

  “She’ll be at Sundance,” he said. “She always stays there.”

  I didn’t ask why she didn’t stay at the family home. I didn’t want to know.

  By the time we got back to the truck, Holmes was shivering as he held his injured arm against his chest. His nipples were dark against his pale skin, stiff and pebbled with cold.

  “If you could help me with what remains of my shirt,” he said, “and with the buckles on the overalls.”

  Instead, I dug around in the back seat and came up with a Dodgers hoodie I’d left back there at some point. We eased his injured arm through one sleeve, then the other. “Leave the overalls,” I said. His shoulders were narrower than mine, and I liked my hoodies big. I liked how it looked on him—how he looked in something that was mine. I yanked the zipper up. “You look more thug that way.”

  He gave me that tiny, amused huff. It would have been easy to accept the lie his face was telling: that everything was under control, that he was fine. But I helped him up into the truck anyway, and his body was stiff with the pain he fought so hard to mask.

  “You can rest on the way,” I said.

  A bitter smile twisted his lips. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  By the time we’d turned around, though, his eyes were closed, and his breathing had gone slow and deep.

  “H,” I said.

  He made a sleepy noise.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Maybe he didn’t hear me. But maybe he did, because he let me pull him across the bench, and he rested his head on my shoulder, and he was asleep before we reached the highway.

  Chapter 9

  Irrelevant

  We drove down the long, halide tunnel of light that was I-15. In the distance, brighter than the amber confetti of homes and businesses, a few Mormon temples glowed white. There was no way to miss them. Celestial landing strips, maybe. I left the stereo off, and I thought. I wondered how I was supposed to stay mad at him when he couldn’t take care of himself. I wondered what I was supposed to do about the way his breath changed when I touched him.

  Getting to Sundance meant going up Provo Canyon, and the route was almost identical to the way back to the Walker School. The canyon walls sheared off the edges of the night sky. The spray of Bridal Veil Falls was phosphorescent, backlighting a mule deer. In the draws, the shadows were deepest, and I had a moment where I thought about what it might look like from above, the dark spine of road winding through mountains, the dark ribs of the draws, like a snake’s skeleton. Holmes was still breathing evenly, rocking against me every time we went over an uneven patch. I had a hard time not feeling like this was September, and we were doing it all for the first time.

  But instead of taking the turnoff that would lead us back to Walker, we went to Sundance. The main area of the resort was a compound of cedar-colored buildings with steel roofs, a mixture of log and board-and-batten and glass. This time of year, this time of night, the parking lot was mostly empty.

  “H?” I whispered.

  He woke with a quick intake of breath, and then there was the sound of someone trying not to drool, plus the smacking of lips. If I grinned, he’d take it the wrong way, so I made sure not to let it show on my face. Still, he gave me a long, suspicious look as he ran the back of his hand over his mouth, as though somehow I had tricked him.

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Fine.”

  “How’s your arm?”

  “Fine.”

  “Right. Why would you make this easy? What’s your pain level?”

  “Six.” No hesitation.

  “H, a six is not fine.”

  “It’s insignificant.” He wiped his eyes and pointed with his good hand. “Follow that road. She always takes the same cabin.”

  I let the Dodge roll forward again. “What if someone else is using it when she comes to visit?”

  “You don’t know my sister,” Holmes said, voice dry.

  “Because you never told me about her.”

  “Why would I tell you about her?”

  “I don’t know, H. Because—” We were friends, I almost said. Instead, I managed, “It might have been important.”

  “If it had been important, I would have told you.”

  That was the kind of thing that made otherwise sane, healthy, happy teenage guys want to drive off a cliff, so I said, “Are you close? She seemed…nice.”

  Holmes huffed that amused little breath, but then he said nothing. I guessed that was my answer and kept driving up the hill, and we left the lodge’s central compound behind us. Pine and spruce and cedar grew thickly here—planted and tended, part of the ski resort’s landscaping—and even with the windows up, their perfume filtered into the cab. I’d almost forgotten the question by the time Holmes started speaking.

  “Noneley and I are not close. Not in the sense I think you mean. She’s four and a half years older, and once she left for school, we saw each other primarily at holidays.” He was silent for a moment. “You enjoy using the word genius. Noneley is literally a genius. She is the single most intelligent person I’ve ever met.”

  A million different questions sprang up, but on the other side of the cab, Holmes’s silence loomed like a shadow.

  Then he sighed. “Very well, Jack. If you must.”

  “She said something about setting your dad’s desk on fire.”

  That startled a laugh out of Holmes. “She and my father do not have what you would call a healthy relationship.”

  “Gee,” I said.

  Holmes shifted his weight. He didn’t look at me, but his—what was it? Disapproval? Defensiveness—locked around him like armor.

  “Did he do the same…stuff that he did to you? To her, I mean.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35