Gabriel Winterborne was still alive, but he looked half dead as he leaned against the cellar wall. He wore a blanket around his shoulders and held it tight, as if he could keep his scars and tattoos hidden from the kids who had already seen and heard too much.
“Hello, April.” His voice was deeper, rougher, but his eyes held a mixture of disappointment and wry amusement—like he didn’t know whether he should be happy or sad to have . . . you know . . . not died. Which was the most Gabriel Winterborne-y thing that April had ever seen.
“I suppose you don’t understand the meaning of the words don’t tell anyone.”
“You were dying,” she said. “And besides, you’re heavy.”
Sadie studied Mr. Winterborne, probably trying to guess what his temperature and blood pressure might be. Colin looked like it was a pity they didn’t have popcorn. But Tim was the one who looked like April felt: like he knew a conscious Gabriel Winterborne might be scarier than the man on the pallet any day. So he pulled Violet closer. And waited.
“Mr. Winterborne.” Sadie inched forward, deadly serious. “I’m Sadie—”
“I know,” he snapped. “You’re Dr. Simmons’s daughter.” He looked at Colin. “And you’re the con artist’s kid. And you . . .” He trailed off when he looked at Tim. “You’re the son of the man who tried to kill me.” Mr. Winterborne finished with a shrug. “Or one of them.”
“Did you kill him?” Tim asked.
Slowly, Gabriel shook his head. “Wrong Winterborne. If you haven’t learned by now, Uncle Evert doesn’t leave loose ends.”
April gulped and thought about the shady men she’d seen doing shady things on the dark dock. She remembered the way Evert had looked at her after—like she was a mess he’d have to clean up eventually. But that was Future April’s problem. Present April had a half-dead billionaire and a roommate who wasn’t bouncing anymore.
“Mr. Winterborne?” Sadie’s voice wasn’t as strong as it usually was. “There were some other articles . . . about . . .”
“I’m sorry, Sadie. Your mother and father were brilliant people. They didn’t deserve to die. But neither do most of the people who die in my place.”
“No. See . . . they had an accident.” Her voice cracked as she pleaded, “It was an accident. Wasn’t it?”
But Gabriel was shaking his head. “I can’t be sure. I was gone by then, but . . . your dad designed the ship. Did you know?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Publicly, Evert blamed your father. Ruined his career—labeled him ‘the man whose negligence killed the Winterbornes.’ But of course, privately, we all knew why the boat sank.”
“Why did it sink?” Colin asked, and Gabriel raised an eyebrow.
“Because bombs and boats don’t mix.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Sadie said, and April couldn’t blame her. Sadie’s was a world of science. Where equations always balanced and actions had equal and opposite reactions. “If there was a bomb, my dad would have proven it. There would have been investigations. It would—”
“Oh. I wish we’d thought of that,” Gabriel said dryly. “But I seem to remember the evidence being at the bottom of the ocean and people not being willing to take the word of a ten-year-old boy, a disgraced engineer, and a butler.”
Then the work of standing upright seemed too much for him and he staggered to the table and downed a bottle of water in one long gulp. He looked frail and weak, and April couldn’t help but think about the tattoos and the woman right upstairs.
“Do you want me to go get Ms. Nelson? Or Smithers?”
“No!” he snapped, then leaned against the table. “The element of surprise is all I have, and I won’t let you take it away from me.”
“Evert’s trying to have you declared dead,” April said.
Gabriel huffed. “Good. Maybe then he’ll stop trying to kill me.”
“But you’re alive,” April said.
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
“But if you tell people you’re back, then—”
“Who are you going to tell, little girl?” Gabriel snapped. “Who is going to listen to a handful of orphans and a dead man?”
“Well,” Sadie said in her most scientific voice, “when the man in question is demonstrably not dead, it would be—”
“Do you think I haven’t tried?” Gabriel’s words echoed around the room.
“When I was ten, I washed up on the shore. When I was twelve, I started having accidents. Luckily, my parents’ will gave Smithers custody. He brought on Izzy’s father to lead my security detail, and I was safe. For a while. But I was the only thing standing between my uncle and the Winterborne legacy, as he liked to call it. I was rich and famous and privileged beyond compare, and no one beyond this house believed a word I said. But go on. Be my guest.”
He poured water on a rag and wiped his face. “Maybe they’ll listen to you. They never listened to me.”
He turned back to them, finished with his lecture. But the story wasn’t over, of that much April was sure.
“Mr. Winterborne?”
“Don’t call me that!” Gabriel shouted, then seemed to feel badly about it. “He’s Mr. Winterborne. Not me. Never me.”
“Okay. Um . . . Gabriel? What happened when you were twenty-one?”
“My uncle tried to kill me.” He raised an eyebrow, then gave a quick, cold laugh. “Again.”
“You might as well just tell the whole story, you know? They won’t leave till they hear it,” Tim said, and Gabriel looked at him like he might be the only one of them who had any sense, and then he started to talk.
“On my twenty-first birthday, I was going to come into my inheritance—take over the business. Become a man.” He huffed, then winced in pain from the effort. “But I was still a boy, really. Arrogant. I told my security I didn’t need them anymore. I said I was the head of Winterborne Industries now, and I didn’t need a babysitter. Izzy . . . Izzy told me I was stupid—that something bad was going to happen, and I’d deserve it. She was right.
“I didn’t see your father.” He looked at Tim. “Not at first. He hit me on the back of the head and knocked me to the ground. Then he took my wallet and my father’s watch. It had been in the shop when the ship sank, so I had it. I always wore it. For a second, I actually thought that maybe it really was just a robbery. But then he had a gun, and . . .
“It didn’t hurt at first. Because of the adrenaline, I guess. I fell into the water and stayed under. Swam as far as I could. When I came up for air, I heard shouting and sirens, and I knew he was probably gone. But I also knew he’d come back.” He leveled April with a glare. “Him or others just like him. They would keep coming back.”
For a long time, April and the others stayed silent—unwilling or just unable to break the spell, waiting for Gabriel to finish. “I managed to climb aboard one of the ships, and then I just . . . went away.”
“Just like that?” Colin sounded doubtful. “You. Gabriel Winterborne. Just floated off into the sunset? Just like that?” Colin snapped his fingers, and Gabriel shrugged.
“Izzy and I used to joke about it—what if we ran away? What if we moved to the other side of the world? What if . . . I don’t think she really thought I’d do it. Not without her. But Evert would have kept trying until I was dead. Until everyone I loved was dead. So I decided to just be dead.” He took a ragged breath, and April knew that the question was no longer why he’d run. The question was . . .
“What do we do now?” Sadie said.
Gabriel looked like he would have laughed if he’d had the energy. “We?”
“Yeah. You need us!” Colin said. “We’re . . . you know . . . not dead.”
“You will be if you don’t leave me alone,” Gabriel said, and April knew words wouldn’t convince him. There were no facts, no figures, that could have possibly changed his mind.
So April punched him in the shoulder.
“Ow!”
He recoiled even though she hadn’t even punched him very hard. Really, Violet hit way harder in her sleep.
“What was that for?” he cried.
“To show that you need us. You might as well go ahead and let us help. We’re precocious.”
“I have other words for you,” Gabriel grumbled, but he looked around at them, the children who had saved his life. “Go to bed. All of you.” He stumbled to the pallet and dropped to his knees. “I’m sure I’ll see you in the morning.”
April couldn’t sleep. She didn’t even try. She just lay in her big, soft bed, staring up at the Winterborne crest woven into the canopy overhead, thinking about long-lost billionaires and murderous uncles. She’d spent her whole life wondering who her family might be, but now she wondered if maybe families might be overrated. At least if they didn’t know you, they couldn’t try to kill you. That had to be a good thing, right?
Then, for about the nine billionth time, April reached for her key and came up empty-handed. The wind howled outside, and she wondered if Gabriel was warm enough down in the cellar. Did he have enough water? What if the fever came back? But mostly she thought about what he’d told them. And she knew that his body was going to heal, but she wondered if the rest of him would ever do the same.
“April?”
When the voice came through the darkness, April wasn’t surprised to hear it. There had been the same tossing and turning coming from the other side of the room for hours, even after Violet drifted off to sleep.
“Yeah?” April asked.
“Do you think Evert killed my parents?”
It wasn’t hard to imagine Sadie running those data points through her mind over and over, looking for a way that two plus two could somehow equal fifty.
“I don’t know,” April said.
A tree limb scratched against the brand-new window, and the house seemed to creak and moan under the weight of all that stone and wood.
“April?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you—when you said you’d found Gabriel Winterborne. I should have listened. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” April said, because it was. No one ever believed April. She hadn’t really expected the people at Winterborne House to be any different.
“April?” Sadie’s voice was softer this time, as if she was already half asleep.
“Yeah?”
“We’re gonna get your key back.” Sadie yawned. “I promise.”
Promises were easy to make and hard to keep, but April closed her eyes and didn’t say so. She just lay there for a long time, listening to the wind.