55

Tower Bridge, London

“This is it.”

Salem looked at the museum of oddities the driver was indicating. “That?”

He tapped his GPS, into which he’d typed the coordinates rather than have her search a street address. “I don’t think so. I think it’s that door between the museum and the Indian restaurant.”

“Thanks.” She paid and tipped him and stepped out, clutching her phone, the roll of butcher paper tucked under her arm. The streets were busy, but nothing compared to the chaos surrounding Parliament. Her heart hitched up her chest. She must live long enough to rescue Mercy. The awareness was out-of-body. She felt like she was watching from above, directing a Salem puppet.

She walked toward the door.

Mercy might be inside. Salem hoped she could hold her, nuzzle her sweet-soft hair, tell her everything was going to be okay even though it was a lie. Her only bargaining chip was the thin hope that the Order would not recognize the significance of the image of two women and the eel. With their main codebreaker, the Grimalkin, down, they might need her to lead them to the final treasure. She’d figure out how to free Mercy in that time, even if she had to push the child out of a moving vehicle to save her.

The door creaked open as she raised her hand to knock.

She stepped into a dark hallway. A single table broke the flow, a vase of plastic roses set on top of it. She walked past, engaging the flashlight on her phone to light her steps. Dishes clanked in the restaurant next door. The air smelled like curry and dust. Two closed doors branched off the end of the hallway, one going each direction.

They were identical, both with old brass knobs and peeling yellow paint.

She didn’t know which one to take and so chose right. Her hand gripped the cool knob.

“Don’t!”

She turned. It was Charlie, coming through the door she’d entered.

“What are you doing here?”

He walked toward her, his face wrecked with worry. “I can’t let you do this, Salem. It’s a trap. The Order has no reason to give you the girl. Not right now. MI5 thinks you’re expendable if it gets them something concrete on the Order. I don’t.”

A vise squeezed Salem’s head. “You can’t do this. It’s not up to you. I have to save Mercy.”

His face dissolved into tears, unsettling her. But she had too much forward momentum. She pulled open the door. A brick wall was on the other side. She pushed on it, the solid rough surface scraping her palms.

She turned to the other door and opened it.

Another brick wall.

Now Charlie was weeping. Salem stepped toward him, almost reached him, when she realized it wasn’t tears but laughter, a breathy pinch of horrible dry wicked humor. Charlie darted to the side, grabbed a plastic rose, and held it toward Salem.

“Smell it.”

She recoiled.

“You can’t,” he said. “It’s fake. My idea. Nice touch, yeah? Bet you wish you had trusted the flowers, like Mrs. Molony told you.”

All Salem could hear was the single knock of her heartbeat.

Thump.

Charlie bent forward as if to tie his shoes, but began licking his arm instead. Like a cat.

Thump.

With the back of his hand, he rubbed over his ears, tufting out his hair. He smiled up at her and meowed, bringing his cat and mouse game full circle.

Thump.

She realized what had been nagging her on the plane ride from Dublin to Heathrow. Back at St. Brigid’s, Charlie hadn’t seemed surprised or worried to see Jason, only irritated. It wasn’t Alafair who had made her uneasy. Alafair, who hadn’t trusted Charlie from the moment she’d laid eyes on him. It was Charlie.

Thump.

He stood between her and the door.

The Grimalkin stood between her and the door.

“You shot Lucan, you fucker.”

He darted to his feet and grabbed the phone out of her hand. “Killed him, too, with any luck. My car is out front. I presume you won’t tell me what the map means until you see the girl, so off we go.”

Bile burned the back of Salem’s throat. “You have the FBI on your side?”

“Only a few. Only when I need them.” He pushed her outdoors, his too-hot hand holding the back of her neck to steer her.

“Jesus, you cut off your own finger.”

“I like to embody my roles.”

She was struck by a final, shameful understanding, something she should have put together earlier. Back at the Gloup, Charlie had said Bode’s throat had been slit when Charlie looked back toward the hole, but that Bode had been facedown when Charlie came to. He couldn’t have known how Bode had died unless he’d witnessed it.

Or done it.

Agent Len Curson held the door open. Salem glared at the turncoat. He held her stare, coolly, leading her toward a car. A suit Salem didn’t recognize sat behind the wheel. The Grimalkin tossed Salem’s phone into a trash bin and then forced her into the car. He and then Curson followed, one sitting on each side of her in the backseat.

“Probably no small talk, right?” Charlie said. “It’s been exhausting listening to your every little thought the past four days, by the way, fulfilling your fix-it fantasies by telling you about my parents, hearing you whine about Bel. Blah blah blah. Bloody hell, you should have called her. She would have told you it wasn’t your fault Mercy was taken. She would have helped you crack the code.”

Salem couldn’t stay on top of the quicksand that had become her life. Her brain was flying, but it wasn’t moving fast enough. She was going under.

Mercy.

“Where is she?”

Charlie ducked his head and pointed. “Up there.”

She followed his finger. Tower Bridge, close, far too close. Salem’s panic began a high keen. She dulled it, swallowed it, buried it. “You were working with someone else.”

“Jason. Useless, except when it comes to disguise. You know him. Or your mother does. And can we talk about your mother? What a piece of work. She’d fuck up a saint, that one.”

The Heel Stone. The Eel Stone. The Heel Stone. The Eel Stone. Salem sang the words inside her head, biting down on them when they grew too slippery.

“Is your name really Charlie?”

He nodded, his smile even. “Charles Arthur Thackeray. My mother was a spy for the Underground. Father, too, just like I said. Cost them both their lives, and for what? Shite.”

They pulled up to a Tower Bridge side door. Agent Curson exited first, running around to open Charlie’s door, then escorting Salem inside the Tower Bridge, gripping her arm. He should have known she wouldn’t run, not with Mercy inside.

Charlie led them to an elevator. Curson entered first with Salem. Charlie followed. As the elevator shot up, Salem’s stomach dropped.

“That’s right,” he said. “You’re a bit of an agoraphobe, though you seemed to do just fine on our little road trip. You’re not going to like what you see up here. The whole world, no protection, spread out as far as your eyes can see.”

Salem’s tiny world grew smaller. “What is Mercy?”

Charlie’s eyes stopped their crazy spin and focused. “She’s the one-pad cipher. As was her mother before her, and her mother before that, so on down the line to the inception of the Underground. It’s nothing to do with her blood, at least not in a way measurable by current technology.”

DNA. Genetic instructions as code.

“I see your brain working. If you could solve that one, the Order would certainly love you, yes they would. But no one can break it, not with the knowledge we have now. If we crack a few more trains, however, it should be easy peasy. All glory to the Grimalkin.” He giggled.

The elevator door slid open to an opulent room the size of a hotel lobby.

Mercy sat in the center, huddled on a blue velvet couch. A familiar-looking man sat near her. She wore corduroys and a Disney princess
t-shirt. Her head was bandaged over her left ear. She seemed smaller than she had days ago, her expression haunted, her focus on some spot on the floor even though a coloring book and crayons rested next to her.

Salem cried out.

The child glanced up. A heartbreak of emotions played across her face—hope, suspicion, terror, love. She leapt off the sofa and into Salem’s arms, shivering, her frame slight, clinging so tightly to Salem that she stole her breath.

Salem held her like her life depended on it, weeping with grief and joy. The connection she felt embracing the child overwhelmed her. She’d never felt such pure love, or horror. Mercy was a part of her, she knew that now, but there was something shriveled and stunned about the child, a vital part of her spirit broken. The men had stolen something from her, something precious. Salem didn’t know if they could get it back, and that realization crushed her.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” she murmured repeatedly, choking on the words.

The familiar man rose from the couch. Salem realized where she knew him from. He’d been Stone’s partner last year, following her and Bel as they’d tried to save Hayes. He’d had a different nose then, but he was the same man, a dead ringer for Ed Harris.

“It’s done,” he said.

Charlie walked to the window and looked down. “You’ve caused quite a stir, haven’t you, Clancy?”

The sky beyond the high wall of windows was unbroken blue. They must be in a penthouse suite attached to the top of one of the bridge’s supports. Salem shifted her weight, causing Mercy to whimper and snuggle deeper. The shivering warmth of the frail child woke something deep in Salem, a primal maternal rage. She wanted to scream, fight, and tear at the men who had stolen the girl, yet her fury was tempered with a sharp terror that they might not make it. They were outnumbered, their adversaries too potent, too cunning.

No, she would not let the child die here. How could she offer her life to save Mercy’s?

Charlie spun and strode toward Salem, cutting off her train of thought. “I’ll take the rubbing from you, then, and you can explain exactly what it represents.”

If she did, he would kill her immediately. They might let Mercy live, or they might not. Her mind raced, searching for an out. The elevator was the only entrance she could see. No way to get that door open and safely closed without alerting the four men. She knew where Curson carried his gun; the outline of it was clear at his hip as he leaned near the elevator buttons. That’s also where Charlie carried his piece. Probably the Ed Harris lookalike, the one he called Clancy, carried a gun in the same spot. She would snatch one of their weapons, and she’d shoot all four men dead center in their foreheads. She’d have to. There was nothing to lose. It was now or never. She gave Mercy one last squeeze and tried to separate from her. The child clung to her like a baby monkey.

“She’s been through a time,” Clancy said.

Salem glared at him. Was he really trying to empathize with the child he’d helped kidnap?

Then her pocket buzzed, a loud but unmistakable hum against her flesh and Mercy’s. Salem held her breath, and for a moment, Mercy’s trembling stopped. It was almost as if time stood still, the spell broken as Clancy lunged toward her, moving startlingly fast.

“Jesus Christ, you didn’t search her?”

“I confiscated her phone,” Charlie said, his voice high and reedy.

Clancy wrenched Mercy out of Salem’s arms, the child clawing and screaming. Salem fought him like a wildcat, bereft without the weight of Mercy, but he was able to dip the phone out of her pocket and step away before she could get at his gun.

He clicked its power button, lighting up the screen and reading the information it revealed. “But you didn’t confiscate Stone’s phone.”

Charlie blanched.

Salem didn’t know why she’d snatched it from his pocket when he slumped, bleeding, in front of Parliament. She’d felt it under her hand, and she’d wondered about him, about who would survive him, who would tell his story. She’d slipped his phone into her pocket without thinking too hard about it.

The elevator light pinged.

Someone was riding it up.