“Although I’d like to point out that Henry and I didn’t receive a sash or a crown or any kind of formal welcome,” Sam said, bemused.
“Sloane’s a girl,” Freya said. “So it’s more exciting all around. And she’s Abe’s girlfriend, and her existence means Abe will be a lot nicer to us.”
“No guarantees will be made,” Abe said, eying us with affection.
To me, he said, “I can’t imagine Codex without you. You were the final missing piece, Sloane.”
I reached forward, squeezed his fingers. “And you were mine.”
After the nonstop adrenaline of that week in London, Abe and I were simply together. The adjustment for two (former) lone wolves was not without its challenges, but our trust, our intimacy, and our growth deepened every single day.
We were also having the most frivolous, silly fun of our lives. Dance classes, cooking lessons, picnics on our living room floor, weekend road trips, and lazy brunches in bed. After my first video chat with Abe’s moms, they’d told him, definitely, that I was the one.
After we’d hung up, I crawled into his lap and kissed his cheek. “The one, huh?”
He’d scooped the hair off my shoulder before kissing me back. “If I’d called them the night we met, I could have told them the same thing.”
We didn’t get out of bed that night or the next day.
Our nights together couldn’t accurately be put into words, except that I woke each morning with wild sex hair, bite marks on my throat, and a smile of smug satisfaction. We had also broken our fair share of tables in Abe’s home.
There was another reason why today was so exciting. Sam’s father had sent us all the information he had on Bernard and the criminal organization that Codex had helped bring tumbling down. Abe, sensing my shift in thoughts, rapped his knuckles once on the desk.
“Now that Codex is officially a team of six,” he said. “Shall we dive into it?”
There was a chorus of “please—for the love of god—fuck Bernard for real” to which Abe smiled discreetly. “We have the Deputy Director to thank for this, by the way. Though I did appreciate your father thanking Codex in his press conference about Bernard last week.”
“Sam may have had something to do with that,” Freya said. “Andrew Byrne might be… kind of… almost becoming a… half-way decent human being.”
“Finally,” Sam remarked dryly. “He was curious to hear our thoughts after we see all of these updates.”
Codex had still received its fair share of smaller cases. Bernard had fallen, but low-level book thieves were still using a stray Reichenbach Falls code word every so often. For the most part, they appeared opportunistic in nature, not orchestrated on a grand scale. Codex was grateful for a bit of peace and quiet.
Freya projected her laptop screen onto the large white wall and opened all the files Sam’s dad had sent. “Now our glorious leader has read through all of this, right?”
“I have,” Abe said. “If you pull up those first few pictures, I’ll walk us through.”
Bernard Allerton’s mug shot appeared on the screen. He bore a regal pose, academic, but there was true fear in those eyes. Henry let out a long, relieved sigh.
Delilah kissed his cheek. “You did it.”
“We did,” he said.
“We sure fucking did,” Abe said. More pictures appeared on the screen, more mugshots.
“The night that Henry confronted Bernard, he fled to London to hide away in the secret apartment at Adler’s Bookshop, owned by Peter Markham aka Jim Dahl. The Sherlock Society of Civilized Scholars had been using that apartment for years to host all manner of secret meetings or to store stolen books,” Abe said. “Bernard often used that space after he’d come into stolen inventory—it was an ideal place to hide things before being sold off to a private owner.”
“So that was always Bernard’s plan?” Henry asked.
“It seems like,” Abe said. “He knew that, as a wanted suspect, his ability to travel would be limited. He still went around London from time to time to meet with Eudora or interested buyers. That’s why Interpol agents were able to get a few pictures of him. But he was fast, and smart, so always evaded them in the end.”
Henry was shaking his head. “All this time, and he was thirty minutes from Oxford.”
“Those credit card charges in Prague and Germany?” Sam asked. “A red herring, like you thought?”
“Someone in his network did that for him, but we’re not sure who yet,” Abe said. He tapped on a picture of Peter Markham. “This man, Nicholas’s grandson, is an expert criminal forger. He’s been Bernard’s partner for years. Also known as Jim Dahl, he forged the George Sand letters. He forged Henry’s signature on those letters.”
“Jesus,” Henry said, fingers to his mouth. “An expert forger would have made Bernard’s thefts even easier to pull off.”
“And it did,” Abe said. “Peter’s job this past year has been to protect Bernard. Dresden guards were on sight at all hours at the bookstore. During the six months he was here in Philadelphia, pretending to be an intern at The Franklin Museum, the shop was closed down and protected by guards at all times. There was nothing to suspect, certainly not that a man was living in there behind a bookcase.”
Delilah’s brow furrowed. “Jim would have been an intern at The Franklin Museum while we were working to recover the stolen Copernicus.”
“Yes, he would have,” Abe said.
“We might even have met him,” Henry sighed. “And would have had no idea all the things he was planning on doing. Or that he was helping to hide Bernard all along.”
Abe leaned forward, brought up the mugshots of James Patrick, Julian and Birdie, and Eudora Green.
“James Patrick has confessed that he and Bernard had a decades-long partnership that involved the buying and selling of stolen books and antiques using the Kensley Auction House as a cover. Julian and Birdie—not their legal names—are good friends of Bernard’s. Like we suspected, they are con artists who provided the perfect fencing operation for a thief like Bernard to pass his stolen books through. They have been traveling the world for years, pretending to set up bookstores, only to con the hell out of both the buyers and the sellers.”
“And my favorite lady, Eudora?” I asked.
“Your favorite lady is currently in big trouble for concealing a wanted criminal’s whereabouts as well as for her part in buying and selling stolen books. Also for being in charge of the threats against Sloane and me.”
“Even in her mugshot, she looks like she’ll bake you a pie with venom in it,” I said.
“So what was the plot?” Delilah asked. “Did he actually want those papers?”
Abe crossed his arms, looking absurdly pleased to tell us this. “Bernard was informed by James Patrick that these new private papers were going to be auctioned off in a week. Bernard brought James into a scheme to gain ownership of those papers himself. Julian and Birdie were brought in to bid—legally—to provide a safe smokescreen between their purchase and Bernard receiving them into his private collection. As compensation, Julian, Birdie, and James would receive payment from Bernard as well as a few select materials from the collection.”