He blinks, perhaps surprised she knows his real name. “Give me one reason,” he says pleasantly, “why I shouldn't have you killed right now.”
“Because I have something you want,” she says. “In my pocket.”
He waits.
“And because I need your guarantee, your personal guarantee, that you will never come near my family again.”
Something almost like amusement, but also impatience. “You know that isn't how this works.”
“Yes,” she says. “I know.”
She knows, as she had told Ivy, that the only way to end this is with a dead body. She presses her thumb against the underside of the raven's wing to release the aerosol.
Novichok is not slow.
Parkinson’s eye twitches. Once. The slightly unfocused expression of a man who has noticed something is wrong but has not yet identified what. His hand moves toward his jacket, towards his phone, and stops. He blinks at his hand. His pupils have gone to pinpoints. “What?—?”
He wants to yell but he can no longer talk. His throat is working without his direction. His other hand comes up, confused,purposeless. He takes one step and his leg fails him. It’s not a fall, not exactly, but something more incremental, the body shutting down in sequence. He collapses to his knees on the polished walnut floor.
He looks up at her, finally understanding. Comprehending that there is nothing, not his men outside, not his money, not eighteen months of meticulous planning, that can change what is happening to him. He takes his last shuddering breath.
Isobel also begins to feel the nerve agent then. Pressure in her chest, a heaviness behind the sternum, the faint blurring at the edges of her vision. It was expected, so she’s not alarmed.
She bends on aching knees and presses two fingers to the pulse point at his throat. Nothing. Parkinson is gone and the Ravenscrofts are safe once again. When she straightens out she finds a chair. There is always a chair in galleries, for the contemplation of art, and she sits.
The heaviness in her chest deepens.
She thinks of Gregory first. Gregory with his mustard waistcoats and his patience and loud classical music blasting through the halls at the manor. The way he has loved her, steadily, for forty years, through everything she has not been able to tell him. She has asked Brumilde to look after him, and every Raven knows that Brumilde is reliable in all the ways that matter.
She thinks of Christopher, the ruffian, the rogue, who will be all right. She knows he will be all right. He just needs someone to believe in him.
She thinks of Ariana. Her daughter, returned to her. Those months—too few, and yet she would not trade a single morning of them.
And dear baby Alexander, who will not remember her, and who will grow up safe because of her. That is enough. That is more than enough.
She thinks of her firstborn, her precious Alistair. The boy he was. So serious, so scarred after Ariana was taken, so determined to manage everything himself. The man he became. The way he looked at Ivy, as though Ivy was not someone he deserved, but she knew better. She knew they were perfect for one another, and their wedding day had put everything right in her heart, even though it was failing.
Isobel has been the keeper of this family for four decades. She did not always do it cleanly, or kindly, or in ways she would care to account for in full. But she did it.
The light in the gallery is very warm and very still, and she is so tired. She’s relieved to finally set it all down. It’s an ocean-deep sadness, but also intense relief. Alistair and Ivy will carry it now. She has made sure of that.
She closes her eyes and rests.
CHAPTER 42
A Proper End
ALISTAIR
We are ready.
Christopher has the access card Brodie sent through. Henderson has two cars on standby. We know the layout, the timing, the number of men. We have been standing in the sitting room for twenty minutes in our coats—all of us, Ivy beside me, Ariana on the sofa with Henderson at her shoulder—waiting for Brodie's call.
My phone rings. Brodie. I put it on speaker.
“You’re on speaker,” I say.
“Hargrove is dead, sir.”
