“Because I’m Fleur Prins,” she says, the same proud speech she gave to me only a few minutes earlier. “Because mined diamonds are my life, mydestiny. I detest those second-rate imposters as much as you do.”
Lars’s fingers tighten on the gun, the barrel still dangerously close to Sem’s skin, but the diamonds are doing their job. Lars is distracted enough not to notice when I reach a hand into my bag,or the way Rayna has crept up behind me. My fingers making contact with cold, smooth metal...
“Here.” Fleur wriggles her fingers so the diamonds bounce around her palm, and Lars is like Xander when he saw the Cullinan on my wrist: blinded by the fire and sparkle. “They’re yours. You can have all of them, just put Sem down.”
As usual, Fleur has thought this through. She waits until his grip has loosened a little on Sem to do it, to toss all those fifty carats up into the air. She hurls them high in the direction of one of the arched windows, directing them into a ray of milky sunlight. The stones spin in the gleam, shooting colorful rainbows onto the exposed brick, the dusty floor, our clothes. It works like a charm. Lars sees nothing but diamonds.
He doesn’t notice when I whip the gun from my bag and tuck it in the folds of my coat.
He doesn’t see Rayna step up behind me, how the gun slides from my hand into hers, the way my hand comes away empty.
He doesn’t see how Fleur skitters backward, getting into position.
The diamonds hit the floor and scatter, cutting lines in the dirt and dust. Lars dumps a wriggling Sem onto the ground and dives after them. He goes for the biggest ones first, snatching them up before chasing after the next, all in one fluid movement, and I don’t think about what will happen if Rayna doesn’t know how to use that gun. The only thing I see is Sem.
I snatch him off the floor with shaking hands and hug him to my chest while he sobs and sobs. “I’ve got you,” I say, pressing my lips to his processor. “You’re fine. I’ve got you. You’re safe. Everything’s fine.”
I say it over and over until he hears me, until he understands the words and believes them, until his little body turns limp and shuddering in my arms.
Right up until he hears the shot.
Rayna
It’s only thirteen minutes before the cops arrive, but we pack as much as we can into those thirteen minutes. Fleur sits us down at the table behind the glass—me on the stool at the far end, Willow next to me with a sniffling Sem clinging to her chest—and walks us through what happens next.
“Here we go,” she says as heavy boots clatter up the stairs. “Just tell them what we talked about and everything will be fine.”
Easy for her to say. Fleur is a Prins, and it’s not like Willow and I were given much of a choice. We were fed our scripts and swallowed them whole, too traumatized to come up with a believable alternative or even think through the scenarios that would end in the detective not slapping on handcuffs. Willow gives me an encouraging nod, and I nod back even though... holy shit. I am so not prepared for this.
Detective Boomsma is the first to appear, trailed by a half dozen cops and more behind them still on the stairs. He takes his time as he moves across the space, pausing to study the dust tracks on the floor, the big arched window minus its pane, the carnage four stories below. I made the mistake of looking out that same window, so I know the horror of what’s down there. Lars, his eyes open and mouth agape, lying on a messy pool of blood and brains, glass shards glittering like diamonds all around.
At least Sem didn’t see that part. Willow kept him far, far away from that window, and she made sure he didn’t see anything thathappened right after it, either. She slipped his processors into her pocket the second that shot rang out, and she kept his face buried in her coat. From the moment Lars went sailing through the window, Sem didn’t hear or see a thing, which means he can’t be a witness.
Neither can Ingrid. She vanished right around the time that Lars did, when gravity tugged him to the ground. I think of his face just before it disappeared from view, and a shudder runs down my spine.
Detective Boomsma peels away from the other officers and makes his way slowly to the kitchen, pausing in the doorway to fiddle with his phone. I register his familiar frame as he moves to the table, the long limbs and hardened eyes as he tosses his phone to the table. On the screen, Voice Memos is recording everything.
“Tell me what happened. In English, please.”
That last bit is for me, I know, not so much so that I can understand, but more so I can dispute any stories that stray from the truth—which I most definitely won’t be doing. This is Fleur’s show, and I’m happy to let her take the lead.
In a calm, controlled voice, she spouts off the tale we agreed to for the detective, a short and dirty summary of the events that led to a man falling four stories to his death. I watch the detective’s face the whole time, and I can’t tell if he thinks it’s the most cockamamie story he’s ever heard, or the most brilliant.
When she’s done, Detective Boomsma sits silently for a few seconds, staring out the window Lars busted through only moments before, blinking at the blue sky and clouds as if trying to put them together, all these puzzle pieces that are not quite seamless.
Finally, he turns back to the table.
“So let me get this straight. Lars found Rayna and forced her here at gunpoint. On the way, he ordered her to summon Willow, who just happened to be having lunch with Sem and Fleur and a bag of fifty lab-grown diamonds in her pocket.”
The three of us give him a simultaneous nod.
“And what’s Lars’s connection to Rayna again?”
“Lars killed Xander,” Fleur says. “He knew about the diamonds and went there to steal them. But he didn’t realize Rayna was asleep in the bedroom until he saw it on the news. He tracked her down because he thought she could help him get more.”
This isn’t exactly true. Lars denied killing anyone, but he’d already proven to be a thief and a liar; why not a murderer, too? He didn’t seem all that torn up about Xander’s death, only that someone else got to his precious diamonds first—unless he was lying about that, too. It seemed like a good bet to blame Lars for everything, and as Fleur pointed out in those thirteen minutes, he isn’t exactly able to dispute that.
“The diamonds from Xander’s safe.”