Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,113

fact that we’re standing in a house of the dead.

“This way.” Guthram waves us forward.

When Hamish’s heavy tread echoes behind me, I throw up a hand and look back at him. “Watch that door.”

He nods, his stride falling short. “Done.”

The commissioner spares Hamish a halted glance before turning to lead me down a hallway. Picture frames hang on the beige-painted walls. Almost all boast botanical flower renderings, as though it’s the coroner’s hope to soothe the distraught friends and families of the deceased.

Henry Godwin never made it to a coroner.

Never made it into a cemetery, either.

Like all the Godwins before him—at least those whose fates were tied to the Crown—Pa was cremated, his ashes scattered over the historic remains of Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh. In death, he returned to the same place as his forebearers.

Ghosts, the lot of us, for over a century now.

For a split second in time, though, I came alive.

Isla Quinn, the king killer, did that. She removed the cloak of ice from my shoulders and wrapped me in an embrace so hot, it’s a miracle my skin didn’t singe. And then I backstabbed her, chose the queen and my loyalty to Holyrood instead.

If I’m to die, then you’ll do it.

A sharp breath immediately has me inhaling the pungent scent of formaldehyde. Slowly, my eyes adjust to the dimmed lighting as we enter the morgue. Stainless-steel wall vaults line both sides of the room, enticing me to find Bootham within one of them, but there’s no time to waste. I head straight for the computer in the back-right corner of the room.

“Priest,” Guthram protests, following, “what the hell are you doing?”

I don’t answer.

Even though tech is my younger brother’s domain, my movements are practiced, efficient. The flash drive I’ve brought with me plugs into the monitor and, seconds later, I’m completely bypassing the need to enter a password to access the coroner’s database. Another one of Damien’s genius inventions. Ironic, maybe, that I’m using it now just as my brother had, months ago, to anonymously infiltrate Westminster. Both times, Guthram witnessed all. This time, I’ll blow his brains out if he tries anything even remotely suspicious.

“I thought you wanted to see the body.”

I do, and I will, but only once I have the coroner’s notes at my fingertips.

It takes me twenty seconds to find William Bootham’s file, and another forty-three to absorb its entirety:

Legal Name: William Aurelius Bootham

Sex: M

DOB: 13/04/1973

Any lingering doubt I had that the priest’s death and the loyalists from The Octagon are related disappears the moment I come across the previously unmentioned cause of death: asphyxiation. Exactly how Isla killed Ian Coney.

“Fuck.”

I tab down with the mouse.

Aside from the handprint around Bootham’s neck, there were no other visible signs of struggle. His clothes remained intact, even after his transport from the unknown scene of the crime to Isla’s flat in Stepney. No traces of DNA left behind, either around Bootham’s neck—aside from the size of the hand prints themselves—or beneath his fingernails.

There’s nothing but a dead man abandoned in an innocent woman’s flat. But it’s enough. Enough for a trial, enough for a conviction, enough to see Isla behind bars for the rest of her life.

Guthram steps beside me, eyeing the monitor over my shoulder. “Well,” he says, almost flippantly, “you’ve come all this way to, what? Sift through medical records?”

With my hand hovering over the mouse, my heart hammers so ruthlessly that I feel its twin echo in my temples, in my lungs, in every limb and artery that was dead until she strolled into The Bell & Hand and threw my carefully orchestrated life into chaos.

You know what you have to do.

I don’t allow myself the chance to think twice—with a stroke of the keyboard, I delete Bootham’s file from record.

Guthram gasps. Grips my shoulder. Tugs, hard, but not hard enough to move me even a millimeter. “Priest,” he hisses, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Making you earn your thousands.”

“Earn my . . .” The commissioner mirrors my step away from the computer, remaining in front of me. His dark eyes flash, but not from fury. Panic. It oozes from his frame, warps his features, and cloaks his voice. “The priest’s funeral must be any day now, and you’ve j-just deleted his autopsy report!”

“Demand another be done.”

“Demand another?” Guthram gapes at me, so shocked that I manage to skate around him, heading for the vaults to my right. “There will be questions. Questions I won’t have a bloody chance in