"Hello, Malcolm," Hevlaska said, bracing herself. She was in for a fight and she knew it.
"I want those files," Malcolm said. "Give me your keys and tell me what they open."
"No," she said.
"Hevlaska!" he warned.
"I said no. You want to vandalize my flat, go ahead, but I'm not giving you those keys."
"Why not?" Malcolm asked. "What could possibly be in those files that still matters?"
"Nothing," she said. "I just don't want you snooping around."
"You never stop sounding like a child," Malcolm said, disgusted. "Did Allen know, when he came here, who he was?"
"He still doesn't know who he is," Hevlaska said.
"I didn't mean his birth parents," Malcolm said, impatient. "They're irrelevant now. He's your heir. Did he know that?"
"No, and I doubt he sees himself that way now," Hevlaska said. "I think, in his own mind, he'll always be Mana Walker's son."
"Well, whoever he thinks he is, he's disobedient in the extreme," Malcolm said. "You need to discipline him."
"Discipline him?" Hevlaska laughed. "How am I supposed to discipline him? He barely knows me and has no reason to respect me. I can't discipline him."
"Then give me what I need to do it myself."
"I can't. In order to discipline someone, you need affection and respect, something you'd know if you had ever bothered to teach. I can't discipline Allen, and I can't give you anything that will help you do it. That's a right you have to earn."
"There has to be something," Malcolm insisted. "Where did Cross find him?"
"That won't help you," Hevlaska said.
"Then why not tell me?"
"All right, I will. Cross found him at the hospital."
"There has to be more to it than that."
A great deal more, but if Cross was going to win, Hevlaska had to stand her ground. "You asked where Marian found him. That's where."
"But why?"
That Hevlaska had no intention of sharing. "What difference does it make? As you said, he's legally my grandson. He's the young Rouvellier dancer we've always wanted."
"We need to be able to control him." Malcolm clenched his right fist. "He's of no use to us unless we can control him."
"I can't help you with that," Hevlaska said. "He has no affection or respect for me."
"What about the files?" Malcolm demanded. "If there's nothing in those files, then why go to such lengths to hide them? And why...?"
"Kill for them?" Hevlaska asked. "Has it occurred to you that the information you want might have the opposite effect?"
Malcolm gaped at her. "What?"
"That if Allen comes to understand what's in those files, he'll be even more uncontrollable than he is now?"
"That's not possible."
Hevlaska was deeply grateful for her new alarm system, and her new medical alert device. All she had to do was push a button. "If that were true, then Marian would still be alive."
"What?"
"Think, Malcolm! If what Marian knew would help us control Allen, the cardinal would have kept him alive. As it is, he's committed one murder and one attempted murder trying to keep that information hidden."
"That wasn't an attempted murder," Malcolm said. "He just wanted the files. You could have spared yourself all that trouble if you'd just given him what he asked for."
Hevlaska remembered lying on the floor, from which she could not rise unaided, and watching her brother smile as he set fire to her sofa. "Are you sure?"
Malcolm looked at the sofa's replacement, a complement but not a match to the rest of the furniture.
"If he thought you knew, you'd be next," Hevlaska said.
For the first time since he was a child, Malcolm Rouvellier looked frightened.