Fic: My blogger’s new Girlfriend (2/2)
Part 1 here
5.30 p.m.
Sherlock’s phone buzzed. He was in the middle of an experiment. He checked the caller id and grumbled to himself as he remembered the pre-Woman days, when it was safe to ignore his brother’s calls. But it had been only four weeks since Mycroft had risked his position to save his skin…
“Yes, your Highness. What was so important that couldn’t be texted?”
Mycroft sounded edgy, “Sherlock, John’s been abducted fifteen minutes back, about two blocks from the clinic. The surveillance footage of the kidnapping is already in your inbox. The GPS tracker on his phone has been activated. The signal is presently on the move, towards Blackfriars. I have sent the car; ETA at Baker Street, one minute. It definitely isn’t Moriarty, too shoddy by half.” He took a pause… “I’m not in the country, presently. Do not do anything rash, Sherlock. I have used a lot of favours, cleaning up the last mess you made…”
Before Mycroft had finished speaking; Sherlock was ready to leave, laptop in hand, John’s gun snug at his hip. There were no snide asides, no arguments, and no refusals. Mycroft hadn’t expected any, not where John Watson was concerned. But then, he didn’t expect any gratitude either…
“Is that all, Mycroft?”
“No…Taking into account the admirable self-restraint you displayed, the last time someone close to you was attacked; I have already taken the precaution of passing the same information to D.I. Lestrade.“
Sherlock snarled, “How dare you? You insufferable…”
“If threatening Mrs. Hudson, makes you throw someone down a building, I would rather not have to deal with the repercussions of letting you loose on John’s kidnappers.”
Sherlock cut the call, seething with fury while simultaneously gliding into the soft leather seat of the car, before it had completely stopped before 221B. “Go!” He commanded the driver viciously, all his attention focussed on the video in front of him. He ignored his brother’s assistant in the front seat, who was focussed on a laptop in addition to her usual phone; probably tracking the car…
He smiled with pride as he watched John single-handedly take down two of his assailants, before a cloth was roughly forced over his face, dropping him unconscious… Chloroform… Definitely not Jim; too pedestrian!
Then his smile disappeared, as he watched his friend’s limp body being roughly manhandled into the back of a van. He took a deep breath as he forced himself to concentrate, picking out the relevant details, trying to forget that the victim in the video was John.
If Mycroft thought, getting Lestrade to supervise him was enough, he had seriously underestimated him. By the time he was done with them, those thugs were going to regret ever laying a finger on John Watson…
He got out of the car which had stopped behind the compound of an abandoned factory. Lestrade was already there. Damn you, Mycroft!
“We have surrounded the building. The signal stopped in the driving lot. There’s a delivery van parked there, probably used for transport. We have to assume they are in the building.”
“What the hell is she doing here?” Sherlock snarled, when his gaze fell on Molly, looking even smaller than usual, standing next to Lestrade’s squad car.
“We were all going out for a pint, when your brother called. John was supposed to join us too. Your brother didn’t have to tell me how important it was for me to get here before you did. She tagged along. That’s not important right now. All the windows appear to be boarded up. They have not stationed any lookouts. They don’t seem to have any idea that we are already on to them. You have any clue, who it could be? Is it him, Moriarty?”
Sherlock lowered his voice as Molly was within ear-shot; one of the strange tics, he seemed to have developed since Christmas. “Of course it isn’t him… Mycroft wouldn’t have been able to track him and the kidnapping was on video. This was done by an idiot.”
That was when Sherlock’s phone buzzed. He whipped it out…unknown number. His insides curdled with doubt. This couldn’t possibly be Jim’s work…
“Hello!” His heart-beat stuttered irrationally, expecting John’s voice reading a prepared script.
“Mr. Sherlock Holmes”, the voice was that of a stranger, smooth and vaguely familiar; did not sound like a terrified hostage. “Just wanted to let you know that I have your friend in my possession.”
“That was a mistake, Mr.----?”
“Let’s just say I wish to remain anonymous. If you recall, my brother tried to engage your services a few months back, to recover a very important file.”
A few months back, organized crime type, with a couple of minions in tow! He hadn’t even bothered to hear the details, and they had kidnapped John in retaliation…
“I’m a Private Detective. I can refuse a case, if I see fit.”
“I think the exact word used was ‘boring’. So I decided to go ahead and make things interesting for you. I am not accustomed to being refused. So these are your options. You WILL recover that file for me, and when you do, you will have your partner back in one piece. Or you can refuse, and have him back in many little pieces… Your call!”
The caller was definitely in a car, on a road with heavy traffic; so not in the building. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth before answering with deathly calm. “Of course, I’ll recover those files for you. But if there’s so much as a scratch on John, when he is returned…well, you’re an imaginative man, so I’ll leave it to your imagination. Email me the details. I’ll be in touch.” He cut the call.
“Alright”, Lestrade ordered, “Civilians stay here…that means you too, Sherlock. My people have surrounded the building and we are waiting for back-up. Let us do our job.”
“I have no intention whatsoever of interfering in your… WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Lestrade had swung Sherlock around and handcuffed his hands behind his back.
Sherlock didn’t struggle. But if looks could kill, Lestrade would have been a pile of smouldering ash. “My brother will be extremely delighted that you complied with his instructions so thoroughly.”
“This is so that you don’t get one of my people, or John killed, in your enthusiasm. You are too close to this, Sherlock. You know I’m right. You can thank me later…”
“Very well, off you go then…”
But Lestrade didn’t leave till he had locked a handcuffed Sherlock in the back of his squad car for good measure. Sherlock found himself trying to undo the handcuffs behind his back, while sitting opposite a nervous Molly Hooper.
She tried to reassure him, “He’s right, you know…” he ignored her as the pin finally slipped out of his sleeve and he deftly manoeuvred it between the thumb and fore-finger of his right hand.
She tried again, “Don’t worry, John will be fine.” Sherlock’s stomach clenched against his will, as he heard the nervous ring in her voice.
“Of course, your boyfriend will be fine. They won’t harm him, now that I’ve agreed to recover their precious file.”
Molly stuttered, “What! Excuse me! My what?” Before Sherlock could wrap his head around her words, there was a clear sound of footsteps approaching the back of the car. And fiddling of keys as the person tried one, then another. So, not Lestrade…
Sherlock’s hands were still restrained. He wondered if asking Molly to retrieve the gun tucked in his waistband would be overkill… the second key worked and the door swung open.
Sherlock’s jaw dropped open, as Sergeant Sally Donovan got into the car, her jaw fixed in a tense determined line, as she fished out another set of keys from her pocket and started to unlock him.
“It’s YOU!” he hated that his voice sounded shocked. Who could blame him? What the hell was John thinking? “But how?”
“Really?” The sarcasm was missing its usual bite. “That’s what you want to discuss right now?” she turned to Molly, while trying to haul Sherlock out, one handed. “Don’t warn him… You know, what I’m doing is right.”
Molly bit her lip, gaze swivelling between both their faces, but nodded firmly before Sally shut the door on her.
“Okay, genius”, she turned to Sherlock, all business. “So what’s the plan?”
“You go back to your team. I’ll take it from here.”
“Like hell!” She retorted. “I sprung you, remember? And don’t you always whine about needing an assistant. Today, you’ve got me to watch your back. Now talk.”
And just like that, Sherlock saw exactly what John had been thinking!
They sneaked into the compound of the factory together. The hardest part was sneaking past the cordon. But Sally went in first, sending off the plainclothes cop, patrolling on the north side. As soon as the man’s back was turned, they made their way into the grounds through a gap in the chain-link fence. Sherlock then examined the ground around the parked vehicle, using the van as cover.
“He’s not in the building”, he announced within a minute.
“But the signal is still in the compound. We traced it! It hasn’t moved.”
He pointed towards the far side of the compound where there was a squat box-like structure… “There…in the garage, it’s the only explanation.”
If Sherlock would have stopped to think, he would have felt surprised at how well they worked together. But he didn’t… Save John first! Kill him for this betrayal later!
They determined that there were two men patrolling outside the garage. Sally’s tone was all business, “Right, I’m assuming that you’re carrying John’s gun.”
The gun had been their secret…Apparently not! “I can’t use it till we are inside, so it’s essentially useless.”
Her voice was challenging now, “Think, you can handle Mr. Green boots on your own?”
Sherlock smirked, “Why? Did John tell you that he was the muscle in our arrangement? Meet you at the garage door in two minutes.” He turned to slink away before adding, “And Sally, your boy has a recent left shoulder injury… just saying…”
One face-full of pepper-spray and a well-placed kick later, he was at the door. Sally was already waiting for him.
Aside from a small cut on the elbow, she looked unruffled… He scouted the garage exterior noiselessly and found an old ventilation duct. One minute for a peek. The room was consisted of a well-lit, open space with no vehicles. In one corner of the garage was John, hands and feet bound, lying on the floor, still unconscious…breathing steady, with no signs of external damage. Two men in the room seated on chairs five feet from the prone form. One smoking, the other…dozing…good!
He stepped back to face Sally and whispered, “Two more inside. Armed…” She silently hefted an old drum towards the window, to stand on, and peek through herself.
“So, what next?”
“Now I will walk to the door and knock. They will presume I’m one of their friends from outside. One of them opens the door. I take him down, and then shoot the other before he wakes up and gets to John. It’s the only way…”
She looked at him like he was a kid trying to speak complex words. “Okay, that’s it…gimme the gun.”
“What! Why?”
“Your plan is stupid, since it relies on the man in the room being too slow to hurt John. With John still out like a light, we can’t take that chance. So here’s what I’m proposing… You knock on the door. One of them answers, and when you are taking him down, I shoot the other man through the duct. No chances, see?”
Sherlock eyed her doubtfully, though he could find no fault with the logic of her plan.
“Oh, for God’s sake”, she hissed. “I’m almost as good a shot as John is, under controlled conditions, and shooting a man within a confined space less than ten feet from me is as controlled as it gets in real life. If you must know, that’s where he asked me out the first time; at the Met’s shooting range, where he had come with Lestrade to watch us practice. I can do this without killing that man. We can finish this in five minutes..”
In the end, it took three. As Sherlock cracked Sally’s baton on the skull of the man who answered the door, he heard a perfectly timed shot go off inside the warehouse, followed by a cry and a thud. He slipped inside to see that the man wasn’t even trying to get to John. He was reduced to a screaming mass huddled on the floor, from a well-placed flesh wound on his calf.
After ridding the man of his weapons, Sherlock had eyes only for John. He cut the zipties free with his pocket-knife and gently rolled his friend over. His vitals were fine with no external signs of injury, not even from the attack. He could hear Lestrade and his troops rush in behind him. But everything faded in the face of the fact that John was alive and fine…
Two hours later they were back at Baker Street. John had been checked over at the A & E in record time with Molly’s help, with the consensus that he needed to sleep off whatever he had been given. Sherlock was not completely aware of everything that was happening, of how they came back, how between him, Sally and Lestrade; they had hauled John into Sherlock’s bed as it was easier, or when Lestrade left with vague admonitions of making him sorry for his actions later…
He was sitting with his violin on his chair, staring off into nothing, and analysing his own reactions, as Mycroft’s words echoed in his head, Caring is a mistake, Sherlock.
Mycroft was right. John was completely fine, and yet his heart seemed to be running a marathon, his mind on a loop. John covered in Semtex at the Pool, John kneeling over helplessly as the American threatened him with a gun, John tied up in a warehouse unconscious; all to get to Sherlock. It was too much to hope that every time his abductors would be inept like today. Next time… and there was going to be a next time…someone could get really inventive and John would get hurt…badly. Maybe it would be kinder to shoot John himself… What the fuck was he thinking?
His morbid musings were interrupted, as a cup of steaming tea was plonked on the table in front of him, and Sally Donovan took the chair opposite with a cup of her own. He felt an irrational urge to shove her off that chair…John’s chair…
She was eyeing him critically, her gaze narrowed. She sighed, “I can’t believe that you need me to tell you this, but this wasn’t your fault!”
Sherlock’s voice was ruthlessly sarcastic. “Oh, really? The man who orchestrated the kidnapping, wanted me take a case for him. I refused, as I found the matter too boring for my attention. That’s all the reason he needed to kidnap John, all for my attention. You are being sooo forgiving now as John was unharmed… in this instance. What about the next time, when someone carves him up or shoots him before we get there?”
She held his eyes as she repeated firmly, “It’s . Not . Your . Fault.”
He snorted feeling inexplicably lighter than before. “You don’t need to be nice to me for his sake. He’s already sleeping with you.”
“Is that what you think? Jesus! You are screwed up.” She grinned. “I started thinking that you’re…well...not so bad, when John started writing his blog. He should rename that blog of his, something like ‘Normal person’s manual for interpretation of Sherlock Holmes’. The best part was his smile, when I suggested that to him. To put it your way, he… sort of decoded you.”
“And you believed him!” Sherlock smiled self-deprecatingly.
“He worships you, you know. And that’s what the world sees. People think John Watson would do anything for Sherlock Holmes, as he wears his heart on his sleeve. What they don’t see is that you would do anything for him too. Well…almost anything… Letting him keep a girlfriend for more than two weeks doesn’t seem to fall in that category.”
“Is that why you made him keep your relationship a secret? Wore Anderson’s perfume to crime-scenes, had him flirt with you subtly, so I would notice. For your information I don’t go around sabotaging John’s relationships. He manages to do that all on his own.”
His voice had risen unconsciously, and there was suddenly an undecipherable sound from the other room. Both shot to their feet, Sherlock only one step behind Sally, as she reached the bed. John was tossing restlessly. She patted his head with one hand and held his hand in the other, as she whispered calmingly, “Shh…it’s alright… You’re alright…”
Sherlock had frozen in place, halfway to the bed, not knowing whether to stay or leave; when John’s eyes fluttered half open and fixed blearily on Sally’s face. “Sh…lock...”
“He’s right here”, she whispered soothingly, gesturing Sherlock forward, but his limbs seemed to have turned to lead, as he remembered how he too had called out to John in a similar fashion, even half-aware as he had been of Irene’s presence in the room.
Then John twisted his head to fix him with an unfocussed gaze. His lips curved upwards in an attempt to smile as he thickly muttered, “Shlock…got…milk…” Within seconds, he was fast asleep, snoring gently.
To his chagrin, Sherlock found that his room had turned blurry around the edges, even as his face split in a stupidly large grin. He turned around to beat a hasty exit, hoping Sally hadn’t seen his face do that, when her voice stopped him. “You should know that I’m not in love with him, Sherlock.”
This was the first time; she had called him by his name…
Sherlock turned around to retort in a low, but scathing voice, “You don’t know what you’re saying. It is impossible to know John Watson and not fall in love with him.”
Her eyes were serene, twinkling. Strangely, she looked neither angry nor sad. “…And I always seem to go for a married man. That’s why, this will work. Because I know that you will come first. I knew that, before I entered this relationship. I know what I’m doing now.” She paused before adding defiantly, “I think, he’s worth the effort!”
Sherlock’s eyes softened at this statement but as Sally continued, her voice had a hint of steel. “So, for the record, I will never dump John because of you. BUT, if you ever tell him that he’s a massive improvement over Anderson, I promise, I’ll make you squeal like a little girl!”
***
Next morning, Sherlock amused himself as he watched John stare at him during breakfast, as if he were about to explode. It was when he was completely hidden behind the newspaper that John worked up the courage to mutter, “Er…Sherlock, I …”
Sherlock lowered the paper instantly, as he fixed his friend in a piercing gaze, while responding, “I’m assuming you wish to talk about Sally…”
His voice had been smooth, non-confrontational. But John leapt out of his chair as though electrocuted and started speaking in a great rush. “Look…I know she was…horrible to you before, and called you…names. But you can’t deny that you were equally worse, if not more. And then over the past few months, I noticed that she wasn’t calling you… names. And we got talking about the blog…and she’s a really good shot too…and she admitted that she could have been mistaken about…you…and…now you’re smiling! Why are you smiling?”
Sherlock grinned as he turned his attention from John’s panicked face back to the paper. “It’s alright, John. As you once told me, it’s fine. It’s all fine…”
THE END…