by Eva Chase
Because they were different. Because out of all the people I’d dealt with, bargained with, or conned, they were the only ones I’d ever met who I could believe might put a greater cause than themselves over their own desires when the chips were down. Because the world was already a shitty place, and while I was happy to make use of that, I didn’t want to be the one to make it even worse.
Because in their own small ways, they’d made me happy.
They’d found the commune anyway. It wasn’t as if they could screw me over more than they were right now.
“You found a group of people in the mountains near Split yesterday,” I said. “They seem to be associated with some kids dying?”
The trio didn’t react. Sherlock straightened up with his crutch, his gun partly lowered but still at the ready.
“You think I orchestrated that somehow,” I went on. “And that’s fair. I wanted you to think the commune was part of my business. I wanted you to find them, because it was taking me too damn long to do it myself. I don’t work with them. I’m planning on stopping them. I just had to figure out where the hell they were first.”
“That’s a little difficult to believe,” John said quietly.
“Is it?” I focused on Sherlock. “I found your little tracking device, hidden in your doctored sugar cube. I went to that transport company with weird requests on purpose. I ‘set up’ a meeting for one of you to overhear. You didn’t discover my plans. I fed false ones to you, just like you did to me yesterday with your little trip. Do you have any other proof that I’m connected to the commune? You haven’t come across a single shred of evidence that I didn’t hand to you, have you? Because there isn’t any.”
I could practically see the gears turning in the detective’s head. His gun hand bobbed down a few inches further. “And you handed us that information because you wanted us to find the ‘commune’ for you?”
“Yes. I’d already been scouting around for them for weeks when you three turned up. I figured with your smarts and resources you could fast-track the process, and then I’d reap the rewards.”
“What rewards are those?” Garrett asked, his tone skeptical. “What does it matter to you what these people are doing if you don’t have any connection to them?”
I sat up a little straighter in my chair. “I didn’t say I’m not connected to them. I know… people like them. They’re part of a larger organization—a sort of cult. I know the kind of horrors they celebrate, and it makes me sick. They have something I need, something that’ll help me take down not just them but everyone like them.”
“So, this is all selfless generosity?” John said with his eyebrow slightly raised.
“No,” I admitted. “It’s also self-preservation. If I don’t get the thing I need from them, I’m probably going to die. Maybe not for another few months, maybe as soon as one. I’ve got a chain you can’t see dragging me down, and they have my only chance at severing it.”
Bash’s expression tensed where he was still braced in the doorway. I hadn’t told him that much. I’d have delivered the revelation more gently if I’d had the time.
“What is this thing you need?” Sherlock asked.
He’d never believe the story about the dagger. I improvised. “Their people poisoned me with a slow acting toxin. They cultivate an incredibly rare plant there that’ll serve as an antidote.”
He studied me for a long moment. He’d seen me under the effects of the cuff’s powers at least once. I knew from my glance in the mirror this morning that I was looking paler than usual overall. Bog’s claim on me and the aura that protected me from the shrouded one might as well have been a poison.
Whatever Sherlock was looking for, my explanation appeared to convince him. He gestured toward the room at large. “Why are you telling us this now?”
“Because it seems to be either that or watch Bash put a bullet in your brain,” I said. “And it turns out I like that brain of yours enough that I don’t want to see it splattered on a wall. What would be the good in that? We both want those assholes on the mountain to stop all the shit they’re up to. I’ll get us in there without them killing us first, you take them down, arrest them, shoot them—I don’t fucking care—and let me get what I need, and we all come out ahead.”
“We don’t know that a single word she’s saying is true,” Garrett protested.
Sherlock sighed. “Yes, we do. I did plant a tracker on her that I contrived to disguise in a sugar cube. We did manage to hear about her plans in very convenient ways. We haven’t seen any evidence that she already knew the whereabouts of this commune, let alone that she had any control over their activities.” He paused. “And from the bearing of our friend at the door, I have no doubt we would all be dead if Jemma preferred we were out of the way.”
The hostility in Garrett’s stance deflated.
“As far as I can see it, it’s pretty simple,” I said. “You can stop them, or you can stop me. If they’re the ones you have the bigger problem with…”
Sherlock’s mouth twisted. He looked at Bash. “You follow her orders, I take it.”
Bash smiled grimly. “Even when it would give me plenty of satisfaction not to.”
The detective tossed his gun on the bed. “Then I assume if the three of us retire unarmed to the other room to discuss how we’d like to proceed, we can count on our heads staying intact?”
“Yes,” I said firmly, and Bash nodded.
“Sherlock,” John said.
His friend motioned to him. “We were mistaken. We need to reevaluate the situation. I think, given the circumstances and the faith shown in us, we can offer faith a little in return.”
John hesitated a second longer and then set his gun on the bed next to Sherlock’s.
“Phones too,” Bash said. “I don’t want to see you making any calls to the police.”
“Fair enough.” Sherlock fished out his and set it down, and the other two followed in turn. Bash stepped to the side so they could file out into the living area. They gathered around the table and started talking in voices too low for me to make out.
Bash stayed on the threshold, his gaze sliding between them and me. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve been in more comfortable seats in my life, but it appears I’ll survive.”
He glowered at me. “I don’t think you should be joking about that right now.”
“Sorry. I should have been more careful in the first place.” I paused. “Thank you for coming to my rescue.”
The corner of Bash’s mouth quirked up at the wry note I’d let creep into my voice. “My pleasure to be of service, Majesty.” He eyed the trio again. “Are you really sure we can’t just get rid of them?”
“Yes,” I said. “As obnoxious as they’ve been for the last half hour, I was the one who gave them the idea I was in charge of the damned commune in the first place.”
“A little personal responsibility never stopped you from clearing the way before,” Bash remarked.
Before I could answer that, the trio returned.
“We have a few conditions,” Sherlock said. He strode past the bed to his suitcase, where he retrieved what looked like a thin silver bracelet. “Namely, we want some guarantee that you’ll keep to your word. An associate of mine at Cambridge designed this. It’s a subtle version of ankle monitor. He thought I might have opportunity to try it out. We’ll know your whereabouts—or know if you break it to remove it. This goes on, the handcuffs come off.”
I could accept that. I shifted my arms. “Well, get on with it then.”
“You’ll share everything you know about the commune with us?” John said.
“If you’re going to use it to take them down, absolutely.”
Sherlock snapped the bracelet into place around my wrist, feeding one end into the other until it was tight enough that I couldn’t wriggle it off.
Garrett came over and cut the tie holding the handcuffs to the back of the chair. He hesitated beside me as I stood up.
“The key for the cuffs is in my room. I’ll go—”
“I’ll come with you,” I interrupted. “And Bash too, to make sure you do find that key.” I studied him and then the other two men. “Are you all on board with this temporary alliance? You don’t have any lingering doubts that I’m a child-murdering psychopath? I’d rather avoid being shoved around like this again in the near future.”
John’s gaze settled on my throat. I could tell from the twinge when I swallowed that a bruise was forming where he’d hit me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was a defensive reflex. I’m all for an alliance if you are.”
“It’s fine,” I told him. “At least you didn’t jab a gun into my back.”
“That was a reasonable reaction given the information we had at the time,” Sherlock said with a lift of his chin. “A reaction I’ve adjusted in light of new information.”
I gave him a thin smile. “I’ve decided I’ll forgive you.”
Garrett just stood there with his hands jammed into his pockets, his gaze wary. He didn’t protest the alliance, anyway. I could feel him out one-on-one.
I turned back to Sherlock. “I’m a little shaken up by this whole adventure, and I could use a few hours to assemble the details I have. You know I’m not going far.” I tipped my head toward his tracking bracelet. “Meet me at my hotel this afternoon—let’s say two—and we’ll go over what we all know? Or would you rather talk here?”
“Let’s say here,” Sherlock said, his eyes glinting. “And I expect you to be prompt.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jemma
On our way out of the suite, I glanced toward the purse John had left on the dining table. “Can you grab that for me, Bash?”
He caught the leather strap without a word. Garrett watched him with particular attention to the pistol still poised in my hitman’s grasp.
Bash gave the detective inspector a particularly unfriendly glower. “Let’s get on with getting that key.”
He held the gun close to his side as we crossed the hall, but no one came out to notice us anyway. My mind flashed back to the massacre I’d pictured in Sherlock’s bedroom, and my stomach turned.
If I’d let Bash blow the three of them away, the scene might not have looked so different from the gory hallucination Bog had forced into my head back in London.
Depending on how well the trio played along, my plans might have just become ten times more complicated. I couldn’t say I regretted the choice I’d made, though. I was a liar and a criminal, but I wasn’t a monster. A person had to have some standards.
Garrett’s room was a much simpler affair than Sherlock and John’s suite: a bed, an armchair, and a dresser that held a small flat screen TV. The accordion blind was pulled down over the window.
He punched a code into the safe in the closet and retrieved a small key. His thumb slid over the inside of my wrist as he moved to unlock the handcuffs, and a shiver traveled up my arm that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. I might have suggested he leave the cuffs on a little longer for the conversation we were about to have if I hadn’t known there was no way Bash would leave me like that.
The cuffs clicked free. I pulled my arms around in front of me and rubbed the reddened skin. Garrett’s mouth slanted in a way that looked vaguely repentant and vaguely disgruntled by that repentance.
“It’s all right,” I told him. “You did what you had to do.”
Bash snorted. “And he can stew about it while you get your bearings again.”
He set a protective hand on my upper arm, but I clasped it and eased it away. “I think I should stay and talk with Garrett a bit,” I said, holding Bash’s gaze. “We have some unfinished business. I’m all right now. You can wait downstairs for me if you want.”
Bash frowned. “Mori…” He didn’t quite want to overtly argue with me, but he didn’t want to accept the suggestion either.
I turned to Garrett. “Should I be worried for my life or safety in your presence?”
The slant of his mouth shifted into half a smile, even if it was a tight one. “Don’t reveal that you’re actually a child murderer after all, and I think we’ll make it through one conversation unscathed.”
Bash exhaled roughly, but he bobbed his head to me and handed me my purse. “You know what you’re doing,” he said, managing to sound as if he really did mean that without any I hope tacked in front.
He went out, his footsteps fading as he headed down the hall. Garrett set the handcuffs on top of the safe. His gaze skimmed over me as if searching for something.
“You’re really dying?” he said.
Oh, yes, I had mentioned that, hadn’t I? “Not if I have any say in it,” I said, spreading my hands. “These people can be vicious, as you’ve obviously already found out.”
“Does it… hurt? The poison?” A flicker of concern passed through his eyes despite his stiff tone.
“A little,” I said honestly, other than the fact that the problem wasn’t a literal poison. “I’m managing. If we can get to the commune in the next few days, it’ll never be more than a little discomfort.” Relative to what I’d face if Bog caught up with me, anyway.
That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about, though. I reached into my purse, detached the false bottom, and pulled out Garrett’s notepad from the narrow compartment there. “I figured I should give this back. Since we’re allies and all for now.”
“I suppose we are,” he said, not sounding all that convinced, but he accepted the pad and flicked through it briefly as if checking to see if I’d defaced it somehow.
“You doodle a lot,” I remarked. “I think quite a few of these drawings are me.”
That tight smile came back. He tucked the notepad into his pocket. “I think you know you make a striking visual, Jemma. Why did you tell Bash to take off? Do we really need a repeat of the conversation when you stole that?”
“I was hoping for something a little better.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, watching me. “Why don’t you start then?”
He might have been a physically smaller man than his two colleagues, but his presence was plenty potent. Garrett Lestrade had worked his way up through the ranks at Scotland Yard faster than any man his age. He’d managed to impress Sherlock despite his adherence, until recently, to the word of the law.
And there was still a little anger burning in those dark brown eyes when he looked at me.
I believed that Sherlock and John would stick to our deal for the next little while, as long as I didn’t do anything epically stupid. Garrett, on the other hand… Something in him was still raw and sore. I needed to know that anger wasn’t going to spark at the wrong moment and burn me.
It was possible I also wanted to know that I could douse that anger. That he wouldn’t always think of me as the woman who’d brought out the worst in him.
I propped myself against the wall a few feet away from him and felt for the right words.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t really say that before, did I?”
Surprise darted across Garrett’s face—and vanished into suspicion. “Do you mean it?”
“About working that scheme in London? No. But I didn’t mean to hurt you as badly as I obviously did, and I don’t enjoy seeing it.” I couldn’t help making a face. “Do I really seem to you like someone who’d kill a child—or ask someone else to?”
“I don’t know, Jemma,” Garrett said, sounding weary. “We don’t really know you at all. For all I can tell, we could be falling deeper into the rabbit hole with this ‘alliance’ rather than finding our way back out. Hell, Jemma isn’t even really your name, is it?”
“Actually, it is. I was born Jemma Marie Moriarty.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “I’m supposed to believe you gave us your real name back when you were only around to con us?”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of London alive. Maybe it was vanity, but I liked the idea that someone other than Bash would know Jemma Moriarty
existed—someone who might appreciate how much I’d accomplished even if they didn’t approve of it—if my run ended there.”
Garrett stared at me for a second. Then he tipped his head back with a groan. “I don’t know when to trust my instincts around you. You lied so easily before.”
“What reason do I have to lie now?”
“I don’t know. Because you want to be sure I won’t screw you over?”
That guess was close enough to the truth to make my skin twitch. I wasn’t lying, though.
“There are easier stories I could tell you,” I said. “Stories you’d be more likely to believe. Stories you’d want to hear more. Would it make you feel better if I said that you were the only one of the three of you it was hard to leave behind?”
A hint of longing crossed his face before he caught it. He studied me again. “You know it would—if that was true. But it’s not, is it?”
“No,” I said. “That’s what I mean. I’m trying to make peace with you here, not play a game. If I had a game in mind, this isn’t how I’d play it. All right?”
“What is the truth, then? How do you feel about me—about any of us?”
A lump rose in my throat with the words. It felt like cutting open my skin and displaying my nerves, admitting this. But it was what he needed.
“I ended up liking all of you more than I should. More than I’ve liked just about anyone. Which may not be a lot compared to the average person, but… I should have been annoyed when you three showed up here to get in my way, and I was, but I was also stupidly glad to have you around again, as ridiculous as that might sound.”
Garrett’s voice dropped. “It doesn’t sound all that ridiculous.” The skepticism in his eyes hadn’t totally faded, though. He curled his fingers around the edge of the bed. “What’s one thing you like about me, then?”
That question wasn’t at all hard to answer. I smiled as I trailed my hand over the faint rippling of paint on the wall. “You have that drive to be the best—to be better than everyone around you—but you have it under control. You make the urge work for you instead of you working for it.”