It had been three busy weeks since Mycroft's visit and she had barely made any progress. Wherever Jim Moriarty had scurried after being released from Mycroft's clutches, he was certainly trying to stay well hidden. Like Mycroft had presumed, whatever he was planning, it was very discreet, and would be disastrous. If England's most notorious (and most likely only) consulting criminal wasn't consulting anymore, no one was safe.
Still, not only in Mycroft's previous visit but also in their occasional encrypted communications, she could tell he was hiding something. He seemed to get increasingly anxious with every reply and lack thereof. It was almost as if something personal was tied to finding this criminal, leading her to ask, had Moriarty said something to Mycroft in the interrogation that shook her superior down to his core? It was difficult to find the right spot to jab to get a reaction out of him. The only time she had ever seen him lose his resolve was not when she had made her first mistake of being caught by an enemy years ago, nor when she had been recaptured after escaping, but only the last time she had seen him when he almost broke her hand because of a meager amount of marijuana. So whatever Mycroft's soft spot was, Moriarty had found it.
She had tried asking for the interrogation recordings or a written log but was told that it was on a strict need-to-know basis, and she had no need for that to find him. No amount of arguing could convince them otherwise. Whatever he was planning, it was something that concerned Mycroft personally.
At the current moment, she sat at her work desk going through interrogation records of recently caught criminals when she heard an alert from her third computer screen. She glanced over and saw a lone inconspicuous sedan riding slowly along the roadway toward the cottage. She smiled and stood up, tying her robe closed at the front and proceeding to walk to the door. After going through the actions to open it, she waited outside on the patio for the car to reach her.
"Good morning, Tim!" she called out as a skinny man in a black suit stepped out of the driver's seat.
"Morning, Emma," he greeted beaming, walking up to give her a warm hug which she happily returned. "How are you today?" How refreshing it was to be asked that, especially in Timothy's sincere tone. He walked back over to the car.
"Can't complain; thanks for asking," she answered, following him. He started to hand her a couple of brown paper bags.
"I got everything on your list. And perhaps a few extra munchies," he added with a wink. They carried the groceries into the cold stainless steel kitchen and he helped her to put the items away.
"How are the kids doing?" she asked, starting to put refrigerator items away.
"Ah, they're wonderful. Charlie's just begun to walk and Ronalds's been stirring up a bit of trouble at school, but – ah well, at least he has his health." He chuckled and pulled out his wallet to show her some of the pictures inside.
She flipped through the pictures grinning widely at Timothy's family portraits. True love was still keeping pictures of your family in your wallet instead of just as iPhone wallpapers, she thought to herself as she let her eyes scan over a picture of a little boy in a onesie crawling across a grassy yard. "I'd love to meet them some day," she stated longingly.
He smiled sadly at her as he put the wallet back in his trousers. "I…apologize. Truly, I do." He rested a hand upon her shoulder warmly.
She returned the pitiful smile. "It's not your fault. Don't blame the prison guard, blame the jailer," she quipped, earning a more earnest smile from him.
Timothy had been her personal servant of sorts throughout her exile. Whenever she needed something from the "outside world," as she dramatically liked to call it, she would have to have him fetch it for her. She was not yet trusted to leave the premises. Luckily for her, Tim had been far better company than Mycroft and was the only bit of freedom she could ever taste. Ever since their first meeting, they been close and she had lived vicariously through him, relishing his personal stories and longing for what she thought would never be hers.
He sat down for a while longer, talking about his nearing vacation time. His plan was to take the family to Dublin to sightsee. He doted on his trip there before meeting his wife, telling her of the nights when he and his friends used to get pissed in the pub beyond comprehension. Then he asked if she had been there. Of course she hadn't.
His stories were so grand that even after he had left the feeling of longing he drew out of her lingered in the air for hours afterward. She barely got any work done, her mind wandering to city skylines at night and waterfront apartment buildings. Once it had gotten dark enough, she gave up her workspace to see if moving to her bedroom upstairs could gather her focus. And once that had failed, she gave up for good and called it a night, dreaming of live music and dancing.
It was nearing midnight when a slight rustle was heard from outside. It felt as if the army veteran inside her gripped her by the arm and violently pulled her out of the pub and back into the real world as her eyes snapped open. She strained to hear another sound. After living in complete silence for almost two years now, she knew every single sound she was supposed to hear, so hearing something foreign was cause for alarm.
A few more seconds passed when she heard a faint scrape downstairs. Her mind abandoned any fatigue she may have felt after being woken up so and she sprang into action. She hopped off the bed as quietly and lithely as she could before reaching under her nightstand and withdrawing the handgun she kept taped under. In a few quick movements, she was behind the door, pressing herself against the wall and looking out toward the room.
She heard soft movements headed her way. She had to give the intruder credit; he was making the least amount of sound possible. And the fact that he bypassed all of her security measures also deserved applause, but it more than likely meant he was not alone.
The figure stepped into the room, peering at the empty bed. Before he could process what that could have meant, she stepped out from the shadow of the door and jammed the butt of her gun straight into the man's cervical nerves in his spinal cord, rendering him unconscious almost immediately. She knelt down and turned him over. He appeared to be a middle-aged gentleman in dark garments that she didn't recognize. In his hand was a revolver, which she slid under the bed.
Downstairs she heard of a flurry of noises, telling her their plan of a surprise attack failed and now it was time to send in all of their guns. She felt her stomach drop, knowing this would not be an easy battle. After a calming sigh, she hurried back to her hiding position and waited, hearing them scramble up the stairs.
The first guy was quicker than the last, or perhaps the unconscious man gave him away, but his gun immediately swung behind the door to where she was, but being faster than him, she had ducked under the gun, grabbing his hand from the underside as she pushed it up, making him shoot through the ceiling. The second man was just putting his gun up toward her when she reached her trigger first and his brain was pierced with a bullet. Quickly turning around as the first man recuperated, she repeated her shot.
She looked around at the two dead men and one unconscious one feeling drained. It had been too long since she was in the combat field and she had not missed it one bit. Knowing she had taken two lives today, potentially three seeing as how the third man would most likely suffer complete paralysis because of the blow, made her nauseous. But even so, she had to pull herself together and make it downstairs to her work desk to send an encrypted email to get her to the hell out of here. With the defenses down, this place, and even she, was far too vulnerable.
She grabbed her handgun and proceeded to walk down the stairs slowly and quietly, still listening for any unknown sound. When she reached her workroom, she had found that the items had not been tampered with. Knowing how difficult it was to bypass the security, they must have known it would have been damn near impossible to log into her database without her. It was capture first, information later.
She set the handgun down on the table before beginning her login process. She had barely gotten past the first screen when she heard a slight creak immediately behind. She reached for the gun, but it was too late. A hand reached out and a handkerchief was pressed to her nose and mouth from behind, clouding her mind with the fumes of chloroform before her consciousness fled from her entirely.
