Jim reached out and placed four warm fingers on his lips. John blew a raspberry into them and made Jim chuckle. The consulting criminal then kicked him hard in the stomach with one quick swing of his surprisingly firm leg, making John double over.

"Urgh! What was that for?" John asked as the shrunken criminal began to shove him viciously.

He tried, as gently as he could, to place the child on the ground, but it was difficult with Jim writhing and squirming like a snake, making small feral animal noises.

The toddler leapt to the floor and ran straight to the television set.

"Are you bored?" John asked watching Jim play inquisitively with the dials. Suddenly the screen flickered to life and the roar of a crowd of exhilarated spectators at a cricket match blasted the toddler away from the glass screen. He stumbled back and fell, eyes wide with awe and wonder.

John picked the remote up from his chair and flipped through the channels until he found a children's show he thought would be appropriate for a toddler of Jim's (approximate) age. He picked him up, surprised at the dead weight of the gleeful tot, who seemed to be hypnotized by the bright colors and high pitched voices that the television was emitting, and placed him back on the couch, thinking only of the hundred or so times his own mother had told him 'Get away from the telly, you'll hurt your eyes sitting that close to the screen'.

He stepped back, testing his theory that the child would be occupied by the programing long enough for him to prepare for the arrival of the sniper, and to his relief Jim remained stoically frozen in place, completely immersed in the cartoon world.

John raced up stairs quickly, hoping that a childish Jim wasn't as changeable as the adult Jim, and made a mad dash for the night stand in his room. He threw the drawer open, grabbed his Browning, and with trembling fingers loaded it. The bullets felt cold and slippery, and he dropped them clumsily a few times, cursing his nerves.

It wouldn't matter; when the time came he could rely on having a steady hand.

A car door slammed somewhere on Baker Street. John's hands suddenly became eerily still. A cold stone of fear dropped into his stomach with a sickening thud, and dissolved into a numb wariness.

He calmly walked downstairs.