A/N: Wow, late update is late. Sorry. My muse abandoned me (finally got it back (yay)) and my homework embraced me. 0-o Just checking… nah, still not mine. I can dream, though. And you guys can review. :) It doesn't hurt, I promise. And it makes me feel good.
Sherlock tapped his fingers on his knee and stared out the window. John knew he was doing exactly what he'd been doing earlier, looking for the best spot for a potential attack. John pulled out his phone to call Lestrade, and by the time he'd finished explaining the situation the two men had already reached the hotel. Sherlock swept up to the reception desk.
"The school group that's here, the Americans, I need to speak with their teacher right now. Where is she?" His abruptness seemed to confuse the receptionist, and Sherlock tried again. "Mrs. Rawlins, the American woman, what room is she staying in?" The still-flustered young woman pulled up the records, but by then, Sherlock's sudden appearance had caused such a commotion that the whole group had come down stairs just to see what was going on. Mrs. Rawlins stepped foreward.
"What's all this about?" she asked. Sherlock turned to her, not wasting words to explain the situation.
"Where's Raina?" Mrs. Rawlins looked around, doing a quick headcount.
"She's not with the group," she responded worriedly. "Where could she have gone?" Sherlock rushed off without replying, leaving John to cut the poor woman off the hook and explain the situation to her. Then he hurried around to the back exit to catch up with the detective. "Did she come through here, can you tell?" he asked. The other man nodded shortly.
"There's the print from her shoes, going down the alleyway. She couldn't have headed this way more than thirty minutes ago. John, I need you to go back to the flat. She might have made it there. I'll follow her trail for as long as I can, but I probably won't get much more."
"Why not?" Sherlock pointed to a spot about thirty feet up the road.
"The asphalt. There won't be any prints for me to follow, unless she goes into more mud." As John raced to catch a cab, Sherlock laid himself out flat on the ground, looking for every detail with expert eyes. Raina's footprints and the tracks of a larger, older person. Male, about five foot ten, with a heavier indentation on his right leg than on his left. Probably from the weight of a gun or knife, although his opinion leaned toward the former. Sherlock didn't often admit that he was at a disadvantage, but he had to admit it now. No leads, their only witness missing and quite possibly dead, and the clock now down by half a day. Their window of opportunity was shrinking fast.
Sherlock closed his eyes and put his fingers to his temples, picturing the map of London. He figured out the quickest route to Baker Street. That was probably the one Raina had taken. She would have had to have looked it up on the internet, and she would have chosen the one that would get her there the fastest. Out the back way, down the alley, onto the road, and it was just three blocks straight to Baker Street. Sherlock took off down the path, looking for more clues with every step.
John got out of the cab in front of 221B and raced in. A quick check with Mrs. Hudson confirmed that Raina hadn't been there in the time they'd been gone. "Damn it," John muttered. He pulled out his phone and called Sherlock.
"Any sign of her?"
"She hasn't been back to the flat, and I didn't see her on the road," John responded. Sherlock cursed, something that John had rarely heard from the detective, and it was an obvious sign of how stressed he was getting. Much as Sherlock was capable of swearing blind that he didn't need to eat and barely needed to sleep while on a case, he was only human, and if he was off his game, it meant the end of at least one person's life. "I'll keep waiting. Call me if you find her." John hung up and leaned his head against the window, staring into the street. "Damn it," he muttered again.
Outside, despite the late hour, Baker Street was still fairly crowded. He didn't see Raina until she knocked frantically on the door. At the sound, John turned and bolted down the stairs and pulled the door open. She was leaning heavily against the frame, and looked ill. She was clutching her arm to her stomach.
"What's wrong?" John looked her up and down, seeing a lot of blood but no physical injury. Raina moved her arm away from her front and turned the inside to him. There was a long, vicious cut along the length of her forearm, obviously from a knife, and dangerously close to the artery.
"Shit," John swore loudly and picked her up into his arms as she began to fall. How in the hell she had even made it over to the flat in that state was a mystery to John, but he ignored that question for later. He could feel himself slipping into doctor mode as he dashed up the stairs, and he hollered over his shoulder, "Mrs. Hudson, I need an ambulance!" Raina was close to unconsciousness by then, unable to support herself or even sit up, and John didn't know where to put her to work on her. She was so small and light that finally he just put her on the kitchen table, running into the bathroom, where he kept his First Aid kit. He worked quickly and efficiently, forcing himself to ignore the fact that there was a child bleeding out on his kitchen table. His mind focused entirely on wrapping this, and putting pressure on that, and he wanted to slice Moriarty's arm open and see how he liked it and- no, focus, John. Raina lost consciousness completely just before the ambulance got there, and as the paramedics rushed up the stairs, John yelled,
"In here. The kitchen." He backed off as the paramedics surrounded her and prepared to put her on a stretcher. He had a difficult time explaining the situation to them.
"No, no, she's not my family. She's visiting, a tourist... No, I don't know what happened exactly, but someone tried to kill her... I'm going to call the police, as soon as you stop pestering me and get her to the bloody hospital!" By this point he was yelling, and as the paramedic finally broke away, he made to take out his phone. Then he stopped, remembering the blood on his hands. He stared at them for a second, then shook his head slowly and turned to the sink, scrubbing off his hands longer than was completely necessary. He pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Lestrade's number, wasting no time when the other man picked up.
"Moriarty sent a man to kill one of the students. She's alive, but it's not very good right now. They're taking her over to Bart's." Lestrade's response was equally clipped.
"Meet me there. Where's Sherlock?"
"Looking for the hit man. He sent me back to wait in case Raina turned up."
"Wait, so you two were expecting her?"
"Yeah, it's a long story, look, I'll tell you the whole thing when I see you at the hospital, okay?" Lestrade sighed.
"It was a long story when you explained it to me an hour ago." John could practically hear him shaking his head over the phone. "Alright, explain there. And John?"
"What?"
"Might want to tell Sherlock you've found her." In all the confusion, John had almost forgotten that Sherlock was still out there, searching for Raina. He hung up after agreeing to meet Lestrade outside Raina's hospital room and phoned Sherlock.
"Someone tried to stab her. She's on her way to the hospital," he told him. "Lestrade wants us to meet him there. Any luck finding Moriarty's man?"
"No. Tell him I'm on my way. I-" Sherlock cut off abruptly and John heard the sound of his phone hitting the pavement, followed by blows being struck. John yelled into the phone.
"Sherlock? Sherlock!" No answer. Then, he heard his friend's voice over the speaker.
"I found him, John!" John shook his head in exasperation, running a hand through his hair.
"No shit."
