"This is a bit of a change from last time," Bridget said, cheerfully accepting the cup of tea a stony-faced Sherlock handed to her.
The detective had pulled out all of the stops: offered her his chair, put out a plate of the poshest biscuits they had in the flat, and used their best tea service, the one with the gold trim that he took diligent care of and had retouched every time it began to fade or looked scratched.
John wondered if Bridget had any idea how livid that meant Sherlock was.
Probably, he thought, because she was too determinedly sunny – but then again, she was may just have been enjoying herself immensely.
Probably that too, he added, swallowing an angry comment, displacing it by curling his left hand into a fist.
He'd given up his chair to Sherlock, not out of any real desire to make sure his partner had somewhere comfortable to sit, but because it meant he was sitting further away from Bridget and therefore, somehow, further from Mary.
"Yes," Sherlock drawled, voice dark. "Consider us even."
"We always were," Bridget replied, giving him another bright smile. "I was just doing my job, after all."
Something about her tone caught John's attention – he couldn't put his finger on it, but it felt like a penny had dropped, a missing piece slotting into place from a puzzle he hadn't even known existed.
"You knew where we were," he said, the realization only really solidifying as he said it. Sherlock turned, almost in slow motion, grey-eyed gaze locking on John, and the shock that the detective hadn't figured it out nearly pinned John to his seat.
He met Sherlock's eyes just long enough for something to pass between them, before they both swung their attention back to Bridget, who at least had the decency to look mildly surprised.
"Not exactly," she said.
"Not exactly?" Sherlock echoed, polished accent cold, barely restrained. Bridget raised her eyebrows and settled back into the chair, doing a very good job, John thought, of not being the least bit intimidated.
"I am a search and rescue worker," she pointed out, "and you were all over the news."
"We could have been anywhere," Sherlock pointed out, his tone hard, unyielding.
"You could have," Bridget agreed, helping herself to a biscuit, annoying John with her unconcerned attitude. "But Mary doesn't like surprises, nor does she like when things doesn't go to plan."
"We aren't hers to make plans for!" John snapped.
"You call her Mary," Sherlock noted with an arched eyebrow.
"How the bloody hell is that important?" John demanded, nearly pushing himself off from his chair, perched on the edge, muscles tense and ready for a confrontation.
Bridget held up a hand, the appeal for calm sending a shock of anger through John that he swallowed on, hard.
Starting a row wouldn't help Alexandre.
"You know her as Mary, so I'll call her Mary," she said. "It hardly matters to her. And no, John, she knows she has no direct control over you, but your abduction didn't suit any of her purposes."
"So, what, if we had no worth to her, she'd just have us killed?"
"If you had no worth to her, she wouldn't have read your blog post and I wouldn't be here. There'd be no point in killing you."
John bit back on a retort when Sherlock cast him a glance; it was clear enough that Sherlock had thought this all through and was fine with it – or at least, John admitted, had made some sort of peace with it. He knew it shouldn't get under his skin but it did. Mary had broken Harry's heart and thrown her life into disarray for no reason other than to find out first hand when Sherlock returned.
She hadn't really known Sherlock had still been alive, John told himself firmly. She'd just guessed.
Unlike him.
"And yes, you could have been anywhere, as far as we knew," Bridget continued. "That was part of the problem."
"So it was just coincidence that you work in the area we were dumped?" John demanded.
"Yes," she replied. "But it wasn't coincidence that there was unscheduled and non-routine helicopter activity in the area that night."
"Which you just happened to hear about," Sherlock commented.
"Search and rescue operations have contacts. More than you might suspect."
"I suspect you have more than most," Sherlock said.
Bridget shrugged lightly, unconcerned.
"No one complains, Sherlock, when you get the job done. It's not the first time my extended network has come in handy." She gave them another sunny smile, making John's hands twitch. "Possibly the most important, though."
"This is more important," John snapped.
"Is it?" she asked, turning her suddenly sharp, dark-eyed gaze to him. "A mystery novelist compared to a London Met DI, a genius detective, and a military doctor? One person compared to three?"
"It is right now," Sherlock said, dropping the words like a hammer, broking no more argument – from either of them.
Bridget gave him a thoughtful look over the rim of her teacup as she took another sip. John took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly, forcing himself not to react anymore than that.
"Right then," Bridget said. "Where do we start?"
Sherlock smiled, that cold, bright smile that never failed to send a warning chill down John's spine.
"You've got contacts," he pointed out. "Let's see what they have to say, shall we?"
"That's not how this is going to work."
Sherlock froze in the midst of hailing a cab, caught in a suspended moment in which a habitual action was disrupted. His mind stuttered, protesting the interruption, sending a surge of unexpected anger through him.
She'd met them only once before. Granted, she'd saved their lives, but that should by no means have made her an expert in his operations, let alone given her any authority over his actions.
Bridget stepped forward smoothly when a taxi pulled out of traffic, leaning past Sherlock to speak to the driver as if the detective weren't even there.
"Sorry to have stopped you," she said, acting (surely it must be acting?) utterly oblivious to the penetrating glower that would have had most people ducking for cover or stammering a profuse apology. "His mistake."
The cabbie rolled his eyes and drove off, leaving the two of them standing at the edge of the road, John looking almost forlorn and abandoned on the pavement.
"And what do you propose we do? Take the tube?" Sherlock drawled, refusing to budge; they were far enough from the flow of traffic that they were hardly in danger of being hit, and he was damned if he was going to give in – even implicitly – to her commandeering of his work.
Bridget rolled her eyes, slipping her hands casually into the pockets of her jeans but, Sherlock noted, also making no move to step off the road and back onto the pavement.
"Time isn't a luxury we have right now, Sherlock," she said, and he bristled at the obvious. He could feel each minute ticking past, decreasing the odds of the only desirable outcome.
"Well then?" he demanded.
"Haven't you ever been fooled by a cabbie?" she asked.
Sherlock locked down the impulse to respond, feeling the anger pouring off John like a physical sensation. He had, twice, and she knew that full well.
"Jim Moriarty isn't the only one who can buy off a cabbie to do what he wants," Bridget said. "Mary wants us all alive, and I intend to stay that way. I am a trained search and rescue worker. You've seen my driving skills first hand." She paused to fish a set of keys out of her handbag. "Let's go."
The weight of John's gaze finally dragged Sherlock's attention to the doctor; John was clearly livid, chafing under the growing sense of being manipulated yet again.
The sensation was nearly suffocating. Years of carefully building his reputation, carving out a career for himself, yet he was constantly walking into these webs, trapped in situations orchestrated by unseen forces, being guided like a marionette on very short strings.
He could stop.
Just stop. Plain and simple.
The realization hit him like a bag of bricks, the shock so strong Sherlock was surprised he didn't stagger.
Dragged in its wake was the certainty that he couldn't – not really. Not ever.
The mere idea of it was even worse than the reality that he was being toyed with, led where someone else wanted him to go.
Without this there was nothing. There was no defence against the lure of cocaine, and with that came the absence of John – out of everything, that was the most paralyzing prospect, that John's presence, so complete and dependable, could vanish as thoroughly as it had when they'd been tossed into the Welsh wilderness.
It would, Sherlock knew, kill him.
And Alexandre Georges.
"Coming?" Bridget asked, arching her eyebrows.
Sherlock swallowed on everything, giving a curt nod, wishing like hell for colder winter weather instead of the August warmth, so that he could flip up his coat collar and bundle his hands into his pockets, a silent protest against this ridiculous nonsense.
He didn't have that choice.
He didn't have any real choice at all.
Not this time.
He jerked his head at John, who fell in half a step behind him, following Bridget to the non-descript white sedan parked up the street. It was dirty enough not to attract any attention, but not so dirty that it stuck out on London's turbulent streets.
Without being offered, Sherlock took the front passenger's seat; he was well aware that it left his partner alone in the back, but he knew John would let him get away with it. The doctor wouldn't be thrilled, but Sherlock needed the information that only the better visual access in the front seat could give him.
And he wasn't going to knowing let anyone working for Mary trap them together. There wasn't enough data to confirm that the back doors could be opened from the inside.
"Where are we going?" John asked. Useless. As though Bridget would answer.
"City Airport," she replied, and Sherlock felt another jolt of shock nearly ground him, leaving him grateful that he was already seated. "I know a few people there. They might have heard something."
"Is that how you found us?" John demanded, and Sherlock kicked himself mentally for not having immediately made the connection.
"They helped," Bridget replied, putting the car into gear and pulling smoothly into traffic.
It bothered him that her wilderness training had prepared her for this; it was nearly as bad as learning John could drive well in London, too – that still annoyed Sherlock, who considered that driving in a war zone was no preparation for driving in one of the most civilized cities in the world.
Never mind that John had pointed out that London drivers were hardly polite or patient, and that, as a surgeon, driving had not actually been one of his routine duties in the army.
Bridget had been raised in Cardiff, Sherlock reminded himself. Surely some of her skills must have come from that experience.
And it hardly mattered now – what mattered was the potential data they were going to collect, the scant promise that they may be able to track Georges' movements after he'd left France.
Presuming he'd left France at all.
It was an infuriating sticking point; he had absolutely no information to support that Georges might be here aside from the fact that Mary was and the Woman had been, at least at one point. She must have been recently, even if only briefly, to set her convoluted plans into motion.
Sherlock knew her. As much as John would have disliked hearing that, it remained true.
He knew her. Almost inside and out.
Mary might have stepped back, orchestrated everything from a distance.
But not the Woman. She was far too hands-on for that approach.
But it didn't meant Georges was here.
Aside from his connection to Mary, there was no reason for him to be.
And, Sherlock realized abruptly, he had no guarantee that Mary herself was currently in London. As certain as he was that this was her base – Paris was significantly smaller, increasing her chances of being recognized – there was no reason she had to be here right now.
Which meant Georges could be anywhere.
The world opened up suddenly, like a gaping chasm, reminding him of its immensity. He'd felt it – lived it – during those nine months away, constantly on the move as he snapped the remaining threads of Moriarty's web, unknowingly tracing his way to Mary Morstan – Amélie Lassalle – via Sebastian Moran.
That trail had led him back here. Home.
But this wasn't Georges' home and there was no reason to assume he'd been brought here.
Because this had nothing to do with Sherlock. Not this time.
It was between the Woman and Mary.
Whatever it was didn't have to tie them to London.
The city came back into sharp focus, as if it had vanished and reappeared, leaving Sherlock all too aware of the sensations – the hum of the engine and the efficient movement of the vehicle under Bridget's expert guidance, as they slid almost effortlessly through the heavy traffic that contrasted the rows of high, white, stately London homes, the nearly inaudible sound of John's regular breathing in the back seat–
"Stop!" Sherlock snapped abruptly, aware of the disruption it caused John, the sudden tension in Bridget's muscles that she wrested under control with admirable speed – she even remembered to turn on her blinker before pulling off to the side of the street, engine still running.
"Sherlock–" John started.
"Stop!" Sherlock said again, this time to forestall any discussion, holding his hands up next to his head, the position helping block out extraneous information, letting John know to let him think.
He barely dared to breathe, stalking whatever tenuous connection his mind wanted to make cautiously, afraid if he came straight at it, it would vanish.
Every sound seemed heightened now: the rush of the traffic past his window, the low rumble of the engine, the faint chatter of pedestrians as they passed.
"What–" Bridget began.
"The Land Rover!" Sherlock said, realization hitting him like a flood.
"The Land Rover?" Bridget repeated. "I don't need an s-and-r vehicle here–"
"Not that one!" Sherlock snarled. "You can drive in London."
"Obviously," she replied, loosening her grip on the steering wheel slightly, giving him an annoyed look.
"You drive under the most extreme road and weather conditions in Wales. City streets, no matter how big the city, would hardly present a challenge."
"Did you pull us over to talk about my obvious driving skills?" she asked, raising an eyebrow, impatient.
"Even at night. Even in a larger vehicle."
"No," she sighed, gripping the wheel again. "Can we–"
"Ronald Adair was shot from a vehicle outside his home at night. The angle of the bullet's entry suggested it had to be a higher vehicle. Most likely a Land Rover. Like a soldier in Her Majesty's army might be accustomed to driving. Or a search and rescue worker in northern Wales."
There was no time for the flash of triumph that threatened when Bridget's confident expression dissolved – nor to banish all of John's confusion.
The doctor would just have to keep up.
He usually managed. Mostly.
"Back to Baker Street," Sherlock ordered. "Your contacts won't be as useful as a dead man will be right now."
