Littleston pushed the door open. "Your brother's here," he announced, pushing Sherlock into the room.
Sherlock's eyes did a quick scan of the room. Approximately fifteen feet square, cement walls, single overhead light, no windows, no other doors, a wine rack in the corner. And tied to a chair in the middle of the room, one terrified Harry Watson.
He rushed toward her, warning her with his eyes. "Harry! Are you all right? I've been so worried." He looked back at Littleston. "If you hurt my sister…"
"Oh, what will you do, Mr. Watson? You're in no position to make threats." He looked between the two of them. "Don't look much alike, do you?"
Sherlock sniffed. "You're not the first to say so. What does it matter?"
"Everything, Mr. Watson. It means everything. Sit down." Littleston waved the gun toward the corner and after Sherlock sat, recuffed him with his hands through the wine rack. He tied his feet with a length of the same rope he'd used on Harry. "I'll leave you two to chat." He reached over and pulled the tape from Harry's mouth and stalked out the door, locking it behind him.
Before Harry could say anything, Sherlock gave a warning look and said, "I'm sorry I didn't answer any of your texts, Harry. I didn't see them."
"But, you…" Her voice was hoarse and dry from disuse. "Where is…?"
"Sherlock," (he accented the name, warning her to go along, Littleston might be listening), "hid my phone. I didn't know any of this until today. I'm sorry."
"What are you talking about?" her voice was doubly harsh now as her anger kicked in. That was something she shared with her brother, Sherlock thought, and her temper wasn't helped by having been tied to a chair for most of 48 hours. He noted the pale skin and red eyes; she was in desperate need of a drink as well. He winced at the cruelty of locking an alcoholic in a wine cellar.
"I'm saying that your brother would never have let this happen if he could have prevented it. I'm saying that I'm sorry. Me. Your brother."
She blinked at him and he tried to breathe slowly, to summon patience and count his blessings that this was not the Watson he had to deal with every day. Though he supposed he should make allowances for her current situation. He wondered if he would ever see Harry Watson at her best.
"So," she finally ventured, "Where's your flatmate, then?"
He beamed at her. "Back home, sick in bed with bronchitis. I've been looking after him and didn't want him to exert himself. He's got a high fever, and you know how he worries. It was just easier not to tell him about any of this—though I imagine he's noticed I'm gone by now."
"He won't be happy."
"No, I know," Sherlock said. "But he's safe."
She laughed, a hard little laugh, but a great improvement over terror. "Unlike us."
"Well, yes." Sherlock looked around the room, noting the absence of any spy cameras. He couldn't be sure Littleton wasn't listening, but was reasonably sure he couldn't see anything. "We'll have to see what we can do about that."
He squirmed around a bit, hands reaching. He had known this was coming, after all, and had tried to prepare himself, though Littleston being such an idiot certainly was making things easier. He had left Sherlock's hands cuffed comfortably in front of him and hadn't even made sure he was unarmed. Picking the handcuffs would be easy just as soon as he…
A noise from outside the door interrupted him. It was Littleston, fidgeting and pale.
"Something wrong?" Sherlock asked.
Littleston gave him a dirty look. "Just checking to see how the reunion is going. I don't trust either of you an inch, and I'm not risking anything until I get what I want."
"Mum's diary."
Harry's eyes widened slightly, as if she hadn't realized he knew.
"Yes, the diary, you idiot. It's the key, and I need it. Once I have it and whatever it leads me to, I won't need to listen to your aggravating voice anymore."
"You said you wouldn't hurt her," Sherlock said just as Harry burst out, "Don't you hurt him!"
Littleston looked at both of them, gun shifting between them.
"I know my brother can be annoying—believe me, I know—but you can't hurt him." Harry said, eyes flicking to Sherlock. "If you do, I'll kill you."
He turned to face her. "Oh, really? And how are you going to do that?"
"I don't know, but I'll do it." Her voice was high and tense but she meant every word. "I might not get along with him, but he's my little brother. And if you do anything to harm him, I'll do worse to you. I won't let anybody hurt him."
Sherlock's eyes closed briefly, fingers working busily. He remembered how furiously she had rounded on him when he had come back, after. "You almost killed him," she had shouted at him. As if he hadn't known how badly John had been hurt. As if he hadn't been as badly wounded himself by their enforced separation. Her fury has surprised him, knowing how little she and John got along, but in retrospect he shouldn't have been surprised. Affectionate or not, they were siblings and who knew better than Sherlock the lengths to which one would go for a brother?
"Aren't you a little tiger," Littleston said. "You have no idea how little your threats mean to me. You can't hurt me, and you certainly can't stop me from getting what I want. If he's smart, your brother will get out of my way. If he does what I tell him, you won't be hurt. Be grateful. But you can't do anything for him."
He was just turning away with another sneer when he tripped over Sherlock's outstretched legs and fell, gun clattering from his hand.
Sherlock, handcuffs still dangling from one wrist and breathing heavily from the effort, flung himself on top of him. Using his longer reach to grab the gun, he rammed the man's head against the concrete floor. "Don't move, Littleston."
Stunned, the man stopped struggling which gave Sherlock enough time to unlock the other cuff from his wrist.
"How do you know my name?"
Sherlock pulled the man's arms behind him and secured them with the cuffs before rolling off him so he could untie his own ankles. "It was on your mail in the kitchen, idiot. I'm not blind."
He rose to his feet, stamping them to restore circulation, before tucking the gun in his pocket and crossing to Harry. "It's okay," he reassured her as he reached for the rope. "You're okay. Good job distracting him just then, by the way. John would be proud."
"John?" a voice questioned weakly from the floor.
He turned his head toward Littleston. "Yes, John Watson, her brother. Do try to keep up."
"But … you're her brother."
Sherlock made a rude noise. "You must be the most unobservant, most inept, most stupid kidnapper I've ever seen. Have you even looked at us? Do we remotely look like we could be siblings?"
He pulled the last piece of rope from Harry's wrists and moved to her ankles. "You didn't even do the most basic homework. If you'd done the simplest of Google searches on John Watson, you would have found his blog—with his photo, which clearly isn't me. How you managed to find his sister is a mystery."
"He had a letter from our Mum," Harry croaked, voice raw and dry. Sherlock looked around the room and moved toward the refrigerator in the corner. Bottled water, as he'd hoped. He opened one and handed it to Harry who drank it eagerly.
"He came looking around the house and pulled the gun on me when I answered the door. He kept going on about a secret of Mum's and where would she hide it. Asked if she'd had a diary, which made no sense."
"And that's when you told him about John?"
"What kind of sister do you think I am?" she asked hotly. "I mean, we don't get on, but he's my brother. I didn't tell him anything. He got John's name and your address from my phone. I couldn't do anything. I don't even know what he wants."
Sherlock turned back toward Littleston. "He considers John to be a threat to him, Harry. And quite rightly," he told the man. "John Watson is a far better man than you are Certainly not one to cringe at the sight of a gun."
The man's eyes were even more confused now, but he was just as arrogant as ever. Sherlock picked up a length of rope and began securing his legs. "He would have taken you down two days ago, I might add, the minute you threatened his sister, if I hadn't hidden his phone so he wouldn't see your texts. I'm his flatmate, by the way. Sherlock Holmes. I went to school with your brother."
"School?"
"Yes, school, where children learn to hunt in packs." Sherlock couldn't keep the disgust from his voice. "You thought John was an uneducated layabout, prone to being arrested and without a thought in his head because he didn't grow up in a large house like you did. People like you disgust me. Arrogant with no cause, just an unfounded sense of superiority."
He quirked a smile at the noise Harry made and moved back to her to massage feeling back into her wrists. "Yes, I know I'm arrogant, too. I've been told often enough. But I'm also very good at what I do. I earned my arrogance. This man is an idiot. If he'd done any research at all, he would have learned that your brother is not only a doctor, but a surgeon and a captain in the army. He's also the finest man I have ever known. John Watson would never let any harm come to his sister, or indeed anyone he could protect."
Sherlock glanced at Harry's face, making eye contact for the first time. "My apologies for the delay, incidentally. I knew Littleston wouldn't harm you before he had found John, and John was too sick for me to leave. He may never forgive me for making you wait."
He raised his head, ears intent on a distant creak from somewhere in the house. "Did I mention that John and I spend our time solving crimes, by the way?" he asked Littleston cheerfully. "We're really quite good at it, and have lots of friends on the police." Another smile at Harry, who actually returned it this time. "Or at least, John does."
Littleston just sputtered, speechless on the floor. "You don't know who I am. I could BUY the Watson family, you idiot."
"I know exactly who you are, Andrew Littleston. The smallest and weakest member of a fine family, eternally jealous of his older brother, who died suspiciously in a hunting accident right around the time your father grew ill a year ago. You were several years behind me in school, but even I heard the stories about the way you bullied every boy weaker than you and toadied to the ones above. You've been a creeper your entire life, a leech on your family, one who has never lifted your hand to support yourself despite a pile of debts."
Sherlock couldn't keep the contempt from his voice as he continued. "That is, not until just recently when you learned about another, greater threat to your inheritance and you decided to get rid of it. Even if it meant ridding the world of one of the finest men it's ever known."
There was a soft click at the far end of the hallway. Sherlock shifted so he was between Harry and the door, gun again in his hand as he continued, "Your mistake is that, not being in the habit of doing anything, ever, you completely bungled it. You didn't do your homework. You kidnapped the wrong man. And you certainly didn't think any of this through."
His voice grew cold. "And you have no idea the world of trouble you've brought down on yourself by threatening John Watson and his family."
"Not to mention the Holmes brothers," came Greg's voice from the doorway.
Sherlock looked up. Greg was standing in the doorway, weapon drawn, with Donovan and several more officers behind him. "Detective Inspector Lestrade," he said. "What took you so long?"
#
