Bone tired and chilled, John Watson should have fallen right into bed the moment he got home. God knows he wanted to. But his mind had kept racing ever since he had left Lestrade's office. Sarah had been asleep for hours and John didn't want to chance waking her with his tossing and turning, so he went to their small kitchen and made a quiet cup of tea. Settling into his favorite soft chair, he kicked off his shoes, leaned back, and sighed. Still exhausted from the wide range of emotions that had gripped him all evening, John nonetheless couldn't help grinning.

Sherlock was alive.

John wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen the detective with his own eyes. His best friend didn't appear to have changed much over the past three years. Imperious, demanding, arrogant. Maddening, brilliant, true.

Sherlock hadn't even been back in John's life for ten minutes when they were thrust headlong into solving a crime, just like when they had visited 221B Baker Street together for the first time. But this wasn't just any crime. Their friend had been kidnapped right in front of them.

"John?" Sarah switched on a table lamp and padded over to the couch, her blue eyes heavy with sleep.

"Sorry," he began ruefully, but she waved him off as she sat down.

"I was half awake anyway," she said, eyeing John carefully. "This whole thing with Sherlock... How are you?"

John took a sip of tea. He wouldn't try to hide anything from her; she knew him too well. "I'm happy he's alive. I'm angry that he lied to me. It's a lot to process."

Sarah nodded. She had witnessed firsthand what John had gone through after Sherlock's "death" and remembered all too well what it took for her to bring him back from the edge of despair. He had clung to her like a drowning man, lost and alone. Perhaps moving in together had happened too soon after the funeral, but they had made it work. Sarah had the foresight to know John's love of adventure wouldn't just go away, so she encouraged his interest in following criminal cases and studying weapons. And when he expressed a desire to work with former service members who were having a hard time adjusting to civilian life, she had supported him wholeheartedly.

As a couple, they just clicked. Together they shared a love of watching classic movies and taking weekend trips to explore different corners of the country. They had developed close friendships with other couples that they hung out with. Most days John and Sarah worked at the clinic and most evenings they spent in front of the telly. And when they went to bed, John made her feel like she was the most desirable woman in the world. All in all, it was a good life. Maybe not as exciting as living with Sherlock Holmes, but John seemed content.

"Want to talk about it?" Sarah asked, absently running her fingers through her golden brown hair.

"Not right now," he answered. "Why don't you go back to bed? I'll follow in a bit."

She got up and tenderly kissed the top of his head. "Goodnight, sweetheart. I love you."

He grasped one of her hands and placed a kiss on the back of it. "I love you."

John warmly watched her leave the room. Of all the good fortune he had been blessed with in life, she remained incomparable.

He carried his cup to the kitchen and rinsed it out. Leaning against the counter, he worked out what he needed to do first in the morning. He didn't have clinic hours scheduled until later in the afternoon, so he would meet Sherlock and see what his friend had uncovered, because he knew Sherlock wouldn't be sleeping tonight.

John had missed this—the action. He had missed Sherlock.

~s~s~s~s~

Molly awoke in the same way she had gone to sleep: on a cold floor in darkness. But she didn't know how long she had been there, when she had fallen asleep, how long she had slept, or what time or day it was now. Her kidnappers hadn't returned to check on her, unless they came when she was asleep, and she knew she would've heard them.

Her throat was sore and scratchy, and thinking of a cool glass of water only made her more miserable. The pounding in her head had increased, probably due to dehydration. I didn't eat or drink anything before going with Sherlock to Baker Street, she realized. It felt like a lifetime ago.

Fighting off the urge to cry, Molly got to her feet and once again tried the door. The lock was secure and no matter how many times she ran her petite shoulder against it, the door held solidly. She turned her attention once more to the walls, feeling her way around the small room in search of something, anything, to grab hold of. Finding nothing, she got on her hands and knees and painstakingly ran her hands over the floor. All she turned up was a paper clip.

Sitting with her back to the door, she fought back little bubbles of hysteria. Did they leave me here to die? she thought.

"You are not going to die." Sherlock's voice filled the room, or maybe it was just in her mind.

"Really?" She choked back a sob. "Then I might be going mad, because you're a delusion."

"Molly," he said in a warning tone.

"They just dumped me in here," she said. "The man who grabbed me said he was Moran's second in command. Moran was Moriarty's second in command. That's not a ringing endorsement of kindness and sanity, now is it?"

"True," Sherlock conceded. "But you know I am on the case. And I am smarter than this lot."

"OK," Molly said softly, trying to regulate her breathing. "I trust you."

"As you should," he said. "Keep calm. I am going to find you."

~s~s~s~s~

DI Greg Lestrade let Sally Donovan handle Sebastian Moran's housekeeper, an angry older woman with wispy brown hair and a foul mouth concerning the police who had just shown up with a search warrant. Noting she must have run home to change into a gray tweed skirt and cream-colored blouse, Lestrade suppressed a smile as Donovan fought to maintain her professional demeanor in the face of the cursing woman.

Leaving them in the foyer, he bounded up the stairs of the modest home and watched as his people methodically went through everything. Lestrade felt sure they would turn up some clue as to the identity of Moran's accomplice. Meanwhile, his phone beeped impatiently.

Anything?

-SH

Swallowing the urge to tell Sherlock once and for all that he did not work for the consulting detective, Lestrade instead typed in a reply.

Not yet.

-Lestrade

Sally joined him, looking back down the stairs at the glowering housekeeper. "Nice piece of work, that one is. Says Moran is the salt of the earth."

"Right," Lestrade scoffed. "Make sure we search every nook and cranny, yeah? Do we have his computer and mobile?"

"Already on their way to the office," she said. "O'Brien is ready and waiting to go through them with a fine-tooth comb."

"Sir?" An officer gestured for them to come into the second bedroom that served as Moran's study. "We found a false bottom in this desk drawer."

Lestrade excitedly watched as the contents of the hidden drawer saw the light of day: a small handgun, several stacks of cash, and a black ledger. Picking up the ledger, he flipped through pages filled with unlabeled columns of initials, numbers, other combinations of letters, and dates going back several years.

"Moran is old school. No computer spreadsheets for him," he murmured.

Sally leaned over to get a better look. "I get the dates, but what do the numbers refer to?" she wondered aloud.

"I want Sherlock to look it over," Lestrade said.

Hiding her displeasure, she nodded. "Yes, boss."

"You're in charge here, Donovan." Lestrade ran down the stairs and opened his phone. "Sherlock? Yeah, meet me in my office. We've got something."

~s~s~s~s~

Sherlock's ice blue eyes shone brightly as he carefully noted every detail of the ledger. John looked on, noting how the dreadful pallor of his friend's skin contrasted dramatically with the purple bruise on his cheek. Sherlock clearly hadn't slept.

Lestrade put his hands on his hips. "Well?"

Sherlock snapped the ledger shut. "This is a record Moran kept of debts owed to him. While you were sleeping, I was investigating. I can prove Moran went online to contact compulsive gamblers on various message boards, invited them to lucrative card games. He let them win at first, then cheated and he began winning. He did this to such an extent that the unfortunate idiots kept playing in the hopes of 'winning it all back.' But they never won it all back. Occasionally he would let them win naturally in order to keep them returning, but he always returned to cheating. Soon they owed him more than the normal person could ever pay back in one lifetime.

"In the ledger the date is when the debt was accrued, the initials are of the person who owes the debt, and the numbers are the amount that is owed. Moran tracked every pound so he could hold it over the gamblers' heads. Those combination of letters are a code to indicate what type of game the person regularly lost at. There is one set of initials—AP—that first appears three years ago and now has several pages dedicated to him or her, most likely a man. With this amount owed, what else would Moran take in place of payment? Not just money, as proved by his low-key standard of living, No, Moran required service in his criminal enterprise. AP is his accomplice."

Watson nodded. "Brilliant."

Sherlock gave his friend a quick smile. "How else could Moran recruit people into the organization? His personality? He doesn't have the abilities or charisma of Moriarty."

"Yeah, OK, who is AP?" Lestrade asked.

"He is on several online gaming sites and goes by the name LuckyAP1."

"I think I can help sort this out, guv."

Sherlock whirled around to see a young man in the doorway of Lestrade's office. He wore jeans and an old sweatshirt and could have passed for a uni student, but Sherlock noticed telltale signs that he was actually closer to thirty.

"O'Brien, meet Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. Sherlock, John, this is J.T. O'Brien, our computer genius."

"What have you found?" Sherlock demanded abruptly, his glance not leaving the laptop O'Brien held.

If the techie was put off by Sherlock's manner, he didn't show it. "Your guy, Moran, isn't a criminal mastermind by any stretch of the imagination, if you know what I mean. Not like what I've heard about Moriarty."

Sherlock's jaw clenched at the mention of Moriarty's name. He had a clever response for this young "genius," but O'Brien continued before he could speak. "Moran thought he was being smart in deleting his sent mail, but short of taking acid and a sledgehammer to a hard drive, there isn't anything I can't recover."

O'Brien opened Moran's laptop and set it on Lestrade's desk. "Phone records show Moran placed a series of calls to the same number five minutes after he received your text, Mr. Holmes. No one answered. Then he sent an email that says 'Ring me.' Two minutes later he sent another to the same address. This one says, 'Where are you?' Three minutes after that he sends a third email, but this time to a different address. It says, 'Where is he? Get him here now.'"

"What are the email addresses?" Sherlock asked.

"See, this first one is LuckyAP1 and the second is Beethoven45," O'Brien replied.

"LuckyAP1? There's our AP!" John exclaimed. "How do we find out who he or she is?"

"It's a he," O'Brien stated and handed a piece of paper to Lestrade. "Andrew Parker. Here's his address."

"Great work! O'Brien here has been the nearest thing to having you these past three years!" Lestrade grinned ear to ear while Sherlock remained stone faced.

"Lestrade, if you are quite finished I would very much like to find Mr. Parker and save Dr. Hooper," Sherlock snapped. "John, with me!"