Chapter 9
As Laura fell to her knees and into a foetal position on the floor, tears streamed down her face. Sherlock fixed his gaze on Greggory, pulled out a gun of his own and proceeded to point it at him.
"I would be careful if I were you Sherlock." Greggory began to slowly walk forward. "You don't want this young lady dying on your conscience do you?"
"She won't die"
"Won't she?"
"No, I'll make sure of it"
"Will you now? Does Sherlock Holmes actually care about someone?"
"I think you'll find caring about someone and making sure they don't die is not the same thing, John."
Sherlock gestured his head to Laura, who at this point has lost quite an amount of blood. Watson knelt by her side and helped her up. She moved painfully slowly, but she and John managed to get out of the way of Sherlock and Greggory, both at gunpoint with each other. Laura sat still and let John examine the wound to the left side of her abdomen.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Just a little light headed."
"Well you've lost enough blood for one day. Just keep talking."
John took her hand, and as he did this, Laura smiled weakly. She was breathing heavily now, and clearly in a lot of pain, but she managed to hang on.
"There's a piece of cloth in the bag."
Laura tried to get the bag sitting beside her as she said this, but fell unconscious. John grabbed the bag – which neither he or Sherlock had noticed when they first arrived - and rooted round for the material. He looked up at Sherlock and Greggory, who had made no progress whatsoever I their situation.
"I should shoot you now, but I'll bet you know why I'm not going to do that."
"Of course I do. You've only got one bullet left in that gun."
"Very clever!"
"You never have your gun loaded, because you're afraid that at any point Laura could turn on you and decide to shoot you herself. So you keep your bullets hidden somewhere that she won't find them, but you left in a hurry this time, because you only just found out that your little puppet was asking for help without you realising, which by the way was astonishingly slow. You only had time to put two bullets in your gun, but you wasted one because you got angry with Laura for not doing the dirty work for you. Now if you shoot me, one of these two could easily pick up this gun and kill you."
"But at least you'll be dead as well. You know what would make things a whole lot easier, if you just killed me now"
This scenario particularly confused John. Gregory appeared to be asking Sherlock to kill him. Was he calling his bluff? Would Sherlock actually kill someone? As if answering the questions swirling round in John's head, Sherlock replied to Gregory.
"I prefer not to kill people unless necessary."
"Well then. You've just made things a whole lot easier."
He smacked Sherlock's wrist with the butt of the gun, causing his weapon to fly from Sherlock's hand and skid across the ground. It landed right beside John and Laura. John checked the ammunition in the gun.
No bullets.
Gregory then pointed the gun right slap-bang in the middle of his forehead. Sherlock breathed out through his nose and stared his opponent right in the eyes as Gregory prepared to shoot. John looked back up to the shock of the scene before him