Lestrade had a car take them back to the crime scene. They silently walked to her vehicle, climbing inside.
With a cheery wave to Sally Donavan, as Alexandra drives off, Sherlock turns and repeats his earlier question, "are you all right?"
She sits quietly for a moment, then answers with a sigh, "I'd have rather not resorted to violence."
"You are rather good a mayhem," Sherlock opines.
"Yes, but I prefer not to. Some beings just wont let you."
He watches her, concerned at her world-weary tone.
Scrubbing a hand over her face, she changes the subject. "So I'm assuming we both agree that he's targeting you?"
"So it appears."
"What exactly did he threaten you with?"
"I seem to recall the words 'I will burn the heart out of you'."
Sitting in silence, she keeps a watch in her mirror, driving through a high traffic area. She stops at a light, after it's change, turns down the next street, and when quickly turning again, she depresses an unlabelled button on the dash. A low whirring and crackle noise, and she slips into traffic, down even another street.
Passing the reflective surfaces of a small grocery, he notices something, "the colour's changed."
Alexandra, looking to the rear-view mirror, nods her head, "a small static charge alters the vehicle's paint, our number plate has switched as well. "
"Please tell me this does not become a submersible,"
"No, neither does it fly or have snow skis," she enumerates, her throaty chuckle strikes him in an odd place, inside, "not that I didn't have a boffin or two suggest that, and more. I had to rein them in before they added caltrops and oil sprays."
Sherlock looks around the interior, gazing at buttons and switches. "What, no ejection button?"
Alexandra pretends to search about, "ah, here it is," she exclaims, flipping a toggle, as liquid squirts upon the windscreen and cleaning blades flap back and forth. "Oh, guess they haven't had time to install."
He joins her in a companionable chuckle, easing the tension built from the evening's earlier escapades.
She lets a comfortable silence descend for a few minutes, as she drives into a more suburban area, before she returns to the difficult subject.
"He's trying to isolate you, either by you distancing yourself from your support or by chasing them away."
"Makes it quite dangerous to be involved with me."
"How would John react to the obvious threat to Dr. Sawyer if me and mine were not involved?"
Sherlock contemplates for a moment, "he'd be torn, wanting to protect Sarah, yet desiring to attack Moriarty, either choice would make him feel guilty, which would make him angry, which would lead to a disagreement between the two of us."
The silence that follows this line of deduction is strained. Sherlock realizing just how much he'd come to rely on John and how much his good opinion matters. Moriarty was right, as much as he might hate to admit it, he does have a heart to burn.
Alexandra interrupts his stream of thought by softly asking, "and if he manages to kill Dr. Sawyer?"
"The guilt would destroy John, and even if he said he didn't blame me, subconsciously he would." The next statement takes a minute to get out, one of the most difficult things he's ever done, to open his emotions to another human being. " I'd lose John as a friend, maybe not immediately, but fairly soon, and permanently."
Alexandra says nothing, giving Sherlock time to compose himself. It seems she's aware of how hard for him the admission was. She gives her attention to the driving, turning into the automatic gate, slowly driving up to the house. Parking, she pulls the keys from the ignition and turns to Sherlock. "We'll just have to keep that from happening."
Sherlock gives a quiet snort of disagreement, "the best thing I can do is to just stay away," he mutters fatalistically.
"Exactly."
His head jerks up in surprise, he'd not expected her to agree with him so readily, without even a token argument. It seemed suspiciously out of character. "Exactly?"
Her, 'how's your head?" disconcerted him even more, and didn't answer his question.
He stares at her, his confusion at her tangential comment more than evident. She just shakes her head and opens the car door. The thump and pressure pop as she closes it, brings him out of his distraction, quickly following her out and into the open door to the home.
The ever reliable Gunthar is assisting Alexandra out of her coat, a quick head bob and holds his hand out for Sherlock's woollen duster and scarf.
Divesting himself, he continues after her, into a hallway back to the large metal door to the tactics room. One eyeball pass by the approving sensor and they return to the darkened room they'd occupied earlier, this time there's only one person staffing the room, a young man in black trousers and white shirt and tie.
"Good evening, Marvin, what have we got?" Alexandra asks.
"Metro has identified two of the three suspects, only the Golem was placed at the victim's home, who's been charged with homicide. The others have been charged on 'various weapons infractions.' CCTV coverage is light in the area and there are no images of the suspects or our target available." Marvin presses a few keys at the terminal he occupies, throwing a mapped image of the dead woman's neighbourhood. There are two red circles shown.
"Oddly enough, two camera's were somehow taken offline minutes before the projected time the suspects should have arrived. We've got someone looking into that."
Alexandra and Sherlock glance at one and other, certain of the reason, if not the method. She turns to the young man and asks, "any requests from elsewhere?"
"None, as yet, ma'am."
"If we do, see about getting access to their info dump."
Marvin takes pen to paper and jots down a quick note, "yes, ma'am. Anything else?"
"We're going into conference one, send Dr. Watson in when he arrives."
At the young man's nod, she leads Sherlock to a door to the left of the wall screen, a dark room slowly becoming more visible as the lighting slowly brightens. There is a long light wooden table, surrounded by a mixture of wheeled and static, black and chrome, office chairs.
The door slowly closes behind them, Alexandra waves Sherlock to take his choice of seat as she moves to an armless chair, flipping it around so it's back is against the table and straddling it, moving stiffly and slowly.
Sherlock slips into a comfortably swivelling chair, noticing her careful movements. After a moment of silence, "what did you mean by 'exactly'?" he questions her earlier comment, again.
"The best way to keep John safe is to make it appear that your relationship has already been damaged," she begins, unzipping her boots and toeing them off under the table, "and this obvious attack on his lady-love has strained it even further."
"Moriarty is tenacious, I doubt a spat will be enough to draw him off."
"True, the more he keeps trying, he's likely to get lucky."
As she's speaking, the door opens and in comes Dr. Watson, followed by Gunthar with a tray of first aide supplies.
John moves down the table along the same side as Alexandra, sits, shifting the chair so he can see them both.
While this occurs, Alexandra straightens up, pulling the zipper to her jumpsuit down to her waist, stiffly slipping off the sleeves with Gunthar's assistance. Peeling it down over her bustier protecting her modesty, her man helps ease it down her back.
He tsks his resigned disapproval as he opens a bottle of peroxide, using a cotton ball to soak the liquid and apply it to the thin line of broken skin across her back.
She leans against the back of the chair, her face devoid of any reaction to what's going on behind her.
"Do you need any assistance?" John asks, taking in the wound and bruises beginning to colour.
Alexandra shakes her head, "no thank you, doctor, I've had worse coming off the salle."
Gunthar finishes up with some ointment and a large plaster, bending down to gather her boots and leaves the room.
"Who's getting lucky?" John asks.
"Moriarty," Sherlock answers.
"So he's the murderer?"
"Our old friend, Oskar Dzundza, did his usual. I'm afraid your Sarah is in danger."
"How are you going to find the Golem this time?"
"I don't need to, our resourceful hostess apprehended him," he nods to Alexandra across from him.
John looks at her back, with the realization of the origin of her injuries. He opens his mouth to ask more, but closes it at Sherlock's shaking of his head. "We were discussing our next move," the detective continues, 'you're not going to like it."
Ooooo! Mysterious! Sorry this took so long and it's so short, faithful readers, life, as they say occurs, and into each life a little fecal matter hit's the rotary cooling device, at least into mine. Though brief, I hope you enjoy and I'm working on the next installment to our intrepid friends adventures. Sometimes brain work not….and this holiday lark is anything but….so have a joyous whatever your traditional or chosen end of year rituals and/or festivities may be, as for me, Wondrous Saturnalia!