Why Fireflies Flash
Chapter Nine
"Too Cold For Angels To Fly"
221B Baker Street
"They'll be back in China by tomorrow," John says as he pushes into the flat and pulls his overcoat off.
Sherlock shook his head, glaring at all the evidence and books filling the small sitting room as he too stripped himself of his outerwear. "No. They won't leave without what they came for."
Quinn stalked around them, her movements suddenly a militaristic as John's. "We need to find their hideout. Rendezvous. Somewhere in this message," she brushed her now well-worn manicure of the cypher from the tracks. "Alfie would have known. Oh, what is the damn key?!" She spun on the balls of her feet and started riffling through the books.
"Well, I think perhaps I should leave you to it," Sarah says suddenly.
"Yes, it'd be better for-"
"If you do not mind-"
"No, no, no, no, it's fine.-"
"-if you left now." Sherlock gives her a brief uncommitted smile.
"He's kidding," John rebukes.
Quinn glanced between the two men and shook her head. "No, he was not. Do not lie to the woman." She gave Sarah a once over before continuing her riffling. "Sarah, you do seem like a nice woman. Stay if you would like. I can work around you. John, you best spend some time with her."
"Is it just me or is anyone else starving?" Sarah asked.
"Ooh, god," Sherlock mumbled under his breath.
"Right," John mutters as he goes to the kitchen to look for something to snack on.
Quietness settles between the remaining three. Sherlock takes his seat at the table between the windows to continue his work on the cypher.
"So this is what you do for a living?" Sarah questions the detective as she takes in the plethora of papers covering the mirror. "You- you two and John? You solve puzzles."
"Consulting Detective," he snapped peeved.
Quinn frowned. "And no. I only live in the flat below." A clank in the kitchen draws Quinn's attention from Sarah to her date. Her frown deepens before she swiftly but silently walks out of the flat and to hers. She returned five minutes later with a serving tray (borrowed from Mrs. Hudson, hers were hidden in a box somewhere) with a picture, plate, and three glasses, one of which she took after she set the tray down. John looked over just in time to see her do this.
"Anabeth you are a saint."
Anabeth shrugged. "I couldn't stand to see your date go any farther to the dumps. It's nothing much, just homemade shortbread cookies and gingersnaps and half-n-half, um sweet tea and lemonade. But I'll warn you I am from the Southern States, so everything's really sweet and really fattening. To say we enjoy our butter is a bit of an understatement." She pours herself a glass before joining Sherlock and Sarah.
"And each pair of numbers is a word?" Anabeth hears Sarah ask.
"How did you know that?" Sherlock wonders.
"Well, two words have already been translated. Here." Setting the evidence bag containing the paper on the table, she points to the faint writing of a ballpoint pen.
"John. John!" Sherlock exclaims excitedly as he tears the paper out of the bag. "John look at this. She started to translate the code for us. We didn't see it."
"Frankly, I was more worried about protecting my asset."
Sherlock spared Anabeth a passing glance. "NINE... MILL..."
"Nine millions?" John asks.
Anabeth glances at the paper. "Nine million quid for what?" She gives a secret smile at her use of slang. Alfie would have been proud. The smile's gone as soon as it came and she's dashing down to her flat and to the stack of book on her mantle. It was easy enough to spot the book, the white and blue cover sticking out against the dark leather covers of her classic works.
She sprinted up the stairs, into the hall just in time to see Sherlock bound out the door. "Holmes!" She shouts, racing down the sidewalk. The pacing man pauses. "It's the London A-Z. A book that everyone would own. Easy enough to your hands on a copy. In fact, my Bestest Friend in the Whole Wide World gave it to me whilst still in America. As a gag gift of course. It's her way of teasing me about how I got us lost in the woods once when we were younger. Any time I go to a new place, she gets me something akin to a map or a gui-"
Sherlock grabs hold of her upper arms and gives a slight shake. "Rambling," was all he said.
"Sorry. Here," she hands him the book. "Page fifteen, entry one. Deadman. Zhīzhū was threatening them. Nine mill for jade pin dragon den black tramway. The cypher. That's what it says. However I have no idea what that means, or rather where it means."
"Has anyone told you, you are very annoying?"
"And yet you've drug me along for the past three days."
"Come on."
"John! John! I've got i- Ow! What was that for?"
Anabeth glared at the detective. "I, me, Anabeth, I got it before you even figured it out."
"Doesn't matter. It was the London A-Z," Sherlock explains as he bounds in to the sitting room. He pauses though. The bright yellow cypher covered the windows.
"Ah, hell," Anabeth breathes.
Sherlock pulls a map of London from his bookshelf and unfurls it. "Tramway." He runs his finger across the paper before tapping it. "Found you."
Since finding John and Sarah missing and the cypher in their place, Quinn's adrenaline had kicked in, her training coming to the forefront of her mind. She hadn't parted with her handgun since Soo Lin's murder, she simply kept it strapped to her thigh. Now as she approached the entrance to the tunnel (in her ruined Oscar de la Renta, something she was going to insist on Sherlock replacing) she felt the comforting weight of it in her hand.
"Do not fire that in here," Holmes warns. "If you miss, it'll ricochet."
Quinn looks him in the eye as best she can in the strange lighting. "Then I will not miss."
"I'm not Sherlock Holmes!" John shouts exasperated.
"I don't believe you!" It was the Ringleader lady from the circus.
"You should, you know," Sherlock calls out to them. "Sherlock Holmes is nothing at all like him."
The short Chinese woman turned around aiming her weapon to wear the two intruders stood just previously.
"How would you describe me, John?"
"Fishing for compliments, Holmes?"
Sherlock ignores her as he picks up a pipe lying on the ground. "Resourceful? Dynamic? Enigmatic?"
Quinn rolled her eyes.
"Late," John murmurs.
"That's a semiautomatic. If you fire it, the bullet will travel at over a thousand meters per second."
"Well?" the woman asked.
"Well," Sherlock jumps from his hiding spot and whacks a henchman with his pipe.
"Professor Plum in the conservatory with the lead pipe," Quinn quips.
Her companion continues as if she hadn't spoken. He was good at that. "The radius curvature of these wall is nearly four meters, if you miss the bullet could ricochet. Could hit anyone. Might even bounce off the tunnel and hit you."
Quinn's impatience gets the best of her and she makes to kick over a fire drum. Sherlock takes the initiative to untie Sarah. It's not three seconds before he is dragged back by a scarf around his neck. The Chinese and their scarves. As he struggled with Zhīzhū, Quinn fought off another assassin, the adrenaline pulsing through her veins, giving her enough of an artificial high to coerce that same rare half-snort-half-giggle sort of laugh from her lips.
The sounds of the crossbow firing and a fallen comrade distracts the assassin long enough for Quinn to receive the upper hand and hit the man in the head with the butt of her pistol. As she catches her breath she glances at John who was still tied to the chair they found him in, only now he was lying on the ground. "I told you I could do more than just run in heels."
John gave a quick nod and turned his attentions to Sarah. "Don't worry," he says to the hyperventilating woman. "Next date won't be like this."
221B Baker Street
"So nine mill-"
"Million."
"Million, yes. Nine million for jade pin dragon den black tramway."
"An instruction for all their London agents," Quinn explains to John as she sips on her glass of cocoa.
"A message," Sherlock continues. "What they were trying to reclaim."
"A jade pin," John clarifies.
"Yes," Quinn agrees. "Worth nine million pounds. It was to be brought to the tramway; their London hideout."
"Hang on." John glances up at the two standing up. "A hair pin worth nine million pounds?"
"Apparently," Sherlock replies. He sips his coffee.
"Why so much?"
"Depends on who owned it first."
John gives the suggestion some thought and nods. "So who stole it?"
"Eddy Van Coon," Sherlock tells.
"How did you figure that? Even the killer didn't know that."
"The soap," Sherlock and Quinn say together.
"The soap in Van Coon's apartment matches the same luxury brand as the hand lotion on his secretary's desk..." the woman informs further, though the last part was whispered as her phone vibrated in her jacket pocket.
How good of a shot are you?
Quinn frowned at the random question.
I was the best sniper in my platoon. -Annie
Perfect. I need you to do me a favor tonight.
Who? -Annie
A short Chinese woman that knows too much.
Quinn's jaw was clenched. She should have known he was behind this.
Your will is my command. -Anniexx
"Everything alright?" John asks.
"Hmm?" Quinn looks up. "Oh yes, fine. It seems, although, that even on my days off I cannot keep from working. Speaking of," she turns to the detective, "have you figured it out yet, Holmes? What I do for a living?"
Sherlock smirks. "John, meet Anabeth Ryder. Part time burlesque dancer, full time government agent."
"So you work for Mycroft?" John asks.
Quinn shrugs. "Yes and no. While I am currently under his command, and was relocated to here to watch over the both of you by him, I am first and foremost a CIA agent and I will have to report back to Langley about Soo Lin's death." She gave an impressed smile to Sherlock, one that didn't reach her eyes. "I am impressed though. For a moment I thought I had you stumped. I was almost disappointed. Burlesque dancer I am indeed."
Can I see you tonight? -Anniexx
We'll both be busy. I thought you were smarter than this.
I am. I meant afterwords. I just got done with a case and I want you. -Anniexx
Want to see you** -Annie
Stop by after the job's done.
Love you! -Anniexx
Quinn leaves the two men who'd decided to carry on the conversation without her, and resorts to her apartment.
Office building across from General Shan's hotel
Quinn takes a deep breath. She was trained for this, to neutralize the enemy with minimal effort. Though, at this point in time she wasn't quite sure who that was.
Her job was simple. Wait for the text and pull the trigger once received. Simple in theory. It was the wave of guilt that came over her as she watched the body fall, slumped over into a victim of something that was so much bigger than her. Bigger than all of them.
Some time within the last six months, something had gone wrong. Not on her end, obviously not, she was too careful. No it wasn't her.
Her phone buzzed beside her.
It's time.
She takes another breath to center herself, corrects her aim, and fires.