Wrapping a tie around his neck, John watched Mary on the monitor. In an interview room, she made a show of looking through the folder in her hands, her features sunk into a frown. The standard, forgettable pose of an official. Moriarty stood off to the side, observing her every move.
"Stephen Willis – or otherwise known as Mike Stamford." She flicked through a set of entirely irrelevant papers. "You're quite prolific, in the gambling world. Is this why you changed your name?"
"I made a few mistakes, yes." Mike laughed uncomfortably. "But does that really necessitate – all this?"
"Well… you are a criminal, Mr Stamford, so yes."
"But I'm not a criminal anymore," Mike insisted, shifting in his seat. Even on the grainy image of the camera monitor, the growing tension in his shoulders, his whole body, was clear to see. "Surely I've earned the right to earn a living? Or are all criminals irredeemable in the eyes of the NGC?"
Mary came to a stop. "What exactly are you implying, Mr Stamford?"
"I'm saying that the NGC doesn't give ex-criminals like me a second chance. You'd rather we all – lived on the streets, as penitence for our past lives!"
"That is a ridiculous accusation, Mr Stamford—"
"My name is Stephen Willis!" Mike said hotly, jumping to his feet and advancing forward. Mary doubled back as Moriarty finally stepped forward, his full attention fixed on Mike. If the footage on the monitor was anything to by, he barely felt Mary, in the midst of the slight scuffle, slip the codes out of his pocket and into her own.
Sitting back on the sofa, John cocked a smile. "I knew she could do it."
"She could blink and you'd praise her," Wiggins muttered, still watching the screen where Moriarty, eyes flashing, had gripped hard at Mike's shoulder.
"Sit down, Mr Stamford. Because it doesn't matter what name you go by – you are never setting foot in my casino again. Do you understand me?"
Mike nodded, meek once again. Wiggins chuckled and looked to the other screen. There was a live feed to the security centre, where Mrs Hudson stood with Moran by her side. Sweat was slick on her forehead and her temple. Moran, as yet unaware of the trouble faced by her, continued to talk her through the process of her suitcase being taken down to the vault, but Martha was barely listening. Wiping at her brow, she swallowed a pill.
"That's my cue." John shrugged on a suit jacket and made to leave. "Contact Lestrade, tell him we're nearly ready."
Wiggins leaned forward, speaking into his microphone. "Lestrade? Where are you? We need a status update, mate."
There was a crackle of feedback, followed by a sigh and the sounds of passing traffic. "Yeah, yeah – nearly there."
"How long is 'nearly there'?"
"I'm turning in now."
Coming up to ten minutes, and still no sign of James Moriarty. Meanwhile, Sherlock still had to wait in a room void of cameras. Apparently the man was determined to burn quite a large hole into his evening schedule.
"It must be a busy night for him," he suggested. Something resembling puzzlement crossed one of the bodyguards' faces. "With the fight."
He eyed the two silent bodyguards in front of him. "Someone's coming, if the looks are anything to go by. But it isn't Moriarty. Is it?"
A large loud knock sounded on the door. One of the bodyguards opened it, and a man stepped inside, stooping underneath the frame of the doorway. The second bodyguard smirked and, along with his colleague, made a discreet departure.
Sherlock barely managed to get to his feet before the first punch was landed, sending him stumbling back.
"Jesus!" he hissed, clutching at his jaw. He directed a remonstrating scowl at the man in front of him. "Bruiser, did your mother never teach you about patience?"
"Oh, I forgot—"
"We'll just call it you getting your eye in." Sherlock climbed onto a worktop, and pushed up at the vent above. He was about to climb through when he looked back to Bruiser. "By the way, say congratulations to your wife. She's pregnant."
"Again?"
"Mm-hm. I can always tell an expectant father. It's the exhaustion." Leaving Bruiser with the news that he was about to become a father for the fifth (or sixth, it was hard to keep track) time, Sherlock began his climb.
"I mean, she told me 11, right – but c'mon, I work in a casino, the earliest I can get away is, like, way early in the morning during the slow hours, you know? But she keeps nagging and going on at me—"
Soo Lin resisted the urge to grind her teeth and concentrated on breathing. For most of the way, she'd had to endure such charming chatter as what she now listened to, and more than once, she had yearned for the bickering of the Talkative Twosome, Gary and Billy. At least they injected some variety into their arguments. This man and his wife just seemed to be obsessed with times of day.
Mercifully, the conversation ceased on entering into the vault, only to be replaced by another trouble. A trouble that was signified with a thud, directly above her. Hesitantly, she reached up and pressed at the lid. Sure enough, the weight of the suitcase pressed down upon it.
Very quietly, under her breath, Soo Lin swore.
Martha knew the problem as soon as she saw on the monitor the idiot of a security guard, his attention wrapped up in his colleague's enthralling tale, set the suitcase down atop of the very unit Soo Lin had stored herself. She again wiped sweat from her brow and again swallowed a pill, but it had little to no effect. On another monitor, the sight of Mary Morstan loomed into view, heading quickly down a corridor. A security guard, far too quick on his feet, peered at the screen.
"Who's she? Hey, we got a bogey in the west—"
"Mrs Zerga!" Every last person's attention was drawn away from the screens by the sight of Mrs Zerga, German widow and prominent arms dealer, fainting dead away onto the floor.
As the staff, eager not to be sued by Mrs Zerga or any of her associates, scrambled to attend to her distress, Mary tapped in the codes and watched as the lift doors slid open and stepped open. In her ear, she heard Wiggins chuckle.
"Good work, Miss Morstan. We're switching to video… now." On the last word, Mary began to move. Shifting towards the corner of the lift, she jumped up and opened up a latch in the roof, only to be met with the most arrogant grin she had ever seen in her life.
"Bloody hell!" she yelped, bracing herself against the walls of the lift. "You could've warned me!"
She cocked an eyebrow. "Or did you just not trust me?"
"Had to make sure," Sherlock answered and he held out a hand. Mary eyed it warily, but Sherlock only rolled his eyes.
"If it helps, you've more than proved yourself."
Smiling, Mary took his hand.
Back on the main floor, John Watson strode up to the casino cage doors, carrying a medical bag with one hand and adjusting his tie with another. He came to a halt.
"Did someone call for a doctor at all?"
Mary tightened the rappelling line around her waist, testing it. "So why didn't you just tell me? Instead of going through that whole rigmarole of having me tail you and everything? Telling me would've made things much easier."
"True," Sherlock said. "But John had a lot of faith in you, almost from the get go. I just wanted to make sure that faith wasn't misplaced. He's very loyal, very quickly after all."
"As am I," Mary retorted. The pair of them began their slow climb down the side of the lift. "What, did you think I was going to betray you or something? You know – tip off the police about your plans."
"No, you're not stupid enough for that. I had to trust you were good enough to complete the job; that was all."
"Still, an incredible risk to take."
"Doesn't make things half fun though," Sherlock said with another grin, getting into position over the glowing red of the motion sensors below. With the pair of them poised to drop, Sherlock tapped at his earpiece.
"Wiggins? Ready."
At the same time, John, Gary and Billy wheeled a recently deceased Simone Zerga out of the casino on a gurney. John tapped at his own earpiece.
"Ready."
"Lestrade, we're set."
"Yeah, in a minute," came Lestrade's distracted reply.
"Soo Lin's going to suffocate soon, mate – you don't have a minute."
"Alright, alright," Greg sighed. Making a grab for the detonator, he pushed the pinch bomb back into the confines of the van and stepped back. Looking over the glowing green of the bomb situated in the back of the van, he took one more step back for luck. His thumb hovered over the button. "Broke, blind and bedlam in 3, 2… 1."
Just as the first punch of the most important fight of the season was about to land, Greg pressed the detonator. Las Vegas fell into darkness.
One by one, in quick succession, the red beams of the infrared sensors flickered off. Delving into his pocket, Sherlock retrieved a series of glow sticks, cracked them and dropped them. They fell freely down the shaft, the sound of their descent echoing. Mary glanced to Sherlock.
"Down?"
"Down."
Together, they fell, abseiling, down the elevator shaft, stopping with a groan as the rappel lines came to their end. It was a good ten foot drop to the bottom.
"Cut the rope," Sherlock ordered. "They'll reel back automatically."
Without question, she obeyed and they landed on the bottom of the elevator shaft with a definite thump. Above them, the red of the sensors returned. Thirty seconds precisely. It seemed that Greg Lestrade could indeed achieve something.
"Now just the guards to go," he said with a groan, clambering to his feet. He looked to Mary. "Where's the gas pellet?"
"Here." She pressed the gas pellet into his palm and they pulled open the elevator doors. As expected, three guards stood there, engaged in easy chatter, with their fingers ghosted over the guns strapped to their sides. Sliding the gas pellet across the floor, Sherlock let the elevator doors slid closed. First thud came quickly enough, soon followed by the second, and finally, the third.
After that, the procedure was simple. Soon enough, the three guards were tied up, unconscious and the codes were punched in and the door was sliding open to reveal the entrance to the vault.
"So, where are we at then?" Lestrade asked, casually strolling into the hotel room, a bag of crisps in hand, to sit by Wiggins, who smirked.
"Well, as of now, there's pandemonium on the main floor and I'm guessing it's much the same in the Garden Arena,"—Lestrade's grin widened on witnessing the effects of his work—"and Sherlock's about to breach the vault with Mary."
"Great." Lestrade propped his legs up on the table. Wiggins chose not to make a comment. They were, after all, about to steal 160 million dollars. He wasn't about to complain about a small breach of etiquette in the circumstances. "Things are going smoothly then."
The same attitude could not be shared by Soo Lin. Her pockets stuffed with the weight of explosive emerald jewels, she had somewhat overestimated her jump onto the money shelf behind her, and currently hung from it by her fingertips.
With every ounce of strength she had, she pulled herself up and began her climb towards the vault door. The thudding knock came from behind the vault door for a second time. Settling herself against a corner of the vault door, high above the motion floor sensors, she placed the bombs against the door. Pressing two knocks against the door, she quickly began her climb towards the back of the vault.
The explosions she expected never came.
Stood outside the vault, Mary glared, unendingly, at Sherlock, the supposed genius who had put this whole plan together. Sherlock, muttering, slammed the detonator against his palm. Still nothing happened.
"Did you check the batteries at all, Sherlock?"
He didn't blush, but the shifting of his weight and the slight, blank stare he directed at her served as a good enough answer. Mary shook her head and plucked the detonator from his palm, switching the batteries.
"It's always the simplest problems that trip—"
The rest of her sentence was blown away by four powerful, but muted, blasts sounding against the vault door. Tentatively, she and Sherlock stepped forward and tried the door. It slid open and they stepped inside.
Wisps of smoke curled in the air and in front of them, a crumpled cash cart was pushed away. Soo Lin crawled forward, strands of her hair falling in front of her face. She met them with a raise of her eyebrows.
"You really took your time, didn't you?"
Martha strolled into the lounge, very much alive and out of the opulent fashions preferred by her late German counterpart. Brushing at the skirts of her dress, she, along with Lestrade, Wiggins and a newly arrived John and Mike watched the monitor.
"Have you ever been married?" On the screen, the grainy image of Sherlock, Mary and Soo Lin packing up the seemingly endless piles of money played. Lestrade nodded. Martha smiled, pointing to the screen. "That is better than any marriage."
"Mr 'olmes would struggle to agree with you there," Wiggins retorted. Bringing out his phone, his fingers sweeping over the keypad, he pressed it to his ear.
"Yes?"
"You're up."