Hello everyone! I hope you're all enjoying your summer! Sorry I haven't posted in a bit, I've been dreadfully sick, got better, and then got sick again with the same crap as before. *sigh* Also, FF.N for some reason doesn't want to let me open my private messaging, so I haven't been able to send this to my beta, so all mistakes are mine. Sorry if you spot any. Without further ado, here's chapter 36!

~J.

As spring finally arrived, and the snow had melted and the sun began to warm London, Jayne and Sherlock arrived home from shopping. Jayne was humming to herself as she looked up the stairs and saw Sherlock sniffing the air. "Sherlock?" Jayne asked quietly. She followed him, noting that a window that hadn't been open previously, was open to it's fullest point. She frowned at it and followed Sherlock, still clutching the groceries in their bag. Jayne heard John's footsteps coming up the stairs as well.

Sherlock kept moving towards the open door of his bedroom, Jayne following behind him still. She gasped when she entered the room. "Hey Sherlock," John began, before Sherlock cut him off.

"We have a client," Sherlock said, looking past Jayne to John.

"What, in your bedroom?" John said, coming up behind Jayne. "Oh."

There, in Sherlock's bed, lay Irene Adler. She looked peaceful, almost angelic in sleep. As though the weight of everything bad, wrong thing she had ever done, was released. She didn't have to hold herself to the "bad girl" image she held while awake. She looked, Jayne thought, almost vulnerable.

A short while later, showered and dressed in Sherlock's dressing gown, Irene sat impatiently on a chair, John and Jayne sitting by the desk, Sherlock sitting on a chair watching Irene's every move. A fact that Jayne desperately tried to ignore.

"So who's after you?" Sherlock began the first question.

"People who want to kill me," Irene answered, a little smile gracing her lips.

"Who's that?" Sherlock questioned.

"Killers," Irene replied, her smile growing.

"It would help if you were a tiny bit more specific," John said.

"So you faked your own death in order to get ahead of them," Sherlock stated.

"It worked for a while," Irene said, her smile dimming a bit.

"Except you let John know you were alive and therefore, me," Sherlock said

"And me," Jayne said softly.

"I knew you'd keep my secret," Irene said, staring into Sherlock's eyes.

"You couldn't," Sherlock answered.

"But you did, didn't you?" Irene said, smiling again when Sherlock didn't answer. "Where's my camera-phone?"

"It's not here, we're not stupid," John said, taking a sip of his tea.

"Then what have you done with it? If they've guessed you've got it, they'll be watching you," Irene stated.

"If they've been watching me, they'll know I took a safety deposit box on the Strand a few months ago," Sherlock's statement was stiff, he wasn't enjoying this, Jayne thought.

"I need it," Irene insisted.

"Well we can't just go and get it, can we?" John thought for a moment and threw out a rather long, complicated plan that involved Sherlock's homeless network and Molly. Jayne raised a brow at using her best friend on a dangerous mission. And it was dangerous, Jayne thought, as those American CIA's had shown.

"Very good, John. Excellent plan, full of intelligent precautions." Sherlock said it in a way that made Jayne smile. She knew he though John's plan was ridiculous.

"Thank you. So why don't I-Oh for.." John huffed as Sherlock pulled Irene's phone from his pocket.

Jayne gripped the arm of her chair tightly, her knuckles white as she glared at that phone. Of all the stupid places to keep it!

Sherlock, John and Irene got into a argumentative conversation about what Irene kept on her phone. John kept insisting it was for blackmail, Irene insisting just the same that it was for protection. After all, she's spent most of her life "misbehaving" as she put it.

Jayne was absolutely shocked when Sherlock turned the phone over to Irene. "Show me," he said. And they watched as she entered the number to unlock it. But it buzzed. "It's not working," Irene said, looking annoyed.

"No, because it's a duplicate I had made into which you've just entered the numbers 1058. I assumed you'd use something more specific than that, but uh, thanks anyway." Sherlock said, grabbing the real phone and entering the number. Only Jayne saw that Irene wasn't furious, in fact, she almost seemed to be...laughing. Damn, Jayne thought.

Sherlock looked rather baffled when the correct phone buzzed at the incorrectly entered passcode. Irene smiled and spoke, "I told you that phone was my life. I know when it's in my hand."

"Oh, you're rather good." Sherlock said.

"You're not so bad," Irene flirted back at him, and Jayne rolled her eyes and slouched down into her seat. She saw John's look of concern, but said nothing.

Irene began to explain about an MOD man who she knew what he liked. (Jayne shuddered at the thought of that.) She went on to explain that while he was otherwise occupied, she had taken pictures of an email he'd said would save the world. He hadn't known she'd photographed it, of course. She showed it to Sherlock. "I had one of the best cryptographers in the world take a look at it, though he was mostly upside down, as I recall." Jayne shuddered again, unhappy with this rather distasteful conversation and how Irene flaunted it.

"What can you do, Mr. Holmes? Go on, impress a girl," Irene said, leaning over Sherlock's back.

"Sherlock," Jayne whispered. She had a feeling that breaking this code was a very, very bad idea, all of a sudden. But Sherlock was intensely focused on his task and paid her no attention. Within seconds, he had an answer.

"There's a margin for error, but I'm pretty sure there's a 747 leaving Heathrow tomorrow at 6:30 in the evening for Baltimore. Apparently it's going to save the world, I'm not sure how that could be true, but give me a minute, I've only been on the case for eight seconds." Sherlock answered.

John and Irene looked at him in shock, Jayne just closed her eyes and sighed.

"Come on, it's not code. These are seat allocations on a passenger jet." he said and started to explain common seating arrangements on airplanes and why he believed that the jet was leaving from Heathrow. "Please don't feel obliged to tell me that was remarkable or amazing John's expressed that thought in every possible variant of the English language."

"I would have you right here, on this desk, until you begged for mercy. Twice." Irene said.

Sherlock was speechless and that was the last straw for Jayne. She shot out of the chair and out the door, down to her own apartment, slamming the door behind her. She didn't see Sherlock's eyes following her, Irene's malicious smirk, or John's look of sorrow.