Giant thanks to The kid at hear, LatinClover, AugustRrush, and bored411 for their reviews of the last chapter!

I hope you guys enjoy this one!

"Sherlock! Slow down!" John yelled as he nearly ran after his long-legged friend, tearing through the street towards the New Scotland Yard.

"Hurry up, John!" Sherlock called over his shoulder as he increased his pace.

John swore under his breath as he jogged to catch up with his friend. He still did not understand why Sherlock had leapt out of the cab nearly 10 blocks away after yelling at the cabbie for driving too slow in traffic.

Sherlock had woken him up after a night shift at the clinic, announcing he had a lead before tearing down to the street to grab a cab. John had been able to extract that it had something to do with remains of the torso murder, but had been unable to gain anymore insight as the London morning traffic had caused his friend to go nearly mental.

John followed him in through the doors of St. Barts hospital, nearly jogging to keep up as they went down the familiar path towards the morgue.

Sherlock flung open the doors, causing the morgue attendant to jump in surprise at his entrance.

"Molly," Sherlock greeted shortly, "I need to see the body parts pulled from the Thames. Now."

Molly just stared at Sherlock in surprise, before her eyes flitted to John.

"Er, which one?" Molly said as she shifted and smiled at the dark-haired detective, "We have several…"

"The cut up ones," Sherlock said irritably as he was nearly shaking with the anticipation of a new lead. "The ones that Scotland Yard sent over."

"Oh, those," Molly said, "You should have called. Would have saved you the trip. They took the bodies back into evidence. New leads and all."

Sherlock stiffened and turned towards her sharply.

"Leads? What new leads?"

Molly's eyes widened for a moment as she saw the detective nearly going manic again.

"I.. I dont know. Lestrade came and took them this morning…"

Sherlock didn't even let Molly finish her sentence before he was pulling out his phone and calling Lestrade, his coat swishing behind him as he swiftly exited the morgue.

Molly's words died as she saw Sherlock leave.

John gave her a small smile before muttering thanks and leaving Molly alone with the corpses once more.

*#&( *#)(

Sherlock cursed silently to himself as he strode out of the morgue as he held the phone to his ear.

What kind of moronic lead could those inept detectives found and not shared with him? Lestrade may be an idiot, but he was usually bright enough to keep him in the loop as he never knew their actual relevance to the case.

"Lestrade," Lestrade picked up after the third ring.

"What new leads do you have?" Sherlock asked, "I need to see the bodies, now."

"Well, hello to you too," Lestrade chided back.

"Where are the bodies? And why did you remove them from the morgue?" Sherlock snapped back.

"Let me remind you, Sherlock, that this is my investigation, not yours…"

"If it was yours, you would have actually solved it by now instead of bumbling your way around and hindering me from doing my job."

Lestrade sighed heavily on the other end of the line.

"Anderson is with the bodies now, taking more samples now that we identified the chemical used…"

"What chemical?" Sherlock asked, stopping in his tracks.

He could irritatingly hear Lestrade smiling on the other end of the line, "And here I was thinking I was just bumbling my way around…"

"The chemical, Lestrade?" Sherlock growled into the phone as John finally caught up with him.

"The redness of the skin on the bodies as to why they were relatively well preserved is because the victims were soaked in some sort of bleaching agent…"

There was a shuffle of papers in the background, "Calcium hypochlorite," Lestrade read off.

Sherlock shut his eyes, his brain beginning to whirl.

His hypothesis was confirmed. The killer had essentially bleach-cured his victims.

"Which is why we couldn't find any witnesses," Sherlock spouted off, "Our timeline was wrong. The chemical preservation made us believe the murders were more recent."

"Anderson is recreating the timeline now," Lestrade told him. He paused momentarily, trying to sound as casual as possible. "Never would have found it without that woman you sent me," he told him, "Though it seems she found it before you did as well…"

"Woman? What woman?"

"You know, that anthropologist lady. Your neighbor. Kylie, was it? I wrote her name down here somewhere… Anyway, yeah. Showed up this morning with the file and gave me a few leads to follow."

Sherlock froze on the spot as the blood stopped pumping in his veins.

...That's how Lestrade got that lead...

"I'd love to get her back in here," Lestrade continued, "You don't think you could talk to her…"

Sherlock hung up on Lestrade. Staring straight ahead as a smile slowly crossed over his face.

The game was on.

(*#)( )( _!)_)

Kylie hummed along with Billy Joel as she sat on the floor of her flat, carefully peeling off wallpaper with a small scraper. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, brushing the loose hair out of her face as she glanced down at the small speaker she had picked up at a second hand store earlier that morning.

She smiled at it before continuing her task. There was nothing like music and manual labor that could keep her mind off the chaos at hand.

While she was exhausted from not having slept all night, her mind was still racing with possibilities about that case. She had been trying to focus her mind on the music and wallpaper, but she couldn't help but keep the file next to her. She glanced down at the open file next to her discarded wallpaper shavings, glancing once more at the picture that disturbed her the most.

One thing was bothering her, the thing that she couldn't get out of her head. Why castrate and decapitate these men while still alive?

Pain and suffering?

… it seemed like this was more than that. The reddish hue?

Nothing seemed to make sense in this case, though, with murder, things honestly hardly ever did make sense.

The front door to the trio of flats opened and she paused, turning down her speaker briefly as she heard male voices.

The dick and his mate… John, was it? Yes… John.

Kylie turned the speaker back up and went back to work. Instead of the footsteps thumping up the stairs, they seemed to be thumping towards her.

Shit.

Kylie quickly closed the file and covered it with the discarded wallpaper, hiding it from sight just as a knock rang out on her door.

"Go away," she yelled at the door as she kept scraping at the wall, trying to loosen a stubborn piece of the paper.

The knock then became a bang. And an incessant one.

Kylie shut her eyes as the banging kept on for 45 seconds.

1 minute.

A minute thirty.

She sighed and rolled her eyes as she got up, answering the door.

"What?" she asked moodily.

John looked as if he wished he could evaporate on the spot while Sherlock just stood there, looking smug as ever.

"Kyleigha," he greeted as he put his hands behind his back.

"What the hell do you want?" Kylie asked him as she leaned on the door frame, crossing her arms. "And its Kylie, by the way," she added.

"Kyleigha is your given name," Sherlock said dismissively, as he looked past her into the flat.

Kylie shifted to block his view, raising her eyebrows.

"I go by Kylie."

"Aren't you going to invite us in?" Sherlock asked.

"No," Kylie said flatly, "What do you want?"

Sherlock tried his best to look hurt, pouting slightly, making Kylie sigh at him again, looking at John instead for answers.

"Why are you two here?" she asked.

John gave her a tight smile, "Honestly, no idea. Come on Sherlock, lets go."

John tried to grab Sherlock and turn him around, but Sherlock refused to move.

"We came to see your finding on the file I gave you," Sherlock told her.

Kylie looked at him, standing up straight, putting her hand on the door, ready to close it, "No findings. I haven't looked at it. You'll have to find some other ex-anthropologist to pester."

Kylie tried to close the door, but Sherlock's arm stopped it.

Panic began to coarse through her as the door wouldn't budge under his strength.

No…

Not again…

In her panic, Kylie took a step back, finding the drawer on the table next the door she had set up that morning, finding the handle of the drawer.

Sherlock's face appeared in front of her suddenly. His eyes seemed to look through her as he looked at her with something that resembled concern.

His eyes flitted down to her hand that had paused on the drawer.

"Interesting," he muttered as he looked back up at her.

That seemed to kick her senses back into gear…

The hand on the drawer holding her loaded weapon clenched angrily.

"Say what you want and get the fuck out," Kylie spat.

John looked completely taken aback by this statement while Sherlock raised his eyes in mere slight surprise.

"I took you for a much polieter neighbor," Sherlock said in partial amusement as he stepped into the flat, walking around her living room.

John gave her a wary look before glancing at Sherlock.

"Sherlock, come on," he muttered to him, "She doesn't want us here."

"You looked at the file," Sherlock told her, ignoring John as he spun round on his heels, facing her.

"No, I didn't," Adalyn told him.

"You did. You couldn't resist," Sherlock said as he took a few steps towards her.

It took every ounce of concentration in her body not to move away from him as he approached her. Her lack of focus on her face gave her away though, based on the way the tall, dark-haired detective looked at her.

"Why are you afraid?" He asked her, his voice in a slightly gentler tone as his eyes bore through her, right to her soul.

Kylie swallowed.

"I'm not."

"You are."

Kylie stayed silent and locked eyes with the man, refusing to back down or show him that he was right.

"What did you find, Kyleigha?" Sherlock asked her as he was now barely an inch from her.

She wasn't breathing.

She wasn't thinking.

Fear and something else she couldn't place was coursing through her.

Anger?

Was that it?

… Had to be.

"I never looked in the damn file, Holmes," Kylie told him, her eyes locked firmly on his, trying her damndest not to waiver.

"Then why...?" Sherlock asked, his eyes lowering.

A new surge of fear coursed through her.

Was this dick really going to try to kiss me?

"...Is the file under this paper?" he finished, as his eyes met hers again.

Kylie froze. The blood rushing to her face in what she knew was a blush.

Sherlock smirked at her, knowing he had won as he looked down again, kicking away the wallpaper that had been hiding the file, exposing it on the floor.

"Don't know how that got there," Kylie said breathlessly after a moment, trying her best to play it cool.

"You are a worse liar than you think you are," Sherlock said as his eyes searched hers.

Kylie remained silent. Her teeth grinding together as she refused to admit that he had won.

"I will ask again," Sherlock said as he took another step closer to her, "What did you find?"

Kylie felt adrenaline shoot through her. He was too close.

She felt her hands beginning to shake out of fear. She instantly knew Sherlock saw her fear as his eyes narrowed at her slightly, searching her face for something.

Footsteps down the hall saved her. She faked to look towards it and stepped away, putting distance between herself and the consulting detective. As soon as she had, she was able to let out a shaky breath, feeling herself calm ever so slightly.

The footsteps came towards her door as someone else joined them in her small flat.

"Oh good," Detective Inspector Lestrade said as he glanced around, "You are all here."

Kylie frowned at him.

All here?

"You were right," Lestrade told her as he looked at Kylie specifically, "About everything you told me. Had my team look into it…"

Sherlock glanced at her, an irritatingly smug smile on his face before he switched back to 'case-mode'.

"What did you find? A new lead?"

"We think we may have found where this guy killed at least one victim," Lestrade told them, "We tracked down large suppliers and stores of that chemical that they were soaked in…?"

"What was it?" Kylie asked before she could stop herself.

She cursed herself internally for giving herself away… again…

"Calcium hypochlorite," Sherlock answered quickly.

Kylie frowned at him. If he had figured it out, why was Lestrade at her flat?

… either way… Calcium Hypochlorite was an interesting choice for the killer.

Was he trying to preserve his victims?

"That would alter the timeline," Kylie told Lestrade, trying her best to ignore the smug detective, "The victims would have been in the Thames far longer than one week. Calcium Hypochlorite can assist in the preservation of flesh…"

"I already told him that," Sherlock said dismissively.

"I told you it was calcium hypo… whatever," Lestrade told him, "Dr. Gibbs here was the one who figured it out."

Kylie couldn't help a smug smile coming over her own face at the man's reaction. He was NOT happy Lestrade had mentioned that.

"Did you figure out the actual timeline?" John asked, redirecting the conversation back to the case at hand.

"No, Anderson is still working on that. I had officers canvas the main suppliers and storers of that chemical, found a lot of blood and parts of what we assume are human bones."

"Where?"

"London Public Water treatment plant," Lestrade told him.

However, before he could even finish the sentence, Sherlock was on his way out the door.

John rolled his eyes, muttereing goodbye to both Kylie and Lestrade before hurrying after his friend.

Lestrade turned and looked at Kylie.

"I'm not coming," Kylie told him firmly, knowing what he was about to ask her.

"Please," Lestrade asked. "I will keep it purely unofficial if you want, or official if you want. The department will pay you either way. Your help has broken this case."

"You'll solve it without me," Kylie told him, fighting the urge to run out the door towards the scene with him.

"Look," Lestrade said slowly, "What I didn't get a chance to say, was we aren't even sure the remains we found were human. They are cut up into small pieces. Our coroner can't make sense of it and we would have to request DuPont to come down in person as they wont let us send the remains. We all know that DuPont wont come for at least another two months, if he comes. I am not willing to let this maniac run around on the streets while he kills more people. You can stop him. I need your help to catch this guy."

Kylie sighed.

She knew the inspector was right. DuPont was notorious for his frequent vacations and high consultation prices. The killer would kill more people before DuPont even set foot in London.

"There has to be other Anthropologists in London. I know the Royal Institute has several…"

"None have forensic experience," Lestrade told her.

"I know I am laying it on thick when I say this," Lestrade told her, "But more people will die if you don't help us solve this case."

Kylie sighed angrily, feeling herself cave.

"Fine," she said, "Let me change."

"Brilliant," Lestrade said happily, "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," Kylie called as she disappeared into her bedroom, looking for decent clothes, "I will help you this once. But this is a one-time deal."

… Of course, she had no idea how wrong she was.

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