Dissent in the Ranks

Sherlock came round slowly, feeling a light throbbing in the back of his head where he had been hit. He could hear voices, close but distant at the same time. Outside whatever room he was in, but the walls were thin, and barely muffled the sound. He opened his eyes to confirm his suspicions. He was alone, in a small dark room. Bathroom, in fact. There was a skylight of frosted plastic through which a little moonlight shone, joined by the light from the cracks around the door. His hands were bound together with cable-ties, as were his feet, but still his long pale fingers reached out to what they could, to make silent assessment of details he could not see clearly. The Bathtub was plastic also, as was the sink. Lightweight, cheap. Conclusion: Mobile home. It made sense for the travelling musicians to live in a setup like this. Not the securest prison, but bound, he had significantly less chance of overpowering those outside the door, ostensibly guarding him.

Although, there were other means of escaping guards than overpowering. Judging by the conversation he could hear, it would be only too easy to turn them against one another. It had already begun.

"It was only supposed to be a test to see if he had unravelled our code or not! You weren't supposed to kidnap him!" A female voice protested.

"Well what would you have done? Cos it seemed to me you had no contingency plan for if he did, so I came up with one." A man argued.

"And where does that plan lead to now huh? He couldn't get us convicted on the code, the police would never had believed him, or else he wouldn't have still been trailing us, he'd have handed us over long ago. He was looking for concrete evidence. Knowing whether he knew the code or not was just so we'd know how careful we'd need to be to prevent him getting that evidence. Now though, he has all he needs. We let him go, he goes straight to the police on the charge of kidnapping. He's even got a nice head injury to prove it!"

"So we don't let him go."

"Well we can't keep him prisoner here forever."

"I say we kill him." The voice of a younger man spoke up.

"Nathan!" The woman rebuked, shock in her voice.

"He has a point, Nina. Like you said, we can't keep him here. I doubt bargaining for his silence would work, so we can't let him go. Killing him seems like the only solution." The older man reasoned.

"No! It is not a solution! It'll only be making things worse for ourselves, because there is no way we'd get away with it. He has a friend, remember, at the party. And judging by his glares through the set, and how hard he tried to get to us before we left, he knows we have something to do with Sherlock's disappearance. Sherlock turns up dead in an alley, or doesn't turn up at all, then he'll be pointing the police in our direction."

"So we kill him too."

Sherlock couldn't help but let out a snort of disbelief at this. The idea that this bunch of amateur crooks stood a chance at taking on John was preposterous. They'd got lucky with Sherlock, his overconfidence ever his downfall, but John was far more cautious, they would never be able to get the jump on him like that.

There was a sudden hush outside the door, as his captors heard him and realised that he was conscious. The door opened cautiously, revealing Nina shooing away the other members out of his sight, and her husband standing defiantly in the doorway.

"Something funny, Holmes?" He demanded.

"Oh don't mind me." Sherlock smirked. "I was just wondering how the pair of you ever got together, what with one being almost brilliant and the other so spectacularly stupid. Your code was rather impressive, I must say. And it takes a lot to impress me." He added over the man's shoulder to his wife behind.

"Shut up!" The man snapped. "Don't think I don't see what you're trying to do. Divide us. But it won't work. We're a family. Something I'd doubt you know anything about."

"He has a family." Nina said softly from the back. She put a hand on her husband's shoulder, and after a slight squeeze he let her through, so she could crouch in front of Sherlock. "A wife. And a child on the way, if my research serves me well. How close is it now?"

"Very." Sherlock answered singly. His eyes scanned over the woman in front of him, assessing motives, strengths and weaknesses.

"I bet you're eager to get home then. You wouldn't want to miss the birth of your first child. It's a beautiful thing." She smiled knowingly. "I don't want you it miss it either. I hate the thought of a woman alone in the hospital ward, not knowing where her husband is, or if he'll be returning at all."

Her words struck Sherlock to the core, but he didn't allow an ounce of it to show on his face. She didn't allow his apparent indifference to put her off though.

"I'm sure we can come to some kind of agreement, Sherlock, to make sure that doesn't happen. After all, everybody knows you care more about the excitement and mystery of a case than seeing justice done."

"If you believe what everybody thinks, then you disappoint me. Perhaps you're not as smart as I thought you were." Sherlock announced coldly.

Nina took a big breath, disappointment in her own eyes as she looked at the floor, while getting to her feet. She steeled herself then looked down her nose at him.

"We'll give you some time to think about it. Don't take too long." She told him, turning and walking from the room with her head held high. With one last disdainful look at Sherlock, her husband closed the door behind her, leaving Sherlock once again alone.

AN: going back to shorter author notes, since i seem to be getting more reviews of them than I am the story :p Thanks again for all the suggestions for baby names (I have picked now) and for all your other kind words :)