John would have kicked himself. Just how did he always end up stuck?
It´s Afghanistan all over again, you idiot. Of course John would follow the mad man into danger. Of course he would end up hiding and praying to God to be allowed to continue his existence.
A long fingered hand touched his gently. John could fell Sherlock´s muscles contort slightly. Adrenaline. Well, at least it proves Sherlock is actually human.
As for John, of course he was full of adrenaline too. His whole body was ready to spring into action, to fight or, on this occasion, to take the stupid stupid long-fingered hand and run for the hills. He just hoped that he could rely on the short list of well learned moves to get him out of there, because his brain right now was completely useless.
In fact, if someone asked John to transcribe what his brain was telling him right now, it would go somehow like this: There´s a BIG gun. The guy in front of you is DANGER. The woman staring at the gun pointed at her with a slight smile is INCREDIBLY FUCKING INCALCULABLE DANGER.
Then the room blew up.
Sherlock was cursing under his breath. How did this go so WRONG? It should have been easy. The hacker he knew destroyed all files Milverton had outside his house, so any blackmail material the man had now was within the confines of this room. There were some two hours before he would be alarmed that his back-up files are gone. By that time Sherlock would have left with the originals. Simple.
In fact, Milverton shouldn´t have been home at all - surely he didn´t buy the extremely expensive tickets for Lohengrin for nothing?
But he was here, in a frankly alarming shade of purple dressing gown, holding a gun and pointing it at the woman.
Said woman being a used-to-be famous journalist. Her reputation destroyed over some public outcry. Long red hair falling in locks over her not-so-much sane expression.
She was yelling at Milverton. Something about him killing her son by taking her source of income and preventing her from getting her offspring a better medical treatment.
Quite a sad story, actually. Although Sherlock wasn´t prone to sympathy towards the journalist folk, he would have felt sorry for her.
If she hadn´t brought a suspiciously full handbag with her. If she hadn´t kept her hand near an outline of a phone in her pocket. If she didn´t set the bomb threatening to kill the man Sherlock loved.
Officer Porter was sure he would never forget the sight.
A whole left half of the villa was gone. Beautiful, at least two hundred years old trees on that side of the building fallen. The bricks and shards of glass and tiles, which had once formed a house, quickly disappeared under a layer of thick white smoke.
As if the sight wasn´t surreal enough, a parrot flew out of the fire - an African Grey one - and sat, screaming in misery. At least it had enough of common sense to yell. Because Porter couldn´t. And what was worse, no one inside the house did.
Then a black car arrived. Sooner than any back-up Porter was desperately calling the support for, a black Audi stopped near the curb and out of it, a man in his pyjamas ran towards the destruction.