Lose Control (Jim Moriarty)

Part 8

"Go down, go down," he muttered to himself. Jim was pacing up and down his loft, his thoughts revolving around Monica's first clue. Why couldn't he think of the answer? Go down... A lift? A submarine? Angry and frustrated, he slammed his fist on the table, making Evan – who was sitting on the couch with his foot on a stool – and Ronan – who was polishing his gun in the kitchen – focus their gazes on him.

"What goes down?!" he yelled at them, unleashing his quickly-growing-anger. "No, don't answer that," he immediately added, shutting the twins down before they even tried to speak. This was something he had to do on his own. It wouldn't really be winning if he needed an entire team to beat that woman. And most importantly: what was the fun in that?

"Leave," he told Evan and Ronan without explanation. He needed silence, complete deafening silence, so he could listen to his own thoughts. Even if he wanted to ask the brothers for help, they wouldn't be of much use anyway. They were great in combat, but for anything involving using their brains, he couldn't count on them.

Loyal as they were, the twins left, leaving Jim with his thoughts, spiralling down an endless path of madness. He had never considered loss as a possible outcome of this game; either she'd kindle his interest and he'd keep her alive for a little longer, or he'd simply kill her. Now though, losing was beginning to sound terrifyingly real. Usually, he was on the other end of this, providing people with riddles, smiling, laughing, living of their incompetence. Oh, how the tables had turned and oh, how he utterly hated it. It infuriated him. It made him smash the clock that kept him aware of every second passing by. Tick tock. Tick tock.

Soon, he told himself, soon he'd have shot that woman and he'd have buried her underground. Underground. It clicked, the answer came to him. How stupid, how obvious! The answer had been right in front of him all along. Quite literally, he thought, as he looked down upon the Underground station outside his building. The Underground. He knew exactly where she was, oh, he couldn't believe it took him so long to figure this out.

**

Waterloo Station was the busiest Underground station in all of London, so it was no surprise that Jim had to push his way through crowds of people hurrying to enter the Underground. It didn't make it any easier that he was going against the stream, because he had been halfway down the stairs when he realised she wasn't going to be down there. She had said 'go down' not 'be down' so she'd be above ground. Fairly obvious, but in the rush of the moment, in the immense pressure that was put on him because he had watched minutes tick by, it was hard to stay focused on every detail.

It was packed, it was insanely busy and he couldn't see a thing. He didn't catch a single glimpse of bright red, bouncing curls in the crowd of moving, chattering, ordinary people. It was almost unfair, the task to find a single person amongst hundreds of others. He was trying to find a way so he could see the crowd from above, when he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He fished the device out of his suit pants and read her text.

'Trains always leave late, don't they?'

He was running out of time, he realised. Quick thinking was essential now. He needed to find a train that was almost departing, better yet, a train that was delayed and almost departing. He checked screens and he checked times and there were just too many trains, left, right, everywhere. His feet kept moving, carrying him from one rail track to the other, back to the first one, his eyes scanning the crowd, looking for the easily recognisable red hair. The familiar feeling of the vibration in his pocket cleared his thoughts. He was making a fool of himself.

'So funny to watch you run around like a fool.'

The text confirmed what he had already known: he was being foolish to let her push him around so much. This wasn't about rushing, it was about ice-cold steel-hard thinking. Analysing. Once again, he received a text.