Burning In Water (A Moriarty Fanfiction)

Chapter Six: Dance with the Devil

We had been standing around in the morgue for an hour. Sherlock had finished his examination of the body and now we were all sitting around in his lab looking at the results.

"So basically, we're back to square one," grumbles John.

"Yes John!" snaps Sherlock.

"Yes, and no," I cut in. The others look at me questioningly.

"Well whilst you were poking around in our dead friend's stomach, I was visiting our now deceased waitress friend. She was only able to tell me one thing - Moriarty."

Ok, so I may have lied a little bit. I did go and visit her, and she is now dead...but I needed some way to put them onto Moriarty's scent without letting them know about our little meeting.

"Of course," snarls Sherlock, jumping up and running over to his microscope.

"We also ran some tests when you were there and found nothing in the sugar or salt so we can assume everyone is safe for now," says John, gesturing to the bin that was overflowing with little salt packets.

"So who is Moriarty?" I chime in, trying to put on a face of innocence. Besides, I wanted to know what he had done to these two.

"Moriarty is a spider," Sherlock says, venom in his eyes. I raised an eyebrow at his very creative description.

"He killed a lot of people just to play a game with Sherlock. We thought he was dead but clearly he's not," John clarified.

"Well if we don't want that to happen again then I suggest we get started on finding him. Who knows what he wants this time," I say. The other all nodded in agreement.

"So, does anyone have any ideas as to where he is?"

After another half an hour of brainstorming we had narrowed Moriarty's location to... well London at least.

"But beyond London we have no idea. We know that he likes to bait Sherlock so he would have to be close to Baker Street, but if he was too close we would have noticed him," summarized John.

"If we could just know one place that he's been recently," says Sherlock, looking quite annoyed. Well, I should probably come clean. I had only seen one camera in the park, and that was a security camera for the outside of the hospital that was facing the park. If I was lucky, I may have just managed to avoid facing the camera. If anything, it was our best shot.

"Maybe if we checked the security cameras of areas around here?" I suggest.

"Good idea Darcy. Molly, do you think you could get that up?" asks Sherlock. Molly nods mutely, sending Sherlock a shy smile before leaving the room.

Ten minutes later we are crowded around a pile of monitors in the hospital's security room. Molly is flicking through the footage with the rest of us looking on like hawks.

"There!" yells Sherlock, jabbing at the screen. Sure enough, at the edge of the screen there is Moriarty just before our meeting. He's standing there on his phone, until there is a disturbance on the edge of the screen. I tense, my hands curling at my side and my nails creating little crescents of red on my hand, but Moriarty just looks up and starts talking to the person. Thank God, I'd stayed out of frame. The conversation goes on, the lack of microphone further keeping my cover. Finally Moriarty walks away. We switch cameras to follow him as he walks around the outside of the hospital like a predator stalking his prey. Eventually he steps into the bright white lights of the hospital. Molly is frantically trying to switch cameras to keep up.

"How long ago was this?" asks John.

There is a silence as we all look at the number on the bottom of the screen.

"5 minutes ago," says Molly.

We are all processing this information in tense silence when my phone starts to ring. Starting a bit, I slip it out of my pocket.

Unknown Caller

Hesitantly, I click the green button and lift it to my ear.
"Hello?"

The voice that greets me settles a stone in my gut whilst my heart writhes like a wild animal.

"Why hello again Darcy."

It's his voice. He has my number, he is in this building, he has murdered all those people and that is his voice.

"Always a pleasure, Moriarty."