Sherlock Holmes and the Red Maverick

Chapter 13- To Proceed

I woke with a start, sucking cold night air into my lungs. My eyes flew around frantically as I digested my thoughts. I sat up suddenly and my head spun, but I didnt care. I gripped a tree trunk beside me and glanced around at my surroundings. I was in the middle of a forest and Franco was lying just a few paces away from me. I grit my jaw and my lip curled menacingly. Using the trees I made my way over to him lying in the dirt and only barely visible from the light the moon gave off peeking through the tree leaves above us. 

I peered down at him moving me shadow out of the way of the minimal amount of light I had been allotted. Judging from the awkward angle his neck and head were turned in and the light less eyes sitting in his sockets he had taken the greatest part of the impact of the fall. I bent down and picked up his wrist glancing at the object that had caused the yellow glint from his wrists. A pair of gold cufflings held his shirt together at the wrist. 

I ripped them off each hand and examined them. I sifted through me memories of our evidence. We had collected the pair from Adriano in the cell that night. Giuseppe had been wearing his own pair when we had encountered him on the train. Here were Franco's pair. So who had sent the pair in the envelope? Did they belong to Giuseppe some how? Or did they belong to how I had suspected all along?

I stood abruptly and shoved the cufflings into my money pouch that I had pulled from my purse. I hung it around my neck and chucked the little red velvet purse over my shoulder into the trees. I slid my knife into my belt and held the pistol by my side. Looking down at Franco lying on the ground among the decaying bits of wood, pine needles, and leaves. It tugged on my heart strings for a moment and then I straightened myself. I had no time to weep over some man that had wronged me profusely and repeatedly.  

Straightening myself out again I spit down on Franco's face and kicked some more debree from the surrounding trees onto him. I looked up at the train tracks just up the hill, picked the direction my train had been going in and set off through the forest. Filled with determination and purpose. The crunching of the leaves and wood beneath my feet seemed to help me keep rhythm and I focused on that rather than the thoughts ceaselessly pulling at the edges of my mind. 

Watson's Point of View

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My friend had returned back to our compartment some time later and I peeked up at him over the edge of my journal. My jaw dropped slightly and my eye brows sprang up in surprise. For across his countenance there was an emotion I had never seen him display. His eyes were blood shot and wide, his mouth set in a downward curve, his brows furrowed deeply and framing his dark eyes in a look that resembled concern and remorse at the same time. I was deeply astonished to see his face morph to display such an emotion. One that was, up until this point, unjustified.

"Where is Cameo?" I asked quietly concerned. It surely had to do with the missing companion.

His red and weary eyes shot over to me and emotion flew threw them. Causing my deep amazement to grow staggering heights in a few seconds. Never had I seen Holmes display so many emotions at once. His face remained blank the majority of the time, much akin to the red man from the Americas. If he did show an emotion it was brief and lacked complexity in origin or meaning. And yet he sat before me dumb founding me with only his sudden burst of emotion, leaving that cold, calculating, logical man he had once been as only a faint memory. I had yet to hear the story that had made these events come into occurrence.

"She is gone." he answered placidly as he straightened himself in his seat. Pulling his chin away from the perch his fist had formed.

"How?" I asked in bewilderment

"It appears, Watson," He took a somewhat shaky breath "That she and the eldest brother of that trio of Karlotto men had a relationship. He ambushed her and I went to her rescue. At which point the man continued to explain parts of the events that led up to her making our acquaintance. He then confessed that they had plotted for us to join in on their plan. He explained that she had suggested that I become involved so that their victory may be sweeter in the end."

"So she was plotting against us all along?" I asked doubtfully. I had convinced myself I knew her more than I did.

"She attempted to deny it." He interjected breathlessly, as if to himself. "And then he opened the compartment door, he grabbed her and he pulled the both of them out of the train."

"She is dead?" I asked in further shock.

His eyes looked out the window and he pursed his lips. "I didnt see the fatal blow, Watson. There was too much tree cover for that and the train was traveling at too high a speed. However from my calculations I have concluded that because of the speed at which we were traveling and how heavily wooded the forest they fell into was. I believe that it is highly unlikely that either... survived"

His eyes continued to stare out the window at the fast escaping landscape that passed beside us. I found my mouth opening and closing, as if I were a fish gasping for air. In some sense I was trying to grasp at the events that had just been regaled to me. I found myself in absolute shock. He couldnt possibly true. This companion that Holmes and I had admittedly become somewhat attached to, and if not attached to then at least accustomed to her company, was dead? I was in denial. I could not accept the fact and yet as I sat and pondered the possibility of her surviving I found that had come to the conclusion that she was gone.

I looked up from my hand twisting around each other in my lap at Sherlock. "Do you believe she did it?"

He glanced at me briefly and then back out the window. His eye brows furrowed and his jaw wiggled "Im not sure."

I sat back in my chair, my head overflowing with information that I was going to have to attempt to slowly digest.

"We are then going to continue in our attempts to take their plan apart?" I asked unsure

"Yes." He said determinedly, a somewhat crazed look leaking onto his solemn face "It is of the up most importance to do so. No matter the recent events."

"So we continue?" I asked with sadness and doubt beginning to drip from my voice with out my permission

"We continue." He nodded quickly and continued to squint out of the window in our compartment.

I slowly lowered my head back down to my journal to attempt to take my mind off of these grim occurrences. Though I knew it would be of no use at all. 

Hello All, Well the few of you who do read this. I'd like to take the time to thank you for reading it. I appreciate your time that you spend on regarding my works that I put much time into. I do hope you are enjoying yourself and continue to throughout the rest of the story. I am currently participating in an inner battle with myself over if I should or should not continue this with a sequel. And if you would so kindly lend me a hand through my intellectual thicket I would be most obliged. As always I wish you the best and hope that you find it in your hearts to vote and comment if you are so inclined. Until next time.

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