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The suits sneak up on her. Two men. Clean-cut. The one in the back reeks of military experience. Though he’d shaved off enough edges, it is hard to say with which country.
The lead suit has the posh kind of English accent that implied the power of MI5. Behind every attempt to strong-arm her into revealing who’d contacted her about her current case. As a matter of ‘National Security’.
Too bad for him that she keeps contact with Sherlock’s old MI5 contacts. Quid pro quo. Helping with their cases in return for assistance on her human trafficking work.
She lets him drone on. Keeps her face blank until his words trickle to an end. Jaw clenching tight enough to crack his air of genial camaraderie. Not that he’d been doing a good job at that before. His partner lets out a huff of breath from his nose. The almost laugh of a soldier watching their commanding officer step in it. While having to maintain discipline.
If you want information, you can work through my usual MI5 contacts .
Well, this is a time-sensitive matter.
Great. Then you best get off my steps and back to the office.
Lives-
His partner lays a hand on his shoulder. Stopping the cliché in its tracks. Like any decent information agent would start that line of argument with a known asset.
Reason to believe the person contacting you may have been compromised. Just checking if you suspect something off. Given your reputation for inferring more than said.
Better. If they’d sent just him and he’d dropped a few of the right names, she might actually think he was from the government. Shame she can’t use her ability to ‘infer more’ to critique the delivery. Without drawing more attention.
It’s possible her sister was compromised. But I find it hard to believe. She contacted me through my parnter in the United States. Knowing specialized in human trafficking cases.
They both relaxed. The lead less than the soldier. Still a noticable shift of his shoulder. The soldier falling back towards parade rest. Instead of ready to spring.
If MI5 has information on the traffickers you’d like me to look out for-
She trails off. If MI5 wanted that kind of information they'd email directly. This is more a test to see if they'll give her names or titles. Anything she can use to track them down.
A side along long at each other.
No. Thank you, Ms. Winter. We’ll trust you will report anything about the organization connected to national secrets to our superiors through the usual channels.
Of course.
She stays on her stoop, watching. Until they walk down the block and turn out of sight. A scan of the street doesn’t show any obvious observers. Not that she trusts that. Still, nobody is close enough to grab her before she can get inside and trigger the security system.
Set up a dead man's message to Sherlock. In case she disappears in the next few days.
Her phone buzzes the moment she turns her lock. Not the usual rat tat tat of Sherlock's abbreviated texts. Or the single chime from Joan's more measured communications.
She leaves it in her pocket. Gets her security measures in place. Rolls back the security cameras to make sure no one snuck in while she was gone.
No taking chances when Archie and his nanny would be back soon. Everything was quiet on the tapes. Not even the suspicious kind of quiet. Just an average London afternoon. Cars coming and going. People walking their dogs along the sidewalk.
The parts of her brain that weren’t steeped in trauma or Sherlock’s training wanted to tell her it is nothing. Just a couple of other PIs trying to horn in on her work. Or maybe a MI5 agent trying to get one over on their boss and her contact.
Detective Brain assures her this isn’t some misunderstanding. Her paranoia shouldn't be dismissed because she doesn't have proof. Biting her lip, she fights with herself over whether to send Archie to a safe house.
But if they are some dangerous group looking into her client. They haven't taken any obvious steps against her as a public figure. Even pulled back once she assured them she was treating this as just another human trafficking case. Which she had been. If she wants to keep selling the idea she was oblivious, that meant not making obvious changes to her schedule.
She pulls out her phone. She knows better than to have it auto-display messages. On the lock screen, where she should see a notification with the number of unread texts, there are words.
>>I apologize
>>We’d hoped having a detective of your reputation and specialty would avoid attention.
Kitty looks over at her case wall.
Evie Michaels, a second-year university student. Come for a semester abroad. Then fell into a group of Geocachers and puzzle hunters before disappearing. It made sense for the sister to contact her. Given Sherlock's publicized work on previous puzzle hunt mysteries. No obvious signs of foul play. Her passport left in her dorm. She reappeared online under an assumed name a few weeks later. While never contacting anyone from her old life.
She'd been telling the suits the truth. Everything felt like a classic human trafficking case. When the organization wanted skilled English speaking labor. The woman claiming to be Evie's sister was even willing to get on a video call from the US. All big brown eyes and brown curls falling down her shoulder. Listed as a half-sister, the resemblance was still strong. The very picture of Evie in another decade.
The only signs pointing to something unusual were a slightly tinny and monotone voice and the way the image glitched when she moved too fast. Things that could be passed off as connection problems but were still noted down. Questions waiting the oncoming answers she’d find in the case. Only now they were just more questions.
A deepfake using a voice and pictures resembling the victim is beyond any computer tech currently on the market.
<<How much of the case is real?
Nearly instantly, a response. Faster than she’d expect anyone to type.
>>All but my identity. My contact in the NYPD assured me that was a requirement when working with your partners. And looking over past cases it seemed to hold true for you as well.
So even the contact through Sherlock’s channels is legit. If forged on the other side. Sherlock likely wouldn’t ask too many questions on a boring case. Meant to keep things friendly with an NYPD detective. He'd expect her to do her own verification.
<<Why the sham. If those guys were intelligence. Then you are too.
>>The last time we investigated these kinds of games, a MI5 turncoat was involved. We lost the girl due to interference.
So they’d figured on keeping a light touch. Using people who weren’t involved would keep from spooking the target organization. Still, she hates being kept in the dark.
She runs her thumb over the edge of her phone case. Lets her nail catch on the knick where one of the traffickers she’d gotten too close to tried to knife her.
This is dangerous. The kind of deep state cases she doesn't work on anymore. For her and Archie's safety.
Still, there is a girl missing. One she has the best chance of catching before other girls are taken. She can do a little more investigating.
<<Send me everything you have on the previous game.
>>Thank you.
Her computer pings an incoming message a second later. Unnaturally fast. Another question that she’ll eventually find the answer to.
-
The cache of information is extensive. Organized in a way that is frighteningly similar to her and Sherlock’s case boards. Rather than through the more standard law enforcement methods of by file type or date.
Mysteries piling up in ways that immediately tug at her Detective Brain. Wanting her to get more involved. Keep digging until she answers all her questions.
The previous puzzle hunt was similarly engaging. Calling the participant to prove themselves at every stage. Not offering money but more challenges. Even more tantalizing for how unusual that was.
"I see you. I see how special you are. How smart. Come meet someone on your level." The kind of promise that kept Sherlock dancing on Moriarty's strings. Even though they all knew it could only lead to pain.
The previous target was similar to Evie as well. Enough similarities that the people who contacted her were able to clock the same victim pattern. Young, university educated but with no close friends of family. Searching for meaning after finding themselves alone in a world ready to chew up and spit out young women.
When she'd gone looking, she'd found Sherlock. But if she'd been unlucky a few years ago, she’d have found this instead.
<<How much did you know about me? Before you reached out.
They’d been so careful. Keeping her identity and past before Kitty separate from her time in the US. There were other investigators, even in her organization, who specialized in human trafficking. Ones who wouldn’t take this so personally. It is hard to believe they picked her on a whim.
>>You remind me of a friend I lost. Most of the people who work with me found something worse before they came to us.
The smell of nutmeg and burning flesh.
>>When we looked through the recommended contacts, there was no question who I would pick. If you prefer I work with someone else, I understand.
The messages stop there. Waiting for a response. Not offering an argument for why she should try anyway. Even to point out the likelihood of Evie being lost in the time it would take for another detective to become familiar with the case.
It is a relief. If they did know more about her than she was comfortable sharing. At least they aren't using it directly against her. It could just be that they’d seen her work with Sherlock. Matched it with her disappeared history. And made the logical guess. As they said, this was the same kind of background that led people to get into intelligence work.
<<I’ll keep going for now. But if she did get taken by a crime ring or covert group I’m not putting my family at risk going to get her out.
She is no Sherlock. Willing to risk herself and damn the other people in his life.
>>Understood. My people will get her out. They just need to know where to go.
Same deal as the original explanation of the job. Find if she’d been taken by a cult or some other human trafficking organization and send the information to the right authorities.
She can do this.
-
The case hits a cold patch. A lot of them do. More than she’d ever realized when she was working with Sherlock. His were always what he termed the most interesting. Read high-priority cases. The ones that made waves in NYC politics and got the full might of the police and sometimes federal agents thrown at them.
Her cases aren’t like that. Even the normal trafficking cases. Nobody cares all that much about a missing woman with no sign of force. Just stupid or off with some boy. She’ll come back in her own time.
Only she knows better than most that it isn’t always the case. She has the scars that tug at her every time she stretches as proof.
Still, she’s only one woman, and even with her agency's resources, there are periods when she has to wait. For someone to get back to her on a DNA test. To try and find the one immigrant willing to trust someone who could be with the police.
Whatever.
In this case, it's for three of the Irregulars to crack the last puzzle where Evie disappeared. She could send it directly to Sherlock. If this were a normal case, that is what she would do.
Despite no further contact from her ‘client’ or the suspicious suits, she still doesn’t trust this to be a normal case. Kitty checks her security system a few times a day. Keeps her deadman drop to Sherlock active. Stopped for another 24 hours day after day.
If this is another Moriarty situation, she doesn’t want to drag him into it. Or draw attention from either of the organizations involved.
So she goes about her days. Works on other cases in the downtime from this one. Does everything she’d normally do. Including making sure she and Archie make their playdate. With the little boy Ax he’s become best friends with at the playschool.
It’s the hairs on the back of her neck that warn her first. That feeling of being watched.
Even more concerning is when she’s at a playground. And anybody watching too closely could be a threat. She doesn’t see them at first. Making sure to keep a smile on her face as she uses the excuse of gathering up her hair into a loose bun to roll her neck and scan the area.
Parents, nannies, and kids of all ages. From the babies in their bucket swings and strollers. To the older siblings throwing frisbees and playing on their game systems in the far trees.
Finally, she clocks a woman. Playing tug of war with a stick and a large dog. Pointed nose and alert ears reading more military than house pet. Along with the slight bulge under the woman’s coat.
She’s not staring the whole time. Looking there and away with seemingly casual disinterest. Until their eyes meet and hold for a second too long.
Can you watch Archie for a minute?
Ax’s mom’s eyebrows scrunch together in concern.
I think I see an old client and want to check in on her. But I don't want to spook her by bringing too many strangers, you know.
She gives the practiced shrug Watson mastered. When dealing with excusing Sherlock’s eccentricities.
Of course. The boys are busy with the sandbox anyway.
Archie yells triumphantly as his action toy crashes through the sand wall. They'd barely finished building.
To her credit, the woman doesn’t run. She just keeps playing with the dog until Kitty gets a few meters away. Then, with a sharp whistle, he’s by her side, but on the ground and head pointed right in Kitty’s direction. Eyes sharp.
Kitty takes the implied warning and stops a few paces away. Close enough that their conversation won’t be easy to overhear. Far enough that the struggle to grab her will be loud enough to draw attention. Her smile was pinched.
Can I help you?
Even this close, the other woman is nondescript. Shorter than Kitty with pin-straight black hair pulled back into a low ponytail. The thick eyebrows, prominent nose bridge, and olive skin are hard to identify. Likely from one of a number of ethnic groups common to London.
When she speaks, her accent is all American. With the New York twinge even Sherlock managed to pick up.
Just wanted to check out the park. I'm in town for a few days on a case. Sometimes there isn’t anything like a physical check to make sure you aren’t missing anything.
Anything?
She’s not acting guilty. In fact, she’s not acting much like anything. None of the familiar emotional tells Kitty learned to watch and deduce.
Any sneaky rats in tailored suits.
Kitty tenses on instinct. But squashes the urge to look around.
Bear here is good at sniffing them out. Nothing to worry about, so we came to the park to blow off some steam.
Reassuring in some ways. Less in that they knew where she was going to be and made a point of being seen.
Mommy!
The call rises and falls as Archy tries to yell and run at once. Before slamming into the back of Kitty’s legs. She turns enough to see Ax and his mother coming at a slower pace.
Archie peeks around her legs to stare suspiciously up at the woman before his attention zeros in on the dog.
Puppy!
The woman’s face softens. Still unreadable in body language, but a little around the eyes and a quirk of the lips.
He’s a working dog. But if your mom says its okay you can pet him.
Please!
The woman gives a Dutch command and the dog falls to its belly. Crawls towards them but still leaves a little space. Before putting his head on his paws and giving Kitty the puppy dog eyes. Matching Archy’s own.
Alright.
Soon Ax joins them and joins in on the petting. Bear makes pleased wuffles and remains belly down and calm. His teeth are covered even when he jolts at a particularly hard pull of his fur. Ax’s mom calls 'gentle hands'.
After a few moments of this, the woman’s head dips to the side. Her eyes go distant. Before she straightens.
Sorry, kids. Bear and I need to go back to work.
She seems impervious to their whining. Managing to shift her body so that the kids are forced to duck away and let go of the dog. All without ever touching them.
Good to see you, Ms. Winter. If you hear anything about Evie, let us know and I’ll take things from there.
Kitty nods.
-
>> Shaw says it was nice to meet you. Bear can always use more attention.
It’s good to have a name for their visitor. Even if she didn’t appreciate the lack of warning.
<<Was their a threat at the park?
>>No. She’d finished surveying all the places you frequent, and there was no sign of interference. She felt it was polite to let you know she was done.
Kitty wracked her brain. Trying to think of any sense of being watched. If it was true Shaw had avoided every camera she checked, all her security measures, and even her own instincts. She wanted to deny it. Claim this was a scare tactic.
<< How long was she watching us?!
>> I told her this would only distress you. She found no threat.
<<How long?
The wait for a response was unnaturally slow. Compared the instantaneous way they usually responded.
>>A week. She has offered to provide you with guidance to reinforce your perimeter.
Fuck. Damn. Hell. A week and the client didn’t think it was necessary to tell her. She’d known they were keeping secrets, but this was beyond what she’d expected. At least Shaw seemed to understand the problem caused by going that long undiscovered.
>>Let me send Archie on a sleepover. Then send her here. We are taking care of this now.
A call around to one of the playdate moms about a broken pipe saw Archie safely away. And a plumbing truck pulled up an hour later. A woman in coveralls and a hat climbed out with a toolbox in hand.
We’ll have to let Bear in through the back. It's suspicious to bring a dog in for a plumbing emergency.
Kitty didn’t have a response to that.
-
Shaw was in and out of the house a number of times. Boxes of marked and sealed plumbing supplies turning into computers and wires. Once inside and unboxed.
General setup is good. You have a good instinct for camera angles.
My mentor helped me set it up.
Holmes, right? Worked as a deputy on a case he was on. Competent guy. Not the most observant.
Kitty couldn’t help the half-hysterical laugh. Of all the various curses and compliments she’d seen flung Sherlock’s way, "unobservant" was never one of them.
Shaw pulled her head out of the camera control box to look at her. Head tilted in question.
That’s not how most people view him. But I can't say it's wrong.
Used to work with a guy like that. Good guy. Smartest man in every room. Easiest mark cause he always had to do what was right.
Kitty remembers the client's comment about the woman she reminded them of. And didn’t ask why Shaw didn’t work with them again.
A few sparks and a sizzle. The whole house went dark.
Oops.
Compared to her usual monotone, this was pointedly expressive. The kind of tone change Kitty usually experienced when Archie was mimicker her voice.
Did you just kill my power on purpose?
Some rustling in the dark. Before a bright work flashlight clicked on. Bathing the room in a impersonal blue glow.
Minor EMP pulse. Don’t need anybody listening in.
Kitty pulled out her phone. It stayed ominously dark. Despite repeated and increasingly panicked stabs at the power button. Had this all been a trap?
I thought you said the suits weren’t a problem.
If Shaw kept her face placid. Hand not holding the flashlight up open palmed. Staying still and well back from Kitty. No threat of grabbing her.
They aren’t. But there is more than one kind of threat in the world.
No shit.
Kitty tried to steady her breathing. This seemed like it was part of the security check. Not some kind of attack. Scary as fuck, but the kind of tough love she’d learned to expect from Sherlock. The person you are trying to protect counts on digital security and doesn’t have backup against an EMP bomb. Well, turn off the security to make the point.
She was definitely calling him when the was over. Demanding a security irregular to check on the wiring and put in protections.
You’re smart. I know the type. And you aren’t like Holmes. Too focused on the mystery to notice the surrounding context.
That didn’t sound like it had anything to do with her electronics.
So you have to be figuring things out. Putting together the pieces even if you aren’t writing it down where someone could see it.
What do you think I’ve put together?
There is no way for an intelligence agency this small to get information through the standard channels.
The strange artificiality of the video images. Buzz of a vocal distorter. Instantaneous pings. Ability to override her phone's settings. Hunting someone who was dealing with cryptographic puzzles it took multiple irregulars to solve.
Maybe.
So this is a warning. One nobody but the two of us will hear or have to know about. You can keep digging. Putting together the pieces. You’ll get there. Probably sooner than I expect. But if you know the truth. There is no unknowing it.
What happens then?
Maybe you get lucky. There have been some who did. Who walked away. Kept their mouth shut. You and your partner are known for keeping secrets.
And if I’m not lucky?
They hunt you to the ends of the earth. You die. Or you never see your friends or family again.
Even with her lack of affect, there was no way for Kitty to miss the sorrow in Shaw's eyes. The ring of truth in her words. That result wasn't a guess. She'd lost people. One way or another.
The power clicked back on with another buzz. Shaw started mid-sentence like they had been talking the whole time.
Fuses. I don’t know who your friend hired in. But I don’t think they knew what they were doing when it came to this style of wiring.
After a beat, Kitty picked up on the raised eyebrows and pointed head tilt.
I was already planning to have someone else come in after you finished. I’m not giving unilateral trust of my security to anyone I don’t know.
Good. Now let's have a look at those camera angles.
-
Beyond the camera angles, Shaw also installs a number of area-wide microphones. With assurances she will learn how to use those effectively with time. Able to tell when there is a difference even if she can’t necessarily pick out the causes like with the cameras. Part of what Bear does for Shaw on the fly apparently. Useful when considering security perspectives she wouldn’t have herself.
Even if the EMP was the most important point of weakness to discover.
She lets Archy come back the next day. After sweeping for and finding no new bugs. The next few days are a mix of dread and attempting to appear even more normal. Unwilling to even think about the mysterious client. Since apparently that was enough to warn Shaw she was putting together the pieces.
On the fourth day, the irregulars get back to her with the solution to the puzzle. A GPS location for a cache labeled the promised land in binary. Normally, she’d pull satellite images, contact some of her police and agency contacts to investigate the location. Dig to be sure this really was the final clue.
Instead, after a few hours of staring blankly at the solution, she encrypts it. Forwards it to the client. With her apology. Something has come up, and she needs to move on to another case. But this location should lead to Evie if anything does.
It hurts leaving things unexplored, unsolved. It will likely keep hurting for a while. She’s not Sherlock, though. This won’t break her. Kitty made the call to leave the high-stakes criminal world he swam in. To focus on the people the system left behind. Who hopefully wouldn’t have to die because nobody was looking for them.
A computer system that could do everything the clues implied. Even listen in on her own electronics. Create realistic AI voices and faces. Deep fakes able to interact in real time. That was decades away from civilian viability. Possibly even from that of most governments on Earth.
Being used to fight against some off-the-books recruitment drive of smart young adults. Only a single operative representing whatever their organization was. Clearly willing to risk compromising herself to keep others from getting in too deep.
It reeked of the kind of hidden world Moriarty danced around in.
One Kitty wanted no part in.
When her computer pinged a response to her package of information regarding Evie, she deleted the message without reading it.