“Shut up.”
“Think about it. Either you’re right and you get set free…or you’re wrong, and my game continues—and you get to continue to live out your darkest, most sinful fantasies at my side.” He sank his fingers into her thighs, squeezing them as he pressed his hips into her.
“At your sidewhileyou try to kill my sister two more times.” Damn him. Damn him to hell. If that was even possible. She tried to shove him away but he refused to go, simply ignoring her attempt to rebuff him.
“I didn’t have to do anything this time. You did a perfectly good job of it on your own.” He nuzzled into her hair, letting out a shuddering breath. “You do smelldelightful…”
Where Moriarty had been stoic but fierce, Vile was strangely…raw, almost? Like someone eating their favorite pastry after decades of having never seen food. His touch was rougher—needier.
“If I didn’t come up with a plan, whatever you came up with was going to be worse.” She tried not to think about how good he felt behind her.
Or think about what was slowly wrapping around her ankle.
“Oh, really?” Vile leaned his head in close to hers and whispered to her. “I’m not sure Sidney will feel that way when she wakes up. Train wrecks are aterribleway to die. And you gave her a front row seat.”
Groaning,Sidney lifted her head. She felt like she’d been drinking for way too long, without all the fun bits. Just skipped straight to the headache and the hangover.
The world was swimming around her. Concussion? Probably. She’d only had one, back when she did competition figure skating. Going head-first into the boards around the rink was a great way to see birds and get out of a day of school.
Something had hit her. And judging by the two cartoonishly-cliche low-brow Victorian Londongoonsstaring up at her, that something had been a someone. Both of them were wearing ratty wool clothes, scally caps, and had more soot on them than should be allowed outside of a production ofAnnie.
At least she couldn’t smell them from where she was.
Which was, apparently, now that she was awake enough to notice,tied to the front of a fucking train.
“I am going to kick yourassfor this, Sasha—” She yanked on the ropes that bound her wrists to the front grill of the train. Whatever the name of the pointy bit was. She was strapped there like a shitty figurehead on a boat. Which meant that whatever the train hit, she would hit first.
“If you start yellin’, I’ve been given permission to break your other knee.” One of the two men grinned at her, showing off his rather spectacular lack of teeth.
“Yeah. Well. No one would hear me anyway.” She sighed. No, there was no point shouting. That’d be the easy thing to do, and Moriarty andIrene-fucking-Adlerwould have thought about that. There was a reason all this was taking place in a big construction yard in the middle of the night. “Where’s?—”
“Let mego!”Someone shouted from about fifty feet away. “Youutter oaf!”
Sidney’s shoulders slumped. “Never mind.” There went any hope that Sherlock had escaped while she’d been unconscious.
The two goons guarding her laughed.
No, there was Sherlock Holmes, with prisoner chains on. Thekind that hobbled a person but still allowed them to move and do menial things like operate doors under supervision. He was standing on a platform in front of a large metal lever and a post with two wooden flags. One was down. The other was up, and on it was a large, painted number one.
A man in a suit, who looked far more put together than anybody else Sidney’d seen that night taped together, was standing next to Sherlock holding a gun pointing at the detective. He was talking too quietly for Sidney to hear every word, especially over the low rumble of the steam engine at her back.
They were firing up the train. And hot, by the sounds of it. Their dad had a train set when they were little. It was one of the few things he really loved to do, and Sidney had been obsessed with sitting there with him, letting him tell her all about the different kinds of engines and the way they ran.
Most of the knowledge had faded over the years. Not much use in her marketing life for random bits of train engineering facts. But she knew that the hotter the engine burned, the more steam. The more steam, the more speed, the more speed…
The more crushing force. Not like it’d take much to turn her into a fly on the windshield. In fact, the hotter they got it, the faster her death, and the more merciful. She never wanted to know what it felt like to be Judge Doom inWho Framed Roger Rabbit.
A few words she did catch, however. Something about the innocent bystanders being drugged?
“You’re mad! This ismad!What kind of nonsense is that bastard trying toprove?Let them all go, it’s me he’s after!” Sherlock shouted at the other man. When he lurched toward him to try to grab for the gun, another, burlier man knocked Sherlock’s knees out.
The train lurched.
She saw someone run from the engine. Likely whoever had pulled the brake. No one else was going to go down on this wreckage but her. Her, or the innocent—but non-existent—civilians on the other track.
Either she died.
Or they did.
