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None of this operation had gone to plan. Most likely because Sherlock and Molly had had to pretend to be a couple, and while they were good at it, sometimes unnervingly so, the mark that they needed information from had been a client of Irene Adler’s…
...and still was.
Not that Irene had spilled all her secrets but she had alluded once to her lover and from there the mark extrapolated that the lover was, indeed, Sherlock Holmes, and as Molly wasn’t Irene? Well, there were some problems. Ostensibly he’d been the bodyguard who had been hired for the occasion but now, as bullets were being fired and Molly was trying to get the three of them to safety in the library, Seb was not even remotely amused by how badly it had all played out.
“‘It’ll be easy. You just have to seduce him,’” Molly said in a high pitched tone, mocking Sherlock as she yanked at the back of his neck. She was absurdly strong for a woman of her build and stature, but that’s what came of hauling dead bodies on and off tables. “You were kidding, right? I’m about as seductive as a cabbage. I am not your bloody girlfriend!"
“Irene is not my girlfriend,” Sherlock huffed as the bullet missed his head by scant inches. “Thank you.”
“Welcome,” she said.
“There was no mention of Molly having to seduce anyone,” Seb grumbled. “And that’s a lie, by the way. You’re at least as sexy as an eggplant.”
“No time for jokes, Seb,” Molly replied. “Library. Now.”
Eventually, the three of them got into the library and Seb pulled a table in front of the door. “Why are we here?”
“Well, this sexy aubergine knows there’s a hidden exit here somewhere,” Molly said. “I was listening in on the staff. They use it to leave when they don’t want to be noticed. Did you know that they have to stay here twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week?” She was looking at a set of books nearby the left side wall.
“And that concerns us, why?” Sherlock asked.
“Because,” she said with a smile. “Sometimes the staff knows all the good gossip, something you’d know if you stopped being so classist,” she said, pulling a copy of “A Christmas Carol” down slightly. There was a click, and then a panel opened up in the wall. “We have two minutes before it closes behind us.”
“Three till they break the door down, tops,” Seb said. “But I can rig a surprise.” He pulled out a grenade.
“You’re going to kill us!” Sherlock said.
“Smoke grenade, you prat. Do you think I’d bring a live grenade on a case where Molly’s around? I’m nuts, I’m not willing to risk the only good thing in my life.”
“Lovely sentiment, and I’ll even agree to your marriage proposal if we could just...” She signaled to the open doorway. Seb quickly rigged the smoke grenade to go off when the door opened and the three of them scurried into the passageway.
“Where does this let out?” Sherlock asked as the door slid shut behind then and emergency lights went on in the pathway.
“Out to the cove, where there are a few boats,” Molly said. “We’ll steal one and get the bloody hell out of here if we could just move? Now?”
The three of them began to run, Molly abandoning her heels to gain speed, and the sudden smell of salt air told them they were close. They came out of a jagged cut in the rock and saw three speedboats sitting in the water. Seb got in the nearest one and realized the keys were in it, and so he turned it on as Sherlock and Molly got in. Minutes later they were heading out of the cove and thankfully it didn’t seem as though anyone else was following them.
Molly slumped into the seat she was in. “Never again, Sherlock. Never again.”
“What? We’re alive, and you’ll get to marry Moran while my brother has all the information he needs. Or he will, as soon as I give Irene a ring. She’s probably had it for months now.”
Molly glared and then moved into Sherlock’s face, meeting him eye for eye. “Never. Again.”
Sherlock actually had the decency to look scared. “Right,” he said.
“I agree with never again. Not that I think you can’t hold your own, Molly, but this isn’t your kind of life,” Seb said with a grin. “In fact, I think I might put in my retirement since I’ll be getting married and all.”
“I like that plan,” Molly said with a smile, and Seb smiled back as they sped away from the island and back to the comforts of home.