Chapter Text
“Bored,” said Sherlock, flouncing into the sitting room of Mycroft’s house. He threw himself down on the sofa, glaring over at his brother who sat in a straight-backed armchair, reading the morning paper.
Mycroft set down his tea slowly and turned to look at his wayward little brother. “You’re fresh out of rehab, you need some ‘boring’, little brother.” He picked his tea back up, glancing down at the paper in his lap.
“Bored,” said Sherlock again, standing and pacing around the room. Mycroft watched him over his paper.
Finally, having enough, Mycroft thrust the paper out towards Sherlock. “Here, read the paper, it’ll give you something to do.”
Sherlock spun around, scowling. “For about five minutes.”
“Sherlock,” said Mycroft in a warning voice.
Sherlock rolled his eyes and grabbed the paper, throwing himself back down on the sofa, laying with his feet up on the armrest. “Fine,” he said.
Mycroft sighed, and continued to sip his tea. Sherlock had been staying with him in London for two weeks, ever since he’d completed 60 days in rehab. In February he’d received a call from his university, saying that he was listed as Sherlock’s emergency contact, and could he please do something about his brother. It’s not that your brother isn’t brilliant, they’d said. He’s brilliant, and doing very well in his studies. But he’s gotten mixed up with the wrong sorts, and the drug use had gotten to a point that it could no longer be shoved under the rug. Sherlock would have to go clean up before he could return in the fall.
And so Mycroft had picked up his little brother on a Tuesday afternoon. He was high, collapsed in his small dormitory bedroom with a girl whose name Mycroft hadn’t bothered to learn. Off to rehab went Sherlock, into storage went all his belongings, and Mycroft had made some excuses to his parents that he was fairly sure they didn’t buy at all. The Holmeses were loving parents, but they were not blind to their youngest’s faults.
And so now it was April, and Mycroft insisted that Sherlock spend the summer supervised before returning to classes in the fall. To make sure he stayed on the straight and narrow.
Sherlock, of course, was doing his best to be a pain so that Mycroft would allow him to move back to their parents’ house. Mycroft knew his parents went too easy on him, and he’d easily be back into trouble if allowed to go.
Sherlock skimmed the headlines of the paper, trying to placate his brother. Perhaps he’d leave for work soon, and Sherlock could find some sort of experiment to get up to while he was gone. The house staff knew he wasn’t to leave, and although he could easily sneak out, Sherlock was holding off on that until he had a good reason to go.
His eyes fell on a headline. “Local Girl Still Missing - Police Stumped.”
He skimmed the article. A seventeen year old girl had gone missing on her way home from school, and the police had zero leads. Her mother had put out frantic press releases, asking for anyone with any information to come forward.
“Did you see this?” he asked Mycroft, pointing to the story. “Do you know anything about this missing girl?”
Mycroft looked over. “Yes, she seems to have disappeared without a trace. The family doesn’t have much money, and there’s been no ransom demands. Probably a runaway,” Mycroft shrugged and stood. “I’m off to the office. Stay out of trouble.”
“I always do,” said Sherlock.
Mycroft snorted and left the room.
Sherlock read the article again, and then stood and took the paper up to Mycroft’s home office. He turned on the computer in there, quickly connecting to the internet and going to Yahoo.com. Doing a search, he began to read articles about the girl’s disappearance.
He scribbled down some notes as he went along. “Molly Hooper, student, no siblings, father deceased, gone three days.”
Working on a hunch, he searched for her father’s name, and found his obituary.
Robert Hooper, aged 42, passed away on Thursday, February 27th after a short battle with liver cancer. He is survived by his wife, Mona, and daughter, Molly. Funeral services will be held…”
Sherlock made some more notes and disconnected the call, shutting the computer back down. Well, this certainly gave him something to do.
He spent the rest of the morning in the back garden, chain smoking cigarettes he’d managed to get from the gardener after he deduced the affair he was having with the maid, tossing the facts of the case around in his head and trying to see what he could piece together.
oOo
Molly woke with a screaming headache, which wasn’t surprising given that her last memory was of a very large torch being slammed into the back of her head. At least she thought it had been a torch.
She’d been walking to the bus stop from school, lost in thought as usual, mulling over a particularly tricky chemistry equation they’d been working on at school that day. When the car pulled up along side her, she glanced over.
A rather well put together older woman rolled down the window. “Excuse me, but do you know how to get back to the motorway from here? I seem to have gotten turned around.”
Molly stopped and looked around. “Um,” she said. “I think you have to go back that way.” She pointed back the way she had come from. “And then turn left.”
“I’m sorry, dear, my hearing isn’t what it used to be. Can you speak up, or come closer?”
Molly looked at her. She was alone in the car, so Molly didn’t think anything of stepping over to the passenger door. “I said I think you have to go back that…”
Before she could even finish her sentence, a man slipped up from the floor of the seat where he’d been hiding, out of sight from the angle she’d been at on the side of the road. He reached out of the window with both hands, one holding a rather large torch, and before Molly could do much more than turn around to flee, he’d slammed her in the back of the head with what she now realized was the torch.
Molly reached up and felt the back of her head. She could feel dried blood in her hair, but it seemed to have stopped at some point.
She turned, trying to take stock of her surroundings.
She was on a mattress on the floor, in a windowless room. Looking down at the floor in the dim light, she realized she was in some sort of cellar, with a single bare bulb illuminating it from the center of the room. Other than the mattress, there was absolutely nothing else in the room. She stood, making her way around, looking for a ladder or some other way of getting out, but she found nothing.
After a few moments she sighed and sat back down on the mattress. She still had her clothing, although they’d taken her school bag. She had no idea what time it was; her mother had always been on her about not wearing a watch. “Figures,” she grumbled.
With little more to do but wait, Molly pulled her knees up to her chest and tried not to cry.