Tuesday

Sebastian had endured much worse climates than London in August, even with a heatwave on; that said, he was in no mood to endure his stuffy flat and whiled most of the day away at the Bagatelle Club instead. Less fashionable and affluent than the city’s other private clubs, the Bagatelle lacked air conditioning but made up for it with a lovely shaded courtyard—and, as a concession to the heat, the club’s regular poker game had been moved outside. Sebastian volunteered to deal, as that made it easier to cheat.

Cheating at cards wasn’t hard; cheating effectively was more difficult. Sebastian could deal any hand he wanted out of the deck, but if the other players’ hands weren’t any good, they wouldn’t bet. If they didn’t bet, he wouldn’t make any money. The trick was to deal them all hands just good enough to raise on, then deal himself a hand just good enough to beat the others.

But not too often, or his fellow players would get suspicious. And anyone watching Sebastian’s hands might notice he was stacking the deck, so misdirection was key.

“What do you mean,” Hardy said, incredulous, “your anniversary might be coming up?”

“I’m not sure where to start counting.” Sebastian slipped a few more cards from the bottom of the deck to the top. “It’s not like we’re married.”

“It’s from the first date, isn’t it?” Milner chimed in. “When was that?”

Sebastian struggled to phrase his answer delicately. “There’s two possible answers to that question.” Following a penetration test gone wrong, a threat or two with a knife, and the ruination of an aerospace executive, Sebastian had first slept with Jay Moriarty at the start of September last year. Then Jay had disappeared for six weeks; they hadn’t actually started seeing each other until October. “I’m not sure which one counts. Jay hasn’t mentioned it at all—I’m not sure he’s remembered.”

“Careful,” Adair said, with a conspiratorial air. “He might be waiting to see if you remember. I fell for that one—Edith had me sleeping on the sofa for a week.”

It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Jay liked to treat people as puzzle boxes, twisting them about and pushing their buttons until they produced an interesting result. Sebastian was no exception—if anything, he was Jay’s favourite puzzle box. If that were the case, though, Jay’s idea of punishment would be … creative.

The prospect wasn’t entirely unpleasant, and Sebastian was grateful he could blame his flush on the heat outside.

But before Sebastian could reflect any further on the subject, Adair’s attention drifted to the door. Footsteps approached across the courtyard, and a porter appeared next to Sebastian’s chair.

“Captain Moran,” the porter said, in a voice sufficiently hushed to give the illusion of privacy, “you have a guest waiting for you in the foyer.”

“Did they give a name?” Sebastian replied, reluctant to venture back into the stifling interior of the club. There were a few of his clients who might drop in on him here, but he wasn’t so desperate for work to indulge any of them.

“A Mr. Moriarty, sir.”

Sebastian immediately set the deck on the table and stood.

Adair laughed, broad and crass. “Just had your leash tugged, eh?”

Hardy and Milner were also chuckling, albeit more subtly; Sebastian shrugged it off. “Gentlemen,” he said to the group, bidding them goodbye as he followed the porter inside.

It was no surprise they hadn’t let Jay past the foyer. He was dressed for the weather, and the armholes of his tank top dropped past his waist; he was also drenched in sweat and projecting an air of weary, universal hatred.

“Everything all right?” Sebastian asked; he couldn’t imagine Jay voluntarily going outside in these conditions. If he hadn’t called or texted, then whatever had brought him to Sebastian wasn’t safe to discuss through either of those channels.

Jay replied, simply, “John Clay.”

“What did he do this time?”

“Don’t know yet. He wants to meet tonight.” With a sigh, Jay continued, “Any plans for the evening?”

“None I can’t cancel.”

---

Clay had provided an address for the meeting; it led to a terraced Georgian townhouse a mere stone’s throw from Hyde Park. Sebastian paused on the pavement, staring up at the red-brick facade. Whatever he’d been expecting from a clandestine meeting with a professional thief, it wasn’t this—property values here started in the millions.

Jay rang the doorbell. From inside the house came an immediate explosion of small-dog barking.

Long seconds passed. The heat had abated a bit in the late evening, but not by much—it was summer in England, after all, and the sun wouldn’t set for hours yet. A few of the neighbours were heading out for dinner or walking their dogs; one or two gave Jay odd looks as they passed by.

The door to the house swung open. A woman of about seventy or eighty stood in the doorway, wearing a bright paisley dressing gown over a set of silk pyjamas. Holstered under one arm was an elderly Jack Russell terrier, baring crooked teeth as it growled.

“Is John Clay here?” Jay asked, in a tone of voice that indicated he fully expected the answer to be “no.”

“Oh, yes,” the woman said. “Johnny said he’d have more friends stopping by.” She stepped aside to let Jay and Sebastian inside, blithely unconcerned by the appearance of two strange men at her door. “He’s up in the study.”

The house’s interior was standard for those of its type, dominated at the centre by a winding staircase that led all the way to the top floor. Despite the pristine white walls and polished hardwood floors, the whole place had a lived-in feel; paintings and mounted souvenir plaques and photographs covered the walls, many dating back to the sixties and seventies.

They found the study on the second floor. The decor was an eclectic mix of continental and mid-century styles: Persian rugs and oak bookcases full of leather-bound volumes shared space with a geometric teal sofa and a matching pair of armchairs. In one of said chairs lounged the slender, acrobatic frame of John Clay, his usual aristocratic poise dampened somewhat by the heat.

There was also another man, standing at the double doors that led out onto the house’s rooftop terrace. He wasn’t particularly large, but there was a heavy, sturdy strength to him; his dark t-shirt and jeans fit a little snugly in the biceps and thighs. His nose had been broken at least once, and while Sebastian didn’t see any indications of formal combat training, he was sure the man could handle himself in a fight.

The man glanced briefly at Jay before settling on Sebastian. “Moriarty?” he guessed.

“Wrong,” Jay answered, with flat disdain.

The man’s focus immediately switched back to Jay; he approached at a measured pace, sizing Jay up as he closed the distance between them. Sebastian moved to intercept before he got too close, stepping neatly into the man’s path. The man looked up into Sebastian’s face with a quiet, contemplative air—clearly unfazed by the three or four inches Sebastian had on him.

“How much do you cost?” the man asked, with a hint of amusement.

Sebastian smirked right back at him. “More than you can afford.”

With a short, satisfied nod, the man stepped back and gestured for Clay to proceed.

“Clay.” Jay kept one eye on the stranger. “What have you got yourself into this time?”

“I just need some technical advice,” Clay replied with forced cheer. “Max here hired me to break into BasePairing’s office here in London, and I ran into a spot of trouble.”

Jay squeezed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What kind of trouble?”

“I cleared out one of the accountants so I could do some recon, but security rumbled me right away,” Clay said. “I need to know how they did it and how to avoid the problem next time.” In solicitous tones, he added, “I’ll pay you a cut of my fee. Ten percent.”

Clay was playing it off as a quick favour, but a simmering tension hovered throughout the room. He was in over his head, and now Jay was his only lifeline.

Jay didn’t seem happy about that at all. “Why BasePairing?”

“None of your fucking business, isn’t it?” Max replied.

Jay’s eyes narrowed. “Your name is Max Turnbull. You’re head of security for Harry’s Haulage, a transport company based out of Liverpool. Your boss, Harry Nolan, also happens to be one of the country’s longest-operating drug smugglers.”

Max blinked.

“If I had to guess,” Jay said, “I’d say someone’s mum or brother sent their DNA in to be tested, and now you’re worried the authorities might get their hands on that data. Maybe draw some inconvenient connections to a few unsolved cases.”

Max was silent for a second. “All right,” he finally said. “The sample was sent in a few days ago. We have some time before it’s processed, but not much—two or three weeks, maybe.”

“They can’t keep the data without the customer’s permission,” Sebastian pointed out. “You could just wait for the results and then file a request to delete them.”

“That’s no guarantee of anything,” Jay said with a sigh. “By the time a customer gets their results, that data has been shared out with any number of BasePairing’s business partners. There’s no way to know who’s got a copy, and whether they’ve all been deleted properly. Best option is to steal the sample back before it’s processed.”

“BasePairing does all its testing on-site at their office,” Clay explained. “The sample will be in cold storage down in the lab. I just need to figure out how to get down there.”

Jay turned back to Clay. “When, exactly, did security catch on?”

Clay considered the question. “I checked in all right,” he said. “They handed me a visitor’s badge, and I got through the turnstiles. Security was after me by the time I reached the lifts, though.”

“Security cameras in the lobby?” Jay asked.

“A few.” Clay waved a hand dismissively. “I was using a legitimate ID, though. Someone who was supposed to be there.”

“Facial recognition,” Jay said. “HGS must have supplied photos of all their accountants. When you badged through, the cameras scanned your face and the system compared it to the picture on file for that ID. They didn’t match, so it pinged security.”

Clay made an annoyed noise. “Great. How do I get past that?”

“You don’t,” Jay said. “They’ll have your face on file, now. I doubt you could get within a mile of that building without setting off an alert.”

The full extent to which Clay was fucked took several seconds to process. He groaned and buried his face in his hands.

Jay’s eyes flicked to the side and met Sebastian’s. He had an idea, and it was one he couldn’t pull off alone.

Sebastian answered the unspoken question with a quick nod.

“I can salvage this,” Jay said, mostly to Max, “but it’ll cost you more than ten percent.”

Clay emerged from behind his hands with an expression of abject relief.

Max crossed his arms. “Let’s hear it.”

“You need a new inside man,” Jay said. “One who has good reason to be in that office, and who’s also exactly who he claims to be.”

---

A few words in the right ears, and in short order Captain Sebastian Moran had been quietly referred to BasePairing’s board of directors as the ideal person to look into their recent security breach.

The lobby of the building was nearly empty as Sebastian made his way to the reception desk. “Hi,” he said, with a friendly smile for the receptionist. “I’m Sebastian Moran. I have an appointment with BasePairing.”

“Oh.” The receptionist was far more flustered than the situation called for. “Let me just call up—if you could—” she gestured toward the seating area.

Sebastian made himself as comfortable as possible on one of the couches, and it wasn’t long before a professional-looking woman emerged from the lifts. She had a harried air as she badged through the turnstiles and came to meet Sebastian.

“Mr. Moran,” the woman said, more out of breath than Sebastian would’ve expected. “I’m Kelsey, Mr. Leach’s assistant. If you’ll come with me?”

“Of course,” Sebastian replied, and followed her back to the lifts. Kelsey produced a key as they walked, fitting it into a keyhole marked “VIP” on the call panel. Seconds later, a lift arrived and opened its doors for them; Kelsey used the same key on the control panel, and they enjoyed an uninterrupted ride up to the executive suites.

As they approached the managing director’s office, Kelsey motioned for Sebastian to wait in the anteroom as she knocked on the door. While she was distracted, Sebastian slipped a small flash drive into one of the USB slots along the back of her computer’s monitor.

Kelsey opened the door and poked her head inside. In the tones of someone unsure whether she was interrupting, she said, “Your ten o’clock is here. Should I reschedule?”

“No, no,” came the response from inside the office. “Actually, this works out well. Send him in.”

At Kelsey’s urging, Sebastian stepped into the office. Andrew Leach, managing director for BasePairing’s UK branch, wasn’t alone; two other men were standing in his office.

One was maybe a year or two older than Sebastian and a few inches shorter; moustached, handsomely broad and burly, sweat-damp t-shirt straining a little over his belly. He’d do very well at any gay bar Sebastian cared to name. The man’s posture suggested some experience in the military, and he was carrying a high-end voice recorder—Sebastian recognised the model as one he’d seen a few journalists use out in the field.

His companion was much taller, and so thin the word “gaunt” immediately came to mind; despite the heat, he wore a threadbare tweed jacket over a rumpled button-down shirt. While he was probably no older than thirty, the lines and dark circles surrounding the man’s eyes suggested some less-than-healthy sleeping habits. He had sharp features and even sharper eyes as he studied Sebastian, noting any number of details in turn as his gaze swept from head to toe.

Leach wasted no time in rushing forward to shake Sebastian’s hand. “Captain,” he said. “Lovely to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Sebastian replied, and glanced at the two strangers. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Not at all,” Leach replied eagerly. “Allow me to introduce you to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson—this is our new security consultant, Captain Sebastian Moran.”

Leach had introduced Holmes and Watson as if expecting him to know who they were, and a moment of awkward, baffled silence fell over the office.

Clearing his throat, Leach went on, “Mr. Holmes is a consulting detective—quite a talented one, at that.” After a beat, he added, “Dr. Watson was also in the army, as I recall.”

“Oh?” Sebastian turned to Watson with polite interest.

“1st Fusiliers,” Watson said briskly; he’d had a wary look ever since Sebastian walked into the room. “You?”

“22 SAS,” Sebastian replied. Leach was delighted by this answer, but it clearly put Watson on edge. “Before that, 1st Foot Guards. Fought alongside the Fusiliers a few times in Afghanistan.”

“And now you’re a consultant,” Watson said. “You know, a mate of mine once said a consultant’s job is to look at your watch and tell you what time it is.”

It was beautifully accurate, but Sebastian couldn’t admit as much in front of the client. “There’s a bit more to it than that. For one thing, I’ll be carrying out a penetration test of the building—the best way to find any security flaws is to try and break in, myself.”

Up until now, Holmes had been content to lurk at the edges of the conversation; at the words “penetration test,” however, he focused once more on Sebastian. “Mr. Leach,” he said, “what if we were to work with Captain Moran? Surely additional minds bent toward the problem will improve the result.”

Before Sebastian could raise any objection, Leach jumped in: “Of course! I was about to suggest it myself—and I’m sure Captain Moran would appreciate the help.”

There was no talking an executive out of what he’d convinced himself was his own brilliant idea. With a smile that felt more like a grimace, Sebastian said, “I’m sure Mr. Holmes’ contributions will be quite valuable.”