Eye Contact *ON HOLD*

Moriarty

The cabbie ahead didn’t seem to realize they were following behind.

“Boyfriend leave ya, miss?” Maggie’s driver asked, eyeing her from the mirror.

She shook her head.

“What we following for, then?”

She frowned, trying to make an excuse. “Uh, my brother. He’s a drug addict,” she said, thinking back to the ‘drugs bust.’ “I’m making sure he’s not going to buy some more. We just searched his place. Intervention. He stormed out.”

The cabbie nodded. “My sister’s the same. Rehab might help, ya know.”

She nodded as though listening, although she was in her own mind, her thought process racing. It all makes sense now, she thought. A cabbie. Unseen in a crowd. Everyone trusts a cabbie to get them where they wish to go, even though they are complete strangers. This man had the perfect job to become a serial killer.

Maggie wished now more than ever that she had a mobile. She needed to call John, Lestrade, someone. She sighed. Even if she had a phone, it wouldn’t matter. She didn’t know anyone’s numbers.

The taxis turned left and entered a quieter part of town. She watched the scenery pass by.

“Eh, miss,” the cabbie said. “He’s stopping.”

She leaned forward, looking out the windshield at the tail lights.

“Keep going another block and stop there.”

The other cab pulled off to the side as theirs passed by. Maggie caught Sherlock’s eye as they passed while his cabbie got out. They’d stopped at two seemingly identical buildings.

“Oh, that’s Roland-Kerr Further Education College,” her cabbie said, pulling to a stop. “Maybe he’s trying to go back to school, miss.”

“No, he doesn’t need to,” she murmured, her head turning to keep an eye on where the other cab had stopped. The cabbie was walking in, leaving Sherlock behind. Run, she thought.

He did run. Into the college, after the cabbie.

“Dammit!” she yelled as the cabbie looked back at her.

“What’s wrong, miss?”

“Nothing,” she said, a scowl on her face. That idiot. “Here.” She pulled her half of Mycroft’s money out, dropping into the cabbie’s hands.

“Miss, this is too much…” the man began, but it was too late. She’d left her door open as she ran off down the sidewalk, back toward the college.

She ran toward where the entrances were, stopping. The buildings were identical. There was no difference in structure, and she hadn’t seen which one they had entered. But as she examined the doors, she noticed something. On the window of one door, there was a handprint, dissipating in the cold. Someone had pressed their hand to it in the last minute or so, the heat creating a fog on it. She stepped closer and recognised the size of the hand. Sherlock. She pushed the door open slowly so not to alert the cabbie to her presence in the building.

Travelling down the halls, she came to a crossroad. She could go forward, or either side direction. She sighed, deciding to go right. She opened a few doors and looked into the windows of ones that were locked, but there was no sign of the two men. Finally she reached a dead end and had to turn around. She turned this way and that, eventually getting a bit lost in the halls. There was still no sign of the men.

She found the staircases and travelled up, searching more halls on the second floor. She saw a clock on the wall. It had been forty-five minutes since she left the flat. Roughly thirty since she’d began searching. She thought of the poison the victims took. It could already be too late.