Fight for Me

Chapter 41

Sherlock noticed that Lydia had grown a bit more distant during the train ride, but did not understand what had happened. Perhaps he had crossed a boundary when he had tried to comfort her, but she seemed to have appreciated it. She had, after all, rested her hand on top of his. But perhaps the issue was with how long he let his hand rest there.

He had tried to tell himself that he had only kept his hand there as a comforting gesture so that she would be in peak condition to solve the child's disappearance, but he had to admit he loved the feeling her fingers curling around his. He had never craved physical touch like he had in that moment. And he hated knowing that his emotions were getting the better of him, but at the same time the feeling was so addicting.

But he had a suspicion that such touching would not be happening again soon. It may have just been a coincidence, but as they got into the backseat of the Jones' car, Lydia waited for John to climb into the middle before taking the seat the furthest from Sherlock. It was then that Sherlock realised that they had had a normal seating arrangement in cabs, with Sherlock always on the right, Lydia in the middle, and John on the left. That order was now disturbed and it troubled him.

Sherlock tried to push it out of his mind as they approached the house, which looked as though it had come straight out of an advert with its stone exterior and lush green yard. However, Sherlock did not take the time to admire his surroundings before demanding to know where Amelia's room was. If her disappearance was of her own doing, he knew immediately the answer would be found there. If not, he would have to deal with the reality that she was likely she dead.

Lydia and John followed behind Sherlock as he made a beeline for Amelia's room, hoping to provide some assistance to his search. Sherlock was immediately taken aback by her organised room. There was a large collection of rocks spread across a table, terrariums with different types of bugs lining every flat surface and, in the corner most out of the sun, a collection of mosses with everything neatly labeled, or as neatly as they could be in the chicken scratch handwriting of a child. He had never seen this type of curiosity in an eight-year-old before, apart for perhaps himself as a child.

He began to examine the different rocks, noticing that they were categorized by type. Not surprisingly, the most abundant were the sedimentary. They seemed to be mostly self-collected, apart from a few editions that would have been more difficult to find in this part of the country. The igneous and metamorphic, however, appeared to have been bought specifically for her collection. Taking a closer look at the sedimentary rocks, he began to determine which ones had been collected herself and which ones purchased, taking mental notes as he went along.

After that, he turned to the moss and tried to map out where on the grounds they would have been collected from. Perhaps that was the key to finding her. Maybe she had wandered out too far and had gotten lost or maybe she was kidnapped while out exploring and they would be able to find more evidence at the spot she had been taken from.

"Sherlock!" Lydia called out to him, glancing over her shoulder at him while she looked at Amelia's computer.

Curiously he placed down the moss-covered rock he had been observing and leant over Lydia's chair to see what she had found. Up on the screen was Amelia's search history, which included searches for nearby coal mines. Realisation flooded through Sherlock, everything clicking in his brain as Lydia looked up at him with a worried glance.

"Mrs. Jones, I trust that you've had a substantial amount of rain recently?" Sherlock asked as he turned to the parents loitering outside of Amelia's room.

She nodded, her brows furrowed in confusion, "not more than usual, but you know how the weather is."

"And on the day that Amelia went missing, do you remember if there was any rain then?"

Mrs. Jones passed for a moment as she tried to remember, then slowly nodded, "yes, I remember it was raining because that's why we went out looking for her so early in the afternoon. Amelia never cared much about the rain so she would never choose to come in on her own, we had to go out and get her so she wouldn't catch a cold."

Sherlock clapped his hands together, "great, I'm going to need a few things from you and then we're going to go out and find your daughter."

"Do you know where she is?" Mr. Jones questioned, the hope in his voice painful for Lydia to hear when she knew exactly where his daughter was and her chances of survival were not great.

"Sherlock's going to be completely insensitive, isn't he?" Lydia muttered to John, who gave a nod, trying to catch Sherlock's gaze to stop him from speaking.

But Sherlock was completely oblivious to their interaction and began to answer, "well, given your daughter's fascination in different types of rocks and minerals and the fact that there is a-"

"What Sherlock is trying to say is that we have an idea where she may have been exploring, so we are going to go investigate that area and see if there are any clues as to where she might have gone or who took her if she was kidnapped. We're one step closer to finding your daughter, Mr. Jones," Lydia assured the nervous parents with a kind smile, ignoring the glare she was receiving from Sherlock for interrupting him.

...

"I just don't see why you needed to give them false hope, Lydia, is it not better to prepare them for the fact that their daughter might very well be dead?" Sherlock hounded Lydia once again as they trekked across the grounds to the closest coal mine listed in the database Amelia had been looking at.

Lydia gave a sigh as she shook her head, "no, Sherlock. There is still a chance that Amelia is still alive, she seems to be a smart girl with good survival instincts. If we told them where we suspect Amelia is, they would have gotten hysterical and then we would have had to deal with calming them down, wasting valuable time to save their daughter. Every second counts in this situation."

"But why would we waste the time on them?" Sherlock frowned, glancing over at John to see if he was understanding what Lydia was going on about. "I would have just left them in the house to calm down so we could focus on finding Amelia."

"You might have done that, but Lydia and I would have had to make sure that the parents were still emotionally stable before leaving them. Neither of us is a robot like you, mate," John answered for Lydia, receiving a grateful smile from her in response. She had enough of trying to get emotions through his thick skull when she had tried to get him to take the case.

But Sherlock still seemed to not understand why they would do such a thing when a child's life could be at risk. They seemed so concerned with saving her life, it was illogical of them to stay behind to calm the parents when they could have been out looking for the daughter. But he also knew it was pointless to argue, the two of them seemed quite set in their belief that they should not have informed the Jones' of the truth.

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Happy new year everyone! Let's hope it's much better than the one we had to go through this year!