Two days passed.
I worked. Checked on Vex's recovery. Handled routine operations through Dmitri and Konstantin's networks. Avoided the places where Marcus might be. Tried not to think about the interview room or the broken voice or the particular weight of "get out."
On the third morning, my phone buzzed with a text I'd been expecting.
Come to the brownstone. We're going to have a conversation we should have had when we met.
Sherlock Holmes. Using complete sentences and proper punctuation, which meant he was being serious.
I stared at the message for a long moment, remembering Vex's report about the file — fourteen pages of documented anomalies, photographs of me with Marcus, timeline reconstructions that traced my impossible knowledge. Sherlock had been building his case for weeks. Now he was ready to present it.
Part of me wanted to ignore the summons. I'd already lost Marcus — what was one more confrontation? What was one more relationship collapsing under the weight of my deceptions?
But ignoring Sherlock wasn't an option. He'd just keep investigating, keep building his file, keep asking questions until he constructed an explanation that might be worse than any truth I could offer.
Better to face it directly. Better to control what he learned.
I texted back: On my way.
---
The brownstone looked the same as it always had — the elegant facade, the particular character of a building with history. But approaching it felt different now. This wasn't a consultation or a case discussion or the careful cultivation of a professional relationship.
This was a reckoning.
Joan wasn't there when I entered — either out on her own business or deliberately absent so Sherlock could have this conversation privately. The consulting detective sat in his usual chair, fingers steepled, watching me with the particular intensity of someone who'd been waiting for this moment.
"Sit," he said.
I sat across from him, noting the physical file on the table between us — thick, organized, bearing my name in Sherlock's precise handwriting. Fourteen pages or more. My documented impossibilities.
"Let's not waste time with pleasantries," Sherlock said. "You know why you're here."
"Your file."
"My file." He tapped the folder. "Months of observation. Correlation analysis. Pattern recognition. Everything I've learned about you since you first appeared in my awareness." He paused. "You're an anomaly, Cash Dalton. You know things you shouldn't know. You appear in places at times that suggest foreknowledge. You've demonstrated capabilities that don't match any explicable background."
"I'm good at my job."
"You're good at hiding what your job actually is." Sherlock leaned forward. "But that's not what this conversation is about. This is about one specific thing."
He opened the file and pulled out a single photograph — a still from a security camera, showing me at Konstantin's bar the night I'd claimed the Moriarty name. The angle was poor, the image grainy, but the moment was unmistakable.
"Moriarty," Sherlock said.
The name fell between us like a blade.
"You're using that name. You've built a reputation around it. In the criminal underworld, when people speak of Moriarty, they're increasingly speaking of you." His voice was controlled, but underneath, I could hear something raw — something wounded. "That name belongs to someone. Someone who destroyed me. Someone who took everything I had and burned it to ash."
Jamie. He meant Jamie. Irene Adler who was Jamie Moriarty who was the woman who'd broken Sherlock Holmes and rebuilt him into something different.
"I know," I said.
"Then tell me why." His hands were trembling slightly — the only sign of how much this cost him. "Why would you choose that name? Why would you invoke her? Are you working for her? Against her? Is this some elaborate game she's playing through you?"
The questions tumbled out with more emotion than I'd ever heard from Sherlock. This wasn't the detached analyst examining a puzzle. This was a man confronting a wound that hadn't healed, demanding answers from someone who'd deliberately touched the scar.
I took a breath.
"I'm not working for her," I said. "Not the way you mean. I'm not her agent or her puppet or some extension of her operations."
"Then what are you?"
"Someone who recognized the power of that name and chose to use it." I met his eyes directly. "In my line of work, reputation matters. Fear matters. When I claimed that name, I claimed the weight of everything people associated with it. The mystery, the capability, the particular terror of someone who operates beyond normal understanding."
"You're using her legacy as marketing."
"If you want to put it that way."
Sherlock's expression was unreadable. He was processing, calculating, building models of who I might be and what I might want. His file sat between us — months of observation reduced to evidence that couldn't explain the fundamental question.
"You knew about the beekeeping," he said abruptly.
I stilled.
"At the Bronx crime scene. You referenced my plans for beekeeping as a retirement pursuit. That information isn't public. I hadn't shared it with anyone except Joan." His eyes were sharp, penetrating. "How did you know?"
The memory flickered in my mind — a casual comment I shouldn't have made, a slip that revealed knowledge I couldn't explain. Sherlock had noticed. Of course he'd noticed. He noticed everything.
"I have sources," I said carefully. "Comprehensive ones."
"Sources that somehow know my private retirement plans?"
"Sources that know more than they should about a lot of people."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer I can give you."
Sherlock stood abruptly, pacing the room with the particular energy of frustration meeting fascination. He was caught between wanting to expose me and wanting to understand me — the eternal tension of a man who solved puzzles for a living confronting a puzzle he couldn't yet solve.
"You know who owns that name," he said, turning back to face me. "You know what she did. You know everything — the addiction, the manipulation, the year I spent believing she was dead, the revelation that destroyed me. You know all of it, somehow."
"Yes."
"And you chose her name anyway."
"Yes."
"Why?" The question was almost a plea. "I need to understand. She's not just a story to me, Cash. She's a wound that never closed. And you're walking around with her name on your lips like it means nothing."
I thought about Jamie's gallery. The portrait she'd painted of me. The deal we'd struck. The particular danger of being interesting enough to keep around.
"It doesn't mean nothing," I said. "It means everything. That's why I chose it."
Sherlock stared at me like I was a problem he couldn't solve — and Sherlock solved every problem eventually.
"You're using the name of the woman who broke me," he said slowly, "to build a reputation in the criminal underworld. You have knowledge about me that no one should have. You appear at crime scenes with information that suggests foreknowledge. You've cultivated a relationship with me while hiding what you actually are."
"All true."
"And you expect me to trust you?"
I stood up, facing him directly.
"I don't expect anything," I said. "I'm telling you the truth I can tell. I'm not your enemy. I'm not her puppet. I chose her name because power is built on perception, and that name makes people pay attention." I paused. "Whether you trust me is your decision. But I'm not lying when I say I'm not working against you."
Sherlock studied me for a long moment. His hands had stopped shaking — the emotional surge passing, the analyst returning.
"This conversation isn't over," he said finally.
"I know."
"I'm going to figure out what you are. How you know what you know. Why you're really here."
"I know that too."
"And when I do—"
"When you do," I said, "we'll have another conversation. Until then, I'm exactly what I appear to be: a fixer who uses a famous name, who has good sources, and who occasionally helps you with cases because we both get something out of the arrangement."
Sherlock picked up his file, holding it against his chest like a talisman.
"Get out," he said.
The words hit differently than when Marcus had said them. Marcus had meant forever. Sherlock meant for now.
I walked toward the door, then paused at the threshold.
"The name Moriarty," I said without turning around. "I know what it costs you to hear it. I know what she did. And I'm sorry for the pain it causes." I paused. "But I'm not giving it up. It's mine now."
I walked out into the Manhattan afternoon, leaving Sherlock Holmes with his file and his questions and his wounds that wouldn't heal.
Some conversations change everything that comes after.
This was one of them.
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