As S.H.I.E.L.D.
shifted into high gear, the sudden scrutiny of a powerful government agency sent waves of alarm through both the High Table and the Continental, neither of which had any idea what had triggered the investigation.
Sherlock had no clue that the persona he had invented on a whim had caused such a storm back in the United States.
Nor could he have imagined that, on his very first visit to the intelligence market, he would happen to meet Hawkeye operating undercover and gathering information.
Once Sherlock obtained the coordinates he needed, he saw no reason to remain at the market.
He returned directly to their rented house, spread the satellite map from the military base across the coffee table, and entered the coordinates.
The valley appeared immediately.
After confirming the location, Sherlock marked out a route and drafted a simple plan before heading to his room.
Even as he lay down, he could not shake the feeling that he had forgotten something.
Unfortunately, he was already too exhausted to keep his eyes open, and before he could remember what it was, he fell asleep.
The unfortunate thing he had forgotten was John.
John continued wandering through the intelligence market for hours, completely unaware that his partner had already gone home and gone to bed.
Unlike Sherlock’s request, which had received an immediate response, John’s search for information connected to Tony’s disappearance proved almost impossible.
His wristband occasionally directed him into one of the private booths, but after exchanging only a few words with each supposed seller, John could usually tell that they were lying.
If reliable information had been available here, Hawkeye and the military would hardly have come away empty-handed.
The Ten Rings had demonstrated exceptional discipline when they captured Tony.
They had left no shell casings behind, and their personnel operated in tightly controlled cells with almost no opportunity for information to leak.
After spending the entire night searching—and roughly five gold coins on drinks—John finally returned to the house in defeat.
He had assumed that an organization as deeply connected to assassins, criminal syndicates, and terrorist groups as the Continental might possess information unavailable to official agencies.
Apparently, that was not the case.
Most likely, every lead concerning Tony that had surfaced in recent weeks had already been investigated and dismissed by the authorities.
John returned only shortly before the intelligence market closed.
The moment he entered the house, he noticed Sherlock’s cloak hanging beside the door and realized the bastard had come back long ago.
His teeth clenched.
For a moment, he felt as though Sherlock had deliberately abandoned him.
Then he spotted the satellite map on the coffee table, along with the marked valley, routes, and rough operational plan.
Only then did he decide to spare Sherlock’s life.
John still had no idea how Sherlock had determined that Tony was being held in that particular valley, or how he knew the Ten Rings were responsible for the kidnapping in the first place.
After checking the time, John chose not to return to his room.
Instead, he sat down on the sofa, partly to keep watch and partly to improve Sherlock’s plan.
He opened the Continental’s network on his phone and began combing through its intelligence database for everything connected to the Ten Rings.
As John gathered and organized the information, the map gradually became far more detailed.
What had begun as a single route and a rough plan expanded into several possible approaches, fallback routes, and contingency options.
He continued working until the final hours before dawn.
Only when the sun was close to rising did he pack everything away and head upstairs to wake the other three.
Neither Sherlock nor Helen understood why John was dragging them out of bed in the middle of the night, but they trusted him and respected the Continental’s rules.
After putting their cloaks back on, they followed him to the truck and left the settlement.
Only once the Continental had completely vanished behind them did John pull off his cloak and explain.
Because this branch operated under war-zone rules and catered primarily to intelligence brokers, almost no one remained until sunrise.
The moment the safe-zone protection expired, everyone became vulnerable, so most guests made a habit of leaving before dawn.
Years of paranoia and professional caution had turned that habit into an unwritten rule.
The Continental had developed a matching custom of its own.
The instant the first rays of sunlight touched the ground, the entire branch disappeared.
Literally.
From the moment Sherlock’s group arrived, the intelligence market’s central facilities had consisted almost entirely of portable structures.
Only the residential area made use of abandoned homes that had received basic repairs.
At sunrise, those houses were simply discarded.
Before night fell again, a new Continental would be assembled inside the ruins of a different settlement.
That system had operated without interruption for years.
It was also why John had insisted they leave before dawn.
The easiest way to preserve their anonymity was to disappear alongside everyone else.
Sherlock and Helen had no objections.
If anything, both felt as though they had just been given a rare glimpse into an entirely different world.
Doro, meanwhile, remained curled up in Helen’s arms, completely dead to the world.
None of them had the heart to wake her.
Once John finished explaining all the intelligence he had added to the satellite map, he slumped into the passenger seat and promptly fell asleep.
Sherlock did not mind.
Rather than immediately following the plan and rushing to rescue Tony, he drove them into a wide, empty stretch of desert and decided to establish camp.
None of them had rested properly the night before.
There was no reason not to recover first.
With Sherlock’s alchemy, creating a luxurious campsite required little more than bringing his hands together.
A moment later, an elegant desert villa complete with its own garage rose from the sand.
Helen, the only other person still awake, stared at the building with her eyes nearly bulging from their sockets.
She had always known Sherlock could use alchemy, but she had never realized it could be this absurdly convenient.
When Sherlock climbed back into the truck to drive it into the garage, Helen looked at him and said the first thing that came to mind.
“I swear, Sherlock, if you ever went into real estate, you’d become the next Tony Stark.”