The report arrived in Moran's encrypted inbox at 3:47 AM.
He read it three times before the implications fully registered. Someone calling himself "Moriarty" was operating in New York. Not whispering the name in corners, not using it as intimidation — actively building a reputation under it. Solving problems. Making connections. Earning respect.
Using Jamie's name like he had a right to it.
Moran sat in his safehouse apartment in Chelsea, the city lights painting cold patterns on his walls, and felt something he hadn't experienced in years. Anger. Not the professional irritation of a complication, but genuine personal offense.
Jamie Moriarty had built that name through decades of work. She'd made it synonymous with genius, with danger, with the particular terror that came from facing someone who saw twelve moves ahead. And now some fixer in Brooklyn was wearing it like a costume.
He pulled up everything his network had compiled on Cash Dalton.
British passport, verified but the trail was suspiciously clean. Security consultant cover, no verifiable clients before his arrival in New York. Solving problems for small-time criminals — crew disputes, document acquisition, information brokerage. Building a reputation systematically, professionally, like someone who understood how criminal ecosystems worked.
And now calling himself Moriarty.
Moran typed a single message to his primary handler: Investigating potential identity theft. The Moriarty name. Will report when I have confirmation.
The response came in under a minute: Proceed. Priority level: High.
---
Dmitri Volkov was picked up the next morning.
Moran's people were professional — no violence, no threats, just two large men in a black car who invited Dmitri to answer some questions about a mutual acquaintance. The forger, who'd survived twenty years in criminal spaces by knowing when to cooperate, got in the car without protest.
The questions started gentle and got progressively more specific.
Where did Cash Dalton come from? London, supposedly — but his accent was inconsistent, his references unverifiable. What did he know? More than he should — predictions that came true with unusual accuracy, insights into situations he'd never witnessed directly. Who was he working for? No one, apparently — independent operator, building his own network from scratch.
Dmitri answered honestly. He liked Cash, respected the work they'd done together, but he wasn't dying for a man he'd known less than two months.
"The documents I made him were clean," Dmitri said. "Real paper, real chain. If there's something wrong with his identity, I didn't know about it."
"We believe you." Moran sat across from Dmitri in a basement room that smelled like concrete and bleach. "What we don't believe is that Cash Dalton appeared from nowhere with perfect operational tradecraft and no history. Someone trained him. Someone sent him."
"If they did, he didn't tell me."
"No." Moran leaned forward. "He wouldn't, would he? Not if he's really what he appears to be."
Dmitri was held for forty-eight hours. No torture — Moran wasn't wasteful — but isolation, pressure, the particular stress of not knowing what came next. By the time he was released, Moran had a complete picture of Cash Dalton's network: the clients, the contacts, the operational patterns.
And one very interesting detail: Cash had been sending anonymous tips to Sherlock Holmes.
Moran filed that for future analysis. The convergence of interests was too precise to be coincidence.
---
I knew something was wrong before Vex confirmed it.
The surveillance patterns had changed. I couldn't identify how — nothing specific, nothing I could point to — but the instincts that had kept me alive for six weeks were screaming. Something in my environment had shifted, and I couldn't see what.
"Dmitri's shop is closed," Vex reported. "Hasn't been open for two days. His phone goes straight to voicemail."
"He goes dark sometimes. When he's working on something complicated."
"Not like this. I checked his usual spots. He's not anywhere."
The words landed with the weight of something I'd been dreading since the visitor in Mrs. Petrova's parlor. My network wasn't as safe as I'd believed. Someone was pulling at threads, and Dmitri had been the weakest one.
"Who's asking questions about me?" I asked.
"I don't know yet. The surveillance is professional — better than mine in some ways. Military-grade counter-detection protocols. Whoever they are, they've been doing this longer than most people have been alive."
Military-grade. The phrase triggered Memory Palace associations I couldn't ignore. Sebastian Moran had been a colonel in the British Army before joining Moriarty's organization. His tradecraft was legendary — the kind of surveillance that left no traces, the kind of patience that waited years for the perfect opportunity.
If Moran was hunting me, Dmitri's silence made terrible sense.
I walked to Dmitri's shop in the Lower East Side, moving through streets that felt hostile for the first time since I'd arrived in this city. The bodega where I'd bought my first cup of coffee — where I'd made my first transaction as Cash Dalton — was two blocks away. The memory felt distant now, separated from the present by layers of complication I hadn't anticipated.
The shop was dark. Not closed-for-the-day dark, but empty dark. The kind of darkness that settled when no one was coming back.
I tried the handle. Locked, but the lock was new — installed recently, different from the one Dmitri had used. Someone had been here. Someone had cleaned up.
Vex appeared at my ankle, her fur bristling with agitation she rarely showed.
"His phone just came back online," she said. "One text, then offline again."
"What did it say?"
"'They're asking about you. I told them what I knew. Sorry.'"
The message confirmed what I'd already suspected. Dmitri had been picked up by whoever was watching me. He'd talked — not betrayal, exactly, but survival. I couldn't blame him. I'd have done the same.
But it meant everything I'd built on his foundation was now exposed. My documents, my network, my operational patterns. Whoever had questioned him knew more about Cash Dalton than I was comfortable with anyone knowing.
I walked back to the boarding house through streets that had stopped feeling like home. The watch in my pocket was ticking steadily, its rhythm somehow wrong — too fast, like it was counting down to something.
Mrs. Petrova met me at the door with an expression I'd never seen from her. Fear.
"Another visitor," she said. "While you were out. Didn't give a name. Said he'd come back."
"What did he look like?"
"Large. Military bearing. Very calm." She lowered her voice. "Mr. Dalton, I don't know what kind of trouble you're in, but these men... they feel dangerous. Professional dangerous."
"I know." I handed her an envelope I'd prepared weeks ago — emergency funds, enough to cover six months of rent if I had to disappear suddenly. "Keep this. If I don't come back within a week, assume I won't."
"What have you done?"
"I used a name that belongs to someone else. Now she's sending people to find out why."
The game had changed. The net was tightening. And somewhere in this city, Sebastian Moran was getting closer to answers I couldn't afford to give him.
I climbed the stairs to my room and started packing. Not running — not yet — but preparing for the moment when running became the only option.
The watch stopped at 3:47 AM exactly.
Same time I'd arrived in this body. Same time it always stopped. Some mysteries were getting closer. Others were just beginning to make terrible sense.
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