Free Chronicles of the Lost Years (The Sherlock Holmes Series) by Tracy Cooper-Posey

achieve his aims. These facts coupled up in her mind and she stared at Holmes, horrified.
    “The note. It was a forgery!”
    Holmes shook his head irritably. “You saw the note. It was signed by Steiler. Why would I send Watson on such a long goose chase, with his poor leg, if I even suspected it was false?”
    But Elizabeth’s quick mind had already leapt past the question and reached the answer. She looked around the jagged horizon, feeling very much trapped in a corner. “You wanted him out of the way. Now you’re trying to do the same to me.”
    “Really, Elizabeth, paranoia suits you ill. However, I do think you must return to the hotel.” He spoke quite firmly.
    Elizabeth ceased her search of the close horizon and studied Holmes instead. “The message was a fabrication. You knew it was the minute you read it. You knew Moriarty wrote it. He is setting up a trap.”
    Holmes merely returned her look.
    “‘Death is on the agenda’, you said. Now you are calmly waiting for it to arrive.”
    “I also said that bystanders would be hurt. You must return, Elizabeth.”
    An artificial calm descended upon her at Holmes’ indirect confirmation of her guesses. The panic left her as she comprehended that the final confrontation was mere minutes away. She had a promise to live up to.
    “I am not leaving you alone,” she replied.
    “You must. For your own sake.”
    Elizabeth held out her hand. “Give me the gun.”
    “The gun will serve no useful purpose.”
    Elizabeth stared at him, dismayed and vexed. It was not part of her nature to accept the inescapable with Holmes’ fatalism and she knew no way of jarring him out of the mood short of direct action. Alert to the seconds ticking away, she used this dramatic alternative.
    With a swift, dexterous movement, she lunged and delved into Holmes’ coat pocket, the one she knew carried the loaded revolver. She moved very fast—quickly enough to catch Holmes off his guard. She succeeded in getting a grip on the gun and half-withdrawing it from the pocket, before Holmes’ iron grasp snared her wrist. She looked up at him.
    “If you won’t help yourself, I must,” she said.
    “And you will be killed alongside me,” he said firmly. He lifted her wrist and her hand was held steady, the gun between her tingling fingers. She could feel her grip loosening. “Go back,” he told her and reached for the gun.
    It dropped from her numbed fingers and fell through Holmes’ as he stretched to catch it. With a solid thump it hit the spray-drenched rocks at their feet and gave a little bounce up, over the edge and down, irretrievably, into the mists hiding the foaming water beneath them.
    They both looked over the edge, Elizabeth with a wordless cry of dismay. She wrenched her hand from his loosened grasp, grabbed his lapels and shook him.
    “Damn it, Holmes, do something! Don’t just stand there. Think of a plan, work out a strategy. He can be beaten!”
    Holmes looked down at this extraordinary woman. He had not had a finger laid on him since boyhood and he certainly hadn’t been shaken. Her vexation was beginning to communicate itself to him. Firmly he pulled her hands away. “I have been building strategies and laying plans for a whole year and it all leads to this.” He in his turn shook her a little, for emphasis. “Go back to the hotel, Elizabeth. Now. I insist.”
    The sound of loose falling rocks alerted them and they looked up toward the top of the cliff path. The hunched, crooked figure outlined in the last of the evening sun was unmistakable. Moriarty had arrived.
    Elizabeth didn’t need confirmation of Moriarty’s identity, for Holmes’ quick, exhaled breath was all the verification she required. She rubbed her wrists as Holmes let them go.
    “Too late,” he breathed.
    Elizabeth looked back at the figure slowly making its way down the path that ended where they stood. There was no way out.
    Holmes pushed her gently to one side. “Now I must win,” he