Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the Heist Society or Sherlock.

It is being called the "case of the century." And it happened right there, in the center of London, at the world-famous Henley.

So it is only natural that the world's greatest detective is called onto the scene.

There is a crack as the doors smash against the wall. Several people jump. All eyes in the room are on the newcomers.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," DI Lestrade grumbles. He raises his voice and mock-bows toward Sherlock with a flourish of his arms. "I present to you ladies and gents the great Sherlock, specialist in dramatic entrances."

John sniggers.

Sherlock does not respond. His eyes have flitted from the balding, red-faced man—Gregory Wainwright, director of the Henley and labeled as undoubtedly an idiot by one glance—to the five kids lying on the floor of the room.

His eyes keep coming back to the petite, dark-haired girl in the center. Her breaths are sharp and deliberately measured, and her body is slumped and slightly quivering—aftereffect of a rush of adrenaline, Sherlock recognizes. Despite the obvious signs of exhaustion, her lips are tugged up; she was amused by Lestrade's comment. Her very blue eyes—must be some trace of Iceland blood, he decides—surprise him with their sharpness as they return his gaze.

He barely hears the introductions made. To his annoyance, Wainwright soon recovers from the shock of newcomers and resumed his blabbering.

"Who are these children? Why weren't they evacuated? The fire security protocols should have killed them!" The man waves his hands at a blond girl. "Why aren't you dead?"

Lestrade and John share an incredulous look.

"Speak of bad timing," John says softly, glancing from Sherlock back to the director. Sherlock simply smirks.

"Keep searching the galleries!" the director yells. "Search them all!"

One of the guards steps in. "Sir, they're just kids."

Sherlock observes a smirk flit across the lips of the dark-haired girl.

"As much as I'd hate to agree with this twit, I do agree," the consulting detective says, jerking his chin toward Wainwright. His acute eyes sweep across the room and again stop at the perceptive gaze of the dark-haired girl.

"But they have absolutely nothing to do with the case!" Lestrade protests. "I thought we were looking for a bloke named Visily Romani?"

There is a challenge in the girl's eyes.

"Visily Romani is nothing but a name," Sherlock tells him. "These 'kids', as you call them, are quite real on the other hand. When everyone else filed out during the fire, they stayed purposefully."

He gestures to the bags and art materials scattered across the floor. "You'll notice that there are four blank canvases. But there are five easels and five children. Why is the number of canvases short, if these kids are supposedly painting for an art class?"

The girl has stopped smiling. Sherlock continues to watch her. There is a rare gleam in his eye. "The answer is that they are not just kids. They are in the center of all this, and I intend to find out how!"

"Did you steal the Angel?"

"No."

"But you did rob the Henley," Sherlock interjects. Katarina Bishop and W.W. Hale the Fifth sit across from him and John in the parlor of their flat in 221 Baker Street. No one has touched the tea Mrs. Hudson left on the table.

"Technically? No. Theoretically? Yes." Katarina sighs at the confusion on John's face. "It's…complicated."

"Try me," Sherlock says. He meets the girl's eyes.

The Hale scion glares. From the start, Sherlock noted his protectiveness around Katarina and the pair's complex exchange of looks. It took him half a second to deduct the boy was in love with her but too cautious to do anything about it. The girl was patiently waiting for him to make an advance, but was content with their friendship.

Pathetic, Sherlock decides. But not any more pathetic than love usually is.

The blue-eyed girl is still watching him. She is more observant than most people, definitely more than John and Lestrade.

"You're different," she blurts suddenly.

"As are you," Sherlock replies softly. She is so very interesting. It is refreshing, after his recent streak of cases that appeared promising and ended up incredibly boring.

There is a pause.

"I don't know where to start," the girl says cautiously.

"I know the feeling," John tells her gently. "Sherlock and I have been on some mind-boggling adventures, and it's very difficult to document them afterwards. My advice is to start from wherever makes you feel comfortable."

Katarina bites her lip and gives the boy next to her a sideways look. "Well, I guess it all started when Hale got me expelled from the Colgan School…"

"A family of criminals," John marvels for the fifth time. Sherlock wonders when he'll decide to stop being a parrot.

It is getting late. Katarina and W.W. Hale the Fifth left hours ago. But Sherlock and John are still up, the latter still trying to swallow the long story told to them.

John is shaking his head. "That is one brave and resourceful girl."

Sherlock does not answer.

The doctor gives his friend a look. "You liked her, didn't you?"

Sherlock looks out the window at the darkened streets below. Boring, he had called them. He does not think so anymore, but he does hate so much to change his first opinion.

"No," he says bluntly. "Stupid girl, why would anyone rob a museum by setting it on fire? It absolutely defies logic."

He points out seventeen flaws in Katarina Bishop's plan, but John simply smiles.

"What are you going to do?"

Sherlock has also been puzzling over the question. If he tells the bumbling idiot of a director what exactly had happened at the Henley, Katarina's father will be killed. If he doesn't, it means he will have to admit he had made a mistake in his judgment of the five kids.

His jaw clenches at the thought.

"Technically," John begins to say, before catching himself and giving a piss-off look to an amused Sherlock. "They didn't steal anything, so it isn't exactly immoral, per say, to hide some of the truth."

Sherlock gives his friend a look. John can be so dense sometimes.

A smile spreads over the doctor's face when he realizes what the real hurdle is. "Ah, your pride."

"My reputation," Sherlock corrects stiffly.

"No one would know," John argues. "I'm betting Wainwright and the guards have already forgotten about the kids."

"Of course they have," Sherlock says dismissively. "But Lestrade won't."

He mimics Lestrade's deep, sarcastic voice. "Wrong? The great Sherlock Holmes is wrong? The British government has collapsed! The world must be ending!"

John hides a smile. "Sherlock, he's your friend. He won't bring it up too much—"

He breaks off as Sherlock gives him another John-is-stupid look. "Alright, maybe he will. But it's not like you've never been wrong before. Remember Baskerville? You thought there was a psychoactive drug in the sugar?"

"Yes, yes, fine," Sherlock snaps. He waves his hands in a shoo motion as if that will erase his blunder away. "But this time I'm not wrong. Why should I have to pretend to be?"

His voice has become whiney, like a child begging for another cookie but knowing that he won't get one.

"To protect Kat, her family, and her friends," John reminded him.

"But Lestrade," Sherlock protests.

"Consider it your Christmas gift to him." John grins. "For not getting him any presents for the past eight Christmases."

Sherlock scowls, but he is relenting. He keeps remembering those observant blue eyes that are much like his own.

He thinks that if Katarina Bishop wanted to, she could have become the world's second consulting detective.

But of course, she has her own family business to run.

Author's Note: Basically, I got the idea for this fanfic when I was re-reading The Heist Society (yet again) for my Heist Society: Hale's POV fanfic, and the sentence "No one stopped to notice that there were five children. Five easels. Four blank canvases. No one was in the mood for counting" (259) caught my eye. All of a sudden, the thought "but SHERLOCK would have noticed" popped into my mind. I amused myself by thinking about Sherlock's reaction when Kat told him the truth (really, she should've just given him the book The Heist Society to read ;)).

I wasn't going to write it at first, because The Heist Society and Sherlock are a weird combination and I didn't think anyone would read it. But it kept on bugging me, so I caved in. The story flowed pretty easily, to my surprise, and I enjoyed writing it.