Bail jumpers were a pain. They were usually either innocent and panicking or guilty and stupid. If they were innocent, they usually ended up convincing Magnum to take their case. If they were guilty, there was a good chance of someone getting hurt. Higgins had pretty much decided their current target, awaiting trial for fraud, was in the 'guilty and stupid' camp. Magnum wasn't too sure he'd agree with her, but he wasn't about to argue with her either. She'd only recently accepted his offer to become his partner after dragging her feet for weeks, and he was still feeling a little unsure of the level of her commitment.

"Do you wanna try talking to his neighbors while I check out the apartment?" Magnum kept his voice casual, not wanting Higgins to think he was suggesting she wasn't capable of searching a small, one bedroom apartment. In fact, he had already tried talking to the other residents the previous day after being ordered away from the building by a uniformed officer, but most of them had shut their doors in his face, and he was hoping she would have better luck. He'd noticed people tended to listen to her, even if it was just to hear her accent, and she seemed adept at using people's interest to her advantage.

"Sure," she agreed easily, reaching out to pluck the list of residents' names out of his hands. She had managed to put it together ahead of his previous visit; he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know how. "I'll start at the other end of the hall. People there are less likely to have anything interesting to share than the people living closer." Secretly Magnum was glad she hadn't stuck around to watch him pick the lock on the apartment. Having her watching over his shoulder and offering advice was guaranteed to make his hands clumsy.

"Well, thank you so very much for your time, sir. I really do appreciate it." Higgins kept the smile plastered on her face until the door was shut, then let it drop with a sigh. So far, everyone she had spoken to had claimed not to know the slightest thing about 'that guy in 21C,' and she was starting to wonder if Magnum hadn't foisted the interviews off on her because he knew she wouldn't get anywhere. She was half-convinced it was his idea of a hazing her, and, if she was right, he was going to regret it. One door left to knock, and then she was going to give Magnum a piece of her mind.

She was just a few steps away when the world went crazy. A noise so loud it resonated in her chest and left her deafened. A force so strong it lifted her off her feet. Ringing in her ears. Flickering in her eyes. Breathe. Breathe. You can do it, just breathe.

It took a long time for Higgins to realise she had been thrown into the wall. Her entire body was complaining, but the worst was her chest, burning and aching with every breath her lungs forced her to pull in. No, wait, the worst was her head, spinning and throbbing like it was somehow too heavy and too light at the same time. No, no, the worst was her right arm, bent beneath her and twitching and… Stop it. That's not helpful. What happened?

The noise, the light, the shockwave. An explosion then. Something close by had gone boom in a big way. She quickly amended the thought. 'You're alive. It wasn't that big.' It had been close though. 'Just behind me,' she thought, trying to force her brain to remember where she was and what was beh-

Everything froze.

All the air left her body.

Magnum!

If the blast had come from behind her, then it had come from the flat of their target, and Magnum was…

She was on her feet before she even realised she was moving, the pain being pushed to the very back of her mind to be worried about later. She spun, one hand against the wall to keep her balance and took in the flames billowing out of what was the doorway of 21C. She could feel the heat of them, was choking on the smoke, her eyes stinging and throat burning. She thought she might have been calling for Magnum but couldn't hear her own voice over the pounding in her ears. She didn't even notice when the arms wrapped themselves around her.

It seemed oddly quiet. The EMT had been very concerned with things like her arm and her blood pressure, and she was cocooned in a blanket for some reason. The man who had pulled her out of the building was hanging around, as if he somehow felt responsible for her. There were two fire engines, some police cars, and, farther away, news vans were starting to arrive. It had only been a few minutes since the explosion, and she wondered idly how everything was happening so quickly.

But mostly she wondered what had happened to the noise. She had told the firefighters someone had been in the flat when it went up. The look they gave her told all she needed to know, and the sound had sort of drained away. There had been a banging sort of noise not long back, she was sure of it. Something like an ocean wave set to a heavy beat. What had that been? Couldn't have been the fire; flames crackled. Wasn't the fire alarm; that had been a bell. Emergency vehicles had sirens. Maybe the blast had damaged her ears?

It had certainly damaged her eyes. Magnum had been caught in the explosion, but she was watching him limp out of the alley in front of her.

How strange. There was no way anyone caught in that explosion had survived. The internal wall had cracked, and the external wall had been blown out entirely. Even SEALs weren't impervious to bomb blasts. She wished they were.

But he looked so real. He raised his hand to his head and rubbed at a spot above his ear, like something was hurting him there. It was oddly endearing somehow; she knew how strong he was, how capable he was of totally ignoring pain. Seeing him rubbing at a sore spot like a child made her heart ache. Of course her addled mind would provide her with such a realistic hallucination; Higgins was not one to do things by half measures.

One of the EMTs had stopped by him and seemed to be very curious about his limp. So, naturally, Magnum simply shook his head and…

Higgins blinked and felt herself snap back to reality with a jerk. Noise flooded her ears, she realised her eyes were still stinging and her arm was throbbing and there was a pain in her back that felt like it meant business. But the EMT was still talking to Magnum. Magnum was actually there. The blanket nearly tripped her as she scrambled out of the back of the ambulance, ignoring the calls of the startled medic who had been trying to do something clever with an alcohol swab.

"Magnum!" Wow, shouting hurt. But he had heard her and turned to face her with a relieved look, putting his hands on her shoulders as she reached him and looking at her with worried eyes.

She had to focus to make her body remember how to breathe.

"I didn't have time to warn anyone," he was saying. "There were only a few seconds left on the timer. I barely made it to the fire escape before the blast caught me. Pitched me clean over the rail. Hurt like crazy."

She was just watching his mouth move, hearing his voice but not taking in a single word. "I thought you were in there." She interrupted him mid-word, and he stopped talking. She missed the sound but felt a sudden surge of anger. "I thought you were in there." The repetition made her angrier; she had thought he was dead. She had felt the pain of knowing he was gone.

"You surprise me," broke in on her, Magnum's voice light and teasing, as if he knew all too well what she was feeling and how he needed to deal with her. It worked, the gentle tone soothing her battered nerves. "I didn't know you cared," and he gave a small smile as he said it that mollified the pointless anger.

"I'm just protecting my investment," she fired back, feeling more stable as the sarcasm leached into her voice. "After all, you still owe me a significant amount of money."