Magnum struggled against the duct tape that had been wrapped around his limbs. His arms had been bent behind his back, each hand cradling the opposite elbow, and tape wound around from elbow to wrist. His legs had been secured from his ankles to his knees, and he was distinctly uncomfortable. It was made worse by the pain in his back where a workman's boot, complete with steel toe cap, had slammed into him.

He had still tried to fight, surging backward and kicking out at the man in front of him. But a scream from Higgins, breathless and full of pain, had frozen him in place. A glance over had shown him she was on the ground, a man kneeling on her back and twisting her arm at a vicious angle, while the second man she'd been fighting was holding a knife at her throat.

The men Magnum had been fighting smirked and held up the duct tape. He had stood still, let them wrap him up like a sloppy gift, and then let them manhandle him into the trunk of their car.

The lid slammed, leaving him with the hope that, whoever these guys were, they would be happy to leave Higgins alone now they had him. He tried twisting and pulling his arms and legs, expecting the entire time to feel the engine start up.

Instead, he heard voices and stopped trying to get free in favor of trying to listen.

"...I'll just shoot him."

Well that didn't sound great. Were they warning Higgins not to try to follow them? He smirked into the darkness as he imagined her reaction to his being threatened; standing passively by and letting him be taken wasn't even in the top ten of possible responses.

The lid of the trunk opened again, and Magnum blinked at the brightness, eyes already feeling sensitive.

"Move." The voice was the same one that had threatened to shoot him.

Magnum wasn't too sure where he was meant to move and ended up simply squirming in place. Two hands reached into the trunk and gave him a shove. His breath left him as the sore spot on his back pressed hard against the back of the trunk, and he barely noticed when the sun was blocked out.

He noticed when someone was dropped into the trunk with him though. His head snapped up, and he had just enough time to see it was Higgins before the lid was slammed shut again.

"You okay?" he asked, feeling her shift slightly.

"I'm fine. Just incredibly annoyed." She sounded furious rather than simply annoyed, but Magnum didn't comment on it. He was feeling pretty angry himself.

They were silent for a few minutes, each trying to get free. The vibrations from the engine and the occasional shift as the car took a corner were making Magnum's back throb, and, after a while, he settled for simply moving himself to take the pressure off his back.

"Did you recognize any of them?" Higgins asked, after she had given up freeing herself too. She shifted again as she spoke, and Magnum wondered if she had been injured in the fight. There was nothing he could do about it though.

"The one who was pinning you looked familiar, but I can't place him." He'd been racking his brain, trying to remember where he had seen the guy's face. "Maybe we crossed paths with him at some point? That could be why this is happening."

Higgins just sighed and the conversation, such as it had been, petered out again. Magnum felt like sighing too. His arms and legs were starting to complain, and the temperature in the trunk was climbing rapidly.

"Can you swing your feet and kick out the lights?" They wouldn't be able to signal for help, but it might get some fresh air into the trunk. He tried to move his legs out of her way but could still feel her moving and really wished their kidnappers had invested in a bigger vehicle, one with enough room in the trunk for two adults.

Higgins' back brushed against his chest before she moved closer to the front of the trunk. Even with the small space between them, Magnum felt her shifting as she tried to line her feet up with the lights. There was a huff and then she moved again, pressing her back against his chest and then jerking her body. The dull thud was loud in the cramped space, and Magnum heard enough of the quickly cut-off curse to realize she must have slammed her foot into the metal of the trunk instead of the plastic housing of the lights.

"Sorry. I can't get the angle right." She was breathing a little heavily, and Magnum was uncomfortably aware of how warm he was and how hot wriggling about must have made her.

"We're bound to get wherever we're heading soon." He was trying to reassure himself as much as her; even after the short time they'd been trapped- he thought it had been maybe twenty minutes- the heat was starting to get a little too close to Korengal levels of warm for his taste.

Sweat was trickling over his neck, making his head twitch at the tickle of the drops moving. Beneath the duct tape, his skin was uncomfortably damp, and he thought he might be able to use that to his advantage. But trying to twist his arms and kick his legs just made him even hotter. And then his bent knees drove into Higgins, pulling a cry of pain from her.

"Sorry! Sorry, I forgot how close you were." To his relief she gave an amused huff.

"You forgot we had been dumped into a boot like poorly packed luggage?"

"I was thinking badly wrapped presents."

They both laughed a little, but it didn't last long. It was so warm that Magnum could actually taste the heat on the air as he breathed in, an odd metallic sort of taste that he knew was coming from the hot metal they were surrounded by. It didn't stop him thinking of blood though, and he had to fight down the urge to gag as the taste stuck in his throat.

"Magnum?" She sounded concerned.

"I'm okay." He really wasn't, but he suspected she wasn't either. His mind was running through the symptoms he could remember of heat stroke, and the way his head was pounding sounded a lot like one of them. The rolling nausea that was twisting his stomach fit in the list too, but he told himself it could just be because he was lying down in a moving vehicle.

Although… he tipped his head to the side and focused on pressing himself to the floor of the trunk.

"Has the engine stopped?"

"Yes. A few minutes ago." Higgins sounded exhausted, and Magnum felt concern spark in his gut where it mixed with the sickness. "I was hoping… they'd let us out."

She'd had to pause to take a breath halfway through the sentence.

"Higgy?"

"I'm not great with heat." She was trying to joke, he knew, but it fell flat. Magnum could feel the sweat running down his body and knew Higgins would be just as uncomfortable. He was starting to feel agitation prickling under his skin, like his body was itching to move, like his hands were desperate to tug at his clothes. The headache was starting to give way to an overwhelmingly dizziness, and he knew he was breathing heavily.

"I'm so dizzy," Higgins whispered, a rustling noise telling him she was shifting again.

"Try to lie still." Magnum knew how hard she would find it, his own knees were bending and his feet twitching even as he said it. Silence fell between them again, punctured by the sounds of their breathing. They were both panting slightly as their bodies fought to try to cool down.

"Are they trying to… to kill us?"

"I don't know. I hope… I hope not."

But there was no noise from outside. No voices, no footsteps, and certainly no click of the trunk lid being opened. No sign that they hadn't been left for dead.

Magnum heard Higgins swallow hard, and his stomach clenched in sympathy, sure that she was feeling the same rolling in her gut that he was.

'Once you stop sweating, that's when you need to worry.' It was Nuzo's voice. Magnum couldn't remember the circumstances that had led to his fellow SEAL giving him a breakdown of the stages of heat stroke and almost wished it hadn't happened. He thought he'd probably feel a bit better about things right now if he hadn't been so well informed.

'Seizures and then a coma,' came Nuzo's voice again. 'If you're still trapped then, it's pretty much over for you.' Magnum was sure Nuzo would never have sounded so cheerful about the prospect of them all dying and wondered if the subject had somehow come up while they were all drinking at some point. What on earth had they been talking about to get on to the subject of heat stroke?

It was probably Rick's fault. The man had a real gift for keeping a conversation going but it sometimes came at the cost of sensible topics. Many of their stranger conversations were entirely Rick's fault.

"Thomas?"

Huh? Was Nuzo ill? He sounded weak.

"You good?" Oh. His own voice sounded weak too. Maybe they were both ill? Were they in quarantine? Was that why he felt so hot and uncomfortable?

"I don't feel right at all."

Wait, no. That wasn't Nuzo. Magnum frowned and shook his head slightly. Higgins. It was Higgins. And they were stuck in the trunk of a car. He knew the confusion was a worrying sign but, without a way out, there was nothing he could do about it. He and Higgins both needed to cool down, and they desperately needed water.

"Maybe... we are meant… to die." Talking was hard. His throat was dry, and his lungs didn't seem able to support more than a few words. "Revenge…"

He couldn't keep talking. His eyes were drifting shut, and he wanted to say something else, to encourage Higgins to stay awake, but he was so tired. His mind was stuck on the fact that he felt dry. It was so hot; he should have been drenched with sweat, but his skin felt parched. There was a voice in his head telling him this was bad, telling him that he should be panicking, that he should be kicking his way out of the trunk somehow, grabbing Higgins and getting them out.

But thinking was such hard work, and he wasn't sure why being where they were was such a bad thing any longer.

…

"I can't believe it took so long to offer him a deal." Rick sounded angry, and T.C. was nodding in agreement. It had taken almost half an hour for the paperwork to be finished, offering reduced sentencing in exchange for information on the location of Magnum and Higgins.

The pair had stood and listened as the man had confessed to snatching the two P.I.s in the hopes of holding them for ransom.

"Anyone who casually drives around in a car like that must be worth a fortune," he'd explained when pressed for an explanation.

Katsumoto had managed to remain incredibly patient as he'd prised more information out of the man. "You're happy with the deal?" he'd asked as the man had twirled the pen. As soon as the signature was on the paper, he had leaned forward and his face had gone cold. "Where are they?"

"We left them in the parking lot of The Paradise Inn."

"You left them in the car?" The detective was obviously thinking of the bright sun and high temperatures.

When they'd heard the words "in the trunk," Rick and T.C. had gone running for Rick's Porsche, not bothering to slow down even as Katsumoto was calling after them. They heard him yell something about an ambulance, but they both felt like there was no time to waste. It was a scorching hot day and, even if the car had been left in the shade, they knew their friends would be in a bad way by now.

Rick was driving more like Magnum than he ever had before, and Katsumoto must have called patrol on their behalf because there was no way they could have avoided being pulled over for dangerously excessive speed otherwise. He wasn't even looking at reading on his speedometer, just focusing on coaxing every bit of speed out of the car that she had to give.

The parking lot was nearly half-full and the two men had to quickly drop their original plan of simply breaking into every car present. Instead, they sprinted to the office.

"One of those cars out there isn't registered to a room," T.C. snapped, hoping against hope that the kidnappers hadn't had the foresight to pay for a room. "We need to know which one." Whether the clerk was the helpful type or whether he was terrified of them he didn't know and didn't care. All he could think was how hot he was after running the length of the parking lot.

"That blue one," the clerk pointed, after a quick look at his computer. "It hasn't been here long…" but whatever he was saying was lost as T.C. turned and ran back outside.

Rick paused long enough to say, "If you've got any water here, bring it out." Then he took off after T.C. who was already halfway to the car.

As T.C. put his elbow to the window and shattered the glass, Rick ran to the trunk, ready to lift the lid as soon as T.C. pulled the release. The small click of the catch opening had barely sounded when he yanked the lid up, and he cursed at the sight of his friends, both trussed up with impossible amounts of duct tape, both red in the face, and both unconscious.

He grabbed Higgins, lifting her out as carefully as he could while still hurrying. He was dimly aware of the clerk hurrying up with his arms full of bottles of water and shouted at him to pour it over Higgins.

"Don't try and get her to drink; you'll kill her!" he snapped, already turning back to help T.C. with Magnum. He couldn't actually remember if making them drink was all that bad, but he wasn't willing to take any chances with their already shaky health.

He grabbed a bottle and handed it to T.C., then moved back to Higgins and pressed his fingers to her neck. Her heart was racing and he reached over to grab another bottle of water. As he did, the clerk jumped to his feet and took off back to the office. Rick didn't blame him, dragging unconscious people out of a trunk wasn't exactly normal for most people.

He looked up, shocked, as footsteps raced back toward them to see the clerk, that wonderful young man, was sprinting over with a pair of scissors. It took longer than they would have liked to get their friends' arms and legs free. And neither of them reacted in any way.

Rick checked Higgins' pulse again, hating the way it was racing and pounding beneath her skin. He glanced over to see T.C. looking worriedly at him.

"We need that ambulance." As he spoke, the sound of a siren came floating over to them, and they both heaved a sigh of sheer, mind-numbing relief. The clerk stood and ran to the edge of the parking lot, waving his hands frantically to signal the ambulance.

In short measure, the EMTs had taken various readings from both Magnum and Higgins and made the unusual decision to transport them both at the same time.

"They're pretty critical," the dark-haired one said, and if Rick had lied and said he was Higgins' brother in order to bypass HIPAA, well, sue him. "It'll take some time, but, as long as they're both pretty healthy, they should be okay."

There was no room for anyone to ride with them, but that was okay; getting them both to hospital was more important than someone else hopping in. And it meant Katsumoto could be updated.

T.C. called him as Rick pulled out of the parking lot, following the ambulance along the road.

"We got 'em. We're heading to St. Katherine's." Even without the call being on speaker, Rick could hear Katsumoto's sigh of relief and couldn't help but smile a little at the show of concern from the man who spent so much time insisting he didn't care at all.

"I'll meet you there. To take their statements." But that second part was added quickly and neither of them believed it.

Magnum and Higgins would wake up surrounded by the people who, whether they were willing to admit it in public or not, cared about them the most.