Heist

AN: Yeah, I'm sorry. I've got projects and work bogging me down now, so my update time has been pushed to 'whenever the hell I get a spare few moments'. Here, some questions will be answered. Others I will continue to use as instruments of tyrannical abuse and torture that borderlines sociopathological disregard for human interests.

This is a slightly shorter chapter. Why? Because I figured it was fairer to upload a short chapter rather than make everyone wait much, much longer for a lengthier one.

Chapter Eight: Emelia

-0-

"No...no, no, you crazy bitch!" Danny choked, as he lifted his pistol and aimed for the crazy woman's eyes.

Emelia seized Steve by the shoulder, twisted an arm behind his back, and spun him around. Blood was pouring—not gushing, but definitely pouring from the gut wound at an astounding rate. The knife, still slick with red, was pressed firmly against the SEAL's throat, sharp edge threatening his jugular with the same cold rigidity she'd used to disarm him.

"Ah, ah, ah," she said placidly. This was no longer the innocent visage of a defenseless female, replaced by the face of a killer with no emotion. "Right now, it will take at least ten minutes for your friend to lose his grip on reality. After that, two or three minutes before his heart finally stops beating. If you'd prefer I increase the rate of blood loss exponentially..." She let that thought hang, with the slight curl of an empty smile on her lips.

Danny's gun hand trembled slightly as it sagged.

"Good boy. That's a good detective. Now, put your gun on the ground. Slowly."

Steve's half-lidded eyes bore into Danny's. Don't, the look said. Don't fall for this trick. She'll kill us both, and you know it.

Danny's mask had been pulled off during the scuffle with Philio Banco. It had only lasted seconds; of his two shots, only one skimmed Phil's shoulder. There was a brief manhandling fight, which Danny had been losing. One reason was his hundred and forty pounds versus Phil's two hundred and ten of pure muscle, but there were other factors. One of them was shaped like a bullet hole. If it hadn't been for Emelia, he might have had his neck snapped.

And every ounce of gratitude he'd felt was replaced with gut-twisting nausea.

"What...why are you doing this?" Danny implored, not relinquishing his grip on the gun but keeping it lowered. Non-threatening. "I mean, whose side are you on, lady? What the hell is wrong with you?"

The question seemed to have a tantalizing effect on Emelia. Maybe it fed her ego, or maybe she was just bat shit insane. Danny didn't care. He wanted to put a bullet between her eyes right now.

"It's nothing personal, lover man," she promised soothingly, side-glancing at Steve's face with an intoxicated, devilish look. "It's just who I am. Now that my brothers are dead, I'm so close to freedom, I can smell it. Taste it. I needed you alive at first, because you're a cop, and my big brother really. Hates. Cops." She licked her lips. Then she laughed. "I needed the distraction. You know, Kieuka darling, he was so soft, so yielding...as I cut into his face, his hands, then...his throat." She tapped the blade against Steve's jugular. "But you, you're very hard. You don't whimper. You just seek death and suffer in silence, letting all the walls fade away..."

Danny thought the name Kiekua sounded familiar. He didn't think about it for long. There was no time to waste; Steve was losing blood quickly, and there was no way he could risk a shot when he was being used as a shield. Not at this range.

"Honey, you can wait for him to die and then shoot me...or you can put down your gun, and I'll let you go," she said with a glistening smile.

"Danny," Steve rasped, his blanched face drenched with perspiration. "Shoot her. Just shoot her!"

Take the risk, his eyes ordered. We trust each other that much; take the damn risk!

But Danny just couldn't. Even if he'd wanted to, to risk witnessing a bullet meant for the Wicked Witch of the West entering and shattering his partner's skull, he just couldn't. His arms wouldn't lift anymore, the pain from the bullet graze he'd received was shutting down all power to those muscles. Little by little, his fingers unclasped from the hilt of the gun. Then it slipped loose and hit the dirt.

"Thank you," said Emelia. Suddenly, she let go of Steve's arm and gave him a rude shove. Her would-be captive hit the ground and rolled over, gasping for the air knocked from his lungs. With horror, Danny saw that the wound had torn open more. Blood was everywhere.

He was so distracted by Steve, Danny didn't notice that Emelia had grabbed the automatic from his best friend's belt and was now brandishing it at him. He was so numb at this point, exhausted, injured and resentful, that he simply stood there and accepted his fate. At least, maybe, she would kill him and then leave Steve alone. Kono and Chin couldn't be that far behind them—he knew his team—and they could still help Steve.

"It was hard," Emelia said matter-of-factly. As if she had just barely passed a high school exam. "To be honest. Seducing my former handler—the man who gained Philio's trust, enough to him straight to me. Spreading my real name around Honolulu, using myself as bait. Philio. Archie. Marco. They turned me into this—they trained me, like a dog, when all I wanted was to live with my mother. Then I was seven, and instead of my 'family', it was the FBI, and the government, and the secrets and the lies. It got so crazy, I felt like killing myself..."

A look of delirious tranquility came over her as she took a deep breath and let it out. "Then I realized...I didn't have to die. I could just kill everyone. My brothers. The agents. Tyler. Everyone responsible for what I am. If that's the price of freedom, who's to stop me? God?"

Danny stared at her placidly before turning his eyes over to the other member of Five-0. Steve lay prone, almost motionless, except for the rapid rise-fall of his chest. The corners of his partner's eyes burned, maybe even watered a little, and the overwhelming numbness began to thaw, revealing the furnace of hate that lie beneath.

"Why us?" he asked, feeling the rawness of his throat chafe with each word. "My partner and I have nothing to do with your sad little history, lady. We don't deserve to die—at least not for your twisted little vendetta!"

"You're right," she purred, and tucked a long strand of black hair behind her ear. "But sadly, the world isn't fair, detective. You've been free your whole life, and me? I'm just a girl who wants her turn."

Danny stood with his arms slightly apart from his body and hung his head a little, before saying, "I was supposed to pick up my eight-year-old daughter two hours ago."

That didn't give Emelia any pause, but she did tilt her head in a perverted version of understanding. "She and I have something in common, then. Neither of us will ever see our daddies ever again."

The gun went off. The bullet ripped into flesh, lung tissue, muscle, and finally lodged in the curved breast bone. Danny stood, completely unnerved, having expected this moment for a while now.

Ever since he saw an unmasked Tye slide silently out of the back of the parked van and sneak around the other side.

Emelia's body jerked forward, swayed, almost crumpling at the knees. Behind her, the well-built, undercover FBI agent Marcus Tyler swooped in to catch her gently, lowering her to the ground with one arm wrapped around her body. He jerked the gun from her hand and threw it away, making soft shushing sounds to the sputtering twenty-seven-year-old woman.

"Hey, hey," he whispered, cradling her minutely convulsing body. His free hand went to stroke the hair from her face, so spattered by the blood she was coughing up. "It's okay. It's okay, Emelia. It's all over now. Go back to the beach, sweetheart. I'll be right there, I prom—"

But Emelia was staring at nothing, her mouth open in a silent cry of shock.

Danny didn't need to see the rest. The crazy bitch was dead.

The only thing keeping him from sprinting was the fact that he'd lost blood, and a lot of it. So he stumbled instead, teetering over to where Steve was laying on his back. Instinctively, he reached out to touch either side of his partner's face, pivoting it back towards him.

"Hey, Steven. Stevey boy, look at me. You're all right, alright? Stop playing Candyland in there, Steve. Look at me! Hey!"

Steve's eyes blinked back at him slowly, and one of his hands went to firmly grip Danny's—which were now pressed against the deep stab wound in his abdomen, trying to stem the blood still seeping out. "You...you were shot," he said, barely more than a whisper.

"It's just a scratch, don't even think about it. I mean, later on, I'm going to sue you for how many times I end up shot as your partner, but right now? Shut up." Danny stretched one hand out to grab his discarded ski mask off the ground, and wedged that up against the wound. He ignored the grunt of pain this kindled from his partner.

Steve was staring at him. It scared the hell out of Danny, seeing the unbridled fear in those Great Wall of China piercing eyes. "Thought you were dead," he said, and swallowed his pain down hard. "All I could think was...Grace would never forgive me."

"Seriously, did I not just tell you to shut up?" Danny asked. No, no, no. This wasn't happening. "I'm not giving you mouth-to-mouth, you sick bastard. Is that what you want? Stay with me! Stay..." Fatigue and disbelief punched the air from his lungs, shutting off the rest of his words. "Stay with me," he panted. "Just stay...stay with me."

'Stay with me' became a steady mantra over the next few seconds. Seconds that, unfortunately, were not on his side. Steve's eyes closed against the harsh light, his jaw becoming slack, his body losing its rigidity.

Just as Danny heard a car engine behind him, a door slam shut, a distant, nonsensical shout that might as well have been underwater...Steve stopped breathing.

TBC

AN: There's a lot of explaining in the next chapter, for those of you who have questions that start with, "Wait, but I thought that..." or "I don't get why..." Actually, it's going to be a pretty long chapter. Can't give an estimate of when it will be online, though. Sorry again.