A/N: Short little three shot that wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. I'm not sure how I feel about it, so be sure to tell me what you think! Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: I am making no money from the writing of this story. I lifted the characters from Simon and Schuster (and, full disclosure, I lifted part of the premise from an episode of Psych.)

Frank Hardy groaned a little as he woke up feeling cold, stiff, and battered. His vision was blurry and his head was pounding, which he instantly identified as signs of a possible concussion. His hands, secured to the back legs of his chair with long swathes of duct tape, had lost all feeling. Judging from the angle of the sun streaming in through the dirty windows, he hadn't been out long, but the way the combination of shock and blood loss had him drifting in and out of consciousness was playing havoc with his sense of time.

His stomach roiled, and he took a few slow, deep breaths through his nose trying to calm it. He wasn't sure how much of the nausea was due to his injuries, and how much was due to the fact that he was sitting in the cabin of a boat, which he could feel rocking gently under him. This was concerning, because the last place he remembered being was behind the wheel of his car, being t-boned at an intersection. He grimaced. He really liked that car.

His eyelids were sticky and gritty with dried blood, and he guessed that the gash where he'd hit his head on the window had stopped bleeding, or at least slowed down. It was his leg he was worried about; he wasn't sure what kind of shrapnel had sliced his thigh open, but from the amount of blood still seeping up through the dark material of his jeans, he figured he'd probably nicked an artery. One of his captors had been kind enough to remove his belt and cinch it around his leg just above the wound, but even with the makeshift tourniquet, Frank knew that he was operating under some very serious time pressure.

There was a noise to his right, in the kitchen area, and Frank managed to open his blood-crusted eyes enough to see a man sitting at the counter. A small guy, older, wearing thick glasses and a look of grim concentration on his face. A sinking feeling came over Frank as he recognized the substance that the man was so carefully handling: a large, claylike lump of plastic explosive.

Frank had been in worse situations, but none were coming immediately to mind.

The fuzziness in his head meant that it took a few extra seconds to put the puzzle pieces together, but come together they did.

He waited for the old guy to lay down the lump of C-4 he was working with before speaking.

"Hey." His voice came out weak and raspy. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Hey. Thanks for the tourniquet."

"Welcome." The man answered gruffly, barely sparing him a glance.

"And..." Frank took a deep breath. "It's not that I don't appreciate it, but why didn't you just kill me?" It was definitely a dangerous line of questioning to get into, but in this situation, he didn't have the luxury of biding his time and waiting for an opening. If he didn't want to bleed out on the floor of some dirty houseboat, he had to force some kind of action to happen before he was too weak to do anything about it.

This time the man set down his tools and stood up, coming over to him. "We had a bug in the bank. Heard you asking about the drop ceilings in the vault and knew you'd figured it out. Had to get to you before you could tell anybody. Then Jake—" he seemed to realize his mistake and started over. "We figured that it might be a good idea to have a hostage, in case we don't get away clean."

Frank nodded. He'd known the guy had a partner, or, more likely, judging from his attitude, a boss. "So when you saw me leaving the bank alone, you saw your chance, hit my car, and brought me here." He wasn't sure whether to be grateful that Joe and Nancy hadn't been with him, to to curse his own stupidity for going to the bank to check out his theory alone.

"Yeah." the man said. "Sorry, kid, it's nothing personal. But everyone in Bayport knows the Hardy family. You were the last people we wanted sticking your nose into our business."

Frank managed a halfhearted smile. "Thanks." he said. "For what it's worth, your heist is pretty brilliant. Enter the vault through the ceiling by breaking into the office above, right? Blow open the floor, go through the drop ceiling, grab whatever you can, replace the ceiling panel on your way back up, and by the time security gets there you're gone without a trace. No one discovers the damage upstairs until people start coming in to work the next morning, and by that time you're already on the boat, halfway down the coast." The man looked grudgingly impressed that Frank had figured all this out. "If the bank manager hadn't gotten an anonymous tip that something was about to go down and brought us in to investigate, I think it would have gone without a hitch."

The man scowled. "It still will go without a hitch." He paused and reconsidered. "I mean, aside from you."

Frank shrugged as best he could with his hands still immobilized with duct tape. Even that slight movement made his leg throb in agony. "Joe could still figure it out. He's smarter than he gets credit for."

"Well, if he does, we have leverage." The man looked at him pointedly. "You think, if your brother has to make a choice between catching us and saving your life, he's gonna pick us?"

It was a fair point.

The man left the question hanging in the air as he went back to the counter and sat down, picking up a detonator and adjusting the wiring.

Frank felt the dizziness reclaiming him and struggled to focus on thinking of an escape plan. His instincts told him to keep the guy talking. The more he knew about what was happening, the better his chances of getting out of it alive. "That's... a lot of C-4 just to make a little hole in the floor." he observed mildly.

Again, the man looked grudgingly impressed with his observation. "It ain't all for the bank." His glasses magnified his dark, weaselly eyes, making it all the easier to see when his eyes flickered briefly to the cabin door.

Frank followed his gaze and immediately noticed the small hook attached to the door. A thin, nearly invisible piece of wire hung harmlessly from it, waiting only to be connected to a detonator and leaving Frank with no doubt that his captors intended to booby trap the cabin when they left to commit the heist. Even if someone did know where to find him, just opening the cabin door once the trip wire was in place would set off the C-4 charge. Even half of what the guy was using would be enough to blow the whole boat to smithereens.

Another wave of nausea hit him and he hunched over automatically, his head and leg protesting the movement in unison. Willing himself not to vomit, he stared at the floor until it passed. The cabin wasn't clean by a long shot, and the floor was littered with dirty footprints, fast food wrappers, and other miscellaneous debris. A scrap of pink paper caught his eye—a receipt for an arrangement of white lilies from a place called Green's Thumb Florist and Nursery. The idea of this wizened little explosives technician buying flowers seemed strange, but the name on the slip was Kenneth McGill. "Are you Ken?" he asked.

The man looked surprised and suspicious. "How'd you know?"

"Detective." Frank said with a pained smile.

Ken glared at him, finishing up with the plastic explosive. The smaller of the two bombs was laid gently in the bottom of a black duffel bag on the counter. He took the wire off the hook on the door and connected it to the larger bomb. The trap wasn't set, but it would only take moments to put it in place.

Frank watched as Ken washed his hands, meticulously cleaning any traces of the plastique from under his fingernails. Then he reached into his pocket, drew out a gold ring, and replaced it on his finger. A wedding band.

The careful way he treated the ring told Frank it meant a lot to him, and he doubted that the man who was preparing to flee the country would voluntarily leave his beloved wife behind... of course, coupled with the white lilies...

A crazy idea began to form in Frank's mind. His physical strength was waning rapidly. If he was going to get out of here, he needed to get a message out. He could try to convince Ken to let him make a call. Joe was out; Ken was already well-aware and suspicious of the Hardy family. But he hadn't indicated that he knew anything about Nancy, or that she was working with them. If Frank could get a message to her...

He would have to play his cards just right, play on Ken's weaknesses... like his dead wife.

"Ken..." Frank didn't have to work hard to fake the expression of pain and defeat that he wore. "Can I... I've got to ask you a favor."

Ken looked at him skeptically.

Frank sighed. "Look. I'm dead, okay? You and I both know that. I know your plan, I've seen your face. There's no way you and your partner are gonna let me go, and that's if I even survive until the heist," he nodded at his bloodied leg. "Which, honestly, I'm not feeling that optimistic about."

"What are you getting at?" Ken asked. "You want a last cigarette or something?"

"A phone call."

"Are you nuts?" Ken scoffed. "You think I'm just gonna let you call someone, probably your brother, and just lead them straight to us?"

"Not Joe." Frank said quickly, trying to sell this next part for all he was worth. "My girlfriend." Hopefully, his actual girlfriend Callie would forgive him for the little white lies he was about to tell. Better yet, maybe she'd never know.

One corner of Ken's lip twitched upward, whether in amusement or sympathy, Frank couldn't say. "Your girl, huh?"

"Yeah." Frank murmured. "Please. It wouldn't be for long. I'm not going to tell her where we are. Even if I knew I wouldn't tell her." He jerked his head at the homemade bomb sitting next to the door. "You think I want her walking into that?"

Ken looked thoughtful now. "What's she like?"

"She's... she's got blonde hair, but it's red in the sunlight. Blue eyes. Beautiful." Once he'd said that, there could be no doubt that he was talking about Nancy, not Callie, and he swallowed the guilt that came with the words. "But not the kind of beautiful where that's all that's important, you know? She's more than that; she's a genuinely good person, always trying to help people. She gets along great with my brother, which is easier said than done sometimes. She's brave, and curious, and adventurous, and funny. And smart. God, she's brilliant." The words to describe Nancy came easily. Too easily.

Ken was actually smiling. "She sounds like some kind of girl."

"She is." Frank said. "She's amazing, and I just... if this is it, I have to say goodbye to her." He watched Ken's face carefully as he made his final plea. "I just want to hear her voice one last time, you know?"

"I know." Ken said softly, and Frank knew he had him. "Fine." the older man said finally. "Just for a minute. And if you say anything I don't like, you'll be dead before I end the call."

"That's fair." Frank agreed, his mind already racing ahead, planning what he would tell her. When Ken turned away, he looked out the grimy window, trying to find any landmark that would signify his location.

Ken came back, Frank's cell phone in hand. "I'll dial." he said, still somewhat distrusting. "What's your girl's name?"

"Nancy." Again, that hot rush of guilt. But there was no time for feeling bad about the lie. Callie might be his girlfriend, but Nancy was the one who was working this case with him.

Ken scrolled through Frank's contacts until he found Nancy's name, then hit 'call' and held the phone to Frank's ear.

She picked up almost immediately. "Frank!"

He swallowed hard. Callie might be his girlfriend, but damn, did it feel good to hear Nancy's voice. "Hey Nan."

"'Hey Nan'?" Nancy repeated. "That's all you can say? You scared the hell out of us! Where are you?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Frank, we found your car and there was blood everywhere. What happened? Are you okay?"

"Listen, Nan, I can't answer any questions, so don't ask me any, all right? Just listen. I'm—I'm in some hot water. And this time... well, I think this is it for me."

"What? No!" The words came out sounding strangled, and Frank took half a second to feel guilty for telling her like that. "Frank, you're going to be fine. Just, just talk to me, please!"

Frank smiled into the phone. "Hey, Nan, you remember the first time we worked together? You flagged me down the minute you boarded that train, and I had to pretend not to recognize you because I was undercover. But we made a pretty good team, the two of us."

"The train?" Nancy repeated, but Frank continued before Ken could get suspicious.

"And what about the time we crashed the Sarconne U.N. dinner? And that time we went all the way to Egypt to see Senator Nasser speak at a banquet?"

"Frank..." There was a question in her voice, but she did as he said and didn't ask it. "Go on."

Frank opened his mouth, but Ken cut him off. "Hey, can the trip down memory lane." he hissed. "I said keep it short."

"I've always thought of you as my leading lady, you see." Frank said quickly. Ken was looking at him strangely now; hopefully he would attribute Frank's odd word choices and rambling to shock or the onset of delirium. "Missed you when you went on that trip. I was so afraid I was gonna blow it with you."

Ken was getting impatient now. "Just tell her you love her and say goodbye!"

"Nan, before I go, I just have to say one more thing." he said obediently, and then paused. If they both made it through this alive, this definitely had the potential to make things awkward between them in the future.

"Yes, Frank?" Nancy prompted softly.

"I love you."

He actually heard the sharp intake of her breath, could picture the surprise and embarrassment on her face. Before she could say anything else, he moved on. "I wish I could say I'll see you later, but—"

"Frank?" she cut him off quickly, breathlessly. "I think I... I love you too."

He blinked in surprise. His mouth dried up.

What?

"Um, goodbye, Nancy." It seemed painfully inadequate, but what else could he say?

"Wait! Fra—!"

Ken ended the call.