Chapter Text
Danny stared at his computer screen and debated buying the airline ticket. It’d been three months since he’d seen Grace. Too long. Distance and money were evil restrictions when it came to his daughter attending college on the mainland. Skype and weekly phone calls did little to ease the ache in his heart. He moved the mouse over the purchase icon.
Rapping knuckles on his door distracted him from blowing his savings. Danny waved Lou inside. “What’s up?”
Lou ambled over and took a seat in the chair opposite Danny’s desk. “Sorry for disturbing your brooding time.”
“I wasn’t brooding.”
“Yeah, you were.”
“No. I wasn’t.”
“Oh, okay.” Lou swiped a pen from Danny’s desk and started fiddling with it. “Would you prefer if I looked for some more feathers to line your empty nest?”
“Did you come in here for a reason? Or is your caseload not big enough?”
“All I’m saying is that I know a thing or two about children growing up and going to college.”
“I’m sorry, man. It’s just….” Danny bit his lip. Grace had opted to stay in California after getting a summer job. Charlie, Rachel, and Stan went to Europe to visit family. He had zero distractions. Work was the only thing that had helped pass the time. “Anyway. What’s going on?”
Lou looked like he wanted to press the issue but must’ve realized it was a lost cause. “I got a good tip from my CI about that string of robberies from Pearl. He thinks a major arms shipment is going down tomorrow.”
Finally, a break on that damn thing. During the last two months someone had been arming the Triads and Tongan Samoans with M5 assault rifles stolen from the base. Hundreds were still left accounted for.
“How solid is this lead?”
Danny hated to voice his skepticism, but the last time they followed a hot tip without much evidence, it didn’t pan out. And it was left to him to explain to the Captain how the Special Activities Division had wasted ten hours of labor.
“My man has never let me down.” Lou started twirling the pen between his fingers. “Same dude that helped us bring down that meth ring. He said he thinks whoever is running the weapons are using an abandoned laundry cleaners.”
“A cleaners?”
“Yeah, some commercial facility used for washing and pressing restaurant linen.”
The stolen weapons had been used in several homicides, including a shoot-out with HPD. Two officers had been sent to the hospital. The Captain was out for blood, making the case a high priority.
Gathering his stuff, Danny got up and snagged his pen back from Lou’s fingers. “Then let’s review the schematics and see about setting up surveillance.”
One of the perks of running the HPD’s Special Activities Division meant more access to resources and court judges willing to grant search warrants with minimum evidence. It helped that Danny’s team had a high success rate and good press. Although, he hoped the Captain would spring for larger office space one day. Remodeling HPD’s basement provided the needed room, but sunlight would be nice.
Too bad being HPD’s pet division didn’t erase the more mundane aspects of police work. After almost twenty years, Danny still lacked patience for surveillance. There’d been no movement outside the cleaners and no sign of life inside.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
“The power’s on,” Junior pointed out from the passenger seat. “For a place that’s been shut down for years, there’s no reason for electricity.”
It was night and Danny spotted overhead lights through the windows, but even with his binoculars he hadn’t seen any people. “There are no cars in the parking lot.” He continued tapping the steering wheel, hoping this wasn’t a big waste of time. “We could go inside and poke around.”
“But we don’t have any cause.”
Danny cupped his ear with his hand. “You don’t hear that?”
Junior stared at him in confusion. “Hear what?”
“A faint call for help.”
“Um…" Junior squirmed in his seat. Danny could practically see an internal fight play out across his face. “I…think I did hear something.”
Patting his partner on the shoulder, Danny opened the driver-side door. “We’ll break through those Navy rules yet.”
Don’t get him wrong; Danny believed in regulations. They were necessary to good police work and an orderly universe. But sometimes rules needed bending to get anything done.
Clicking on his com, he alerted the rest of the team. “Tani, Lou, we’re moving inside for a look-see.”
If anyone drove by the front of the cleaners, all they would see was peeling paint and smashed windows. The source for all the lights came from the rear, and the loading area showed signs of recent activity.
There were fresh tire tracks from vehicles peeling out at a fast rate of speed. Not to mention the back door was open.
Tani walked toward the entrance and pulled out her sidearm. “Lock’s been busted.”
Danny drew his Heckler & Koch; Lou followed suit. Junior took position on Danny’s right. All three waited on his signal.
Taking point, Danny pushed the door wide open with his foot.
The loading area was clear except for the occasional spider. Searching for signs of activity, the team started down a long hallway in a hunt of suspects.
Danny panned his flashlight around, the hair along his arms standing up. Something wasn’t right; he could feel it in his bones, but he couldn’t put a name to what was creeping him out.
“Hold up.” Junior crossed to the other side of the hallway, his flashlight shining down on the floor. Kneeling, he studied the ground. “I think this is blood.”
Danny gripped his weapon tighter. He spotted a few drops on the floor inches from a door.
“I think I’ve got more splatter on the wall,” Tani whispered.
The blood evidence was small, likely the result of a fight. Danny studied the door. A long metal bar used to keep it secure hung loosely from some brackets.
Lou muttered under his breath. Tani readied to breach the room on Danny’s signal. Junior took a position behind them and nodded.
Danny held out his hand and did a silent three count with his fingers.
Tani kicked open the door. “HPD!”
She slid to stop after only taking a few steps inside. The room was the size of a storage closet. Danny took in the scene and his blood ran cold.
There was nothing inside except a beat-up old cot that was shoved against the far wall. The thing was covered with a dirty sheet and had several pairs of leather restraints attached to the frame. Danny was nauseous at the sight.
Junior slipped on some gloves and bent down to examine the restraints. “These are used for wrists and ankles.”
“Damn,” Tani swore.
Swallowing against the bile in the back of his throat, Danny went back into the hallway. “We need to secure the rest of this place and get CSU in here.”
He led them down the rest of the corridor with renewed vigor. But there was no sign of life, nothing to indicate who had been kept prisoner. Then they reached the next door.
Danny walked inside a damp, cold room that looked like something out of a horror movie. The place was ransacked, broken boxes and random pieces of detritus scattered all over the ground. A wooden chair had been knocked over onto its side next to a drain in the middle of the cement floor.
But what drew Danny’s attention was a set of shackles that hung from the ceiling. He suppressed a fully body shiver.
Lou picked up the remains of an IV pole while stepping around empty saline bags. “This is nuts.”
“Careful where you walk, there’s broken syringes and busted vials all over the place,” Tani called out, her voice tight. She walked toward the smashed remains of a cabinet. “There’s more stuff in here.”
“Okay, okay, we’ve got….” What did they have? Danny surveyed the scene and took a deep breath. “We’ve got evidence of a kidnapping.”
“And torture,” Junior said under his breath.
“Stay focused,” Danny barked. They still had the rest of the building to secure. “Everyone on me. Let’s go.”
His heart pounded inside his eardrums as Danny exited the horror chamber in search of answers.
A dozen HPD vehicles and several units from CSU swarmed the cleaner’s back parking lot. Danny sipped on a bottle of water to calm his stomach while they roped everything off.
Eric walked out carrying several evidence bags. He barely glanced up at him, his steps hurried, features pinched. Tani followed on his heels, her expression drawn and pale.
“What?” Danny demanded.
“They, um…found this room.” She pulled back some hair that had fallen across her face. “It was all white, every inch of it.”
“A white room?” Danny’s mind flashed to the room with the syringes. “What else was in it?”
“Nothing. It was seriously painted all white.”
Danny wiped a hand over his face. “And the torture room?”
Tani grimaced at his description. “It looks like it was cleared-out in a hurry. Eric has all the vials and saline bags. And he took the whole chair with him. CSU was in the process of removing the cot from the closet room when I walked by. I was going to go back inside and start there.”
“No, I will. I need perspective.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I just need to….” Danny wanted to see what their victim saw. Feel what they felt. He cleared his throat. “Can you check-in with Eric? Keep me updated on what he finds.”
Tani wiped her hands up and down her arms. “There’s a lot to process, boss.”
Yeah. No kidding.
The tiny room could barely fit two people inside. It reeked of old sweat and piss. Disgusting, degrading conditions. The first thing Danny noticed was the only light was controlled by a switch outside the door. Curling and uncurling his fingers, he did a circle inside the cramped space.
How long had their victim been kept inside? With no sign of food or water, no idea of the passage of time, not a single item of comfort.
“Completely at the mercy of someone else,” he said out loud.
Danny scanned the floor, the walls, but there was no sign of additional blood. There was nothing. He sat cross-legged on the ground and closed his eyes. He listened to squawking of police walkie talkies and people moving around in the halls, imagined being restrained to some cot, cold and alone. No chance of rescue.
Sighing, he stood up and grabbed the door handle, then froze. On the inside of the door was a bunch of scratch marks. He pulled out his phone and took several pictures.
Tugging on a latex glove, he rubbed his fingers over the marks. “Maybe you were allowed some free time? Got to stretch your legs or something.”
Danny stroked the scratches, hoping maybe, just maybe, he would find out.
Danny stared at the large computer screen set up in the common area where the whole team could review cases. They had a mountain of evidence but no victim. Danny refused to think about searching for a body. No, his gut told him the victim was still out there. Alive. Waiting.
Junior walked over and glanced at the computer display. “Are those the marks you found on the inside of the door?”
“Yeah. I thought at first they were a bunch of random scratches, but there's a pattern.” Danny enlarged the image. “Long and short strokes.”
Junior stared at the screen in curiosity as Tani jogged over, out of breath. “We got the preliminary lab results back on the blood. It was from multiple sources, not just one. It supports your theory about a fight.”
“Anything else?” Danny asked.
“Eric said even with overtime it’s going to take days to go through everything. Turns out the saline bag actually contained saline. But there was a small bag that came back with trace amounts of Scopolamine as well as two other drugs that they were still trying to identify.”
Danny ran his hands through his hair. Did he just enter the Twilight Zone? “Are we really talking about what I think we are?”
“Truth serum,” Tani said. “Yeah, I don’t believe it, either.”
It didn’t surprise Danny, given what he’d seen with his own two eyes. But it still hit him hard.
“There is currently no drug proven to cause consistent or predictable enhancement of truth-telling,” Jerry said, joining them around the little table. “Subjects questioned under the influence of Scopolamine have been found to be suggestible. But U.S. courts have not accepted any truth drugs as a genuine means of obtaining reliable information.”
Danny stared at Jerry, who stared back, unapologetic. “Sorry. As soon as I learned about the scene, I knew you’d need my expertise.”
“You have expertise in interrogation techniques?” Junior asked.
“As much as you. Probably more.”
Junior crossed his arms in challenge.
But Danny wanted to know more. He brought up pictures of the white room on the large display for both Jerry and Junior to review. “So, this isn’t out of some sci-fi film?”
“I’m more familiar with things from SERE training,” Junior explained with a frown. “Prolonged exposure to loud music, painful restraining techniques. Water-boarding.”
Danny waved his hand. “Yeah, but not all-white rooms?”
“The use of white torture includes extreme sensory deprivation and isolation.” Jerry cleared his throat when everyone stared at him. “There are cases of Iran and North Korea using similar techniques on political prisoners.”
Before Danny could wrap his head around Jerry’s information, Junior made a huh sound under his breath.
Walking closer to the screen, Junior stared at the markings. Snapping his fingers, he turned around with a grin. “It’s Morse code.”
“You mean like S.O.S.?” Danny asked.
Junior buzzed with enthusiasm. “Exactly.”
“Don’t hold us in suspense,” Danny growled. “What does it say?”
“It’s the same five letters over and over again.” Junior squinted at the markings in confusion. “S.T.E.V.E.”
“Steve?” Danny repeated. “You think our vic was writing his name over and over again?”
“Maybe it’s the name of the person holding them captive,” Jerry suggested.
Danny’s gut told him otherwise and he always trusted his instincts. It their vic’s name. But why would anyone do that? What could cause a person to scribble their name on the back of a door in Morse code like some desperate anchor?
Glancing back at the screen, Danny whispered under his breath. “Where are you?”
Labs were backed up. Forensics was behind. This kidnapping case had such a mountain of evidence that Danny wasn’t sure which crime took priority.
It was after midnight. He’d sent everyone home, but his team remained so they would at least have a good starting point in the morning. Danny scoured through missing persons and recent kidnappings going back six months, but there wasn’t anyone with the name Steve. His stomach growled. It’d been hours since dinner.
A loud knock on his door drew his attention. Tani hurried inside. “Dude. Someone just tried to break into our crime scene.”
Danny stood so fast his chair almost tipped over. “What?”
“CSU had wrapped up for the night. They were waiting on Graveyard to come in when they caught someone trying to sneak in the side entrance.” Tani bounced up and down on her feet. “They didn’t catch the suspect, but they got their plates. Duke is waiting on us.”
What had they missed?
“I want the whole building flooded with emergency lighting,” Danny demanded. “I want to see every detail. Someone risked returning to a place crawling with cops and I want to know why.”
Danny stalked down each hallway, glaring into every corner. Bright light bathed the walls and floors, but it didn’t provide him with answers.
He stormed inside a small office, the room closest to where the suspect had exited. Danny had been inside the office during his previous search, but there hadn’t been anything remarkable inside. The crime lab had packed up the contents of the desk drawer and computer.
“Hey,” Lou called out. He was staring at the floor beside a set of file cabinets with his flashlight. “Over here. There’s a disturbance in the dust.”
Danny looked down at the floor and back up at set of empty file cabinets. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Using his shoulder, Danny moved the file cabinet out of the way to reveal a door hidden behind it.
Lou pulled out his weapon.
Slipping on a glove, Danny opened the door to a room with a security system and a row of monitors. “Bingo.”
“You know it’s almost two in the morning?” Lou asked him.
“I want to see what was so important to break back in here.” They had nothing. Every tape was on a two-hour loop and everything had been recorded over. Danny sat in a leather chair and looked at the controls for all twelve cameras. Camera eight had been shut-off. “Huh.”
“I know what you’re going through. There have been a lot of changes with the team in the last year,” said. “Chin moved to San Fran, Kono and Adam got married and went to L.A. We got a couple new pups on the team.”
“Did you just refer to Tani and Junior as puppies?”
“The five-year anniversary of the thing is next week.”
Danny almost broke the controls. He grit his teeth and moved his jaw back and forth. “I’m fine about that. And before you say it, I’m not going through a mid-life crisis.”
“I didn’t suggest you were. But brother, that’s a lot of change in twelve months. It’s a lot to take in.”
Camera eight had been stopped for a reason. Danny started rewinding it.
“Hey, there. Back it up some more,” Lou said, leaning on the back of the chair.
“Yeah, yeah, I saw it.” Danny’s palms started to sweat. There was a lot of commotion on the screen to track. Danny went back to the beginning of all the movement and hit play. He recognized the vantage angle. “This is the hallway in front of the storage closet with the cot.”
Lou leaned more heavily on the back of the chair Danny was sitting in as the footage played out. The quality of the film was a grainy black and white. However, there was no mistaking two men approaching the door, one of them carrying a tray of food. As soon as the bar was removed, the door busted open, hitting one of the men in the face.
Danny heard Junior walk into the room and stand on the other side of his chair. But Danny’s sole focus was on the blur of motion on the screen. Their victim, or Steve, punched the tray-carrying guy in the throat then grabbed the tray and slammed it into the second assailant, who had been popped in the head by the door.
And Danny watched as Steve fought off both captors with raw brutality then leaned against the wall in obvious pain or exhaustion. After a beat, he removed a weapon from one of his captors and limped down the hall, disappearing out of frame.
“He escaped?” Lou asked.
“This is the only camera where the film hasn’t been erased. Maybe they wanted to review it to see how their prisoner got free,” Danny speculated.
“Whoever he is, he’s trained,” Junior said.
“The images are so blurry; I couldn’t identify my neighbor from it,” Lou commented.
“Doesn’t change the fact that the guy can handle himself,” Junior remarked.
Danny really wanted to know what the guy looked like.
“I think I saw something in one of the later frames.” Junior rewound the film and paused after the first minute. “There. You can’t see the vic’s face, but it looks like he has some ink on his arms.”
Lou squinted at the screen. “Man, that’s not much to go on.”
Danny studied the frame. All he could make out was a pair of pants in a t-shirt, a tattoo peeking out over his arm. “Good work, Junior. We’ll take it with us and see if Jerry can enhance it.” He popped out the tape and stared at it, his thumb rubbing over the surface. “Maybe we’ll get something to help identify the victim.”
Lou nodded, but he had to know it was a long shot.
Danny slouched in the chair in thought. “This doesn’t add-up. Why abandon the building if he escaped? And why break in to steal poor security footage?”
“This gets creepier and creepier,” Lou muttered.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll add them to the pile to review. In the meantime, we keep processing. We have no idea if our vic escaped or was recaptured.” Danny stood up and gestured at Lou. “It was your confidential informant that started this whole chain reaction. You need to bring him in.”
“I can’t do that, man.”
“Yes, you can. I want to know what he knows. Confidentiality be damned.”
“That’s not how this works and you know it.”
Danny pulled himself straight and stood in front of Lou. “We have evidence of over a dozen felonies and freaking spy-shit. We need more information.”
Lou held out his hands in a calming manner. “Look. I’ll reach out to him. I promise. But you need to take a step back. You need to go home, eat something, and take a shower and sleep. You hear me? You need to recharge.”
Clutching the video tape, Danny shook his head. “No. I’ll recharge later. The clock’s ticking.”
He was going to find this guy.
Video tape was impossible to enhance. Even Jerry couldn’t work his magic to make any of the images any clearer. He could tell that the two guards and their vic were Caucasian.
After an hour of trying to clean it up, Danny wanted to throw his laptop out the window. Junior turned the main computer off and stood in front of it, arms crossed. Lou and Tani began turning off all the lights and Danny finally got the hint and went home.
His team had been right. Danny needed to sleep and get his head on straight. He wouldn’t be any good to his team if he was tired, and he wouldn’t be able to work the case if he missed an important clue.
Dragging his feet up his stairs, he opened the door to his apartment and was greeted by a wagging tail and the welcoming barks of Eddie. Danny’s somber mood evaporated a little at such enthusiasm.
“Hey, hey. I’m sorry for being so late.” Eddie ran circles around Danny’s legs as he tried to reach the kitchen. “Yeah, I know you’re hungry. I’m really sorry.”
He should have never gotten a dog. It was unfair. Eddie was a living creature and Danny was gone for long hours. Filling the bowl with food, Danny promised Eddie he’d do better, even though he knew it was a lie.
After heating up leftover pizza, he sunk down on his sofa and ate. Damn, he was famished.
After a minute, Eddie jumped up beside him and laid his chin on Danny’s lap, giving him comfort when he felt like he didn’t deserve it. Maybe he’d ask his neighbor to come over a few times to keep the pup company.
Why did he let Tani convince him to adopt? You need someone to snuggle with you at night. And then there was Junior’, he’ll be a really good listener. Like Danny was some pathetic, lonely hermit. At least they both had stopped trying to get him to go out on a date. Yeah, no. He had no desire to go there.
What he needed was to solve this case. Their victim was out there somewhere. If he’d really escaped, he would have shown up by now. People who used white rooms and shackles and fucking Scopolamine were evil. He hated his gut sometimes. Like now, because it was telling him victim was not hiding somewhere.
Why did he let himself be talked into going home?
Maybe he’d missed something. Pulling out his notepad, Danny pushed his plate aside, and began re-reading his case notes to see if he could gleam something. Anything to help.
Danny stood in front of the white wall, pressed his hands against the unforgiving surface. And wherever he looked all he saw was white. Like his eyes had been bleached out.
His heart started racing. The white started taking over, and he couldn’t tell how far away the walls were. They began moving away, then closing in. He reached out to touch them, but it felt like he was spinning. He clutched his ears, straining to hear something, anything, but all he was met with was deafening silence.
Sweating, he called out for help. But nothing came out of his throat. He started banging on the walls….
A ringing sound caused him to jerk awake. Blinking in the darkness, it took a second to realize he was still on his sofa and his cell phone was going off. He almost knocked it over, grabbing it. “Hello?”
“Danny. It’s Lou.”
“Yeah?” Danny started swinging his leg around, his heart still racing from the nightmare. “What is it?”
“I reached out to my CI. He said there’s this shipment we need to stop.”
“A shipment?” Anger flared in his chest. “Like the guns he told us we’d find in those cleaners?”
“Look, man, he was insistent. He said if we want to get to the bottom of what happened there, we need to get on this shit now.”
“I want him at HPD.”
“I know. But we only have like an hour if we want to track this shipment before he reaches the pier and gets loaded onto a freighter headed to China.”
“Shit. Okay, okay, tell me where to meet you.”
Danny was halfway into a pair of pants when he hung up.
Danny wasn’t sure what to expect from this operation, and Lord, he was starting to sound like Junior. But he was still surprised when he spotted a freaking caravan of SUVs escorting a U-Haul.
Lou’s CI had told them the route to expect. Junior consulted with SWAT about the best place to conduct an ambush, suggesting a blind curve leading to a bridge.
Junior picked perfect spots for their team. A gently sloping ridge overlooking the road. Danny laid flat in the grass on his stomach like some soldier on the battlefield. Junior lay beside him, primed and ready and totally in his element. It kind of freaked Danny out to see his quiet partner go all G.I. Joe, but Junior’s experience could only benefit the situation.
Tani and Lou set-up across from them on the opposite hill.
“This gives us the advantage,” Junior commented. “And if anything goes down, we’ll catch them in a cross-fire.”
Danny peered through his binoculars as Jerry’s voice filled the coms.
“The convoy is one minute out. Two SUVs are escorting the U-Haul and one is taking up the rear.”
“We’ll let the escort SUVs go under the bridge then spring the spikes to stop the U-Haul,” the SWAT captain informed them over the coms.
“We won’t engage unless fired upon,” Danny reiterated for anyone with itchy trigger-fingers.
Were their stolen weapons inside the convoy? Were those responsible for the torture room driving the SUVs?
Using surveillance cameras, Jerry kept them updated from a nearby van.
Junior tensed beside him. He kept his sniper rifle steady at the approaching vehicles. Danny checked his M5. It felt like they were about to go to war.
When the lead SUVs went under the bridge, SWAT threw out the spikes, blowing out the U-Haul’s tires.
Then all hell broke loose. Men poured out of the SUVs and began shooting. SWAT returned fire.
It felt like they’d been thrown in the middle of a battle. The sound of automatic fire filled the air. The SWAT commander yelled over the coms. Danny joined the fray, pressing forward.
Danny took out two guys as bullets whizzed by his head. Tani met him halfway, both reaching the road as they approached the U-Haul.
Panting, Danny inched toward the back of the truck. The driver-side flew open, but Junior took out the man before he got a shot off.
The firefight died down, most of the bad guys dead or running. Danny only had eyes on the rear truck door.
Tani covered him as Danny shouldered his rifle and pulled out his Heckler & Kotch. The back of the U-Haul didn’t even have a lock on it.
Taking a shuddering breath, he glanced at Tani. Training her weapon at the back of the van, she nodded for him to go.
Danny yanked up the scrolling lift door with one hand and trained his sidearm with the other. It took a second for his eyes to adjust, but he made out two figures. One was laid out on the floor just inches from the door; the other was standing over the body, ready to leap out.
“HPD! Put your head up where I can see them!”
Danny could hear his pulse pound.
The man froze. His chest heaved with every ragged breath and he stared at Danny like he was his only obstacle to freedom.
Danny made a show of lowering his weapon. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“Sir,” Junior warned over the coms.
“Everyone back off. Now!” Danny ordered. “Give us some space.”
Once SWAT moved out of sight, Danny holstered his weapon, telegraphing his moves.
“Are you sure about this?” Tani asked.
“Yeah. It’s good.”
Tani lowered her rifle and took several steps back but remained close and non-threatening.
Their victim did not relax; he scanned the area, his eyes darting around until his gaze landed on Danny. His shoulders tensed, and his hands remained out in front of him. It took Danny a second to realize they were tied at the wrists by a long piece of rope. Rage filled his veins, but it had no place in this situation.
“Hey, my name is Danny. What’s yours?” Nothing. Danny cleared his throat. “Is your name, Steve?”
“W-hat?”
“Are you, Steve?”
“Y-yes?” Steve answered, hesitant. He narrowed his eyes at Danny. “How do you know that?”
“You left me a clue in Morse code.”
Steve’s breath caught in his throat, his mouth slack-jawed in disbelief. It took everything in Danny’s power not to step forward and reassure Steve that his message had been found.
Steve’s arms trembled in earnest; his legs looked ready to buckle. It seemed only sheer willpower was keeping him upright.
“Look, you’re exhausted,” Danny coaxed. “Would it be all right if I helped you out of the truck?”
Steve began to sway, but he locked his knees in place. The amount of determination it required to keep standing impressed the hell out of Danny. Even with his hands tied in front of him, Danny was pretty sure Steve could take some of them out.
“It’s okay,” Danny said, speaking to Steve like he was a skittish animal.
Steve shuffled closer to the edge of the truck. Flinching at the sunlight, he held his hands in front of his eyes, before slowly lowering them again. Danny bit his lip. Bleeding cuts peppered one side of Steve’s forehead and his face was heavily bruised and swollen.
Danny held out his hands in supplication and inched closer. Steve’s nostrils flared, his breathing increasing. Danny froze, hesitant about his next move.
“Tell him to stand down, sir. He’s been in enemy hands for an unknown amount of time. He’s survived,” Junior instructed over the com. “Tell him he’s safe.”
Danny noted the filthy black cargo pants and the sleeveless olive t-shirt stained with dirt, sweat, and blood. “Steve, you did good work. It’s time to stand down. You’re home.”
Steve made a low, painful sound in the back of his throat. “I’m home?”
The uncertainty broke Danny’s heart. “Yeah, you’re home.” If he didn’t do anything Steve was going to collapse and hurt himself even more. “Come on, I promise I’ll stand by you, okay? I won’t leave until you’re secure.”
“Who…are you?”
“Danny.” He held his chin up and stood tall. “And I’m going to watch your six.”
Steve licked the blood-stained corners of his mouth. “Okay.”
Sighing in relief, Danny walked over. He was going to ask if he could cut those awful ropes when Steve took two steps forward and used Danny’s left shoulder for support as he tried to jump down.
Shit.
Steve lost his balance and slammed into him. Wrapping his arms around Steve, Danny struggled to keep them from both crashing to the ground. “Easy, easy. I got you.”
Danny went to his knees as he held Steve up. Steve leaned heavily on him until he was sitting on the ground, his breathing frayed and uneven. Jesus, the poor bastard wasn’t even wearing shoes.
Danny worked to untie the rope around Steve’s wrists, revealing inflamed, abraded skin. Steve’s battered face was only inches away from his, and despite a beard and all the signs of violence, Danny couldn’t help noticing how ridiculously attractive his eyes were. Eyes that watched Danny’s every move until Danny finally removed the rope.
“There.” Danny held onto Steve’s wrists and, even with the barest of touches, he could feel the heat emitting from them. “That better?”
“Yeah.” Steve took a stuttering breath and swallowed. “Thank you.”
It was like Steve had burned the last remaining spark of energy to secure his freedom because he just crumpled, losing consciousness.
“I need a medic!” Careful of Steve's head, Danny gently eased him to the ground. “I’ve got you, it’s okay, I’ve got you.”