Heist

AN: Some people are wondering about Steve whump. Don't worry. I'll whump when whump is within the acceptable whumpable whump window.

Whump.

Hee hee hee.

Chapter Six: Aftershave

-0-

The first blow stunned Steve, even though he had been expecting it in the back of his mind. The phone dropped from his hand, clattering to the floor. Pure muscle memory raised his left forearm to defend against the next incoming punch, barely knocking it aside before it could make contact. Then he was on his feet, and one of the most intense struggles he'd had in months began.

Phil's men raised their guns, but he made a gesture with a gloved hand. "No," he said deeply. "Just watch. This's gonna be good."

Tye was purposely herding Steve backwards with a series of quick jabs, which he avoided by ducking around a pillar and coming back up to swing at the masked man.

He killed Danny. Danny's dead because of him. The amount of pain he wanted to inflict on his opponent went beyond the humane; it went beyond everything he'd been trained to endure. This might be his only chance to get his hands on the bastard who pulled the trigger, since these guys were clearly walking straight into body bags.

Steve ducked under another wild swing, and then tackled Tye around the waist. They careened backwards until the robber's back slammed into the pillar where Danny had been shot. Steve's lip was bloody from a lucky punch, and he was certain he'd cracked Tye's nose, if not broken it. Tye's hands went up, and they were locked in two-way grapple.

"You're military, aren't you?" Tye grunted. He sounded inexplicably different, like a man having a casual bar brawl—not someone fighting his worst enemy in potentially fatal hand-to-hand combat.

"U.S. Navy SEAL, bitch," Steve snapped venomously. Of course he didn't have to know which branch of the military, but it had become a deep-driven habit to remind people he wasn't just a cop. Especially when Danny kept calling him an 'army' guy.

For the record, a girl scout could beat this guy up. You could say your name is Junior Cadette Susie Pierson from the Flower Brigade; I mean, what's the difference? Oh, wait, I know. One delivers delicious cookies, and the other picks up random, uncorroborated murder suspects and terrorizes them with his fists.

Dammit, Danno.

You're a guy who thinks 'concrete evidence' means smacking a guy's head on the sidewalk. Tell me I'm wrong. You can't, can you?

The past Steve had finally just cracked a smile, shook his head and pointed his cup of shave ice at his friend. You're not wrong, he'd said. You're not right, but you're not wrong.

A feeling of overwhelming loss wrenched that memory loose from Steve's mind. He headbutted his opponent before hooking his leg behind Tye's knee and pulling him down. They collapsed onto the marble floor, splitting apart—but Steve was fast, despite his sprained rib from earlier. He dove on top of his partner's killer and punched him. And punched him again. Tye grabbed his fist on the third punch and rolled them over, using his greater weight to pin him down.

"Your partner is alive," he whispered. Then he punched Steve across the face—and pulled it. There wasn't enough weight in the punch to knock a bird off its perch, but it would look just as real to his fellow gang members. "In about ten seconds, you're going to—" Punch. "—take my knife, and fake unconsciousness." Punch. "Emelia and I will do the rest."

Steve spat blood out of the side of his mouth, too involved in his own, personal vendetta to take anything this man had to say seriously. Before he could do anything drastic, however, Tye hauled him to his feet by the front of his shirt and slammed him face-first against the pillar; Steve's arm was twisted behind his back painfully at the same time.

But that was when something was pressed into his hand. Something small and metal—the promised pocket knife.

Whatever Steve thought of Tye evaporated in that instant.

So when his attacker seized a handful of his hair and smashed his head forward against the stone pillar, Steve squeezed his fist shut and dropped like a fly. The blow wasn't actually powerful enough to do more than sting horribly, but he acted like it damn near killed him. He fell in a limp heap, making sure the arm concealing the knife fell behind behind his back.

Somewhere across the lobby, someone began clapping their hands slowly. Then Phil laughed. A cold, satisfied laugh.

There were layers upon layers of things running through Steve's mind. One: Danny was alive. He wasn't ready to fully accept that until he had more proof, because he wasn't open to believing the word of who was supposed to be his murderer. Still, the possibility existed now where it hadn't before. His close encounter with Tye taught him more about the man than words could describe—he was definitely military, probably working with the CIA, FBI or even the local HPD. The only other explanation was, he was an ex-military rogue.

Rogues didn't help cops. This was an undercover job. It had to be.

Steve heard the familiar 'click' of Tye's pistol—the one he'd thought killed Danny—being cocked somewhere above his head. For a tense moment, he thought he'd been completely wrong, that Tye was just screwing with his mind out of spite—

"Wait!"

That was Alice's voice. The nice girl with the soft brown eyes and a surprisingly steady hand who had spent twenty minutes with Steve extracting a bullet from Kamekona's shoulder. The single person in the lobby, aside from Kamekona himself, who had ample opportunity to plant a cellphone on him. Suddenly, he could feel her presence behind his prone body. Delicate fingers carefully removed the knife from Steve's hand and tucked it into the waist of his pants. Then the same fingers slipped his shirt over the hidden blade, so it would stay that way.

"Just...stop," she said shakily, throwing her arms over Steve's torso. "I'll come quietly, Philio. I'll go! Just don't kill him, please! I love him!"

Steve couldn't see what was happening, but he guessed what Phil's face looked like right about now. He'd already figured out that Alice was the woman they were searching for—someone being chased by animals like these men had to be brave. And she was definitely not a coward.

"Emelia."

"Yes. Yes, I'm Emelia Susana Branco. I'm your sister," 'Alice' said desperately, with just enough emotion to make her act believable and not over-the-top. "I promise, I'll stop running. You can do whatever you want with me, Philio. Just don't hurt him anymore. Please!"

The sound of steady, heavy footsteps told Steve that Phil was walking closer to them. He was the only one of the 'robbers' who wore construction boots; with his added massive size, there was no mistaking it.

"Him?" Phil's voice raised significantly. Steve tensed his body, just in case things went south. "Him? You're in love with a cop? My little sister sleeps with a fucking cop?"

"If you kill him, I'll swear I'll fight you," Emelia said through her teeth. "I'll scream and yell; you'll have to drag me by my hair. But if you promise to let him live, I won't fight. You can take me home, Philio. I really do want to go home," she sobbed. Genuine sobs. Steve figured her desire to go home was probably the most real thing about her.

"Philio," said a voice from the bank's entrance, interrupting the reunion. Steve recognized it; it belonged to Phil's other brother, the one who had kept him calm when Archie and Tye left his sight. "Brother, they got the van coming at us now. What do we do?"

"Plane leaves with or without us, in like, thirty minutes," said Tye. "Bro, we gotta go right now. Let's just grab her and fly, man."

Emelia was clutching Steve's bicep hard enough to actually cause pain, and he thought there was something strangely hostile about that. She had every right to be nervous; their ploy could unravel at any second. It was a possessive grip, though, one that he'd felt only during interrogations by ruthless criminals who wanted answers. But then, that wasn't completely unexpected for a young woman who had been chased by a madman for who knew how long.

"There's a honey gettin' out of the van," Phil's other brother observed. "Damn, she's sexy. Wonder if those cops'll mind if we take her out for a spin."

"There's only room for one cop in my van," said Phil. "Archie, tie that pig-lying fucker up; we're taking him with us."

The hand on Steve's arm tightened even more, if that was possible. A lot of years of practiced self control kept him from making a sound, however. "Philio, you can't-"

"Oh, shut up, bitch. Your bo-bo's just comin' with us to the airport, after that, I swear I'll cut him loose myself. You gonna make this a problem?"

There was silence, aside from Emelia's shaky breathing.

"Y'hear that, my good customers?" Steve had a feeling that this was addressed to the remaining hostages, judging by Phil's condescending tone. "The rest of you, I don't care about. But I hope ya'll catch some Hepatitis A and B before you go home, just to remind you of all the sweetness we've shared."

He was leaving the hostages behind. That meant Kamekona was going to survive. Paramedics would be the first people through the doors after the SWAT team invaded. It was a load of pressure off of Steve's mind, which would have comforted him if not for the fact he was still in a great deal of trouble personally.

Steve was really starting to wish he could open his eyes, but he wasn't going to risk exposure by trying. Now he could hear movement from everywhere; all of Phil's men were abandoning their posts. Phil himself must have taken possession of Fausch's cellphone again, because the next thing Steve knew, he heard the faint sound of redial over speakerphone.

"This is a courtesy call," said Phil, sounding too close to Steve's position for comfort. "I'm just letting all you cops know that I'll be boarding my getaway vehicle now. And just so you all don't get any ideas about followin' us, or trying to shoot me or something, I'm taking this cop with me. Not the blonde, stupid one; we accidentally put three bullets in him. I mean the ugly one who fights like a girl. Thank you for alls your cooperation."

A muted beep announced the end of the phone call, so apparently Phil had no interest in what the 'cops' had to say.

All of a sudden, Steve was moving. A pair of surprisingly gentle (though definitely masculine) hands hooked him under the arms and pulled his limp weight upwards. A second person grabbed his other side, who Steve identified as Tye by his unwashed smell, which he'd gotten a good dose of just minutes earlier—

Wait a minute.

Aftershave.

It took a full minute for the smell to hit him, Steve was just so used to it. That smell was in Danny's car, in his office, overwhelming the Five-0 men's room on their busiest mornings when he brought his shaving kit into work. It was constantly on Danno himself, so Steve experienced that stupid, musky aftershave every day whether he liked it or not. When he'd opened his couch to his homeless partner, it took a week to air out his main floor bathroom to get rid of it. Nobody in Hawaii would be caught dead using Danny's brand, either, because frankly, one had to be a nose-dead city dweller just to stand the smell up close.

One of the men carrying him was wearing that aftershave.

Archie, who wasn't really Archie, and probably hadn't been since he came back from investigating the back rooms.

Steve scarcely registered the sensation of a coarse burlap hood being tugged over his face, nor the feeling of his hands being wrenched behind him and bound up with a zip tie. He didn't even have to pretend the limpness of his body as Tye and Smells-Like-Danny began to drag him across the lobby floor, closer and closer to the sunlit south entrance. A mixture of emotion washed over him, not quite relief, not exactly happiness, but a strong combination of both.

"I'm telling everyone at the HPD you cried like a baby this whole time," said the all-too-familiar, husky voice in his ear. He sounded pained, a little wheezy, but so utterly alive that his voice might as well have been an explosion in Steve's brain "And since I have friends there and you don't, they'll believe me and not you. Also, I hate you."

Steve McGarrett was bound, hooded, and being dragged to an unknown destination under the merciless supervision of half a dozen well-armed criminals.

And the grin on his face couldn't have been bigger.

TBC