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The police sirens echoed down the street, the sound shifting as it moved closer. For one moment, Danny hoped that the sound wouldn't move past his apartment building.
The sirens faded in to the distance and he realized that they weren't coming for him. It was unfortunate that the NYPD had no crystal ball and couldn't guess who was in need of help and that his telepathic abilities were non existent. He could've used a little bit of both right now.
Danny shivered against the cold that had taken control of his body. The building was too old to have central heating, which hadn't bothered him that much when he bought the place, because old had meant a lower price. Now it meant that he was freezing cold.
The bottle of vodka was right in front of him, mostly intact, but he didn't dare to drink any more of it. The alcohol would help him to keep warm, but he had an empty stomach and a cracked head. If he wanted to stand any chance against this guy, he would need all of his senses sharp.
His hands were resting against his lap, quietly working on the lacy bonds. They hadn't looked like much, but Danny didn't dare to put too much strength in to loosing them up, not while the killer was watching him closely.
While his fingers worked, Danny had been trying to figure his options. He was coming up short.
He had a weapon on the table, but with the killer holding the bomb's remote in his hand, Danny would never be able to move fast enough to stop him from pushing the button. He had a weapon on the drawer, but no way of moving there without causing the same effect.
Danny had debated with himself for some time about how much of what the killer was telling him could be taken seriously.
The black and white images in front of him were solid proof that his friends were working somewhere, with no idea that there was a bomb next to them; but he had to believe the killer's word that what he was seeing was in fact a bomb.
The remote in the man's hand seemed like the real deal, but he had to trust the killer's word that its signal would be strong enough to reach wherever the others were and detonate the bomb, if he didn't cooperate.
If he did as the killer wanted and actually grabbed the knife to kill himself, something he had no intention of doing, he'd still have to trust the killer's word that he would stop the bomb by using that same remote.
However, something that the other man had said had, weirdly enough, made Danny believe him. The killer had mentioned the word 'client'. He'd said that, by not cooperating, Danny would be ruining his client's revenge.
The CSI was dealing with a professional hit man and, strange as it would sound, these men had an odd sort of rules to which they obeyed. Danny could trust any other criminal to bluff and lie his way around any situation, but men who killed for money, hired guns, they had a reputation to maintain. They didn't bluff.
He needed some sort of advantage over the killer. In his mind, Danny went through his daily routine and what he knew about the routines of the people that lived in the surrounding apartments, searching for something that he would know in advance but the killer couldn't be aware. He couldn't remember anything of use.
His alarm clock, usually set to go off at six o'clock, would provide a nice noisy sound to distract the guy. Knowing that he wouldn't need to get up for work the next morning, Danny had turned it off the night before, so no help from there.
His next door neighbours, a Philippine young couple, usually got up around eight, when he was getting out, so they would still be asleep now. Even if they heard any weird noises coming from his apartment, Danny doubted that they would be coming knocking on his door.
In the apartment across from him lived an old lady, someone's granny. He could smell her baked cakes on the weekends. This early in the morning she would be home, getting ready to walk Fred, her dog, to the street. They had never talked before, but Danny knew that she was almost deaf, so no amount of noise would bring her here either.
He didn't knew who lived upstairs, just that whoever it was, they liked Queen and had no problem sharing their musical tastes with the rest of the building. But that was usually at night. In the morning Danny barely heard anything from there.
No one to knock at his door, no neighbour to notice if he was alive or dead inside his apartment. Being a guy who liked his privacy, that notion wouldn't've bothered him on any other day, but today, as a prisoner in his own house, it was slightly depressing.
To anyone looking from outside, the two men looked like they were playing a childish staring game, barely blinking, looking at each other.
"I have a question for you, Donauh," Danny broke both eye contact and the silence. "I'm guessing that's not your real name, but you don't mind, do you?"
Donauh sat back against his chair, a smile on his face, silent. His hands were playing with the bomb's remote but his pale eyes were fixed on his prey, analysing.
"Why kill six innocent people just to get to me?"
Danny looked at the clock hanging over the kitchen's door. It was shaped like a pizza, Flack's idea of a Christmas gift a few years ago. Ten minutes to six in the morning. He looked at the timer on the bomb. He had twenty five minutes to do something.
Another siren raced down the street. Danny realized that the man wouldn't answer.
"I mean, you were the sick bastard who killed all those bodies we found with the marks on the back, weren't you?"
The smirk on the killer's face was getting on his nerves, but Danny kept talking.
"Were they part of the deal, or just a means to an end? Because I go'ra tell you, that was one hell of a plan you had going on."
Instead of falling for Danny's chat, the killer seemed to be growing bored. He theatrically pointed to his watch.
"You're wasting time."
Danny paid him no attention.
"We fell for it like fucking idiots, didn't we?" He went on. His left wrist was almost free. "The whole FBI's guy comes to help with serial killer's case; just hours after we'd made the connection. You knew that we'd automatically accept your presence if multiple killings were involved, am I right?"
Donauh was still silent, but Danny could see that his words weren't being ignored anymore. The killer was trying to keep his MO a secret and Danny was laying it out for him in a way that was too close to reality.
"And the whole thing with the list and my name? Brilliant!" The CSI was on a roll now.
Despite the situation, it was pleasing to gather all the pieces and uncover the killer's plans.
"You knew that any rule-obeying boss would pull me off the case, even send me home after that connection was made, and you made sure that the connection was made, didn't you?"
Danny pulled at the bindings, feeling another inch give in.
"Good thing I have a short name, hum? Imagine being paid to kill a guy named Sheffield or Bruckheimer… you'd be busy for a month!"
"Always the cop, aren't you?" Donauh said. He knew the other man was up to something. He was, in fact, counting on it. From what he'd learned about the CSI man, he knew that he wouldn't give up easily.
"Either way this thing goes, you will soon be dead, and still you're trying to figure out what I did and didn't do."
"Professional flaw, I agree," Danny said with a shrug of his face. His left hand was almost free. "But still you can't blame a guy for trying to figure out why he's being killed, right? I mean, there is no way this has anything to do with what happened to officer Minhas."
The killer's curiosity spiked at that comment.
"How'd you figure that out? You didn't make a lot of friends when you killed another cop, Daniel. What makes you so sure that one of them didn't pay me to get you off the map?"
Danny felt that life couldn't get stranger than this. He was in his kitchen, explaining to his would- be- killer, how he'd planned his death.
"You killed Mills and Ramirez three days ago and for all of this to work, you'd been planning it for some time. Minhas was killed last week," he paused, setting on his face the affected look that he knew the other man would be expecting at the mention of the shooting. His left hand came free, "... you wouldn't have the time."
Donauh set the remote on the table and clapped his hands, congratulating the CSI's demonstration of logic. His usual victims weren't this much fun.
Danny made his move before the first clap of hands. Neither man heard the phone ringing in the living room.
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AN: Gary Sheffield and Jerry Bruckheimer are real persons, and I mean no offence to either by using their names on this portion of the story. Mr. Sheffield's one of the most well paid baseball players and his current team is the New York Yankees, so I figured Danny would know all about the man. Mr. Bruckheimer needs no introductions.