I must start this note with an apology for causing some confusion in the last chapter. As a new writer, I need to remember that the way I write things sometimes is rather ambiguous. I really should have made it clearer that Danny and Colby have been kidnapped, and not killed, as I now realize the chapter read them to be. But that's the best thing about posting my stories here - I'm learning from every review and suggestion, so thank you again for both.

I've now revised that chapter to show that Danny and Colby have been kidnapped. So with that all clarified, let's get on with finding out what's happened to them. Oh, and there's just a quick reference to one of my favourite Numb3rs episodes. Given where Colby is in this chapter, I thought it appropriate.

Calculated Risk - Chapter Five

Living By Numbers

For a stunned and bloodied body, consciousness returned slowly. Painfully, very painfully, slowly. Danny Williams had been through this before, of course. Halloween in Hoboken, 2002. And it had hurt like hell. With a brutally one sided attack thrown in for good measure this time, Honolulu 2011 was undoubtedly worse.

As his senses came back into full and nauseating focus, he dazedly ran through the familiar checks for damage. He could taste blood at the corner of his mouth, reminding him that he'd put up one hell of a fight. His ribs, too, had taken their share of Yakuza savagery. It turned each breath into agony, but… no. As his fingers probed gingerly down his sides, he felt solidness beneath the bruises. No breaks.

He still groaned, though when another, equally groggy voice confirmed his worst fears. Against impossible odds, he'd hoped that Colby had escaped Noshimuri's ambush. Sadly not.

"Danny? Hey, you with me, buddy? You okay?"

Still groaning as Colby helped him to sit up, Danny nodded while ruefully rubbing his neck.

"Damn tazers. When I get hold of the kid that zapped me, I'm gonna zap him where the sun doesn't shine."

"And I'll be right behind you, but I think that'll have to wait a while. We have to get out of here and find him first," Colby replied quietly, his frown deepening as movement beneath him fell into an unmistakeable deceleration. "We're on a boat. Moving fast when I came round, but I think we've stopped now."

"Yeah, that figures," Danny agreed, glancing around the small cabin that was now their prison. "If Noshimuri wants to dump us at sea, he'll want to get us there before Steve can find us."

When the response he'd been expecting didn't come, he turned back to find out why – as surprised as he was worried by the haunted expression that had settled in Colby's eyes. He'd only known him for a few hours, but Colby Granger didn't seem the type to get seasick.

"Damn, you look like I feel. Are you okay?"

Swallowing down the bile of his memories, Colby nodded through a shakily unconvincing smile.

"Yeah, just… just bad stuff, Danny. Memories I wish to God I didn't have."

No stranger himself to those blights on his psyche, Danny nodded, and stayed tactfully quiet. The detective in him craved for answers. The humanitarian in him realized this wasn't the time.

Besides, they had enough to deal with already. He and his new partner were in serious trouble. Their captors had taken their guns, and their phones. Denied them all obvious chance of rescue. Luckily this Jersey boy had a few tricks up his sleeve too. Well, not his sleeve. Judging by their untidy looseness, they'd searched them thoroughly too. In a late act of defiance, Danny lapped them carefully back up to his elbows. Yes, they'd kicked him into unconsciousness, but no-one messed with his clothes.

And just as he'd hoped, in their foolishly smug sense of superiority, they'd made a mistake. They'd left his tie alone. After all, what kind of weapon could anyone possibly hide in a flimsy strip of cloth?

As Colby himself was now stunned to discover, you could hide the difference between life and death – a thin strand of carefully sculpted metal that, in the right hands, could get you out of the tightest spot.

"I thought I knew every trick in the book, but… damn, that's a new one on me," he said at last, watching in relieved admiration as Danny crawled over to the door and set to work on its lock.

"Yeah, it'll be a new one for Steve too," Danny agreed, grinning back at him over his shoulders, before he sighed through a rueful shrug. "When I saw that ambush, I guessed what was coming. I figured if they were going to do to me what they did to Steve's sister… well, this might come in handy. So I put this wire into my tie, and hoped for the best. I mean, who thinks to look for a lockpicking wire in a tie?"

Happier now that he'd deceived their captors, and cheered further by Colby's approving laughter, Danny grinned back at him. Even in this dire situation, he couldn't resist a gentle dig at the partner, who, he knew, would be tearing Hawaii apart with his bare hands to find them.

"And you know Steve, he's like MacGyver sometimes. Just remind me to tell him that I used to watch it too."

"You got it," Colby chuckled, clearly impressed, and cheered even more by an unmistakeable click. "If you've got a life-raft in there, you'll make MacGyver McGarrett look like an amateur."

After what they'd been through, it was a welcome moment of humour that sealed a new friendship. They couldn't celebrate for long, though. Both of them knew they weren't out of this mess yet. Their captors could still be lying in wait for them, on the other side of a tiny crack of daylight.

Even when they made it, unchallenged, onto the deck, they were both still primed for attack. Just because they couldn't hear or see their captors didn't mean they weren't there, and… oh, hell. Oh, serious hell.

No wonder there was no-one around now to challenge or subdue them. Noshimuri had seen to that.

A bomb was strapped to the boat's controls, booby trapped against all attempts to defuse it. Inescapable death, counting out their lives in a 'tick' 'tick' 'tick' of relentlessly decreasing seconds.

Three hundred seconds. Two nine nine. Two nine eight. Or, in terrifyingly shorter time, less than five minutes.

Frozen for a fraction of one of those seconds, Colby and Danny then reached the same, instant decision – both diving into the water, and hitting for the distant shore as soon as their heads broke its surface.

Neither of them dared to look back, to work out how far they were from death. How close to safety. Every ounce of strength and concentration was focussed instead on speed. Smoothness. Rhythm. Making every kick of their legs, every pull of their arms count, in this desperate race for their lives.

Each one of them dragged them closer to safety. Pulled them further away from that deadly countdown. Two minutes down, three to go.

One hundred and eighty seconds.

One seven nine.

One seven eight.