Pressure Makes Diamonds
Chapter 12
Steve knew what that glint meant. The scope of a sniper. He knew it as much as having a trained eye for spotting them, but also from being at the other end of that scope, another chapter from a past that was riddled with special skills that had saved his life and the lives of others. He deduced the direction in milliseconds and only had a fraction of that to react. The only person he cared about was Danny, he had to get him out of the line of fire as quickly as possible or at the very least deflect the shot somehow.
"Danny! Get down!" Steve yelled.
Danny heard Steve's warning then felt Wo Fat trying to jerk away from his grasp. His reflexes kicked in and he tightened his grip, trying to pull him and Wo Fat down to the ground. He saw Steve duck well. Just before he and Wo Fat fell, he heard an audible thump, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Adrenaline was surging through him and though saving Wo Fat would have been the last thing he would have wanted to do, instinct and training took him over and no matter how Wo Fat wanted to paint his participation in creating Five-0, Danny took pleasure in knowing that none of them had been tainted by that. He may want Wo Fat dead for the suffering he had caused, but in the end, he had followed the law and that was all that mattered to him.
Danny pushed Wo Fat off of him as he also watched Steve rise up, seemingly unharmed. He then realized that Wo Fat wasn't moving.
"Danny? You okay?" Steve asked.
"Yeh, I think so, but I don't think Wo Fat is," Danny said as he turned him over.
There, at his chest, was a bullet hole, blood spreading across it quickly. His face a blank stare, blood trickling from his mouth. Danny stood up next to Steve. They both looked down at Wo Fat's body as they were joined quickly by Chin and Kono. They had been monitoring from the wire Danny was wearing.
"What happened?" Kono asked.
"Looks like Wo Fat is dead," Steve said.
"Can't say that I'm sorry about that. Saved some tax payer time and money putting him through a trial," Danny said, suddenly feeling an ache in his side. He reached there and found it stinging. A soft hiss escaped his lips and went unnoticed.
Steve had a different thought.
"You have a face. What is it?" Danny said.
"This doesn't make any sense."
"What? Again with the not making sense? Last time you said that, you got locked in a bathroom on a ship by a fellow SEAL."
"I was right then, wasn't I?" Steve insisted. "Why would Wo Fat smile just before the shot?"
"He was smiling? Really? Well, I don't know, why does it matter?" Danny said as he grimaced again.
"It matters because I think he wasn't the intended target."
"Which means…" Danny said.
"It means that we were," Steve posited.
Danny then found the pain in his side getting worse. He finally looked down and saw blood there. Steve noticed and realized that Danny had been shot.
"Hey, hey, you've been hit."
"I'm okay," Danny said, but as the adrenaline left his system, the pain increased and he found himself curling into himself involuntarily, finding it hard to stay upright.
Steve and Chin supported him as he began to crumble to the ground, groaning. Kono whipped out her cell phone to call EMT. She couldn't help, but remember the last time she had watched Danny collapse to the ground and had to do the same exact thing. It brought up the same fear.
"Hold on, Danny. Help is on the way."
Danny just nodded, feeling his body quake and clench with pain, all he could do was groan. After just recovering from the Sarin, he didn't relish yet another stay in the hospital or telling both Rachel and Grace again. He hated worrying them, they had been through so much already, but as the pain worsened, he realized that once again, it was out of his control. Still, like before, he was surrounded by friends who would be there for him. They didn't need a title to be a team.
Off in the distance on the rooftop of a nearby abandoned building, Jenna Kaye was packing away a rifle.
TBC