Fic: Malasada's H5Obigbang chapter 1 part A
CHAPTER 1: Breaking Cover
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Part A
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When the shrill ringing of the phone pierced the otherwise tranquil peace of his apartment Bryce had turned his head towards the coffee table and glared at it. Across the room his brother was sitting at the kitchen table, the newspaper spread out before him and a beer in hand. He made no move to get the phone, instead looking to Bryce to see what he was going to do. Bryce frowned, mixed feelings of irritation and intrigue warring within until he finally decided that he might as well see what the guy wanted. No harm in answering even if it did interrupt a perfectly nice afternoon nap. He sat up and grabbed at the ringing phone, ignoring the multitude of other cells that sat beside it on the glass coffee table, and snapped it open with a practiced flip of the wrist.
“Yeah,” he didn’t bother with pleasantries, there was only one person who knew this particular phones number and Bryce couldn’t say he and his brother were overly impressed with the man right now. Even if he had paid them a pretty sum of money for what was an objectively easy job.
“Mr. Smith, I have some important business to discuss with you,” Bruce Hoffman announced, not sounding nearly as calm and collected as he had the first time he’d contacted them. Bryce waited a pointed moment before answering, letting the guy stew in his nerves.
“Mr. Hoffman,” he curled his lips in a smile, “I take it that the search for the tapes is not going well on your end.” It was a bit of a sore spot that he and his brother hadn’t found said tapes in either the car or at the targets home, but that was the way it sometimes worked out. Bryce generally didn’t care so long as he was paid in full by the end of the job.
“You know it isn’t otherwise I wouldn’t be contacting you,” Hoffman snapped and Bryce looked at his brother and shook his head. Clearly the housing commissioner had never expected to run into trouble in all the times he had blackmailed money out of people and he wasn’t handling the fallout gracefully. “I’ve run into a new problem that I need you to take care of.” He announced and Bryce flipped the phone onto speaker and laid it on the table. “The tapes have switched hands and I’m going to need an upgrade in your services.” Bryce frowned at this and Eric finally meandered over to plunk himself in the armchair beside him.
“What kind of upgrade are you talking about?” he pulled the beer from his brothers hand and took a swig, ignoring the glare he received in return.
“A man by the name of Daniel Williams has them now. I want him taken out.”
“Taken out?” Bryce glared at the phone in confusion, because he could honestly say he had not expected Hoffman, the perpetual white collar shark, to step up his game so drastically. There must be some kind of catch. “That’s a bold move, so I’m going to need you to be a little more specific just so I understand that we’re reading from the same book here.” There was something about the name, Danny Williams, which sounded familiar. Then his brother reached forward and grabbed the pen and pad of paper they always kept on the table and began scribbling.
“I want you to kill him and, if it’s still possible, recover the tapes he has taken. Is that clear enough for you?” their possible repeat customer growled over the line just as Eric slid his message in front of Bryce and jabbed at it with the pen. Bryce frowned.
“He’s Stan Edward’s wife’s ex-husband and the father of their little girl,” he said, but something still wasn’t adding up.
“Yes, congratulations on being competent enough to do your research. Now are you in or are you out, because I need this finished sooner rather than later.”
“That’s not how it works Hoffman. A little auto theft at gun point and some B and E is no problem, but if you want to step up to assassination then you had better be prepared to pay the price.” There was a long silence on the other end of the line and Bryce was just about to hang up, figuring the moron had gotten cold feet, when the guy finally spoke again, sounding more strained then ever.
“Five hundred thousand. I’ll pay half up front and the other half once the job is complete.” Holy shit. That certainly got his brother’s attention, and he sat forward with a hard look on his face.
“What aren’t you telling us?” Eric asked, his voice rough from not having spoken yet this day.
“You’ve got everything you need to know to make a decision,” Hoffman snapped, anger beginning to overtake his nerves but Eric wasn’t having that and, frankly, neither was Bryce.
“No, you’re leaving something out. You want this Williams guy dead, that’s fine, but five hundred? That’s a hefty bill for a nobody who grabbed a couple career ending tapes, so I want to know what the price is compensating for and if you don’t want to share up front then we walk.” There was another long pause, but Bryce had figured out by now that Hoffman was pretty damn desperate, at the point where he was probably finished in the free world whether he followed through on the hit or not. Desperate men did desperate things and Bryce and his brother had no problem capitalizing on that, but they didn’t do things blind; that tended to get you killed.
“He’s a cop,” Hoffman finally fessed up, and wasn’t that the kicker. “He’s been here just over two years and he’s threatened to blow my whole operation open. I want him six feet under before he has the chance to blow the whistle. Now are you in or out, because I don’t have time to play around here,” Hoffman was back to talking tough but Bryce ignored it, focusing instead on his brother, who was frowning in thought.
A cop. They’d killed a few guys in their time, more to settle disputes than anything else, but they had never stretched over to taking out a man in blue. On one hand if they did it and got caught the chances of them surviving either the arrest or the first few months in prison were slim to none. On the other hand if they didn’t get caught it would be the boost their underground reputation needed to step up into a higher class of the criminal world. Five hundred thousand could become a more frequent paycheck if they played their cards right.
It was a risky chance. But still, the money was pretty damn good incentive as well. After another moment of staring Eric nodded in agreement and Bryce smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.
“We want seven hundred,” he decided and there was a moment of outraged spluttering on the other end of the line before Hoffman agreed, which only made Bryce grin even more. Clearly this guy was both desperate and an amateur, because Eric and he would probably have taken this job for one hell of a lot less than the initial offer. “Get rid of that phone, we’ll have a new one in your inbox at the office by tomorrow morning. We expect the first half of the funds to be delivered by the end of the day, the second half delivered after the job is complete.”
“I’ll send it to the same account as before,” he agreed and a quick look at Eric told Bryce that that was fine for now. They’d transfer the money into their second offshore account as soon as the job was done.
“Agreed.” He ended the call and looked at his brother. “Danny Williams, huh? Shouldn’t be too hard to track down.”
“I want to swing it to look like it happened while he’s on the job,” Eric said, flipping the pen between his fingers. “If he’s a straight up cop then he’s probably already submitted the tapes as evidence against Hoffman. I’d say Hoffman’s trying to just keep him from testifying at this point so if we finish it up within a few days we can still get the full payment before his accounts are frozen.”
“Agreed. I’ll see what I can find,” Bryce stood and stretched, cracked his neck, and went to work. Turned out he only had to make one call to figure out that Williams was part of that new crack team that had been taking out some of the island’s bigger players in the last year or so. It hadn’t been hard to figure out that they were currently working on busting Nelson’s gang for running guns between the islands. Nelson was an idiot, and one of his thugs had attacked Bryce’s good friend’s little sister only the month before. He had no problem making an anonymous tip to crime stoppers, leaking the location of his main supply warehouse and hinting that there might be a shipment of weapons there at the moment.
All he and Eric would have to do at that point was follow the dream team from a discreet distance and wait until the judge finally signed the warrant on the raid.
Simple. =====
Somehow he should have known when he’d awoken that morning that his day was going to turn as rotten as the pineapple Grace had gifted him with four weeks ago. It had just been another ordinary morning in his not so very ordinary life and he’d been okay with that. Thrilled in fact, because normal mornings meant that it should have been business as usual: go to work, rile Steve up, let Steve aggravate him with his usual unrestrained ways, shoot the shit with Chin and Kono, do a boat load of paperwork, catch some criminals, try and prevent Steve from throwing said criminals out of helicopters under the guise of interrogation, and maybe grab something to eat in between.
A good, typical day at work.
There hadn’t been any warning signs, any ominous indicators, the sun had been shining, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and by six am the air had already made good headway into its usual hot and humid overbearingness. Normal. So it stood to reason that he hadn’t been expecting his day to turn to crap in such a spectacular fashion. In hindsight that had probably been the biggest warning factor of all.
The crowd on the busy boardwalk flowed by them like water in a riverbed, rushing forward with enthusiastic momentum until they approached the apparent boulder that Danny and his team represented and adjusting their course to swiftly flow past with a decent berth. Tourists and locals alike somehow instinctively knew not to get too close. Danny watched this with mixed feelings as he eyed a man proudly wearing a truly horrendous orange, yellow and purple flowered shirt and manfully suppressed a shudder.
“Hawaiian shirts,” he muttered with disdain, “yet another abomination this state has polluted the world with.” He ignored the snort of amusement from Kono by pointedly eating a scoop of his blue shave ice and shifting on his feet. She rolled her eyes at him and pointedly looked towards the beach, doing a decent job of pretending she was interested in a loose game of volleyball. Beside her Chin was slouched against the railing, one foot casually resting on a well placed rock as he sipped at his bottle of water and pointedly ignored the group of young women (the very women who had been the reason for the men to start their game of volleyball over on the beach) who kept sending him come hither grins.
Overall Danny figured they were doing a pretty decent job of blending in with the crowd, which was actually not that difficult to do when the other three members of his team oozed the aura of belonging from their every pore. His contentment at the thought wavered some when Steve, who took casual to an entirely new level as he slouched in his cargo’s and form-fitting t-shirt on Danny’s right, sharply jabbed his elbow into Danny’s ribs and glanced his way.
“Look sharp Danny, you’ve attracted a tourist,” he announced with a look that said he was both bemused and annoyed. Danny forced his posture to remain relaxed as he absorbed the warning and looked around. Damn it, this was not what he needed.
“I’m telling you brah, if you loose the tie they won’t flock to you like lost ships searching for a fellow foreign beacon,” Chin mumbled, humour in his voice even as he tensed slightly on Danny’s other side, and smoothly capped his water bottle. Danny’s ingrained sense of professionalism bristled at the teasing.
“Last I checked Hawaii was still a state which makes me as much of a countryman as you and furthermore the tie has nothing to do with attracting tourists. My general aura of competence is what draws them in,” he snapped back and then finally sighted the tourist Steve had noticed. She was an older woman who seemed to be having no difficulties as she plowed through the crowd with an expression of determination on her face. She boldly walked right at them, dragging a young child in her wake that looked rather put-upon to being yanked around. Her head was tilted slightly, her big eyes squinting from beneath her bright yellow and green visor and true enough her gaze was locked on him like a missile targeting system. It was then that he registered what she looked like and recognition slammed into him with enough force that the breakfast he’d eaten that morning transformed into a vicious ball of acid in his stomach.
“Shit,” he swore darkly and only realized he’d said anything aloud when his teammates visually shifted from easy going to DEFCON one in a heartbeat. He watched her approach with dread and forced his posture to remain relaxed with every step that brought her closer, praying that she hadn’t actually recognized him despite her very driven approach.
“Down children, she’s harmless,” he warned softly, ignoring the questioning look Steve was giving him even as they followed his lead and readopted their easygoing casualness just as she pulled to a stop before him. Danny doubted it would have mattered how relaxed his team appeared in that moment as all her attention was focused solely on him. He resisted the urge to turn tail and run, his whole body flooding with a chill that had no place under the oppressive heat of the day.
“Oh my, it is you!” She exclaimed joyfully and he barely refrained from cringing. “Why, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” she braced her hands on her generous hips and met his eyes with a big toothy grin before looking him quickly up and down. “Little Daniel! My, I think you’re still the same height you were the last time I saw you. Though I will say, you have filled out nicely,” she enthused with an exuberance that he remembered like it was yesterday. He couldn’t begin to describe how glad he was that she didn’t try to hug him.
“Mrs. Rickwood,” he nodded at her politely and ignored Steve’s amused smirk at her blatant dig at his height. He could deal with that kind of ribbing, what he didn’t want to deal with were the possible ramifications of the conversation about to take place. And there would be ramifications, a whole train load of them he was sure.
“Oh come now, we’re all adults here! You can call me Jenny,” she swiftly insisted and he tried on a thin smile for appearances sake. She cast a quick glance at the rest of the team as though noticing them for the first time before focusing upon him again with that same relentlessness he remembered as a child. “Sam and I just rolled in yesterday afternoon,” she offered without prompting, “the kids sprung this surprise trip on us for our anniversary and I just about died,” she fanned herself with a well-manicured hand and Danny looked down at the child that was staring up at Chin with unblinking eyes. He quickly looked back at Mrs. Rickwood. “But enough about me, how long are you in this delightful paradise for? Are you hear on a work related trip?” She looked at his tie briefly and if Danny hadn’t been so sick inside he would have shot Steve a dirty look for the indelicate snort he let loose.
“I’m here indefinitely,” he answered shortly, hoping she’d take the hint and be on her way, which of course she didn’t if her lighthearted chuckle was anything to go by.
“Oh, you haven’t changed much,” she enthused. “He was always a quiet little thing as a boy. I could barely get two sentences out of him in an entire week,” she added with a conspiratorial wink at Kono before his words finally seemed to register in her excited little mind. “Indefinitely? You mean to say you live here now? You must have done something right in your life to manage this.”
“I moved,” he nearly growled and crossed his arms tightly over his chest, coming dangerously close to spilling shave ice all down his shirt. “Wasn’t that hard.”
“I suppose not, but it is nice to see you looking so well after everything. Sam and I had worried about where you might have gone after you left our care. Broke our heart it did but there wasn’t much we could do about it at the time, what with how The System works.” He very nearly crushed the frigid cup in his hand. She meant well, he knew she did but her words, her complete lack of tact, hell her entire existence grated him the wrong way and sent his nerves into overdrive.
“This is Jillian,” she beamed and reached out for the kid that, by that moment, had moved on to staring up at Steve with wonder. “Martin’s little girl and my granddaughter,” she introduced proudly. Danny was really happy for her, seriously, he was just tickled all kinds of thrilled. He wanted to pull away from this entire conversation but the damn railing was at his back and he was hedged in by his teammates who had stopped looking so amused several words back and were now giving him looks that were at different stages of figuring out how exactly not happy Danny was at that precise moment.
“She’s beautiful,” he managed, because it was true and he pulled a brief smile out just for Jillian before looking back to Mrs. Rickwood, who finally seemed to be letting her brain catch up with her mouth if her slightly widening eyes were any indication. He could see the moment she finally recognized that maybe he wasn’t as enthusiastic about this meeting as she was, which might be unfair of him but he was only human and he was sure she’d get over it. She had before.
“Well, it is lovely to know you’re safe and happy,” she nodded knowingly, as if she had any idea about his life whatsoever. He didn’t even bother to respond to that, just nodded tightly in agreement and willed her to move on already. “I do hope you keep taking such good care of yourself. Sam will be glad to know how well you’re doing,” she announced, her gaze roaming to Steve, who must have been wearing a fierce expression because she was gone seconds later, dragging Jillian behind her and glancing over her shoulder at them no less than three times as she went.
Danny did not deflate in relief at her retreat; he remained frozen in place as he prepared for the impact of this piece of his past finally mixing with his present. It was a long moment of tense silence while he refused to look at his teammates, but he could feel them exchanging a silent conversation around him. Finally Steve took another spoon from what remained of his shaved ice, no doubt fortifying his courage, before sidling slightly closer so that his elbow brushed against Danny’s.
“So…that was Mrs. Rickwood,” he started with the most obvious thing in the world and Danny’s sudden headache intensified ten fold. He wanted to go hide under a rock a pretend that this had not just happened.
“You heard that, did you? How observant,” he snapped. He couldn’t help it, but Steve was more than versed to his temper by now and completely ignored both Danny’s tone and silent warning to leave it alone.
“Mrs. Rickwood from the system,” he announced carefully, “as in the foster system?” And there went another part of his carefully obscured past up in smoke. Poof. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose before figuring to hell with it! He liked to keep his private life private, who didn’t? But the cat was out of the bag and now he needed to focus on damage control. Damage control in the sense of answering questions in a way that would not have his team of highly intelligent, inquisitive, and resourceful individuals trying to dig up more of his history than he wanted aired. Some things were meant to remain in the dark.
“Yes, as in the foster system,” he shook his head and unclenched his arms before looking to Steve and then Chin and Kono in turn. They all had these ridiculous looks on their faces, like they didn’t know if they should be supportive or just drop the subject altogether. It would be sweet, if he was a teenage girl and her first boyfriend had just dumped her on the day of prom. “As in the foster system that I was a part of for the majority of my elder childhood years,” he explained and at their pained expressions he grew irritated. “Look, can we stop with the faces and the empathy and just leave it at this?”
“Who’s Rickwood?” Steve ignored his plea, as expected, and Danny glared up at him with irritation that was mostly based on his inability to refuse answering any of Steve’s questions, ever. The man’s piercing gaze just ripped answers from him. It was unholy.
“She was my first foster family. I stayed with her for about half a year.” He tried to hide the bitterness in his tone, but at the sharp look the SEAL was giving him he hadn’t done a very good job of it.
“And Martin?” Steve persisted, just like he always did when he wanted to know something, and of course Danny would answer, because apparently in the last year and a bit that he’d been the guys partner he had become an idiot.
“Martin was the kid they bumped me for, the one they were waiting to adopt.” They fell silent again and he rolled his eyes, really laying it on thick for them. “It was a long time ago people, can we let it go please? I understand this might be a bit of a shock for you but we are actually working right now. Working, as in that thing we do to pay the bills and make the world a safer place for our children.”
And like magic Steve’s phone rang, loud enough that several individuals moving by them reached to check their own phones. Steve, of course, made absolutely no move to reach for his. Chin and Kono looked back and forth between them while Danny blanked his expression as best he could and stared the navy seal down. Or at least tried to, but winning a staring contest with Steve McGarrett was virtually impossible, the man could outstare a lizard and looked twice as creepy while doing it.
“You gonna get that, could be important,” Danny gestured with the hand holding his practically melted treat, only then realizing his arms had been crossed. Steve finally blinked, gave him a look that promised Danny he wasn’t done with him yet, and snatched the phone from his pocket.
“McGarrett,” he listened intently for a moment and then his eyebrows straightened out from their furrow. He jerked his head in the direction of their vehicles and began heading for the parking lot, snapping the phone shut only a moment later.
“Warrant came through for the factory,” he announced and Danny was almost relieved by what this meant.
“Wonderful, at least this time I know we’re going to have back-up,” he smirked at Chin and received an amused little grin in return, which did more to drag him away from his previously defensive mood than the halt of Stevie Wonder’s impromptu interrogation.
“We always have back-up,” Steve tossed a little frown over his shoulder and Danny shook his head, flipping the rest of his drink into a garbage can as they approached his Camaro.
“No,” he said slowly, hoping it would help emphasize his point, “what we always have is me trying to talk you into waiting for backup while Chin and Kono are only five minutes away.”
“Whine, whine, whine,” Steve muttered and then he hesitated, an honest to god pause when he finally reached the gleaming silver car, before he moved swiftly to the passenger side. It was enough to give Danny his own pause and Chin gave his shoulder a quick squeeze that somehow managed to convey both support and the promise of world peace before he and Kono sped off to their own vehicle. “We’re not in England Danny, I actually need you to get behind the wheel before I can go anywhere,” Steve called just as he slammed the door shut. Danny made a point of taking his time to get to the drivers side, pointedly adjusting his seat, buckling his belt, and adjusting the mirror before he finally started the car and pulled into traffic. They’d already waited three days for this warrant (they had sketchy evidence to begin with and he was actually surprised they got the warrant at all), a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.
Steve was practically vibrating with tension from the passenger seat, his body still and ready to strike and he kept tossing darting little glances at Danny as he maneuvered through the traffic. Of course Danny figured that the act of actually letting him drive was as much of a peace offering as he was going to get from Steve after the little confrontation at the beach, so he was a little surprised when, after five whole minutes of edgy silence, Steve cleared his throat.
“If I-” he hesitated, his face scrunching up in that pained, uncomfortable look he got when he wanted to say something he felt was important but was slightly unsure of himself. Danny had only seen that face twice before and it made him roll his shoulders in preparation for what was to come. “If I was being insensitive back there-” he paused again, but this time because Danny had barked out a little laugh.
“Insensitive? By which you mean when you started interrogating me about my very personal history right after a very awkward and unwanted blast from the past?” He glared at the pedestrian walking across the road in front of them. Checking the rear view mirror he could see Kono and Chin practically kissing his bumper.
“I wouldn’t say interrogating-” Steve started up.
“Or the part where you asked said personal questions in front of my fellow coworkers?” Danny interrupted
“Friends,” Steve declared quietly but pointedly enough that it could have been a roar. “And yes, to all of the above,” he squirmed a bit and then shook his head at himself. “I get focused and…it was information that took me by surprise. I don’t like not knowing things,” he added petulantly and Danny shook his head in exasperation.
“What are you? Ten years old? Nobody likes not knowing things, but they, and by they I mean the rest of the human race, have a little more appreciation for both privacy and social etiquette than you and generally use this knowledge as a guideline for standard communication,” Danny waved a hand about for emphasis, but whatever unease he had felt from the questions earlier was already evaporating. He was upset with Steve no less than five times on an average day, so he generally reserved holding grudges for the really important things: like getting shot at because Steve thought that Danny and a bullet resistant vest equaled appropriate back-up when laying siege on arms dealers. He checked his rearview again to see that Kono was still following close behind, maybe a little too close for comfort but there all the same.
“So what you’re saying is that because you don’t consider me on par with the rest of the human race I can get away with pretty much anything,” Steve seemed overtly pleased by this if his twitching lips were anything to go by.
“No, that’s what you’re saying. I’m saying you’re an idiot with compulsive issues.”
“Is that your final prognosis, Doc? Cause I gotta say I think I’ll need a second opinion,” and like always Steve just didn’t seem to be affected by anything Danny had to say.
“I’ll give you a second and third opinion,” he muttered darkly and Steve leaned forward and turned up the volume on the radio.
“What?” He cupped a hand around an ear and looked apologetically at Danny. “I can’t hear you!”
Danny spent the rest of the ride pretending he was the only person in his car.
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Part B
Masterpost