WAHINE - d. williams

THREE.

DANNY came to with his hands tied behind him and his legs strapped to a wooden chair. His head ached, the side of his neck burned and he, for a moment, had no idea where he was. But once he laid eyes on the familiar and deceptively beautiful face of the woman who'd bound and maimed Charlie Fong, he instantly remembered everything.

"Oh, good. You're awake. Now we can play," she said cheerily, shouldering her sniper rifle and pressing the barrel of her handgun to her lips pensively. "What to do first?"

"Where's Fong?" Danny asked her immediately, eyeing her warily. She paused and fixed him with an unreadable gaze, then, in two long strides, she was standing in front of him. He dared not shrink under her blank stare—he needed to be strong...for Grace.

For a moment, it didn't seem like she was going to say anything to him, but again she surprised him by abruptly leaning over and looking directly into his ocean eyes with her own stormy gray ones. "I won't let him ruin our game."

"This,"  Danny said, lowering his eyes to his bound feet and hands, then back up at her, "is a game to you? Maiming an innocent guy, tying up another and threatening to have him meet the same fate?"

She straightened up and smirked, placing a hand on her hip. "It's only a game if you play along. Come on, Daniel. Humor me, won't you? Bleed a little."

She had slipped behind him and pulled a dagger from a holster on her side, then draped her arms around his shoulders and turned the dagger over in her hands in front of him. "Please don't...I have a daughter."

"Ha. The 'I'm a parent' card," she mused, her voice cruel but soft, "come now, Daniel. You'll have to be more creative than that to fool me."

"I'm serious," he said pleadingly, "my daughter, Grace. She's seven. Sweetest thing on this side of the island. My little girl."

"Again," The woman replied, rolling her eyes, "not falling for it. Come on. Grace will just have to—"

She was cut off by the sound of the door bursting open, revealing the rest of the Five-O team, guns drawn.

"You want to play games? How's three against one for odds?" McGarrett snarled, crossing the room with his gun pointed at her and cuffing her hands together. Without time to process just how he knew that she liked games, she let out a low growl, bristling at his touch, but obeyed much to Steve's surprise; this state of shock lasted only a second before vanishing as quickly as it had come. The rest of the team dispersed—Kono went to check on Fong, Chin went to Danny and untied him.

"What do we do with her?" Danny asked in a low voice, rubbing his wrists to assuage the angry red welts that had formed from the tightness of the rope. All eyes momentarily went to the woman, then back to Danny.

"Let's discuss this in the office. I don't want her out of my sight," Steve said finally, making Danny quirk an eyebrow at him.

"Your sight? Sorry, were you knocked out, then tied up and threatened with a knife to your neck to share information you didn't have?"

"Our sight," Steve quickly corrected, though not without rolling his eyes at Danny's nitpicking, "now let's go. We're losing daylight."

With that, he started to pull the woman towards the stairwell, the team on his heels. They made it back up to the main floor and were met with a swarm of officers asking for Fong—there, they handed him off and hurried back to Five-O HQ.

The woman was seated on a chair, her hands still tied. "So," Steve said, eyeing her before looking at Chin, "who's our mystery woman, Chin? You get that back yet?"