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Danny glared at him with all her might, but his aneurysm face didn’t disappear and neither did the stubborn glint in his eyes. “I’m not having this discussion with you! You know I’m right and you just don’t want to see it.” They have been at this for what felt like hours and neither was willing to budge on their point. “The perp will obviously be at the hotel bar surrounded by people so we can’t just waltz in and ‘cuff him. If I go in as bait and lure him away, he won’t suspect a thing other than a pretty girl wanting to spend some time with him.”
She wasn’t sure but it almost looked like a muscle in his jaw twitched and she was sure she could hear teeth grinding against each other. “So, let someone else go in. I need you there to cover me and go in with the team.”
Danny threw her arms up. “I know who the target is, and I have done such an op too many times to count and you want to have someone else do it?” She took a step closer to him until her pointed finger almost touched his chest. “A month ago, you wouldn’t have thought a second time about using our assets to the best.” Her voice low but almost hissing and as he opened his mouth to disagree with her, she actually poked him. “You know it’s the truth. We talked about it and we agreed that we wouldn’t let our relationship get in the way of work.”
He was silent for a minute except for the grinding of his teeth, his eyes unwavering and watching her with a dark fire within. “Fine.” That single word was pressed out between clenched teeth, spit out like something disgusting.
Danny felt almost bad for him. Steve was a born and bred protector. And even though he had never shown it in any way before, sending someone he loved into a dangerous and in the worst case even fatal situation, without being able to give immediate assistance was most likely going against every single one of his instincts.
As she was sitting at the bar next to the pool, Danny felt naked in more ways than the fact she was only wearing a bikini. She had been in the job long enough to be able to defend herself without her gun, but she simply felt safer with it. If the perp saw through her and pulled a gun there were not too many scenarios where she got out on the other side without getting herself shot.
As it was, the operation went off without a hitch, the guy being pulled away in cuffs by Chin. Danny was standing to the side, talking with Lou and Steve as the suspect lunged toward her. “You fuckin’ haole bitch! When I get my hands on you, you will regret ever being born! I will-“
Before he was able to finish his sentence and before she was even able to twitch, Steve had punched the guy. “Get him out of here!” His voice was little more than a growl, every muscle in his body ready to hit again.
At HQ, Danny almost felt bad for Steve, since he couldn’t seem to catch a break in this case. “Letting you go in there would not be a good idea. He already managed to get a rise out of you once.”
“He was insulting my partner. I just shut him up.” His tone was like that of a child not understanding he had done something wrong.
“Even if I appreciate you doing that for me, I don’t need you protecting my honor or being my shining knight. I have been called a haole for years now and bitch is seriously not the worst I heard from a perp in my time as a cop.” She took a deep breath trying to keep her voice calm. “But that is exactly what I am talking about. He will most likely try to control the situation by manipulating you. Let Kono and me go in. Neither of us will rise to any bait and maybe my presence as the one who got him into this situation will rile him up enough to get careless and drop something juicy.”
Steve could see the logic in her words of that she was sure. But just like their previous fight, his logic was overruled by instinct to protect. Going on a hunch, Danny draped her arms around his neck, pulling him close and stroking his back. “I really, really appreciate you acting this way, because it tells me how important I am to you, but we’ve been doing this even before we got together and you have to see past those feelings in order to get the job done.” After some time, she could feel some of the tension melt and she pulled a bit away to look into his eyes. “You good, babe?”
“Yeah.” His deep sigh said the exact opposite but since he was too stubborn to say so and Danny was pretty sure of herself, she had no intentions of going against what he was saying. “Fine.” Like before, the word was ground out between his teeth. “Get Kono, get in.”