Chapter Text
"Central to all units, we've got a 10-31 at XXX Bryant Avenue. Caller reports it's at number XX, on the third floor. Suspect described as male and armed. Units in the area, respond code three. EMS stand by. Central out."
"Central, Detective Don Flack, homicide. I'm in the area. Requesting permission to engage."
"Negative, Detective. Patrol units are already responding, and a sergeant is en route. No need for homicide at this time. Stand by and monitor only."
Dammit, no. Not the answer Flack was hoping for right now. He was not even a block away, and he knew that apartment building, mostly because that was literally where he lived. He was heading that way anyway; his shift had ended not even an hour ago, and he would have already been at his place if it wasn't for his empty stomach throwing a tantrum for not having been fed properly these past few days. So, technically, he wouldn't be bending any rules or disobeying orders if they never knew he hadn't reached home when the dispatch was announced. It'd be a quick in and out, or a quick situation control until the officers arrived. A win-win situation.
His foot slammed on the accelerator in an instant. Normally, from this block, he'd take a good 10 minutes to get home. Well, now he'd have to cut it short! Preferably to 5 minutes maximum.
Eh, close enough, 6 minutes and 45 seconds later, not that he was counting, Flack's car had now been parked across the street from his building. It wasn't a police car, so, it wouldn't raise any suspicion even if the burglar was looking right at him. He was, however, still in uniform. 'Uniform', by that he meant he still had his badge clipped to his belt and his gun holstered to his hip. He wasn't on duty, but at the same time, yes, he was. He always was, even after his shift had ended, because, news flash, his shift never truly ended.
Ah, there it was. Third floor, apartment number XX. He'd passed it a thousand times and yet he couldn't remember whether it was a young couple that stayed there or a single woman. He should really start being more observant when it comes to his neighbors. Not that it mattered now. The information was useless regardless; his brain just needed something to occupy itself with.
The door was cracked open. That could be a good sign. The burglar was either gone (unlikely), or he was about to get caught off guard. And Flack wouldn't have to kick the door down and start chasing the motherfucker. Good for him!
He nudged the door open slightly more with his shoulder, just enough for him to sneak into the apartment. The place was dimly lit, mostly by light coming from the street lamps outside, so he didn't quite have a good visual on his surroundings, but he did notice a brighter light at the end of the hallway. He followed it, his gun low and ready, and his back almost against the wall, and only stopped when he spotted movement ahead.
The living room wasn't that much lighter, but he could see enough to make a move. It was a man, alright. Average height, average build, wearing a dark jacket and jeans. He was standing in the middle of the living room with his back to the hallway, rifling through drawer after drawer. Flack could see a duffel bag on the floor next to him, already half-full with what looked like electronics and jewelry. He'd seen enough.
"NYPD! Hands where I can see 'em, right now!"
The man froze mid-rummage and snapped his head toward the sound of the detective's voice with wide eyes that, despite the poor lighting, had confusion and surprise clearly written over them. For a good few seconds, he stared at Flack from head to toe, then past his shoulders, and back at Flack again, like he had materialized out of thin air, which, from his perspective, was probably a fair assessment.
"No eres uno– What the fuck?"
"Hey, hands! Up! Now!" Don barked the command, taking a daring step forward with his Glock still aimed steadily at the man in front of him. "Actually, I've changed my mind. Get on your knees, put your hands behind your head, and maybe I can be home before the sun comes up. Don't make this complicated."
The man's hands came up slowly, with minimal resistance, but his eyes kept drifting past Flack's shoulder a few too many times. This was suspicious to a level that made the young detective's stomach drop. Looking behind, even for a second, meant risking taking his eyes off the suspect and potentially getting attacked, but what if there was something, or someone, behind him?
Then the front door slammed shut behind him. Hilarious timing.
Screw his inner monologue there about the dangers of turning your back to a suspect, because the second that door got slammed shut, Flack's whole body spun on instinct, flinching at the loud sound that echoed in the small apartment walls.
And it was at this moment that he knew, he fucked up.
He whipped back around and found the Taurus 9mm first, because it was aimed directly at his head from just a few feet away. And he could hear footsteps behind him becoming louder and louder by the second. Well, he had a good life. Short, but good.
"Drop the gun, cop," The man in front of him said, with a thick accent. Hispanic?
"Yeah, I'm gonna pass on that." Flack responded a bit too quickly, because apparently his mouth hadn't received the memo from his central nervous system that the situation had drastically deteriorated and there was no room for jokes anymore.
A second figure stepped out of the kitchen doorway to his left. The kitchen that Flack had walked right past without clearing, because he'd been laser-focused on the living room, and wasn't that just a beautiful tactical decision he'd be kicking himself over for the rest of his potentially very short life? This one was shorter, but visibly more muscular, and with a darker complexion. He didn't seem to be carrying a g– oh, nevermind, there it was. A shiny-looking Glock 19! "Qué es esto…? One cop? Just one?"
"Uh-huh," The taller one muttered. "Solo uno."
"Solo uno…"
A third man appeared from the hallway that led to the bedroom, taller and leaner than the other two, pale as milk. This one wasn't holding a gun. He was holding a crowbar, tapping it against his opposite palm like a cartoon character. Three on one. Flack's brain did the math and hated the answer. Two firearms, one blunt instrument, tight quarters, one exit behind him, and oh, let's not forget that the front door didn't just shut itself. There was another one, wasn't there?
"Don't do anything stupid, alright?" Flack said, shifting his stance to try to open up his angle on all three, which was a geometrical impossibility and he knew it, but the alternative was standing still and hoping for the best, and he wasn't quite at that stage of desperation yet. "You're looking at B&E, illegal firearms, and threatening a police officer, which is already more charges than you have brain cells to process. Let's not add to the pile."
Nobody laughed. That was fine. Flack thought it was pretty good for a guy with three weapons pointed at him, but he'd always been his own best audience. Then the front door opened behind him again, and this time Flack didn't turn, because fool me once and all that.
The fourth man stepped into Flack's peripheral vision, and every calculation he'd been running quietly crashed and burned.
There was no polite way to put it, the guy was enormous and fat. Easy 6'5", possibly 6'6", with the kind of build that came from uncut genetics. His neck was roughly the width of a fire hydrant, his shoulders were wider than the doorframe he'd somehow squeezed through, and he was looking down at Flack the way a man looked at something small that had wandered into the wrong yard.
'You're done, Donnie', said the unhelpful little voice in the back of his head, the one that sounded suspiciously like his own common sense, which he'd been aggressively ignoring for the last… how long has he been here for again?
"Well, well, well," The big man said, and yup, his voice sounded exactly as one would expect it to sound, plus the thick Russian accent. "Look what we have here. One lonely little cop? Where are others?"
"…Others?" Flack tilted his chin up, because if he was going to die right there and then, he was at least going to do it with his neck straight. "What others? It's just me. I'm the entire welcoming committee. It was supposed to be only one of you, after all, so we had to cut the guest list short."
Nobody laughed at that one either. Damn, tough crowd.
"Esto no es lo que acordamos," The one on his right, Glock man, hissed through his teeth, the gun dipping slightly as his attention split between Flack and his partner.
"Cállate," The Hispanic one responded.
"He's alone," The pale one with the crowbar said. Midwestern accent? "He's fucking alone. This wasn't the plan–!"
"I said, shut up."
And there it was. They had a plan. They were expecting more than one officer. Or, they were expecting specific officers? The 911 call, the open door, the single visible perp in the living room like a worm on a hook– none of it was accidental. This wasn't a burglary; it was a trap. And he'd walked right into it, confident enough to think the universe wouldn't possibly dare inconvenience him tonight of all nights.
The big Russian man took a step forward. "Lower your gun, pig. You don't want this to get messy."
Flack's finger stayed exactly where it was, indexed along the frame of his Glock, because the second he lowered it, he lost the only bargaining chip he had. "See, here's the thing. I lower my gun, you shoot me. I keep my gun up, you might shoot me. I'm not a gambling man, but I like my odds better with option B."
"You think this is joke? You think we playing?!"
"I think you're having a really bad night," Flack said, keeping his tone calm even though his heart was beating fast enough to make him dizzy and nauseous at the same time. "I think your plan just went sideways, and now you've got one cop instead of whoever you were actually waiting for, and you're trying to figure out what to do about it. So let me help you out: you let me walk, I forget I saw your faces, and we all go home before this turns into the kind of paperwork that ruins weekends, mostly mine."
The one with the crowbar laughed at his words. "This one's got jokes!"
"I contain multitudes." Flack couldn't help but grin to himself. Then, because his mouth had apparently decided that survival was optional, he added: "Also, just so we're clear, backup's already on the way. You heard the sirens, right? They're getting louder. Tick-tock, fellas!"
The sirens were getting louder, actually, which was excellent timing. The problem was that the nearest patrol unit was probably about five minutes out, and five minutes were a few too many when you had four armed, angry men's attention on you.
"He's lying." Glock man said, though he didn't sound entirely convinced. His eyes flicked toward the window, just for a second, and Flack noted that away as nervous, which could be useful or could get him killed faster, hard to say.
The Russian man didn't move, however, didn't even show any sign of nervousness there. "Where are friends? The officers. Where are they?"
"Again, what officers?" Flack shifted his weight slightly, trying to track all four of them at once. "I told you, it's just me. I was in the neighborhood. Heard the call. Thought I'd swing by."
"Mentiroso!" The Haitian one spat. His gun hand twitched, just a little, and Flack's entire nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree. "They sent you to scout! To see if we are here!"
"Nobody sent me anywhere! I live here, you jackass!"
Now, what possessed him to announce to a bunch of probable ex-cons that this building was the place he was living in? Hello? Brain activity no work no more? Too much put in his humor?
Still, that got a reaction. The big guy's eyes narrowed, and he said something in what Flack assumed was Russian, and the crowbar guy responded, also in Russian, and Flack caught exactly none of it, except for the tone, which, honestly, considering that they spoke Russian, wasn't good for his existence.
"Okay," The big guy finally said. "Okay. New plan. You lower gun. You put on ground. You put hands behind head. You do this now, or Dimitri here–" He jerked his chin at the crowbar man. "–ruins pretty face of yours. Simple, yes?"
"Super simple," Flack agreed. "Except for the part where I'd have to be an idiot to do that."
"Then you are idiot who dies."
The sirens were closer now, maybe two minutes out. Two minutes. He just had to stall for two minutes. Or one minute. Or thirty seconds. Anything!
"Look," He said, and he was genuinely trying to be reasonable now, which was probably a waste of breath, but what the hell. Being a comedian would only dig his grave deeper, however– "You don't want to shoot a cop. You know what happens when you shoot a cop? Every cop in the five boroughs drops whatever they're doing and makes it their personal mission to ruin your entire lives. Your face ends up on the news. Your mama sees it. Your parole officer sees it. Your third-grade teacher sees it and feels disappointed. You don't want that kind of heat."
"Heat's already here," The pale one said, and he wasn't wrong.
"Then don't make it wo–"
The big guy moved fast. Well, he didn't move that fast, exactly, because men that size didn't do fast, but it was still faster than one would expect him to. Flack's brain screamed at him to do something, and his body, bless its little overachieving heart, tried to comply. He made a move, brought his gun around, and was about to consider firing a shot in an enclosed space with four hostile targets and no backup when someone else's gun went off first.
The world went sideways.
No, wait, that wasn't quite right. The world stayed exactly where it was. It was Flack's head that went sideways, snapping to the right as something hot and sharp tore across his left cheek and kept going, punching a hole in the drywall behind him. His brain took a second to catch up, and when it did, the message it sent back was 'you just got shot you just got SHOT you just got–'
The next few seconds were a blur of who shot who and where and when. The crowbar guy came in from the left and landed a few hits somewhere Flack was too high on adrenaline to feel at the moment. The Glock guy rushed from the right. The Hispanic one stayed back, gun up, probably trying to get a clear shot that wouldn't hit his buddies. And the big guy, because the universe had a sense of humor, and that sense of humor was cruel, grabbed Flack by the throat.
He tried to bring his gun up, but it got batted away like a mosquito, and the gun clattered to the floor somewhere behind the couch, which was just perfect, really, a perfect coda to an already perfect evening.
Flack's hands went to the man's wrist on instinct, trying to pry the fingers loose, despite knowing that was impossible. The edges of his vision started to go gray and sparkly, which he knew was a bad sign. He tried to kick, got the Russian somewhere around the shin, and was rewarded with absolutely no reaction whatsoever except for the hand tightening further.
"We don't have time for this," The crowbar guy snapped, and he was right, because the sirens were close now, maybe one block away, maybe less. "Kill him or take him, but we need to move!"
The hand tightened again, and this time Flack's vision didn't just gray out, it went full black-and-white TV static. Any tighter and Flack would have to say bye-bye to his trachea, and life. His feet left the ground, not by too much, but enough to make the entire weight of his body hang from his own throat. The pressure was ridiculous, like his head was being inflated from the inside while his neck was being crushed from the outside.
"We take him." The Russian barked out.
"Qué?! Estás loco? We can't–"
"I said, we take him. For insurance. Now move."
Flack tried to protest, managed something between a wheeze and a cough after his throat had been released, and was rewarded with a punch to the ribs that folded him in half like a lawn chair. What little air he had managed to suck in his lungs abandoned him right there, and before he could get it back, someone kicked him in the back of the legs, right behind the knees, and Flack went down in a second.
Fuckers used his own handcuffs to bind his hands behind his back, snapping them tight enough to bruise, and probably cut the blood circulation. His own damn handcuffs! How humiliating! And to top this off, they shoved a rag in his mouth, before tying another on top of it so he wouldn't be able to spit it out. Death would be less humiliating than this.
The sirens were on the street now. Flack could hear car doors slamming, could hear voices shouting, could hear the crackle of radios. The Russian guy picked him up by the back of his jacket and tossed him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
There was a fire escape. Of course there was. Of course these assholes knew about the fire escape. Of course they had enough time to map the whole place out, considering the fact that they had planned all this.
They dragged him down three flights of stairs, and Flack tried to keep track of where they were going, tried to memorize turns and distances, but his head was swimming and his vision was still doing that funny sparkly thing, and mostly what he managed to memorize was pain and more pain and– did he mention pain?
They hit the alley, where two cars were parked and ready to leave, both dark and nondescript, fair enough. They tossed him into the trunk of one of them, and honestly? A 6'1" man in the trunk of what felt like a mid-sized sedan was the tightest of tight fits. His knees were jammed up against the trunk door as soon as it was slammed shut on him, and there was some kind of toolbox poking into his lower back in a way that was going to leave a bruise on top of all the other bruises he already had. He couldn't straighten out, couldn't roll over without his cuffed hands protesting, couldn't do anything except lie there curled on his side and breathe hard through his nose because the gag was doing its job a little too well and his nostrils were already half-clogged with blood from the fight earlier.
The police sirens were loud now. The backup had arrived, oh, how wonderful. Too bad the car's engine roared under Don, and the criminals were fleeing the scene with probably no eyewitness in sight. Why didn't he sit this one out like he was instructed to do? All because of that stupid hero complex or whatever it was that made his brain ignore the red flags and put himself in dangerous situations, even though he wasn't as invincible as he thought he was.
'Okay, think, Donnie. Think', all hope wasn't lost, not yet at least. He just had to do an inventory check, just like the good ol' training days. He was trained through similar scenarios before. So, standard-issue Smith & Wesson model 100s pair of handcuffs, which meant they needed a key, which² was located on the pocket of his jacket. Yeah, no, out of the question. The Glock 43 around his ankle was also useless, along with the switchblade in his boot. If he can't free his hands, he can't be starting a fight, because even if he could, hypothetically speaking, get a good shot at one, the rest would finish him before he had a chance to blink. Uh, what else? His phone–
His phone!
If Flack could gasp, he would, because oh! His phone was still in his right back pocket! They hadn't bothered searching him, too busy making impulsive decisions to think about patting down a cop they'd just kidnapped, like idiots. Beautiful, magnificent idiots!
He started working on it immediately, twisting his torso, trying to angle his cuffed hands down toward his right hip, and the cuffs bit into his wrists hard enough to make him hiss through the gag. It's okay, the pain would be worth it later. His shoulders screamed at the rotation, the bruised ribs protested with a throb, and his fingers were already going numb from the circulation being cut off, but in the end, his fingers finally found the phone, and goodness, he held it like a lifeline. He pinched it between his index and middle fingers, working it up and out of the pocket one agonizing millimeter at a time.
It came free. He had it. He actually had it, gripped in his fingers behind his back, and he couldn't see it because he was facedown in a pitch-black trunk, but he could feel the buttons under his thumb, the raised nub of the 5 in the center, the familiar layout he'd dialed numbers on a thousand times without looking. 9-1-1. Three buttons. 'You can do three buttons blind. You've done stupider things tonight'.
His thumb found the 9, hopefully. Pressed it. Found the 1. Pressed it twice.
And then, wanna hear a joke?
The car hit a bump. Something bigger, a speed bump or a curb or God's personal sense of comedic timing manifesting as a piece of uneven road, and the phone jumped out of his fingers and clattered away into the darkness of the trunk
No no no no no–
Flack started twisting and writhing and slamming his bound hands against every surface he could reach, fingers splayed and grasping blindly in the dark while the car kept moving and the phone kept sliding and his own heartbeat was so loud in his ears it drowned out everything except the pure panic he felt. Did he even care about the wet feeling around his wrists that was probably blood? No, fuck that, he just needed that phone before they reached whatever destination they were driving to.
His knuckle hit something hard. The phone! He chased it, twisted his hands, and got two fingers on the edge of the casing. He pulled it toward him, pinned it against the carpet with his palm, and held it there, breathing so hard through his nose that his vision, not that he could see anything to begin with, went spotty at the edges.
'Okay. Okay. Again. You can do this'.
He repositioned the phone in his grip. Found the buttons again. The 9 was still there, and so was the 1, and for one perfect, crystalline second, he felt the phone vibrate in his hand as the call connected.
Had he pressed the right buttons? The phone was so far away from his ear, and the car was so loud, he couldn't focus enough to make out whether someone had picked up or not. Desperate as he was, he assumed someone did, and he started screaming. It was muffled beneath the gag, but he hoped it was enough. He tried kicking at the trunk door too, make some extra noise. He knew that one would be heard. They'd only have to trace the signal; that's all they had to do.
But the car soon came to a stop. Could the universe stop SCREWING WITH HIM FOR 5 MINUTES?!
Shit! He should do something with the phone, hide it somewhere. Under his body? Somewhere they wouldn't look? His fingers fumbled with it, trying to wedge it into the gap between the carpet lining and the trunk wall, and he got it halfway in before the trunk popped open and the light hit him like a truck. Hands reached in, certainly more than two– four– six? They grabbed his jacket, his arms, his legs, anywhere they could reach, hauling him out.
Flack's eyes tried their best to adjust to the sudden bright lighting of the place. If he had to guess, they were somewhere underground. Probably a garage. It was too midnight for such lighting, equivalent to the power of the sun. Oh, God. Was there even signal down there? He felt like crying.
"Check him," the Russian said, somewhere above, or behind. Flack couldn't track where it was coming from. "Everything. Pockets, shoes, belt. Everything!"
Within seconds, hands went through his pockets. His wallet, gone. His keys, gone. His spare gun, knife, and other knife– all gone. Not their first rodeo when it came to hostages, noted.
They left the badge, however. Probably on purpose. Who knew.
But the fun didn't stop there, because apparently one search wasn't enough for these guys. The Russian barked something else, and the next thing Flack knew, one of them was pulling at his jacket, yanking it off his shoulders and down to his cuffed wrists, where it bunched up uselessly because, surprise, the handcuffs wouldn't let it come off. So instead, the guy just patted him down a second time, more aggressively now, hands running down his sides, his legs, his ankles, even his goddamn socks, like Flack was somehow hiding a grenade in his dress shoes. They pulled his belt off too, which was just lovely, really, because nothing said 'rock bottom' quite like taking the strip out of strip-search too seriously.
Of course, they found nothing, because there was nothing left to find. Everything useful had already been confiscated, and the one thing that mattered, the one thing that could actually save his sorry ass, was still wedged in the lining of a trunk ten feet away from him. Flack didn't look at the car. He didn't even let his eyes drift in that direction. If there was one single intelligent decision he was going to make tonight, and Lord knew he was overdue for one, it was going to be not drawing attention to the phone that these idiots had somehow missed twice already.
The big guy was talking now, switching between English and what Flack assumed was Russian, depending on who he was addressing, and Flack tried to follow what he was saying, he really did, but his brain was starting to do that thing where sounds came in slightly delayed. Something about moving, about a building, about someone named Volkov, or maybe that was his name, maybe the big guy was Volkov, or maybe Flack was just making things up at this point because the adrenaline that had been the only thing keeping him functional for the past however-long-this-had-been was starting to drain out of him.
"–can't take him there looking like this, people will see–"
"–it's the middle of the night–"
"–still a cop, what if they trace the car–"
"–dump the car then! Are you stupid?"
He was cold. When had he gotten cold? The garage was underground, sure, but it wasn't a freezer, and yet his body was shivering in an involuntary way, like he was trapped in a freezer.
"He goes in the other car," One of them decided, pointing at a different vehicle parked further back in the garage. "Dimitri, you drive. The rest, with me. We go separate ways."
Oh, he heard that part loud and clear.
"Vamos, muévete!" The Glock man said, grabbing him under the arm and hoisting him up with less effort than Flack would have liked. Someone else grabbed his other arm, Dimitri probably, and between the two of them, they half-walked, half-dragged him toward the second car.
The big guy stepped into their path momentarily. Flack had to tilt his head back to look up at him, which was annoying under normal circumstances and downright humiliating now.
"You behave," He said, leaning down just enough to be at Flack's height. "Or next time, I don't let go." He tapped two fingers against the side of Flack's neck, right over the bruises his hand had already left there.
If only he weren't gagged, he would have tried saying something that would at least let him keep a shred of dignity in this dignity-free situation. But the gag turned whatever he tried speaking into a muffled grunt that sounded about as threatening as a sneeze, and the dudes didn't even bother acknowledging it.
The trunk popped open. Second car, same concept but somehow even less spacious. Great!
He was about to get shoved in when the crowbar came up and jabbed at the side of Flack's head. It connected just above his left ear. It didn't hit him hard enough to break his skull, just enough to slowly knock him unconscious, which was about ten times worse, because he had to endure being manhandled and shoved into that tiny trunk while the world slowly became darker and darker, until it finally stopped.