Despite his bulk, Steve is pretty good at sneaking up on people. He might not be hiding under forest cover right now, his face streaked with mud and paint, but he's still barely a shadow.

Still, Danny knows he's there. The door doesn't swing quite all the way closed, and his new friend doesn't notice it, but he should. Without knowing it, he's already lost. "You say that," he says, hands still up and careful, moving into the alleyway with the guy right behind him, "but of all the mistakes I've made tonight -- and there have been a bunch, I promise you, there was a whole lot of not thinking and poor choices made -- I think yours is still worse."

"Yeah?" There's a push at his back, and Danny finds himself facing the man, who's lifting his needle -- that drug Max identified, the one that keeps the victims from running -- and advancing again. "What mistake is that?"

"That you fell for it."

A mistake they share, maybe, because there's still that roiling, confused part of Danny's chest that doesn't want to admit that it was nothing more than a cover, that it was just making it look good, but he doesn't have much time to worry about it, when the guy lunges, and Danny has to block the arm coming down, needle glinting in the dim alleyway light.

There's a scuffle. His hand is around the guy's wrist, and he's getting pushed back, which would be fine, until he steps on a trashcan lid that rattles under his heel and makes him lose his balance.

Which is not great, but that's what Steve's for, right? "Any time, now," he yells, focusing on keeping the other guy back. "That would be just stellar."

"What?"

The guy steps back, looking shifty. "You got back up? You're a fucking cop?"

Except it's kind of a rhetorical question, because that's right about when he turns, and starts to run.