Set Season 1, two and a half months after episode 18: Loa Aloha.
Disclaimer: Doing it just for fun - I lay no claim to H5-0 characters beyond my own current obsession.
"A man's most open actions have a secret side to them." Joseph Conrad
Prologue
The room was small, stuffy and heavy with tension. As Steve stepped over the threshold, three faces turned towards him and the occupants moved back to make space before the row of TV monitors that filled the back wall.
Moving inside, he tilted his head in greeting at the Governor but she said nothing, her mouth merely tightening as though locking herself into silence.
Chief of Police Thomas Maleo stood with feet braced apart and arms folded over his chest. His whole demeanor shouted arrogance but he too remained silent. Steve fancied there was something else in his manner too... Was that triumph?
Turning to his right, Steve felt more stirrings of unease as he recognized FBI Special Agent Edward Kipton. This could be uncomfortable...The last time they'd met, Steve had lied to his face about the whereabouts of a suspected member of a drugs cartel. He hadn't hesitated - the quarry was his partner's brother.
Steve didn't regret what he'd done then but, as he nodded his recognition, he wondered now if he was about to face some belated consequences.
"Someone care to tell me what's going on?"
Kipton moved to close the door behind Steve before answering him. "There's something we thought you should see," he said, then turned to press a button amongst the array on the panel of the desk before them.
The screens lit up with stuttering black and white images.
On the top right, the outside of a two story building at night. Apartments with a verandah along the front, their white railing cutting the screen in two. In the shadows below, a car draws up. Ford, a hatchback. Nothing noteworthy.
The driver climbs out on the far side and goes to the middle door of the ground floor. He remains with his back to the camera, hidden by the low bulk of the vehicle and the darkness and an Hawaiian downpour.
The middle screen shows a different angle from a camera that Steve judges must be mounted on the underside of the verandah itself, facing along the line of doors...security conscious, this place... The man's face remains hidden as he nonchalantly leans his arm high against the door frame. He is wearing a jacket that disguises his shape.
Steve squints at the grainy picture, trying to peer between rivulets cascading from an unseen overflowing gutter above.
There's no sound to the knocking but the door opens a little to reveal only half a shadowed face from inside.
Steve's instincts are beginning to sing. Like the string of a bow being drawn back, he can practically feel the vibrations as something about the silent conversation being conducted before him brings recognition.
No words – there are none to be heard but the arm of the visitor comes down. There's a hand gesture. A jerky, double-handed, fingers-splayed greeting. Then another. All seen from an angle that still leaves Steve some doubt.
In the next moment the door begins to widen but at the very instant of admittance the visitor slams it back hard into the peering face.
Steve is rigid now, unconsciously holding his breath, uncertain if the others in the room saw what he saw. Know what he knows.
Thirty seconds later there's no denying it.
Danny is not hiding his identity now.
Having reached inside and delivered a sharp, familiar looking blow, he's now pushing out of the door once more, shoving a hefty, stumbling man ahead of him. The hard line of his jaw, the grim, dangerous expression, is one Steve knows. He's seen it before but never like this.
His fist is bunched in the man's collar as he thrusts him into the still open car door, forcing him to clamber across.
Cut back to camera 1 and a white face appears in the passenger window...Oh shit... Straggly black hair, rounded features, bloody nose, frightened eyes. And why not? Apparently, he's just been abducted after all.
Abducted by Danny Williams.
Camera 3 on the roadside catches a clear shot of Danny hunched over the wheel as he hauls it left out of the motel entrance. Steve can only imagine the engine's scream as he watches his partner accelerate away in the oppressive silence of that room.
Fade to the blackness of disbelief.
"So Commander," Governor Jameson's words broke the quiet and jolted him from his shock. "Any idea why one of your team just made off with our star witness in a drugs and murder trial."
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