Bright Morning Comes

by manitounell

Beverly Barlow surfaces again, and Zane and Jo get dragged into a new adventure in Hawaii.

This story follows on my previous Eureka/Hawaii 5-0 crossover, "Stars in the Sky" but is an independent adventure and should - I hope! - stand on it's own. I certainly did not intend for another crossover to happen, but Eureka/H50 turned out to be a fertile landscape for adventure fic. Without planning it, another story bloomed. I hope readers enjoy their experience with it as much as I did the writing.

Neither property is mine, naturally, but I do enjoy playing with them.

Prologue:

The video opened with a wide pan of a lengthy but orderly airport security line. Then it zoomed in on a very slender, impeccably dressed white woman. Her fashionable purse dangled from its short strap over her forearm as she held her tickets and passport ready for the first inspection station. With her free hand she reached up to brush her hair back from her face, showing off her thin, aquiline nose, high cheekbones and elegantly understated makeup. She took a step forward, and another, swayed, started to raise her free hand, and then, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, collapsed onto the ground in an untidy sprawl. The lines swirled and broke as people rushed to her side, struggling in vain to revive her. The video ended with another close up shot framing her face, her dead eyes staring emptily up into the camera.

Jo recognized her instantly. It was Beverly Barlow, spy, terrorist, felon, fugitive, very occasional ally and now, it seemed, corpse. Though Jo would have preferred to be able to stick pins in her, a lot of pins, just to make sure.

General Mansfield turned to Jo and Zane, who were seated across from him in the small conference room, just off the Director's offices at Rockwell Industries. His many ribbons were a bright splash of color against his dress greens. His expression was studiously bland. "That was taken two days ago at Hong Kong International Airport. Any thoughts?"

Jo kept her face impassive and her shoulders still, and hoped against all experience that her husband would muster the same control. Just one quick glance at Zane, however, and she knew he was about to say something obnoxious instead. Three, two, one, and…

"You've got a great video editor?" he offered, all disingenuous helpfulness. "That had to have been cut together from about ten different cameras. Could use a sound track, though."

'Bingo' she thought, and wished she bet herself something comforting. Like a stiff shot of Ouzo or an extra thirty minutes at the gun range. Or, maybe, both.

Mansfield narrowed his eyes, and opened up another window on his laptop. "This was taken last spring, in Hawaii. Just before that unfortunate incident with Dr. Parrish."

By which he meant that time the Consortium kidnapped Parrish from the Unconventional Weapons Convention in Honolulu. They attempted to grab Zane and Jo as well, intending to jack them all into another VR prison. With the help of the Hawaii Five-O Taskforce they avoided capture, rescued Parrish and destroyed the computers. Along the way, and quite incidentally, they also rescued Beverly.

Unfortunately for her, not before her former allies had shot her full of nanotech explosives, the same explosives that apparently had killed her two days ago in Hong Kong. And, now unfortunately for Jo and Zane, they had let her go without revealing her existence or whereabouts to Mansfield. Beverly had known too many of their secrets, secrets that could get them all killed. She had also helped rescue Zane from the Consortium the year before, and they owed her something for that. At the time, it had seemed the right thing to do.

And by the pricking of her thumbs, Jo knew exactly what footage the General was about to bring up on screen. This time she bet herself the Ouzo. She was sure she was going to need it.

The video began and, yes, 'Bingo' again, it was the brief footage of Beverly Barlow standing in front of the elevator banks in their hotel in Hawaii. The same images that had led them to Parrish, and that Zane had done his best to scrub away.

Damn Beverly Barlow and her stupid need to be in the middle of things, Jo thought resentfully. She could have stayed in hidden retirement, but no! Beverly had loved orchestrating grand events, and her death was proving just as good as anything else she'd ever pulled off in life.

"This video was quite hard to find," Mansfield said, shooting another gimlet-eyed glance Zane's way, "but," and he smiled a small, triumphant smile, "eventually it turned up."

He waited again, but this time Zane kept quiet.

"It seems to me," Mansfield went on, once it was clear they had nothing to add, "that your debrief on the whole incident was woefully incomplete."

He reached over and closed the laptop. To Jo, the click of the lid snapping closed sounded exactly like the lock on the jail cell in the Sheriff's office.

Mansfield continued, "It also seems to me that there might be questions you would rather I didn't ask. Loose threads you'd rather I didn't start pulling. Barlow. Senator Wen. Dr. Monroe. Henry Deacon. Grant. To name a few."

He watched them carefully in the silence that followed, his glance flickering between them as he waited for their response.

Jo felt curiously numb. They'd been waiting so long for this ax to fall that she didn't even feel fear anymore. Just a strange, distant, floating sensation as she watched the two men enter into their best gunfighter stare-down impressions. She glanced at her watch and decided to time them. Zane could and would keep up this sort of adolescent posturing all day, while the General was a busy man.

"In exchange for NOT pulling on those threads," the General didn't quite snarl, "I have a small project that could benefit from your particular skill set."

Four minutes, twenty-six seconds, Jo noted. Not their longest stare-down, but not the shortest either.

His minor victory secured, Zane asked, "Whose skill set? Mine? Or Jo's?"

"Both." Mansfield sat back, another triumphant little smile hovering around his mouth. He knew as well as they did that Zane even asking the question meant that he had won this round. "A little breaking and entering, and a little coding. You can handle that, Donovan, and Lupo here can cover your back."

Five days later they were in South Korea, in a small city a few hours outside Seoul. They were standing against a wall in a busy market district. Wilson, their curiously inept CIA handler, pointed with relief to an anonymous looking apartment over narrow storefront, "There! That's the safe house."

Jo shared a sidelong glance with Zane. He shook his head infinitesimally; he didn't want to follow Wilson either. This entire adventure had been a long series of disasters, and relying on the intel and contacts provided at their all-too-brief briefing had been part of the problem from the start.

Sweet Christ did she have a bone to pick with Mansfield if they survived to see him again –'a little breaking and entering, a little coding,' her fine ass. He'd wedged their small team, uninvited and unwelcome, into a CIA op that sent them into the heart of North Korea's nuclear weapons center. Their formal mission was to steal copies of all the ICBM operating systems. Gob smacking as this order had been, it got even better. Mansfield also wanted Zane to slip Trojan code into the facility's hardware, code that would allow the US to seize control of the guidance systems if the North Koreans were ever capable of launching any weapons towards the US. Without alerting anyone else on the team or the CIA to what they were doing.

Not that he had provided much in the way of a team in the first place. The moment she and Zane laid eyes on the small collection of people on the military flight to Seoul, they realized that Mansfield's briefing had been, at best, incomplete and, at worst, deliberately misleading.

"What the hell is this?" Zane had hissed in her ear, "The Bad News Bears take on North Korea?"

He was exaggerating, but not by much. Each member had a different background—CIA, Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, NSA—and had never met before. As the only civilians in the group, the CIA analyst was assigned to them as their handler. Wilson had only the briefest of field experience before he landed a desk job and his only apparent qualification for this gig was his Korean-American heritage and his fluency in the right languages. By the time they had all introduced themselves, Zane had quit whispering under his breath and was openly calling the group 'the Expendables.'

"If you can get away clean, good. If not, make it big," had been Mansfield's parting shot.

They didn't get away clean. A network of CIA agents got them in without a hitch, but after that things went south, they improvised like mad, and then Zane triggered the small charges they had laid during their entry. In the ensuing chaos they and the rest of their team managed to slip out of the complex. Fortunately, and not at all accidently Jo was sure, they were all dark haired enough that in coveralls, jackets and caps they passed sufficiently in the crowd to make it through. Then the NSA agent died trying to get them to their CIA extraction point. Their attempt to get back to the CIA safe house they had started from that morning led them to two more dead CIA agents and the not terribly shocking but seriously infuriating discovery that their back trail was completely blown. The whole thing began to reek of a set up.

The Military Intelligence Officers Mansfield had flown in with them had the same reaction. Ditching the CIA and pooling their own prior resources, they helped Zane and Jo and their handler get to the border before peeling away, each to mysterious business of their own.

They had crossed back into South Korea late in the afternoon. Wilson insisted on immediately calling in for support and new instructions. By this point she and Zane both were convinced that the CIA had set them up to take the fall, and the last thing they wanted to do now was follow their directives. They tried to explain to Wilson why they thought he was nuts to trust his home office, but they failed entirely to convince him.

Given Wilson's excitement and relief at seeing their destination, Jo didn't know what else to do. So she cut their losses. "Fine," she said. "You go first. We'll wait here until you're sure it's clear."

As soon as Wilson slipped away, blending immediately into the early evening crowd along the market street, Zane touched her elbow. "We should go."

Jo nodded.

His fingers closed around her arm, tugging her along with him as he stepped into the foot traffic headed the opposite direction from Wilson. "Jo. We did our best."

She shook herself out of her regret and stepped up her pace. "I know. Come on."

They had just cleared the block when the sound of a muffled explosion reached them. They hopped on the next city bus that passed, riding away from the wailing of sirens rushing in behind them. As they slid into two open seats, she muttered, "That wasn't very subtle."

He scooted nearer to her, dropping his arm around her shoulders, pressing his long thigh close to hers. "I think someone is trying to attract attention." His voice was a low rumble against her ear.

"What?!"

"From," he patted the full backpack resting on his knees, "you know."

She vented her outrage about this whole damn clusterfuck with a hissed wail, "Oh my God! How many layers of double crossing are going on here?"

"As many as possible, I think."

She straightened her shoulders. "We need to get to an army base."

"Which one? And how do we know they won't shoot us on sight either?"

That stopped her. She could still hear sirens behind them. "Well, what do you propose?"

"We have to get ourselves to Mansfield."

Jo searched his face, hoping to find any trace of doubt, anything she could use to challenge her own conviction that he was right. There was nothing. Damn it. "That means the airport in Seoul."

He nodded. "We'll need papers and money," he murmured, his eyes already back to scanning the other passengers.

Jo scowled down at her own pack. They didn't have either. They didn't even have phones. Mansfield had requested that they leave everything behind but the two backpacks full of gear he let them select from a small but satisfyingly diverse armory at the airbase in DC. The equipment had been life saving, literally, but right now a giant wad of cash would have been more useful still.

Zane leaned even closer, his breath warm on her skin, his thumb a slight warning pressure along her jaw. "Don't look up, but I think we've been made. Wrong season for tourists." He brushed his lips across her cheekbone and down to her mouth, slanting his head to kiss her. "Next stop, we get off and lead him into an alley."

His lips closed on hers and she leaned in, automatically reaching up to thread her fingers through the soft hair along the nape of his neck. She deepened their kiss and held onto the moment, on to him, until they felt the bus start to slow.

She caught sight of their tail stepping off the bus as she and Zane turned the corner, headed for the darkest alleyway they could find.

Jo knocked him cold with the butt of her handgun and Zane quickly riffled through his pockets. He pulled apart the phone, smashed his watch, pocketed the money, and handed Jo the ID. She shrugged. "I can't read this."

He took it back. "I used to be able to read a little, but," he frowned in the dim light leaking around the street entrance, "I'm way out of practice. I think it's just a drivers' license and a state ID. Probably not even his real name." He stood up. "What do we do with him?"

Jo took a deep breath. "Look away."

"What?" He stared at her in confusion for a beat, then comprehension set in and he nodded and moved to the alley mouth.

Jo joined him a moment later, tucking her knife and her gloves back inside her coat. "How much money?"

"Enough for train tickets, or," he cocked his head at her, "gas money."

"For what?"

"A car. We'd get further, and with less need for ID."

Jo started to object that it would be too dangerous, but Zane stopped her. "Jo, I love that when you look at me, you see a mostly honest man. But, right now, I need you to channel the Enforcer. Remember that I was a thief. And a damn good one."

"Computer crime!"

"You really think there's some bright, clear line between stealing money on the Internet and stealing material things in meat space?" He shook his head. "Come'on Jojo. Enforcer. She knew what I could do."

"But, those were all just pranks when you were a kid…" She trailed off, daunted by his crooked smirk and shaking head. She tried again, "You were never charged with anything like that."

He shrugged again. "Like I said. I was good."

Something odd in his voice caught on her ear, and she pulled her gaze back from the street to look up at him more carefully. His eyes were hooded, his lips were pulled thin and flat and the muscle was twitching in his cheek. She realized with shock that he was nearly vibrating with worry, and not about his ability to steal cars. He was afraid that revealing more of his criminal history would make her doubt him, doubt them, again, even now. She didn't know if she wanted to rip out her own hair or break his fingers. Or maybe the other way around. Good God, had they done a number on each other, each too caught up in their own fears and hurts to see the wounds they had made.

Her eyes filmed with sudden tears, and her heart swelled hot and huge in her chest, nearly choking her. Less than fifteen feet away lay the body of the man she had just killed and Zane didn't even flinch. She was a soldier and that was who she was and he had never once questioned or challenged that. In fact it was part of what had drawn him to her in the first place. But he was panicky that she would run from him again because he knew how to steal the cars and money they needed to get home.

She pressed close to his chest, running her hands up to capture his head and pull him down to whisper in his ear, "I love you, Zane Donovan."

Then she kissed him. She poured everything she had into it, willing him to remember that he really did know how completely she loved him, desired him, trusted in him.

In seconds he had reversed their positions and backed her up against the nearest wall. Time blurred and she was lost, again, always, in his arms, his mouth hot on her skin and his hands leaving aching trails along her body. When she realized she was already grinding against his thigh, a keening moan in the back of her throat, she pushed hard against his chest. "Car. Seoul. Papers."

He laughed, low and relieved, and ducked his head to scrape his teeth along her jaw once more. Then he stepped back and held out his hand. "Yes ma'am."

The sound of his phone woke Steve from a deep sleep. Picking it up, he squinted at the time. Four AM. Terrific. There was no way he'd be going back to sleep today. "McGarrett," he said, his voice thick with tiredness. It had been a long week already.

"Steve? Hey! It's Zane."

For a bleary instant Steve couldn't place the voice or the name, and then it clicked. He struggled to sit up. "Donovan? Zane?"

"Yeah! Listen. I know we're calling out of the blue, but Jo and I could really use your help."

"Okay." Steve was trying to shake the sleep cobwebs from his brain. Zane calling before dawn and asking for help could not be a good thing. "Where are you?"

"On a plane. We're flying in from Seoul and will be landing a little after 11am your time. Could you meet our flight, and give us an escort to Fort Shafter?"

"Yeah, sure, but…" the oddness of Zane's phrase finally clicked, "Escort? To Shafter? What's going on?"

"We're kind of in trouble."

"Trouble?" He wasn't alert enough yet do more than repeat things, apparently.

"Beverly Barlow dropped dead ten days ago, trying to get through airport security in Hong Kong." Zane sighed. "This revealed to certain parties that we might not have been entirely forthcoming about, well, about a lot of things. As a consequence, I received an invitation I couldn't refuse. To provide IT support to a group doing business out of Seoul."

Zane paused, probably to make sure Steve was following along. He was, unfortunately, and feeling the ground slip out from under his feet as a result. He had known last spring that Zane and his wife, Jo, were hiding Beverly Barlow from a General Mansfield. Mansfield was with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for whom he did a number of irregular and mysterious things. Things like ordering covert executions on American soil to hide the existence of advanced technologies and the attempted theft or use of the same. For instance.

Steve had assumed that, after last spring, Barlow would have the good sense to stay hidden. But according to Zane, something had sent her on the run and now she was dead. Unlucky for her, and for Jo and Zane. Her very public death had revealed their cover up to Mansfield. Mansfield's punishment for their deception had been to send Zane out to commit computer crime on behalf of some DOD project, and likely in North Korea, by the sound of it. Fantastic. At least Mansfield had the good sense to send Jo along with him. "Okay," Steve said. "I'm with you so far."

"So," and now Steve could hear the exhaustion and the anger in Zane's voice, "I was just 'support', only the 'computer guy'. Everything that could go wrong, did. It was a stupid plan, and we told them so, but, you know. 'Professionals'."

His scorn was withering and his contempt for this waste of his extraordinary talents was clearly boundless. The man had an ego the size of a planet when it came to his work, and one he almost deserved.

"What do you need now?" Steve asked.

"We got separated from the rest of the team. We have a package we have to get out of our hands, and into Mansfield's. We made it onto this flight, but probably not alone."

And there was a tale for another day, Steve noted to himself. "Why haven't you called him?" he asked.

"Seriously? You don't think we've tried? We can't get through. We don't have any other names or contact info."

"You can't find any?"

"Commercial aircraft. Over the Pacific. No, I can't 'find' him or anyone else right now."

Right. Zane might be a world-class hacker but even he couldn't work with little to no bandwidth.

"Where is your handler?"

"Not coming back. Along with half the team."

"Wow. You are in trouble."

"Yes. Thank you. Can you help us get off this damn plane? Preferably in one piece?"

"Yes. Let me talk to Jo."

There was quiet, and then Jo's familiar voice, low and honeyed with a hint of whiskey, came on the line. "I'm fine." He could almost hear her smile. "I'm relieved you're smart enough to check, though."

"How valuable is the package?"

"Extremely."

"How off the books do you think this is?"

"Since his staff claims that Mansfield is on vacation and unreachable? Even by me? Way, way off."

"Great." By which he meant, 'oh shit.' Jo was chief of security and DOD liaison for a private firm that did a significant volume of R&D work for the DOD, both on and off the books. She was also former military herself. Which meant a lot of personal attention from Mansfield, who knew Jo personally as well as professionally. As did, presumably, his staff. If they were blocking Jo, something was really wrong.

"Yeah." Jo's voice was quiet, and worried.

"Okay. Give me your flight details. I'll see you when you land."

After Steve ended the call he dropped his hands between his legs, his elbows resting on his raised knees, phone dangling from his fingers, and took a deep slow breath. He had something less than seven hours to figure out what the hell was going on, find Mansfield, and make sure Jo and Zane got off their flight and into secure hands. Which meant it was time to get out of bed. Now. He kicked his legs free from the sheets and headed for the shower.

Four hours later Steve was pacing his office, wearing a path in the floor. He had tried and failed to make contact with anyone in DC or on the island who would even admit to knowing Mansfield. Oh, plenty of people had met him, his public record was easy for even Steve to find on the Internet, but no one knew him.

Steve had finally deciphered this astounding ignorance an hour earlier. They all knew him. But none would admit it without a direct order. Which, wherever the hell he was, Mansfield was not issuing. And without their team or their handler, Zane and Jo had been left out in the cold.

He'd rousted Chin a while back, and set him to find out who Mansfield's staff officers were, but this avenue hadn't panned out either. The General's entire operation was buttoned down tight, which meant no way in for someone without the right clearance or contacts. Catherine was also doing her best, but Mansfield was Army, not Navy, and that was a pretty huge barrier.

Kono came in with a big fancy coffee for him, not his favorite, but the calories and sugar were welcome. "Here," she said. "Chin told me what's going on."

"Which must have taken him about thirty seconds, since we don't have a freaking clue about whatever the hell is going on."

"Is it time to start making a plan to get them off the plane?"

"Yeah. I think it is."

"Can we just arrest them? Have the plane held closed at the gate, escort them off, regular drill?"

"Arrest who?" Danny walked in, smooth hair gleaming, pressed shirt tucked neatly into his trousers, looking all bright and chipper and like a man who had had his full night of sleep.

Steve smiled optimistically. His big plan for this was to act like it was good news. "Zane Donovan and Jo Lupo."

Danny frowned in confusion. "As happy as that would make me, for what, exactly? And where? Aren't they home in Oregon?"

"They're flying in from Seoul in a few hours."

Danny leaned forward, his eyes wide with surprise. "From Seoul? In South Korea?"

"Yep."

Danny frowned again.

Steve waited.

Danny sighed and waved his hands and dropped into the chair in front of Steve's desk. "Okay. I give up. There are so many questions to ask I can't even begin. Just brief me and get it over with."

Once he'd finished, and given how much they still didn't know it didn't take all that long, Steve sat back, leaning on the edge of his desk. "So. That's it."

"I see." Danny looked up at Kono. "So, your idea for getting them, and their 'package' off the plane is to arrest them. For something."

"Sure. Why not?" said Kono. "Then we can take them through security, out of the airport and off to Shafter. We can be there in less than ten minutes. It's like, what? Four miles from the airport?"

"Why Shafter and not Hickam? And why would anyone at Shafter want them?" Danny looked at Steve, not Kono.

"That's where they want to go. I assume because Shafter is the Army Pacific Command HQ, and Mansfield's Army. So's Jo. I'm also assuming that once we actually show up, someone will at least take charge of their package until the General can be found." Steve replied.

"And if they don't?"

"They will." Steve leaned forward. "Come on, Danny. Missions in progress that might blow up are denied. But missions that actually cross the finish line, goods in hand, well, they count."

"Is this the actual finish line?"

Steve sat back again.

"Ah." Danny leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. Waving his finger in Steve's general direction he said, "You have no idea. All we know is that Donovan and Lupo are involved in another clusterfuck and are hoping we will clean it up. Again."

"That's not fair, Danny. They did the heavy lifting last time, we were backup and you know it."

Danny remained stubbornly unyielding. "If they hadn't lied to the General about Barlow, this wouldn't have happened."

"She helped them as much as, or more, than she hurt them. They felt they owed her."

"For what?" Danny's voice rose with his exasperation.

"Zane's life, along with the lives of nineteen other people."

Danny scowled, chewing the inside of his cheek as he considered this. Finally, he said, "I suppose you did all this sharing during the week they spent at your house?"

He made it sound more like an accusation than an observation.

"Yes. And you could have been there too, only you refused to come over."

"I wasn't invited."

"Bullshit, Danny. You were invited every damn day. Just like always. Just like Chin, and Cath and Kono here," Steve gestured to where Kono had been standing, only to realize that she had slunk away. Coward. He wished he had the courage to join her.

"Kono where?" Danny looked around. "What happened to her?"

Chin appeared in the doorway. "I might finally have a line on someone who can help. A Lt. Colonel William Shaw, Special Forces, stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado. He isn't part of Mansfield's staff, but his name shows up in some of the same reports as Mansfield's, and it rang a bell for me. He was mentioned in Jo's army record. She served under him in Afghanistan, back when he was a captain."

"Have you gotten in touch with him?"

"Yes. He took my call. Sounded very relieved that we'd heard from Jo. Claimed he had no idea what was going down," Chin's expression made clear what he thought of that assertion, "but would call back as soon as he could."

On cue, Chin's phone rang. It was Shaw. Chin explained who they were, then turned the phone on speaker so they could all hear. Shaw had a slow, pleasant baritone, the kind that made you think of the reassuring Allstate Guy. "I'm not directly involved," he said, "but knowing my connection to Jo, people reached out to me, in case I heard from them. I haven't been able to learn much, but I gather that everything blew up badly. Several people are dead, they thought they had lost Jo and Donovan as well."

It was left unsaid, but Steve had the distinct impression that while Shaw seemed grimly pleased that this wasn't the case, other people involved might not be.

Shaw went on, "Can you arrest them at the gate? Get them to Shafter?"

Steve frowned. "We were thinking of something along those lines. But, for what? And, why us and not you?"

"Theft. I'm sure he took at least a handful of things with him that should never have left the research facility."

That came too promptly even for this crisis. Steve was sure he heard some history there. "Okay. But, why can't you send MPs?"

"This whole," Shaw paused, obviously choosing his next words with care, "project is a Hail Mary put together at the last minute by parties who should have known better." He sighed. "It seems their markers got called in by someone else. It doesn't officially exist, and can't. Get them to Shafter. I can take it from there."

Steve and his team were at the airport thirty minutes early, airport security and HPD standing by. As they stood about the gate area on the ground level, waiting to go out and board the plane using the rear stairs, he assured himself that this would be just like any other fugitive apprehension. Nothing to worry about. Completely standard operating procedure. Not at all dicey, like, say, collecting two amateur spies fleeing from a mission gone up in flames, carrying God knew what sort of intelligence with them. Any minute now he would start to believe it, he was sure.

The plane actually landed a few minutes early, and after what seemed an interminable wait, but was really probably only about a minute and half, Steve's phone rang. "McGarrett."

"It's Zane. Where are you?"

"At the gate. We'll be coming in to arrest you as soon as the plane is parked. Try to look a little surprised and disappointed."

"Right. I think there are at least two people on the plane with us who'd like to take us out of play and retrieve our packs."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I spent two years running from the FBI. I'm pretty sure when I'm being followed."

Steve chuckled quietly. "Fair enough. See you in a few."

"Our fugitives from justice?"

Steve refused to rise to Danny's bait. "Yes. Our fugitives who call first, just to let us know they're anxiously waiting for us. You know. How fugitives do."

Okay. So, maybe he rose just a little bit. He could see Danny smirking out of the corner of his eye. Steve cleared his throat, then with a glance that took in Chin and Kono as well, he said, "Chin, you and Kono cuff them, Danny, you and I will be carrying their packs, and trying to spot at least one, maybe two tails."

"Why can't I cuff them? What happened to 'book'em Danno'?"

"Because you're being an ass."

"Me? I'm being an ass?"

"I get it, Danny, I do. But you're blaming them for something they had no control over. Because it's easier to do that than to deal with the reality of a system that violates things you believe in."

"Like, truth, justice, and the American way? Oh, and, not arbitrarily executing people?"

"Danny," Kono broke in, "they need our help."

"And like good little operatives, we aim to please, do we?"

"No. Like friends. That's what friends do."

"Friends. They're everybody's friends. Everybody likes them. Zane and Jo. Jo and Zane." Danny altered his voice into a breathless falsetto and fluttered his hands around his face, " 'When are they coming back for a visit, Steve? They're so much fun! I like them so much!'" Dropping his voice back to his normal register and his hands to his hips he glared at Kono. "Even your aunties like them."

Kono crossed her arms and glared back. "You have got to stop this, brah."

"Everybody likes you too, Danny," Chin added.

"What? Wait!" Danny held up his hands. "I am NOT jealous! You don't need to reassure me about my place."

"Fine." Chin turned his back on Danny and stared at the gate agent, waiting for their cue.

After a pointed frown, Kono did the same thing.

Danny looked at Steve and assumed the classic, hands-open pose of a bewildered man, a brilliantly executed 'what did I do?' expression on his face.

Steve crossed his own arms and sighed. Back in the spring, Zane and Jo had been vacationing on the island and he had met them while rock climbing. They had hit it off immediately, sparking a new friendship. Later, Five-0 had helped Zane and Jo rescue a kidnapped colleague, which was good, but the operation had concluded with the covert execution of five men, which was bad. Steve had accepted General Mansfield's order for what it was, the neatest solution to an intractable problem. Danny, however, had been righteously pissed over what he saw as Steve's consistent rejection of the ideals of police work in favor of the brutal calculus of warfare. It only added fuel to an old argument, and one they would probably never be able to fully resolve. But, at some point, Danny had transferred his anger from Steve directly to Zane and Jo, or really, just Zane.

Steve hadn't been aware of it at the time, mostly because Danny had avoided him as much as he could until Zane and Jo returned to Oregon. Steve had hoped the week they spent at his house would give Danny the opportunity to get to know Zane and his wife, see what Steve liked about them, deal with what happened, and let it go. But it didn't pan out that way because Danny refused to participate.

Danny's absence aside, their visit had been a blast. They liked everything, from the beach to the mountains, and were willing to try anything once, from spam to surfing. They had been a huge hit at the Kalakaua/Kelly event Chin had dragged them all off to, one of those gatherings that began as 'stop by for coffee' and ended with fifty people and a roaring barbeque and an active, open bar. They even worked in more rock climbing.

Once they were gone, Steve and Danny almost immediately settled back into their familiar routines, easy give and take restored. So Steve had happily assumed that during his self-imposed time out, Danny had gotten over his anger on his own. Then he'd tried to share a very funny, and very obscene, joke Zane emailed him, and Danny had practically turned purple with rage. After a jaw-dropping harangue, Danny finally slammed out of the office bellowing about his role as the father of a beloved daughter whom he could not bear to release into a world in which such vile things existed.

A few experiments later, and Steve realized that Danny hadn't gotten over anything at all. He had only pushed all of his anger onto Donovan. Pointing out that this was particularly bizarre, because it was Lupo who had issued the order to her security force under direct orders from her own DOD superior, had no impact. So, Steve dropped it. He told himself things like 'out of sight, out of mind,' and 'time heals all wounds,' and similar reassuring clichés. He didn't share either of the other emails he'd received from Zane since then.

If he was being really honest with himself, Danny blaming Zane rather than Steve smoothed the way for Steve to make his move on Danny without sorting their professional differences. And for Danny to respond positively, even after Steve cautiously explained that his relationship with Catherine was part of the package, and that he wanted to explore the possibilities of a less conventional romance. If anything, that had actually seemed to reassure Danny, took some of the weight off what they were doing, meant that no one had to take on more relationship than they were ready for.

Catherine had been even more willing than Danny. In fact, Steve thought he had even detected relief on her part. Now she could set aside the weird tug of war she and Danny had found themselves in and instead work with him to balance all their lives. The only thing she asked was that she be the only woman in Steve's life. Wrapped around her in his bed, skin-to-skin, heartbeat-to-heartbeat, that had been a frighteningly easy promise to make, clear eyes and open heart. Without Danny's place safe in his life he might have been too panicked to make it. With him, some of the hard knots pulled free and loose. Steve slipped into love with them both as effortlessly as he swam in the sea.

But with Zane and Jo's arrival imminent, Danny was positively sparking from suppressed energy, a mass of combustible emotions and unsettled arguments just looking for a flame.

The plane slowly taxied up to the gate, and after the usual round of checks and safety procedures, Steve and his team crossed the short distance of noisy, hot tarmac and climbed the rear stairs. The passengers had stayed in their seats at the instructions of the pilot and flight crew, so the aisles were clear. Zane and Jo were in a middle row, toward the back, which made picking them up easy. Coming up from behind startled them enough that they looked genuinely surprised, and then they both adopted attitudes of grim resignation.

In their jeans and battered leather jackets and scuffed boots, with tired eyes and appearing vaguely un-showered, and in Zane's case, quite unshaven, they looked exactly like the sort of couple who could be carrying stolen property.

With Danny carrying their packs, grumbling under his breath about demeaning tasks and what are you hauling in here, anyway, rocks?, they made their way off the plane and into the back corridors of Honolulu International Airport.

"Did you see them?" Zane asked under his breath.

"I think so. 34B and 23H?"

"You're good."

"They were already on the phone, reporting to someone."

"Yeah. Not so good."

Once they had passed behind locked security doors, both Zane and Jo straightened up and let out huge sighs of relief. "Oh man," Zane grinned at Steve as Chin opened his handcuffs. "I have rarely been so glad to be cuffed in my life."

Steve grinned back at him as he unlocked Jo's cuffs, "Do I want to know about the other times you've been glad?"

Rubbing her wrists briskly, Jo turned to look at him. She grinned, her brows arching in firm warning over her laughing eyes, "No. No, you don't." Then she reached up and hugged him tightly. "Thank you."

"My pleasure." Steve said, hugging her back, faintly surprised once again that the top of her head barely cleared his shoulder. She always seemed to take up so much more space than that. Letting go of him, Jo turned to hug Kono and Steve reached out to clasp Zane's hand, pulling him into a one-armed embrace. "Good to see you, man. Even like this."

By the time hugs were exchanged all around, they were all a little giddy with relief. Even Danny had managed to eke out a small smile and a one-armed hug for Jo, though all Zane got was a handshake and a grimace that, on a very charitable viewing, might once have had a relationship with a smile.

After they had all made it inside the small suite of security offices halfway down a white utility hallway, Jo turned to the airport security staffer who had accompanied them and demanded, "rest room?"

"Down that small hall and to the left, first set of doors."

"Thank you!" she cried, and sped off the way she was directed.

Steve turned to Zane and gestured at their packs, inquiring, "Do I even want to know what you have?"

"Yeah," Danny seconded. "One of those is really fucking heavy." He toed the offending backpack, then pulled back, eyeing it suspiciously. "That won't explode, will it?"

"Yeah, Danny. Seoul Airport security totally let me board a commercial airliner with a backpack full of explosives. Kick it and see."

"Very funny, jackass."

"Bite me."

They glared at each other for a moment, but Steve could see that Zane's heart wasn't really in it. Zane turned back to Steve. "And, no, you don't want to know." He twisted his lips ruefully. "Some things are better not shared."

"So, what went wrong on this little mission of yours, anyway?" Danny asked.

Zane pulled off his jacket and rolled it up, shoving it into the larger and heavier of the two packs. He was wearing a hideous and slightly too small 'Gangnam District' tourist tee shirt underneath. Steve figured it was even odds whether or not that had been the largest he could find in a hurry, or he liked the way it showed off his prodigiously well-toned abs.

Hefting the pack up as he rose, he slipped it back on, rolling his shoulders until it settled comfortably. "Honestly? I don't really know." He glanced sharply at Danny, "And it wasn't my mission. There were a lot of things wrong with their exceptionally stupid plan, any of a half dozen flaws that were predictable spots for disaster." He turned back to Steve and Chin, "We were already inside the facility and almost done with our part, when all hell broke loose behind us. After that, it's mostly been running. Without a plan. For four days." His expression darkened. "Loosing people on the way."

He looked up as Jo re-entered. "Better, babe?"

She had taken the time to wash her face and pull her long, dark hair into a ponytail, smooth and neat against her head. She had stripped off her jacket and she also had on a souvenir tee-shirt, emblazoned with an anonymous looking mountain range. Hers didn't cling nearly as tightly as Zane's, but did nothing to hide her figure either. In fact, with the loose hem of her shirt spilling over her belt and her jeans tucked into her combat boots, she looked a lot like Kono's shorter and curvier cousin.

She sighed with relief. "Oh my God, yes. I may get out of this without a yeast infection after all."

Zane grimaced, an aggrieved frown appearing between his eyebrows. With a petulant whine in his voice, he demanded of the room, "Is there no aspect of my life that Mansfield's fucking mission will not screw with?"

Jo shot him an evil eye. "So glad my discomfort is all about you!"

Which cowed him not at all. "In this case, yeah! It is as much about me as you."

"Speaking of things better not shared!" Danny groaned. "Shut up about the personal parts people!"

Zane and Jo swiveled their heads to hit Danny with identical glares.

"It's not over until you're in Shaw's hands," Steve jumped in before things could drift any further into the treacherous shoals of TMI. "Come on. This way."

"You've heard from Shaw?" Jo asked, her irritated expression lighting with pleased relief.

Steve filled her in as they made their way through the underground maze to the parking area. After listening without interruption, she frowned and said, "I'd feel a lot better if anyone had been in contact with Mansfield."

"You don't trust Shaw?"

"Oh, no. I do. He's a good officer and deeply familiar with our work in Oregon. If Mansfield is MIA, Shaw is definitely my choice."

"Yeah," Zane piped up, "Jackboots is a pretty good guy, all things considered."

"You really have to stop calling him that," Jo snapped. "Especially if he's the one who gets us out of this."

"Fine. He gets us out of this, I'll stop calling him Jackboots."

"I'm not making a deal, Zane."

"I'm not either. I said I liked the guy, didn't I?"

"Hey!" Steve barked, "This isn't over yet. Stay alert."

Jo immediately looked chagrined, and nodded her understanding. Zane looked offended, then after he glanced at Jo, thoughtful. Then he nodded too. Steve decided that dealing with really smart people had its upsides.

Steve directed Zane and Jo into the backseat of Chin's SUV and he took the wheel, Kono riding shotgun. Chin and Danny followed at a discrete distance in the Camaro. They pulled out of the parking lot and began to wend their way through the sea of rental car lots toward the frontage road.

Danny's voice crackled in Steve's ear at the same moment he saw it in the rear view mirror. "You have a tail."

"Yep. See it."

"Where?" Kono asked.

"Silver Impala."

"Got it."

"How did they find us so fast?" Zane asked.

"Airport's not that big. Once we went through the security doors, there were only so many possible exits to watch," Steve answered. Which also, unfortunately, meant they had enough watchers to go around. Whoever they were.

"Damn!" Danny's voice echoed in his ear. "A second one. Black Malibu."

Adrenaline starting to slip through his veins, Steve said, "See it." He looked over at Kono. "Black Malibu." He glanced at Jo through the rearview mirror. "Two bogeys now, and we've just turned onto the frontage road. I think you need to tell me what's in the bag."

"Shit." Zane swore briefly. "Okay. We were supposed to make copies, but we were given crap equipment to work with and then we ran out of time. So I yanked the drives and the boards for the ICBM guidance systems instead. That's what's in the bag."

"Where the hell were you?" Steve demanded, suddenly knowing the answer and feeling the peculiar thrilling terror that comes from blowing up something really, really big.

"Yongbyon."

Center of North Korea's nuclear efforts. Holy shit. And Wow. So, so many questions. "How the hell did you get that through security in Seoul?"

"It looks like what it is; old, disassembled computer parts. I said we had volunteered at an electronics-recycling center and these parts were still good, so I was going to use them when I got home to build laptops for underprivileged children. Most people know fuck-all about what the inside of a computer looks like, so it was good."

"Steve!" Kono interrupted, "White panel van, ahead on the left."

"Holy crap. They're going to try to box us in. Arm up, ladies."

Steve took the next right turn at speed, and a second later, flipped on the sirens.

"What the hell, Steven!" Danny shouted in his ear, the radio earpiece not really doing much to keep it less deafening. "Way to tell them where you are!"

"My island, Danny. Mine. We aren't running from them. We're going to arrest them." Steve said. "Kono. Call it in, request backup."

Seeing the white van flash by at the next intersection, running fast in the street parallel to them, Steve grinned in anticipation. "Danny? We've got the panel van. See if you can herd either or both of the others towards us."

He sped up, charged the next intersection and cut left. The van just beat them across the parallel crossroad, but he swung in directly behind. No one was going to chase him, not in Hawaii. Pursuit was Five-0's job.

Jo's happy cry from the backseat, "You remembered my gun!" made him smile.

"Beretta M9," he said, risking a check in the review mirror. Her smile was the brilliant one that lit up her whole face, and he grinned wider. "Of course I remember."

"You remember her birthday, too?" Zane asked.

Steve started laughing, even as he spun left to follow the van. Just because Zane knew he was a jealous bastard didn't ever stop him from acting like one. "Make you miss your cop days, Jo? Nothing like a good car chase, am I right?"

Jo's answering laugh managed to contain a hint of regret, "Not a lot of hot pursuit in a tiny research community."

"Hey!" Zane protested, "What about that time with the kids from Tesla High?"

"What?" Jo sounded confused, then accusing. "You had something to do with that, didn't you?"

Steve stamped on the brakes to follow the van into an alley, slinging everyone to the right.

"Bigger issues, Jo!" Zane said.

The driver of the van did his best, but he obviously didn't know the area well, and within fifteen minutes had gotten himself so turned around that he trapped himself between pursuit and open water. Recognizing the dead end, the van spun to a stop at the far edge of an empty lot and four men, including the driver, boiled out, the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic fire filling the air.

Jo yelled, "Zane, head down. Now!"

Cursing his failure to have everyone in tac vests, Steve, Kono and Jo spilled out of the car, already firing back. Steve and Jo used their doors as cover, Kono shooting over the hood, and Steve bellowed, "5-O! Drop your weapons!"

He didn't expect them to do that, of course, but there were a few pedestrians in the area so it was better to be clear about who was who.

The man on Steve's right fell, clutching his leg, and Steve knew Kono had taken him down. He got the man in the middle square in his vest, knocking him flat, damn them for being better prepared than he was. The man to his left went down with a hit to the shoulder. Had to be Jo. The last man standing ducked behind the van, obviously deciding to make a run for it.

Steve took off after him, shouting, "Stay with Jo!"

Just then the black Malibu came barreling around the corner, headed straight for Steve and the man he was chasing. The man on foot veered away to make a run for it, but Danny and Chin were right behind the Malibu, and there was no time. The Malibu caught their accomplice head on, the solid thump of impact echoing in Steve's belly. The hit lofted the man over the hood, up the windshield and off the roof to crumple on the ground behind. Danny swerved to miss him as Steve dove to the side to get out of the way of the Malibu. The driver slammed on his brakes, apparently aiming for a fishtail turn, but with a double popping of tires being shot out, the black car squealed and skidded across the open lot, coming to rest with the sound of crumpling metal against the front bumper of Chin's SUV.

Steve was on his feet and running even as Chin and Danny burst out of the Camaro. They converged on the Malibu at the same time as Kono and Jo, the sirens of HPD blaring behind them.

Fortunately, the driver and his partner decided not to attempt to shoot their way out of arrest or into suicide, and in relatively short order five men were in custody. The sixth had not survived his encounter with the Malibu. The men turned out to be American, guns for hire, not enemy agents. Steve had no trouble believing that they had no idea why they were supposed to grab Zane and Jo; or that they were simply supposed to wait for instructions after that.

Unfortunately, the silver Impala had made a clean get away, which meant there were still people out there with orders to stop them. And given their now obvious destination of Shafter, well, there weren't that many possible routes. Watching all three approaches would be easy if their opponents had enough manpower.

Steve finished checking in with the HPD officer in charge, then headed for Kono, Jo and Zane, whom Jo had finally allowed to get out of the car.

As he neared them, he heard Kono ask, "So. Car chases with teenagers, huh?"

Jo narrowed her eyes up at Zane. "Long story. From another time."

"Yes, dear. I know." Zane smirked down at her, even as he reached up to smooth his thumb across her eyebrow. "Such adorable frown lines." Then he bent to press a kiss against her forehead.

Kono sighed even as she twinkled at them, her dimple dancing in her cheek. "You've been married more than a year. Honeymoon should be over by now."

Zane and Jo turned to look at her, identical expressions of mild confusion on their faces. Then Zane laughed. Wrapping his arm around Jo, he said, "This? We've always been like this. Even when we were sneaking around."

"Sneaking around?" Kono frowned. "Were you cheating on somebody?"

"No." Zane shook his head, not offended, just correcting. "But the head of security didn't want anyone to know she was banging the resident screw up."

"You are such a jackass." Jo slapped at Zane's arm, but, not very hard. He didn't even pretend to wince. And she left her hand resting against his chest afterward, her other arm still wrapped snugly around his waist. She turned her head to look at Kono. "He wasn't a screw up. But he was a felon on parole, and, well, major, major weirdness if everyone knew. At least, until we knew. If it would be more."

"Friends and lovers came later. And we got married a long time after that," Zane added. He grinned teasingly at Jo. "And I was a screw up."

Kono didn't say anything, but Steve saw the wheels turning. He had a feeling that Jo was going to be cornered as soon as Kono could arrange it. Possibly ambushed even. Kono had never had anyone to talk with about Adam Noshimuri, not anyone who might understand. Gods knew he and Chin and Danny weren't any good on that front, their position having always been that there was no way the sex was good enough or unique enough to balance out the danger. And if the danger was the point, there was always sky-diving. Even Cath, who was pretty tight with Kono these days, wasn't very sympathetic. He'd have to find a moment to give Jo a heads up.

Chin and Danny joined them then. Chin said, "We need a new plan."

"Yes." Jo stepped away from Zane. "I should call Shaw, let him know why we aren't there yet."

"A full on, sirens-blaring escort to Shafter isn't in the works?" Danny asked, his expression hopeful but his tone already resigned.

"No." Zane answered him, saving Steve the difficulty. "How could it be? Without Mansfield around, how would you even explain what you wanted it for? How would you explain us?" he gestured at Jo and himself, "Much less what we've been up to?"

"Remember what Shaw said?" Steve added, "That the whole project is unofficial? When HPD asks who authorizes this, who will be waiting for it, will anyone at Shafter even take their call?"

Danny frowned, his lips twisting in frustration as he struggled to come up with an answer.

"Besides," Zane went on, not waiting for Danny's inevitable objection, "Bringing the HPD in makes them part of something that they shouldn't want anything to do with, makes them accountable for shit better left far away from them."

"Okay," Danny nodded at that, finally conceding the point. "How about this? We put you back in cuffs, take you to holding at HQ and wait for Shaw to send someone to pick you and your stuff up."

Zane shook his head. "That just gives everyone more time to intercept us, and puts more couriers at risk. Assuming Shaw would even agree."

"So what then? No one comes to claim their shit?" Danny demanded. "And why do we care?"

"Oh. Someone will come," Zane said. "It's just a question of who. And how."

That sounded plenty ominous to Steve, knowing what Zane was carrying around in his pack, but Danny barreled on, oblivious. "Well, how about we leave you here, find your own way?"

"Fine!" Zane threw up his hands as his voice rose in exasperation. "You explain to the JCS and the DOD why you didn't cooperate with their fucked up mission."

Steve interrupted before the argument could spiral further out of hand, "What we really need is some sort of diversion. Right?"

He looked around and saw shrugs of agreement.

"Okay," he suggested, "How about a car accident right in front of the main gate at Shafter?"

Chin nodded thoughtfully. "That could work. Make enough distraction, give the folks at Shafter a reason to mobilize at the front, gather a crowd, and Zane and Jo could slip in behind it all."

Kono nodded slowly. "Yeah. I can see how that would play out… but, logistics, who drives what? Chin's car is out, for now. Too obvious."

"What about asking Catherine and my mom to drive the cars? Cath is off duty today," Steve offered.

"Sounds plausible." Zane nodded. "And it would be good to see Doris again, dude. She's pretty smokin'. Got that whole, best-friend's hot mom thing going on." He provided a cheerful leer.

Steve scowled at him. "She can tie you in knots." He tossed in a glare for good measure.

"Right up my alley. I love that."

Steve tried blinking his eyes, but it didn't change anything. Asshole was actually rubbing his hands with an anticipatory gleam in his eye. "What is wrong with you?" he demanded.

Zane dropped his hands and shrugged. Narrowing his eyes he said, "Karma's a bitch."

Jo elbowed her way in between them, somehow they had ended up nearly toe-to-toe. Putting her hands on their chests, she shoved them away from each other, hard enough they both stumbled slightly to catch their balance. Glaring at them both, she said, "Do you two need a ruler? We can get this whole size thing sorted right now."

Steve frowned at her. "What? No!"

Zane just smirked. "What would be the fun in knowing?"

Danny turned to Jo, an expression of disbelief on his face. "Was your whole week like this?"

She folded her arms, "On and off. Fortunately, for my sanity, and," she dropped her voice to a growl that was nearly a purr as she caught both Steve and Zane in her warning glare, "their lives," she turned and smiled sweetly at Danny, "more off than on."

Danny laughed sharply, then looked at Steve. "No wonder you like him so much. You're both perpetually fifteen."

Chin cleared his throat. "So. About a diversionary car crash."

"It sounds good, but," Kono shook her head, "no way Cath is risking her car!"

Steve frowned in annoyance. "Obviously. We'll provide the cars."

"What cars?" Danny demanded. "We don't have any extra cars!"

Steve looked at Zane. "Just how good are you?"

"Stole your truck, didn't I? Besides," he sighed and a brief wave of darkness crossed his features, "I've been practicing lately."

"Steal cars? You're going to steal cars to stage a car accident?" Danny's voice was rising with his incredulity.

"At this point the game is hot potato, and the longer we have the goods, the more likely it is we lose them. And that someone else gets hurt." Zane responded. "We have got to get them off our hands and into Shaw's as soon as we can."

"Yeah," Steve said, "it will take too long to get cars legitimately for this. And the cars can be returned, in as good or better condition. Right?" He looked at Zane.

"I'm sure someone's budget has room. Mine, if no one else can be made to cough it up."

Steve turned to Danny. "Come on. You know he's good for it."

He should, Steve thought. They all should. Zane had used up their entire supply of C4 and most of their grenades last time, and had all of it replaced and more before he left Hawaii. Steve didn't know exactly how he'd done it, but he hadn't wanted to know either.

"That is so not the point!" Danny exclaimed, punctuating his words with emphatic waves of his arms. "Why is it that when these two show up," he pointed at Zane and Jo, "we start breaking laws?"

"We break the rules all the time, Danny," Kono said. "I know you don't like it, but honestly, it isn't unique for us."

"And I don't like to play the whole 'national security' card thing, because that's mostly bullshit, but this time, it is. Really." Zane added.

Danny shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled balefully at all of them.

"Danny?" Jo stepped over to him, tilting her chin to look him in the face, her own large, dark eyes steady and more than a little mesmerizing. Steve guessed that Danny would fold pretty quickly in the face of those eyes. "We could really use your help." She added a small, kind smile. "But, I also understand if you'd rather sit this one out."

Danny eventually tore his gaze away from hers to look at his toes, then the horizon, then finally around at all their faces, ending up with his eyes on Steve's. "You're really going to do this thing?"

"Yes."

He sighed dramatically. "Fine. I'm in."

Score another one for Jo. "All in?" Steve asked. Just to be sure.

"Yes!" He shot Steve an exasperated glare. "All in!"

"Okay. Kono? You call Cath, I'll take Doris. Zane, you and Chin decide how you want to set up the crash. Jo? You get in touch with Shaw and fill him in?"

Doris was more than willing to pitch in, too willing and too pleased, actually. Too late, Steve realized that she would see this as an invitation to step further back into his life. And, more worrisome, he suspected he was probably happy about that, which is probably why he had thought of her in the first place when he realized they were going to need more drivers. Damn.

Catherine was also game, which was not a surprise, and Shaw, who had begun to worry, promised to have people waiting for their cue.

Chin and Zane came up with a scheme for a three car pile up, Cath in one car, Doris in one car, and Danny and Kono in the third. Meanwhile, Steve would drive Zane and Jo to the gate and drop them off to make their run for it as soon as the drivers were out of their cars and yelling at each other. Finally, in a change Steve whole-heartedly approved of, Chin would take the computer drives and boards and ride straight into Shafter on his bike. "What made you think of that, anyway? Using Zane and Jo as more decoys?"

"It was Jo's idea," Chin said.

"Chin is the most disciplined," Jo explained. "And least likely to stop if anyone else gets hurt."

Steve shook his head as he grinned ruefully at them both. "Yeah. You probably nailed that one."

"And I wanted Kono on the ground, center stage, where she'll have the best view of any possible shooters," Chin added.

"So. Four cars?" Zane asked.

Chin nodded in slow agreement. "Yeah."

"Okay then. Let's get going. All from around here, or should we spread it out?"

"Fast is better," Steve said, "But let's at least get away from the HPD."

Steve made their excuses to the duty cop left at the scene, and they peeled out in Chin's SUV after kicking off the rest of the front bumper and leaving it behind.

Zane was fast. He had electronics that made grabbing late model cars almost effortless. But he was just as efficient with old school auto-theft. In a four block radius less than two miles away from their starting point, they took two newer cars, one mid 2000s SUV, and one banged up old mini van. The easier to hop out of, Zane explained when Steve raised his eyebrows at that one.

They rendezvoused at an empty warehouse Kamekona pointed them to, after the brief round of ritual bartering. Steve sent Danny off to hold the warehouse with the first car, mostly to keep him from needling Zane any further about his heroic life of crime. Unfortunately this only gave Danny time to compose a number of irritating observations about Grand Theft Auto, PhD's from FPU – Federal Pen University, get it?– and the various and manifold pleasures of thug life. He let them fly as soon as Steve and Zane arrived with the last car.

Zane, busy prepping the packages for Chin, ignored him. Despite Steve's glares and failed attempts at telepathic communication to just shut the hell up, this only made Danny up the ante.

"It must help keep the role playing authentic, the wife knowing she should arrest you for real, huh, Donovan?" Danny all but elbowed Zane in the side as he chuckled nastily.

That got an arctic glare, but Zane somehow, heroically even, managed to keep his mouth closed.

So Danny turned to Jo. "Hey! Am I right? I'm right, aren't I?" He leered at her. "Knowing your bad boy is still a really bad boy must keep the story fresh, hm?"

Jo, her jaw tight with irritation, eyed him levelly and just let Danny's rudeness hang in the air until even Danny started to twitch uncomfortably. "Are you finished?" she asked.

Danny shrugged and had the good sense to look slightly ashamed of himself. He also refused to look at Zane or at Steve. Which was just as well, Steve thought. Zane was probably fighting the temptation to either slug him or bait him into truly unforgivable territory. Probably the later, knowing Zane. Steve couldn't think of anything to do to diffuse the situation, either, in part because he was so exasperated that Danny was creating it in the first place.

Under most circumstances Steve loved Danny's mouth, for what he said and for all the clever things he could do with it. But every now and then, like, say, now, or sometimes when dealing with Rachel, it took him in way, way too deep to easily walk back. Which was why his legal bills required a monthly payment plan. And why some people didn't like him very much.

"Good." Jo turned her back on him.

The sound of Chin's bike was a welcome disruption, and soon they were engrossed in diagramming out the proposed accident at the T-stop intersection in front of Shafter.

Less than ten minutes later Kono arrived in her own car, having left the Camaro at HQ and collected Doris and Catherine on the way back.

"Jo! Zane!" Doris cried, holding open her arms and giving each of them a strong hug. "It is so very good to see you again!"

"Et tu, Doris?" Danny said.

Doris raised her brow as she gave Danny a long considering look. Finally she said, "Jealousy does not become you, Daniel."

"I am not jealous!"

"No." Zane turned on him, all of his normal good humor entirely evaporated by a wave of surprisingly cold anger. "You're pissed because we violated your incredibly erratic personal rules. I've read your files. Even before you hooked up with Steve you played dirty when you had too. Since then, you've followed commando man into every civil liberties violation that enters his head."

"I have not!" Danny looked outraged. And faintly guilty as well, Steve thought, watching him roll his shoulders into a nearly imperceptible defensive crouch.

"You have too!" Zane curled his lip in a way that managed to be both mocking and contemptuous, and entirely antagonizing. Steve suddenly found the time to be amazed that Zane had made it out of federal prison alive. "You even stood there and watched while a SEAL team played a giant ass counting coup game with Mexican drug lords. Because apparently, according to your personal code, Mexicans aren't worthy of civil liberties, so cold-blooded murder of them is all A-OK by you."

"How the hell do you even know that?" Now Danny was just straight-up angry.

"How do you think I know that?" Zane all but rolled his eyes, his 'moron' unsaid but audible all the same. "I looked it up. Your record isn't even secret. It barely rises to confidential." Somehow Zane managed to make this sound like being banished to the children's table, a direct hit at one of Danny's most painful insecurities. "So when you do get extraordinary, one-time only clearances they stand out like a fucking beacon. You've been a dick to me, and to Jo," Steve thought it was pretty clear everyone that this was the heart of the problem, "almost since we met, so I wanted to know what the hell crawled up your ass and died."

"Did you figure it out, brainiac?" Danny's eyes were narrow with fury and his tone was barely removed from grade-school taunting.

"Yeah. I did." Zane folded his arms and dismissed him with shrug. "Turns out you're just an asshole."

Danny rendered speechless didn't happen all that often, but now he just gaped at Zane. Finally, in a much calmer voice, he said, "That whole thing actually really pissed me off."

"Which 'whole thing'?" Zane asked, implying vast multitudes of options.

"That SEAL thing. My objections wouldn't have made any difference though."

Zane nodded slowly. After a moment he let stretch nearly to the breaking point, he said, "Sucks, doesn't it. Becoming a DOD lackey." His voice was oddly sympathetic, and Steve was relieved to see Danny's shoulders begin to relax as the tension began to leak out of the room.

Danny flicked his eyes to Steve, and then looked away from all of them. "Yeah," was all he said.

"Okay then." Kono broke the scene with a bright, if forced, smile. "I have tac vests for everyone. After our last encounter with these guys, seemed like a good idea."

Steve wanted to hug her, but knew better. "Good call." He looked around. "Gear up everybody. No point in standing around here. Jo? Give Shaw the head's up."

They were about half way back to Shafter when Chin radioed in. "The Impala is patrolling the intersection southeast of Shafter."

"Has he made you?"

"I don't think so."

"Okay." Steve thought for a few seconds, and then decided to come around from the other direction. "Everybody, circle around and be ready to come in again on my mark. I'm going to bring Zane and Jo in from the north."

He looked over at Jo. "I'm guessing that they will be watching from this direction too, and now I'll have to stop on the wrong side of the road, but…."

"That draws more attention away from Chin and makes us more visible running for the gate," Jo concluded approvingly.

"Oh. Yay." Zane said from the backseat.

They spotted the black Camry just as they exited the freeway and turned back south toward Shafter. At about the same moment the driver must have decided it was them and pulled into traffic two cars behind them. "We've got a black Camry on our tail," Steve announced, his adrenaline singing now.

"Guys," Catherine's voice rang in Steve's ear, "another car just pulled out behind me from under the trees here at Funston Road. He isn't looking at me, but I think he's gunning for you."

"Okay – pile up as many cars as you can."

Cath and Doris hit their marks exactly, two left turns at once in the intersection immediately in front of the Shafter gate. Danny and Kono plowed right into Doris's rear bumper, having been following—deliberately—too closely as she swung across a lane and into the turn.

The silver Impala promptly rear ended Danny and Kono's older model SUV. With a screeching of tires, two more cars behind the Impala barely managed to avoid collisions.

Steve pulled to a stop on the far side of the road from Shafter. Danny, Cath and Doris were all emerging from their cars, already yelling about whose fault it was. Then he saw the driver of the Impala pulling a weapon as he strode for the center of the intersection, his partner only a few steps behind him. Kono popped up over the roof of the SUV, her gun already in her hands, and began firing at the driver of the Impala. He promptly darted back for cover, returning fire as he ran.

"Go!" Steve cried to Jo and Zane. Flinging himself toward the Camry, all of them dodging around another car trying to make the right merge onto the freeway entrance, he pulled his own gun and began firing at the Camry closing in fast. He hit the Camry's windshield twice and the car spun out, slamming across the northbound lane and into the stone fence surrounding Shafter about twenty-five yards before reaching the main gate.

The air was full of the sound of gunfire. Zane and Jo were almost across the street, Zane pulling Jo behind him. Steve caught sight of Chin on his bike, simply gliding past all of the turmoil and turning right and into the entrance of the Fort, disappearing around the bend with a wave from the guard as he passed through. Steve smiled in triumph, and then he heard his mother's scream. "Steve! Hit the ground!"

At almost the same moment he heard the whooshing bark of a rocket launcher.

The street directly in front of Zane vanished in a geyser of asphalt and dirt, the force of the blast throwing him up and back, tossing him into Jo, spinning them both head over heels like rag-dolls, debris raining down across the entire intersection. They fell, cart-wheeling into the ground, and lay sprawled and still.

Steve had begun his dive as soon as he heard his mother's shout. The force of the explosion knocked him sideways, but he was more or less prepared for it and already beginning a roll as he hit the pavement. He was pulling himself to his knees, trying to get a sense of what was happening when he saw two men running from the direction of the Camry and headed straight for Zane and Jo, and heard a second round of the rocket launcher.

He dropped to the ground again and covered his head, waiting for the impact before launching himself to his feet. He felt more than he heard a secondary explosion, and then the billowing heat and pressure of a gas tank going up in flames hit him like a wave, making him stagger.

Through the shimmering air he saw Jo standing over Zane and firing point blank into the faces of the two men who had made it within paces of them, blood and bits of bone flying as what was left of their heads snapped backwards and their bodies tumbled to the ground.

He turned his head to see what was happening with the mid-intersection collision and couldn't make out any details, too many running people, too many flames, too much confusion. Men and women in army camo were rushing into the scene, traffic was beginning to back up into long lines in three directions behind the snarl at the gate, too many drivers were exiting their cars, trying to get a better look at the chaos.

Five more strides and he was at Jo's side as she knelt over Zane, brushing dirt and blood from his face and growling, over and over, "Don't stop breathing, damn you. Just. Don't. Stop. Breathing."

The next few minutes were chaotic, but not nearly as chaotic as they would have been without Shaw's intervention. The squad that rushed out from Shafter was aware of what they were seeing. Before HPD even arrived, they had flagmen out sorting and redirecting traffic, the two bloodied men from the Impala in custody, and medics were gently sliding Zane onto a body board before transferring him into a waiting ambulance. Despite the flames, Danny, Kono, Cath and Doris were fine, bruises and cuts and a bit singed, but nothing more. Unfortunately, the men firing the rocket launcher had fled the scene.

Steve called the Governor's office, needing to get out ahead of explaining why his mother, his girlfriend and two members of 5-O had just had an accident in front of Shafter in stolen cars.

Denning was understandably inclined to be cranky, but the careful use of Mansfield's name, an invocation of national security, the cooperation of Lt. Col. Shaw and the people at Shafter, and he was willing at least to delay a dressing down until he'd had time to process the entire story.

Assisting HPD with the accident site was essential. Dumping them with Five-O's extremely messy business would have only resulted in hostility and questions. Cheerful support earned him and his team enough good will that their misdirection about what they had been up to, foiling a terror plot, was accepted readily. It helped that they had two live suspects and two dead ones, as well as the rocket launcher, which had been left behind. They were able to pass the location itself off as the target of the terror plot. The two living suspects, having been threatened with military detention by hard-eyed officers in Army green, were happy to be taken away by HPD and ready to plead to any number of weapons violations as long as they stayed in the criminal justice system.

He also had to spend some time chatting up the officer Shaw had detailed to manage things on the ground at Shafter. The man obviously knew almost nothing about what was going on and was both thrilled and disappointed to be so close to, and yet so far from, something big. The packages Chin had delivered had been snatched up and whisked away by waiting intelligence officers.

As a result, it was almost three hours later before he was able to send his team home to rest and to take himself off to the hospital to check up on Zane and Jo. Catherine had called to let them know that Zane was alive and stabilized, but so far there had been little information about the extent of his injuries.

He arrived at Tripler, the massive Army medical complex on the island, to find Jo, rigid with tension, sitting between his mother and Cath in a small waiting room near ICU. Catherine stood as soon as she saw him and walked into his arms. He held her tightly for a moment or three longer than usual. The stricken look on Jo's face provided all the reminder he needed to hold on to those he loved while he could.

"Hey," Cath pulled back, reaching up to brush gentle fingers over his own bandaged cheek and forehead. Contusions he hadn't realized he had taken until long after the excitement died down and a persistent medic finally pushed him down on the curb. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine. Sore. But fine." He caught her fingers and kissed them. "Any news?"

She nodded. "They think a large piece of pavement hit him full in the chest. Even with the vest, it crushed his sternum and broke several ribs. One of his lungs was punctured and there's been a lot of internal bleeding. Plus the concussion from slamming into the ground, the broken wrist and the gash in his thigh. He was just too close to the point of impact."

What she didn't have to say was that without the vest, he probably would already be dead. "Is Jo hurt?"

"Minor concussion, sprained wrist. Bullet graze to the shoulder and three slugs in her vest. Major bruises where they hit. But he was between her and the blast, so he shielded her almost completely from any initial debris."

Steve nodded and crossed the room to kneel in front of Jo. He started to put his hands on her knees, but she flinched back, so he pulled his hands away. "Hey. I came as soon as I could."

She nodded, and worked up a very strained smile. "Thanks," she said. Her voice was so faint and dry he could hardly hear it, but she coughed and tried again, stronger this time. "Thank you. I'm glad you're here."

They waited quietly for what seemed another very long time. At last a man in blue scrubs and a white coat appeared. "Mrs. Donovan?" he said, obviously not quite sure to whom he should be speaking.

Jo rose to her feet, her back straight and her shoulders square. "Yes?"

The doctor looked around, obviously wondering about privacy.

"It's fine," Jo said. "Go on."

"We have him stabilized for now, but there's been a lot of internal damage. Especially to his heart and lungs. They were seriously bruised at impact, and bone splinters ripped them up pretty badly on top of that. We've repaired everything we can for now, but he's still bleeding and it's not a good long term solution."

Jo swayed, but she did not fall. "Meaning?"

"We think they will eventually fail. He needs new ones."

"New organs? A new heart and lungs? That's what he needs?"

"Yes. We've put him on the top of the transplant lists. He's young, healthy and in excellent shape. If we can get organs in time, he should do very well."

"You need a heart and lungs. For Zane." Jo repeated, speaking slowly and clearly, as though it were terribly important that the doctor understand exactly what she was saying.

"Yes. He needs a new heart, and, ideally, new lungs." The doctor nodded firmly. But then, with a quick glance at Steve and then Doris, he went on, "we can keep him going, here in the hospital, but, Mrs. Donovan, the wait times can be quite long. Especially for both a heart and lungs. You need to understand that."

"No." Jo shook her head. "There's no need to wait." She was fumbling for her phone. Once she had it in her hands, she raised a faintly trembling finger and pointed at the doctor. "Don't move," she ordered.

The doctor looked to Steve and then Doris in confusion, but they both shook their heads. They were as much in the dark as he was.

Whomever Jo was calling was taking their time picking up the phone, but eventually Jo breathed, "Allison? Allison, the doctor is here. He says Zane needs a new heart and lungs."

She nodded sharply once, then twice, said, "OK," then she held the phone out to the doctor. "Talk to her. Tell her everything."

"Jo?" Steve asked, "What's going on?"

"Allison and Henry will print him a heart. His heart. His lungs."

"Um," Steve exchanged wild glances with Cath and Doris. "Okay."

He looked at the doctor whose eyes had gone as wide as he was sure his were as he listened to the person on the other end of the line. The doctor burst out, "Is this some sort of sick joke?"

Whatever this Allison said next had the doctor frowning, then leaning back as though to get away from someone poking their finger in his chest. Eventually, he cleared his throat, and said, "I see. Thank you Dr. Blake. I'll alert the transplant team and put you in touch with the nurse's station supervising Mr. Donovan's care. I look forward to meeting you."

He handed the phone back to Jo, who accepted it and stepped away to speak privately.

Steve looked at the doctor. "Well?"

"I don't quite know what to say. Either I've just been colossally punked, and at the expense of a patient and his terrified wife, or, I'm about to participate in a medical advance that I thought was still only the stuff of science fiction."

"And what is that, doctor?" Doris asked, using one of her more terrifying 'don't fuck with me' smiles. About a seven on a one to ten scale, Steve thought. Aimed at anyone other than himself, watching his mother in action was always a bit freakishly satisfying.

The doctor didn't even hesitate. "You've heard of 3-D printing, I assume?" At their nods, he continued, "This Dr. Blake assures me that they have organic 3-D printers. They are going to build, in their labs, new organs for Mr. Donovan. Replacements. Created specifically for him. Based on genetic information they already hold on all their employees. And fly them in. Within the next twenty-four hours." He paused, frowning. "Allison Blake. That name is ringing a bell."

Jo, who had finished with her phone call, interrupted his thought process. "When can I see him?"

"I'll take you to look at him now, but only through the glass. In a few hours we will set him up in a private room."

"When will he wake up?"

"Well." The doctor scrubbed his hand through his thinning hair. "I was going to see if we could wake him in the morning, but with Dr. Blake's news – I'm beginning to think it will be better to keep him sedated until after the next surgery."

"No!" Jo swallowed hard. "I mean. I want to be able to speak with him before the next surgery. He would want it too."

"He's on a ventilator, Mrs. Donovan. It's extremely uncomfortable and impossible to talk through."

"Give him a tablet. He can type." She raised her eyes to the doctor's. "Please?"

Steve watched the doctor gradually crumble under the onslaught of Jo's eyes. She had amazing eyes, Jo did. Large and expressive, and often so dark you could hardly see her pupils unless you were in bright light. Tonight you could drown in her eyes, terror and hope and love pulling you in and under until you were lost for good in their bottomless depths.

"Okay." The doctor's voice was weak at first, but gained strength as he spoke. "But not until morning. He needs the rest. And I'm sure you do as well."

"I will stay here."

The doctor looked to Steve and Doris. "It might be best if you all took shifts….?"

Doris nodded. "I agree." She turned to Jo. "I'll take you to Steve's. You can shower and get some sleep."

"No." Jo shook her head and repeated, "I'm staying here."

"Josephina Lupo you will do no such thing. You will come with me and get cleaned up and rested before tomorrow."

Jo looked shocked. "How do you know my name?"

Doris smiled warmly at Jo. "Your husband likes to talk about you."

Jo smiled back, a watery smile, but a genuine one, and she chuckled softly. "I imagine the difficulty is getting him to shut up."

Doris wrapped her arm around Jo's shoulders and began moving her to the exit. "Not at all. Listening to a man who loves his wife is a great pleasure. Though, I admit, I won't be asking him a second time!"

Steve and Cath had finished a not quite as awful as anticipated cafeteria supper and were debating who would stay and who would go home for some rest themselves, when the door to the small waiting room off the ICU opened again. Looking up, they saw a very tall, dark-skinned Army officer entering, some sort of aide beside him. "McGarrett?" The man said.

Steve immediately recognized the voice, and the rank on his collar. He rose, offering his hand. "Shaw?"

"Yes. Good to meet you." He turned to Cath, and offered her his hand, "And you as well, Ms. Rollins."

Having now established that despite his uniform, they were not officially on duty, Shaw gestured towards the chairs, inviting them to sit with him.

"I wanted to offer my congratulations on your very quick work today. You earned yourself a lot of gratitude."

"From?" Steve cocked his head encouragingly.

"When it might help, you'll know."

"Ah."

"I also want to offer you my personal thanks. Jo Lupo is a very good friend of mine. I'm very relieved that she is back again, and mostly in one piece."

Steve quirked his eyebrow, "And, Zane?"

Shaw laughed a quiet, rumbling laugh. "Donovan. Makes her happy. So, I'm happy he's going to make it."

"Hmm."

"Well," Shaw leaned forward, a bit conspiratorially, "I'm happy for him too. He is, slowly, proving that he is worth more than the trouble he brings. A great deal more. But you don't need to tell him I said so." He sat back and crossed his legs. "In fact, if you'd like to head home and get some rest, I would be happy to take a turn waiting."

Steve searched Shaw's face, trying to figure out what was making the small hairs on his arms stand up. "I think," he said slowly, "I think I'll just wait here. We're running shifts and someone else from our team will be here in a while."

"No need. Really. I know you had a very busy day."

"And, if you are planning to whisk him away in the dead of night, at least I'll be able to tell Jo I did everything I could to stop it."

Shaw chuckled again. "The thought had crossed our minds, McGarrett. But, he's really in no condition to be moved. And this is a military hospital, so the necessary security protocols can be established. Beginning with this." He gestured for his aide, who handed over two clipboards. "I'm afraid that you'll both have to sign, again, to guarantee your silence about all that you heard here today. Specifically about the extent of Donovan's injuries, and about how he will be treated."

"The whole 'printing him new organs' thing?" Cath asked.

"Yes." He smiled approvingly at Cath, and then grew serious again. "The DOD is not sitting on this technology due to national security concerns, I assure you, but because, so far, it has resisted all attempts to scale up production. It is also incredibly costly and the materials hard to manufacture. To allow any hint that it exists to escape, even as a remote possibility and only in the rarest of cases, would be cruel. Raising hopes that cannot, at present, be met."

"But, you're willing to use it for Zane?" Steve said.

"Yes. He wrote the some of the first organ design programs for the lattice." At their confused looks, he added, "the printer."

Steve exchanged glances with Cath, then they held out their hands for the clipboards. They'd both already signed away so much of their lives, what was a little bit more, really, in the grand scheme of things?

As Steve handed his back to the aide, he said, "My mother was also here, when we heard about it."

"Yes. Someone is visiting with her as we speak."

"You are very thorough."

"Yes."

"So? What happens now?"

"We wait."

So they waited. Shaw took off soon after they signed, but left his aide, who sat quietly working away at a laptop. Around midnight Kono arrived, armed with coffee and magazines. Steve introduced her to Shaw's aide, having already texted her his warning to not leave Zane unwatched, and he and Cath headed home to bed.

In the morning he went first to Five-O, sure that there would be a mountain of paper work waiting for him after yesterday's adventures. Instead he ran into Danny, sitting in his own office, staring off into space with a bemused expression on his face. "What's up?" Steve asked, leaning in the doorway.

"People in dark suits and armed with thick non-disclosure agreements showed up, announced anything we had from yesterday was classified, downloaded and erased files, and left. Just like the last time we tangled with Lupo and Donovan."

"So… does that mean no paperwork?" Steve tried not to sound too gleeful.

"Apparently."

Steve's conscience kicked a little. "Even about the stolen vehicles?"

"I asked about those, actually. They said that the owners would discover that their insurance companies were remarkably understanding and generous."

"I can't believe the owner of the mini-van was carrying that kind of insurance!"

"Fortunately for them, it wasn't damaged."

After a few minutes of silence as they contemplated this turn of events, Danny stood up. "I owe you an apology, by the way."

"Yes. I'm sure you do. For what exactly?"

"For doubting that they would step up, 'once the goods crossed the finish line'. They certainly have." He looked up at Steve. "I will allow you one, and only one, 'I told you so.' Don't abuse it."

Steve laughed then. "Well, I'll be sure to be careful with it." He looped his arm around Danny's shoulders. "Come on. Let's go see if Zane's awake yet."

He had been, but was already in being prepped for his next surgery by the time they arrived.

"He was really groggy, but, I'm glad they let him wake up enough to understand what was happening," Jo said. "He's really twitchy about having things happen while he's asleep. They all are. The ones who…." she fluttered her hands and shrugged.

Steve nodded. He saw the quick gestures to her forehead and temples, and he remembered the banks of machines the Consortium had set up, waiting to jack Zane back into their VR world. He also remembered how thoroughly Zane had smashed those machines, and later, blown up the smashed bits and buried them. Just for good measure. He hadn't thought about it before now, but he could imagine just how upset Zane might be to learn that he'd had major surgery without knowing about it ahead of time.

"McGarrett. Just the man I was looking for."

Steve turned to see Lt. Col. Shaw approaching.

"How's he doing, Jo?" Shaw asked as he joined them. "I heard you had a chance to speak with him?"

"He's strong. He'll be okay." She smiled, her eyes glistening with tears she quickly blinked away. "He said to tell you thanks. For arranging everything for us at Shafter."

Shaw shook his head. "I just wish…"

Jo interrupted him. "You'd what? Anticipated rocket launchers? Really?"

Shaw ducked his head in an apologetic shrug. "Well, that was beyond the parameters I'd anticipated. Or anyone had, I suspect. It seems the local hires decided to use some initiative."

Shaw grew serious again. "The helicopter should be here shortly, and Donovan will be fine. He's in the best hands possible." He turned to Steve. "That's why I'm here. Would you like to come with me, to meet the chopper?"

"Um, sure?" Steve smiled and turned to Danny, his gaze pointed. "Will you be okay here?"

"Yeah." Danny smiled a bit ruefully. "We'll be fine. Really. Go."

Shaw was silent as they made their way to the helicopter landing area. As soon as the chopper landed, several med tech looking types jumped out, turning to take the small organ transfer cases. Hospital employees quickly ushered them inside. Shaw made no move to follow, and Steve turned his gaze back to the chopper. Two more people were emerging; a slender woman and a tall, square-jawed, grey-haired man wearing a polo shirt tucked neatly into his pressed and belted khakis. Steve immediately recognized this look as senior military officer 'civilian' wear. He had a passing moment of relief that he had gotten out of the service before his inclination for comfort over anything that needed ironing was ground out of him.

Shaw gestured them inside, and Steve found himself shaking the hand of the elusive General Mansfield. "How do you do, sir? It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"And the same to you, Commander McGarrett."

Mansfield's grip was firm and well practiced. He turned to the woman with him. "Please, let me introduce Dr. Allison Blake, who will be supervising the surgery."

Dr. Blake was a lovely, trim woman on the threshold of middle age, with long brown hair and expressive eyes and a warm, reassuring smile.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Commander." Dr. Blake had a perfect physicians' voice, warm and full, her fingers in his hand were cool and dry. "Jo's told us a bit about you."

"Dr. Blake," the General said, "let's get you to surgery, shall we?"

With that they all turned to make their way back into the hospital. Dr. Blake was collected promptly by a hospital staffer, and Shaw steered Steve and the General into a small office, conveniently – as if, Steve thought – empty and available.

"McGarrett. I wanted to apologize for being out of touch yesterday. It was necessary, given the parameters of the mission at hand. But the initiative you and your team showed was superb. Lupo and Donovan chose well when they decided to come to you."

"Thank you, General. I assume this means everything ended the way it was supposed to?"

"I believe it did." Mansfield smiled briefly. "Stolen cars and all."

"You heard about that, I see."

"Donovan's a born felon." Mansfield quirked an eyebrow, "I assume your tendencies are the result of training and expediency."

Steve smiled a half smile and chuckled a half chuckle, refusing to commit himself to any actual answer.

"I am in your debt. Which I will remember." Mansfield held out his hand again, and Steve took it, aware that this time they were sealing a bargain. Too bad he didn't actually know what the terms of the deal were.

When they made it to the waiting area, to Steve's surprise, Mansfield held out his arms and Jo walked into his embrace. It was short and formal, but Steve felt it was also quite sincere. "I came as soon as I could," Mansfield told her.

"I understand, sir," Jo's lips quirked up in a faint smile, "And you brought Allison."

"I'm sorry everything went so badly at the end."

"It was a hastily planned mission, sir." Jo shrugged and locked her hands behind her back, quietly assuming the pose of a soldier debriefing to her commander.

"Window of opportunity was closing."

"Yes sir." Jo nodded.

"But," and Mansfield's gaze was abruptly quite sharp, "you and Donovan completed your mission."

"Yes sir. We did." Her voice rang with quiet assurance.

Mansfield's expression acquired the faintest hint of malevolent satisfaction. But all he said was, "Thank you."

Jo cocked her head. "But the risks were far greater than you acknowledged."

Mansfield shook his head regretfully. "I know. And for that, I'm very sorry."

Jo unclasped her hands from behind her back, letting her arms fall to her sides. "In fact, the plans presented to us on site suggest it would have been neater if we hadn't made it home at all."

"No!" Mansfield looked horrified. And faintly guilty as well. "No. Jo. I knew you both would get home. That's why I sent you."

"Did everyone else involved know that? Sir?"

The General didn't answer right away and he wouldn't meet Jo's gaze. Finally he said, "I don't know what everyone else believed." He raised his eyes to her face again. "But I believed in you. And in Donovan."

"You didn't answer your phone yesterday."

"I know. I sincerely regret that I couldn't."

"I see." She paused, and then raised her brows. "You could make it up to him."

"I could?"

Her gaze hardened. "Find him the money to build the chaotic inflation device. I know he and Henry have been requesting funding for more than a year."

"That's pure research Jo. You know I don't handle that."

"Yes. It is. But you can find the money. Sir." Jo's stare was both measuring and a challenge. "It's Nathan Stark's design. With Zane and Henry building it, it will revolutionize astrophysical theory, maybe even some of the laws of physics. It is the beginning of testing his doctoral thesis. He's earned it."

The General opened his mouth and closed it again, once, then twice. Finally he said, "I'll see what I can do."

Jo folded her arms across her chest. She kept her gaze steady on his, "You can make this happen. If you want to. Sir."

Steve had no way of knowing what they saw in each other's eyes, but in the end, Mansfield bowed his head. "Yes. I can," he said at last. "And I will, Jo. I will find him the funds."

Steve let go the breath he had not been entirely conscious of holding. Jo had lined Mansfield up in her sights, maneuvered him into position, and taken him down with little more than a lifted brow and force of righteousness. Guilt and honor and a hair's breadth escape from widowhood were all on her side this time, and Mansfield knew it. It was an impressive performance. He was glad he wasn't in the General's shoes. And admired that Jo had asked for something he could actually give.

Then, turning to take Shaw and Steve in as well, the General gave them all a curt nod. "If you will excuse me, I have other business to attend to."

As the General left the room, Steve's phone rang. It was HPD, with a new case. He turned to make his apologies to Jo, but Shaw waved him off. "It's fine McGarrett. I'll be debriefing Jo today. She won't be alone."

"Today?" Jo looked horrified.

"The doctors have told us the surgery will take ten to eleven hours, Jo. Debriefing now is efficient, and will help you pass the time."

Five-O's new case proved to be the usual. It had a little of this, a little of that, then a dead body, leads that didn't pan out, informants who had little to offer that was useful and lots of commentary that wasn't as funny as they thought it was.

Things were stalled out in the late afternoon while they waited for lab tests and information requests to be filled, so Steve decided it would be a good time to check in on Jo. He was looking around for Danny when Kono and Chin returned from pursing another lead that failed to pan out. "Do you know where Danny is?"

Kono shot him a baffled look. "Yeah. He went back over to the hospital a while ago, said he was going to take Jo some decent coffee and take out."

Steve was surprised that Danny had taken off without telling him, but pleased all the same that it showed effort to mend fences on Danny's part. Striding through the hospital corridors looking for them, he came around a corner and caught sight of his mother's familiar back. He was just about to hail her, when he realized that she was walking along deep in conversation with General Mansfield. As it did so often when dealing with Doris, the first thought that passed through his brain was, 'what the hell, mom?'

Before he could edge himself into listening distance, they stopped at another corridor crossing and he had no real choice but to walk right on up to them. He raised what he hoped was a meaningful eyebrow. "Mom?"

"Steve!" She smiled at him, as always apparently genuinely delighted to see him no matter how badly timed, from either of their points of view, his arrival might be.

"Commander." Mansfield smiled. "I was just telling your mother how pleased I was with your recent intervention."

And just like that Steve felt reduced to grade school during parent-teacher conferences, suffused by that vaguely embarrassed yet thrilled sense that the adults were happy with his work. He automatically thrust his hands into his pockets to shrug off the praise. "Just doing my job, sir."

"Above and beyond." Mansfield smiled. "If you'll excuse me?" He turned to Doris. "It was good to see you again." He offered her his hand. "Take care of yourself." He nodded at Steve. "And your son."

While Steve was still floundering around in search of his dignity, Mansfield walked off.

"Mom?"

"Yes, honey?"

"You know Mansfield?"

"Know? No." She shook her head in denial. "We met, once or twice, a long time ago. That's all."

"And so he tracked you down to praise me?"

"No!" Doris laughed and turned to keep walking. "Don't be silly." She linked her arm through his. "Not that you don't deserve it of course."

Steve thought about shrugging off her arm, but then she would go all brittle and withdrawn and that would end any attempt to get new information out of her today. "So. What did he want?"

"You signed all those documents?"

"Yes."

"Okay. You've put together that I did a lot of my work in Asia, yeah?"

Steve nodded. "Yeah." And kept his 'duh' and his infinite number of Wo Fat questions to himself.

"Some of the assets I helped set up then were used in this whatever it was that Zane and Jo were involved with now. Mansfield was just letting me know that the old work finally paid off. It was very sweet of him, I thought."

She could have been talking about gardening, and not setting up clandestine networks in North Korea. "You know your nice lady routine is really aggravating, don't you?"

"Of course I do, honey! Why do you think it works so well?"

Steve ignored this. "Mansfield isn't a nice man."

"No." Doris frowned thoughtfully. "He wasn't when we were younger either. I'm sure, in time, I'll get the check for this."

Steve instinctively tightened his arm, pulling his mother closer, relieved now that he hadn't shrugged her off earlier. It was entirely up to him to cut her out of his life if he decided, in the end, that was best. No one else had the right to take her away again before he'd made up his mind, and especially not someone like Mansfield. "I'm in on this one too, mom, and not because of you this time. You don't have to do it by yourself."

Doris leaned in. "Thanks. I will remember that. I promise."

They found Danny and Jo sitting by a bank of windows, chatting away in what looked to be a friendly conversation.

"How was your debrief?" Steve asked.

"Long. Thorough." Jo shrugged, then smiled quickly at Danny. "Danny arrived with coffee at just the right time."

After getting the latest updates on how the surgery was proceeding, Steve announced that he and Danny really had to get back to work on their current case, and they wandered off, leaving Doris to keep Jo company.

Walking back toward the parking lots, Steve cleared his throat. "You seemed pretty comfortable, back there, talking with Jo."

"Yes." He shot Steve a cocky grin. "I started with extreme groveling, and worked my way up to an apology for my asshole remarks from there. Techniques honed to perfection over years with Rachel."

"But," Steve wrinkled his brow, "you were sincere, right? Because you really were being a jerk."

"Once again, my friend, you underestimate me." He clapped his hand on Steve's shoulder. "A very early lesson, and one reinforced many, many times subsequently, is that apologies never work if they aren't sincere. You can't apologize for being a jerk if you don't actually know what it was that you did was jerky. This time," he dropped his hand. "I knew exactly what I'd done, because it was obvious the minute it fell out of my mouth."

"The long, awkward pause gave it away?"

"While everyone looked at me like something they'd like to scrape off their shoe? More or less. Yes. That was it."

"So, none of the 'if it made you uncomfortable, I'm sorry' weaseling?"

"Nope. Straight up, I was rude. I'm sorry. I was wrong." He paused, then said, in a musing sort of tone, "It's an excellent life lesson. Learning to apologize that way. One that many people could benefit from."

Steve immediately started wracking his brain, trying to figure out what he should have apologized for but failed to because he still didn't know it was wrong in the first place. Before he had come up with anything, Charlie Fong called with his preliminary report and they were back to work again.

Two frustrating days of failed leads later, Steve looked across the small café table at Jo, "So. Mansfield. What was he on about, with all his 'born felon' attitude about Zane?"

Zane had come through the surgery in excellent shape. Before she returned to Oregon, Dr. Blake assured them all that he would be up on his feet and ready to fly home himself within about four days, which had initially had the local transplant team openly guffawing. But, now, barely thirty-six hours after his surgery, it seemed Dr. Blake had been correct. Zane was awake, restless and bored. In other words, well enough that when Steve arrived at Tripler, Zane was locked in with Shaw doing a full debriefing of their mission.

Even more telling, Jo had slept and was now smiling again, even laughing as she recounted Zane's colossal attack of whining when he realized he was going to be trapped by Shaw.

So he took Jo out for coffee.

Jo shook her head as she chuckled. "That's a long story."

"I'm listening." He smiled encouragingly.

"You've seen his felony record, right?"

"Yes. And the pardons."

"Well, hackers don't start with major theft from government accounts. That's something you work up to. In Zane's case, he was hacking NASA before he was in middle school. And he acted out – a lot – after he was sent to college while he was still a kid. Petty theft, minor vandalism, joy riding, mostly pranks taken too far, but exhausting for everyone involved to clean up after. Mansfield is thinking of that."

"But," Steve paused delicately, "he hasn't committed computer crime since his pardon, has he?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"On why you want to know."

"Our current case involves one of those hacking shops. I want to know who has hired them and for what."

"Without warrants, I suppose?"

"Well. Yes. But, the operation itself is illegal, so…." Steve opened his hands in a 'what can you do' sort of gesture.

"He has a soft spot for hackers."

"I don't think the hackers are the problem, or, at least, not this problem. It's the people they're working for."

"He's ready to climb the walls with boredom. He even shaved off his beard just to have something to do. He'll be happy for a distraction." She reached over and touched his arm. "But don't lie to him about what you want or why. You don't want him to figure that out on his own."

"Would he?"

"He's been hacking since he was a little boy, starting with the computers in elementary school. If ass-covering orders and special emergencies are counted, he's mostly clean these days. If not, well," she shrugged, "bottom line, he's never stopped hacking. With any new system, he's like a cat trying to open a milk bottle. He can't resist. And he's single minded about it too, until he's cracked it." She caught his eyes, her gaze a warning. "So, yes, once he's in whatever system you set for him, he will know everything about it before he is done."

"I can deal with that." He checked his watch. "How much longer will he be with Shaw?"

She checked her own watch. "They should be almost finished."

Steve grinned. "Let's go."

On the way back to the hospital, a new thought occurred to him. "What would he do, if he discovered I misled him?"

Jo laughed. Rather evilly, Steve thought. "Exercise his own judgment," she said.

After a blank thirty seconds, Steve shuddered. It wasn't that Zane had bad judgment, exactly, more like, wildly idiosyncratic and unpredictable judgment. "That's a terrifying idea," he said.

"Good."

Zane was more than willing to do what Steve wanted, the only price was better food than the hospital's. The nurses were inclined to be disapproving on the grounds that he was too excited, but Zane had already charmed most of them into submission and Steve went to work on the rest. Within three hours, Zane had provided him with all the names and information Five-O needed to break the case wide open. He insisted that he would have done it faster if his left wrist hadn't been immobilized in a cast, which was probably true. He begged pathetically to keep the laptop, but, mindful of Jo's disapproving glare, Steve refused. And he didn't want to feel even a little bit responsible for whatever Zane might do once he was inside the Army's networks.

By mid-morning the following day Five-O made their first of a half-dozen arrests in a complicated con turned blackmail scheme gone lethal.

Opening beer in his kitchen that night, Steve looked up as Danny breezed in from another visit to Tripler, takeout containers in his hands. Steve had been tracking his visits, and knew that Danny had been going by almost twice a day, just bringing by coffee or food, never staying all that long. "So," he asked. "How's it going with Jo?"

Danny was opening the food containers. "Good." He began serving food onto a plate. "Very good. I think we are on the way to becoming friends."

"Really?" Steve was skeptical, but willing to be pleased.

Danny made a face, obviously offended that Steve should doubt him. "Yes. Really." He smiled then. "I like her. She's good people. Focused. Disciplined. Believes in law enforcement."

Steve offered him a beer and what he hoped was a winning smile. "What else have you been talking about?"

Danny scooped up his plate, a fork, and his drink and headed for the lanai. "Nothing. Everything. Managing the wild-men in our lives. You know. The usual."

Steve trailed after him, his own supper in his hands. "Managing?"

Danny plopped down on one of the chairs. Raising his eyebrow, he waved his fork emphatically. "Managing."

"I'm not sure I like the idea of being managed."

"Who does? And, yet, here I am. Making friends with two people I was determined to dislike."

Steve ate in silence for a while. Eventually he risked an, "And?"

"They are actually quite likable."

"See?" It was impossible not to crow triumphantly. Or as triumphantly as one can crow with a mouthful of food.

Danny pointed his fork at him again. "Is that your 'I told you so'?"

He swallowed hastily. "No! It is not!"

"Hmmm. Very close to the line, there babe."

"But not over!"

Steve stopped by to visit Zane later that night, during evening visiting hours, knowing that Jo had gone out to dinner with Catherine and Kono.

He found Zane sitting up in bed and riffling impatiently through a stack of magazines. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Battered. And restless. They won't let me out of bed yet. Or do anything fun in it either."

"How are the ribs?"

"Surprisingly good. Allison brought me some new ones, along with the heart and the lungs, so it's really only a few clean breaks that have to knit up."

"And the new organs?"

"Fine. Not even sore. The doctors here keep testing for rejection, no matter how many times we explain that my body won't be rejecting my own parts." He rolled his eyes at the doctors' skepticism. "My wrist and my leg actually hurt more, right now," he added.

Steve nodded at the magazine in his lap. "Never took you for a Good Housekeeping kind of guy."

"I'm reading the warning labels on the pillows I'm so bored. Thank God we go home tomorrow." His expression turned eager. "Got anything else I can do for you in the meantime?"

"No. Sorry!" He really was. He was actually trying to figure out how to decide, in the future, when a case reached a threshold that calling Zane for help would be worth it. "I'm surprised you're not back to work."

"Can't. The networks here are entirely unsecure, and everything I do is classified or proprietary."

"So, why not watch TV? I know there are games on ESPN right now."

"Jo doesn't trust me with the remotes. She gave them all to the nurses. And took my tablet and my ereader."

Steve could understand the tablet and the ereader, they were both wifi enabled. But, "The remotes?"

"You can reprogram remotes to mess with computers. It's fiddly work, and harder one handed," he held up his cast, "but basic enough." He smirked. "She thinks I'd just get into trouble."

"Would you?"

"Yes."

Steve laughed. "At least you're an honest felon."

"As the day is long, Commander."

"Watching Jo handle Mansfield was eye-opening."

"She's good, isn't she?" Zane beamed with pride. "Really, amazingly good. I got a message from Henry today – we got the funding we needed."

Unexpectedly curious, Steve asked, "If your positions had been reversed, what would you have wanted?"

"For Jo? From Mansfield?"

"Yeah.

"I've read my O. Henry, dude. I'm not going to sell my watch to buy combs for her hair."

"So?"

"A reserve commission. Commensurate to whatever rank she should have by now, if they'd sent her to officer school like they should have done instead of marooning her in Oregon. Major, probably. Shaw shouldn't be able to address her as sergeant anymore." He narrowed his eyes at Steve. "Neither should you."

Steve conceded the point with a wave of his hand. Zane had obviously given serious thought to it, and he was right. Jo would have made a fine officer. The Army had lost a valuable opportunity by handing her over to the DOD. Someday soon, he was certain, Mansfield would find himself on the wrong side of a deal with Donovan, and he'd be coughing up a long overdue promotion as a result. And officer rank now would undoubtedly make portions of her job easier. But the Army's loss was not what he wanted to talk about. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure. What?"

"Was getting the goods back to Mansfield the primary mission? Or the distraction?"

Zane's lips lifted in a crooked grin, his bright blue eyes twinkling. After a long pause, he said, "You realize I can't possibly answer that question, right?"

Steve swallowed his own smirk. "Right."

They left five days after his surgery. Zane was limping from the gash in his leg. He had a cast on his wrist. He was still interesting colors from all the bruising. But Steve and Danny watched him walk onto the small Rockwell Industries jet more or less under his own steam, only leaning a little bit on Jo.

***** end *****