Hi everyone. After my last story I mentioned I would write another team/family story, so here it is. Enjoy!
"So have you gotten Catherine's birthday present yet?" Kono asked from her spot on the couch.
"Wait, I thought her birthday was over two months away," said Danny from next to her. "At least it was last year."
"From my experience, you always get gifts early. Always," said Chin from a chair.
"Well that's good, because I have gotten her gift," said Steve, walking back into his living room with drinks for them all.
"So what is it?" asked Kono.
They all immediately noticed the change in Steve's face. "Uh, nothing. Well, not really, but—it's nothing."
"All right," said Danny. "So what, we're gonna have to guess?"
"You could do that," said Steve, taking a drink.
"A year's subscription to Guns and Ammo," Danny suggested first.
Despite expecting that, Steve grinned as he took another drink.
"Jewelry! A new surf board!" Kono guessed wildly.
Steve just smiled at them. "You're never going to guess."
"Wait, knowing Steve, it's not going to be something he can just keep in his house," said Chin. "It's going to be something bigger than that."
"A scuba-diving trip! A trip to Maui! You're going skydiving!"
"And they're going to land in the exact spot he planned for his date," continued Danny. "Right next to the table."
Steve just laughed at them. "No, no, and no, but good work on the creative aspect." He rolled his eyes, then added, "But Chin's only half right. It is actually in the house."
Playing it cool, Kono asked casually, "Yeah, where at?" while looking around.
"Well, it's up in my room if you must know," he said.
"Oh, okay," she said quietly. "Anybody want another drink?" she asked, getting up from the couch and walking to the kitchen.
"No, I'm f—wait!" Steve yelled as he leapt up from his chair and spun around, catching on. But Kono was already sprinting up the stairs.
"Go, go, we got him!" yelled Danny and Chin as they grabbed Steve's arms to give Kono more time.
Kono had been upstairs in Steve's house exactly one time before, and it had been when she had a little too much to drink one night and had stayed in his sister's old room. As she ran up the stairs she realized it must have been more than a little too much to drink because she didn't recognize it at all.
But she had to move fast. Footsteps were quickly following her up the stairs. She darted into the first room she saw and quickly slammed and locked the door.
Yep, this was his room all right. The bed was made, it looked freshly dusted and vacuumed, and could probably teach health inspectors a lesson or two.
Knowing she had only seconds before Steve found some way to get the door open, she quickly looked around the room. There was nothing, absolutely no hints about what it could be. She was just estimating the weirdness factor in snooping through her boss's bedside table when she spotted it.
It was the one thing that made the room stand out from being perfect. She hurried to the dresser and picked it up.
-H50-
Just as Steve was deciding whether to pick the lock or just break the door down, Kono calmly opened it and stepped out.
"Did you find it?" he asked desperately.
She merely gave him a calm, cool smile and walked past him down the stairs.
-H50-
"What are those two talking about?" Danny wondered aloud.
"Apparently, James Austin is not our killer's real name. Turns out his identity is actually a fake, made for him by a guy who makes all kinds of new identities for people on the run—licenses, passports, you name it."
"I wonder what the hell they're talking about," Danny mumbled, almost to himself, his back to the smart table.
"Look at this," said Chin from behind him, tapping the screen. "When our killer was operating out of California, there were a string of murders there that match his M.O. here. However they never arrested anyone for the crimes there."
"What could it possibly be?" Danny asked in frustration, to no one in particular.
"Hey, are you listening to me?"
"What?" Danny turned around. "Oh. Yeah. James Austin, not real name. Murders, California, no suspects. See?" He pointed proudly to his chest. "Multi-tasker."
"Right. Now, could you stop and just pay attention to our case?"
"Sure, but—" he turned back to Steve's office where he and Kono were standing. Steve appeared to be asking a favor from Kono because she had that smug, superior look on her face that she always got when she knew something someone else didn't or held more cards than they did. And it was driving Danny nuts because he wasn't in on it.
"Austin's got the technicality behind him here, which could keep the bastard out of jail. But if we can prove he committed the crimes in California, we can maybe still tie him to the ones here."
"And keep him in prison for the rest of his life."
"Exactly." Chin watched his expression change from motivated to confused in less than a second. "What is it?"
Danny waved his whole arm towards Steve's office. "What in the hell are those two talking about?"
Chin shrugged. "I don't know."
Danny was sure he was wearing Steve's Aneurism Face as he then waved both his arms to the office. "You're not even curious? Look at Steve. Look at how desperate he looks!"
Chin looked for a few seconds. "Well, now that you mention it, Kono is wearing her I-know-something-you-don't-know face. But I have no idea what it's about."
The two watched as Steve and Kono continued to talk back and forth. Steve appeared to be trying to have a serious conversation while Kono kept making a remark and then laughing while Steve just stared back at her. Finally, she seemed to take the conversation seriously. She put a hand on his shoulder and said something while nodding. Immediately Steve's face relaxed. He pulled her into a tight hug and when he let her go was smiling.
Danny and Chin exchanged curious glances.
-H50-
TWO DAYS LATER
"Our guy James, formerly known as Devin Holder, has a brother in Oahu," said Chin, pulling up the picture on the smart table. "It says here he has no record of any kind and moved here before his brother started killing in California. He's our best bet to finding this guy."
"Okay, why don't you and Kono go talk to him, see if he's seen his brother at all," Danny suggested. "Steve and I—"
"Wait, I'll go with Kono to see him," Steve interrupted.
Danny looked at him for a second. "Okay," he finally said. "You two go and visit Greg and Chin and I will go over the evidence sent over from the LAPD on the murders there."
"Great," said Steve, turning to the doors. Kono followed him.
Both men were silent for a moment. Then Chin said, "They're up to something."
"That's what I've been saying for days."
"What do you think it is?"
"Well, it's clearly something they don't want us to know about. Neither of our birthdays are coming up anytime soon though, so I can't think of what it is."
"So what secret could the two of them be hiding? You think they got in some kind of trouble? Interrogated somebody too harshly or broke some kind of protocol?"
Danny looked at the doors as he thought. "That would be my first guess, but I don't think so. In the last few weeks one of us has always been with one of them. When would they have had a chance to do something like that?"
"Good point. What does that leave us with then?"
Danny was silent for a moment. "We do this for a living, we should be able to figure this out." He paused, then his eyes widened as he turned to Chin and slapped the table. "I've got it! I know what it is!" He paused for a second. "Oh my God," he said, turning and walking around the table.
Chin was completely caught off guard. "What? What do you think?"
"I should have seen this from the very beginning," Danny muttered to himself, walking a circle around the table. "I mean, it was right there, all along, right in front of my face. How could I have been so blind?"
"Danny—"
"All this time, after so much, finally it reveals itself—"
"Danny!"
Danny stopped his pacing and finished his circle around the table to stand in front of Chin. "Okay," he said, gesturing as though to keep him calm. "This may be hard for you to hear, but just listen and stay calm, all right?"
Chin just stared back at him.
"They're—they're—" Danny seemed to be struggling for the right words. "They're—together," he finished.
Chin raised an eyebrow at him. "Together? What, like you mean—" He squinted his eyes as Danny's suggestion came to him. "Oh my God," he said, looking like he needed to sit down. Then—"I'll kill McGarrett."
-H50-
"Do you really think now's the best time to be doing this?"
"Come on Kono, it won't take long."
"They'll get suspicious if we're gone for too long."
"I told you, it won't take long."
"All right, fine. But let's hurry so we can talk to Greg as soon as possible."
-H50-
One hour later, Steve and Kono walked back through the doors to HQ. Danny eyed them suspiciously as they walked in. He watched them carefully. They both seemed to be ignoring each other as they briefed Chin and himself on what they had learned from Greg, which turned out to be nothing at all. Yet every now and then Steve would look at Kono when she wasn't even speaking, and when their conversation concluded, Kono handed Steve a copy of the evidence from LA with a quiet, unnecessary, "Here you go." He narrowed his eyes at them.
After Steve left to take a phone call and Kono went to her office, Chin remarked, "Subtle."
Danny looked at him in surprise. "What?"
"Come on. I did a better job at not acting weird than you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what it sounds. Now look. We don't know for a fact if your theory is true. I mean, I'll admit it. It would solve a few mysteries, even make sense." He shook his head as though disgusted with the thought. "But we don't know for sure. So don't go giving them the death glare until we've got proof."
"What kind of proof are we talking about? Short of catching them in the act, we're just not going to get any proof. Neither one would admit to it."
"Maybe not. But if you're right and they really are seeing each other, sooner or later one of them's going to slip up."
-H50-
"So here's what's interesting," Chin said, pulling images up onto the large screens for the rest of the team to see. "We didn't find any connection to Devin Holder at the LAPD crime scenes. We do know, however, that those and the ones here are exactly the same." He pulled up images of one crime scene from each location.
"We also know that there was an unknown fingerprint found at a crime scene in LA. Now, this could belong to numerous people who worked at the storage facility and had nothing to do with the crime, or it could belong to an accomplice. Problem is, it's nowhere in the database."
"All right, so how do we figure out who's print it is?" asked Steve. "Who in Los Angeles would have a connection to Devin Holder?"
Chin smiled. "Greg Holder." He flashed a photo of him up for the room to see.
"All right, but Greg had moved to Oahu before the first victim was found in LA," said Danny. "How would he be involved?"
"Because I checked on his financials around the time of the murders. Apparently, he told his boss he was taking a few days off to attend a funeral when really, he flew to Los Angeles and didn't return until the last of the murder victims had been discovered."
"Pretty big coincidence that he was in the same city his brother most likely killed his victims in during the same time," said Kono dryly.
"Exactly. Now all we need are his fingerprints to confirm he was at the storage unit at the time of the murder there, and we can reasonably connect his brother to it as well. We might even be able to get him to confess that he knew his brother was involved in the Oahu killings as well."
"Okay, let's go get him," Steve said with authority.
-H50-
Greg Holder had just sat down on his couch with a plate of food when the door to his house flew open. He yelled in surprise as the food flew up into the air. He held his hands desperately over his face as four people, all with guns, swarmed his living room. He recognized the tallest as the man who had spoken to him earlier in the day.
"Hey, what's going on?" he yelled in fear.
"Greg Holder, you are under arrest for the Los Angeles and Oahu murders that took place in October of 2010 and August of 2011."
He was frozen in fear. He had no idea how they'd managed to connect him to what his brother had done. But he didn't argue as they led him forcefully out of the house.
-H50-
Chin and Danny walked out of the interrogation room and to the main office area.
"Well, that was reasonably easy," said Danny. "How come they all can't confess that easily?"
"If they did, we'd be out of a job."
"True."
They rounded a corner but stopped almost immediately at what they saw.
Steve. Kono. Wrapped in each other's arms in his darkening office. Due to the blinds on the windows they couldn't see either of their faces, but their arms were around each other tightly. After standing and watching for 30 seconds in complete shock, they broke apart and moved to where Danny and Chin could just see them smiling at each other. Kono dropped her hands from Steve's shoulders but he caught them, holding both in his while he said something to her and she smiled.
They watched for another moment as they continued to talk, each smiling back at the other. Danny literally gasped when Steve bent down and kissed Kono's cheek. Chin couldn't think of any suitable reaction to this and so simply stood, silent.
And with that the two started to make their way out of the office. Danny and Chin each ran to their offices to pretend to be as ignorant as they were two minutes before.
-H50-
Not a word had been spoken between Danny and Chin about what they saw. Both seemed ready to pretend it had never happened and never mention it again. Their car ride over to Steve's house to watch a football game was filled with tense silence.
Finally, Danny could take it no more. "Why wouldn't they say anything?"
Chin looked tiredly out the window. "She's my cousin. My baby cousin."
"I mean, I can understand not saying anything to you, you'd kill both of them in their sleep. But why not me?"
"Probably were afraid of the lecture."
"Lecture! What lecture? I do not lecture, my friend…"
A few moments later they arrived at Steve's house. "Hey, don't forget your phone," Danny said to Chin, holding it out to him. But Chin's eyes were fixed upon the house. Danny looked and immediately saw what he was looking at.
Her car. Kono's car. It was here.
-H50-
Chin had had enough. He stormed up the front steps and angrily rang the doorbell three times. As he and Danny listened, they heard shuffling sounds coming from inside and hurried voices. Seconds later, Steve answered the door, trying way too hard to appear casual.
"Hey guys, what's up?" he asked in an overly friendly voice, slightly out of breath.
"What's Kono doing here?" Chin demanded.
Steve sighed. "Uh, nothing. Just hanging out."
"Did her plans fall through? Did she come over to watch the game after all?" Danny prompted.
"Uh, uh, yeah. Yeah, she's here to watch the game." He took a noticeable deep breath.
Chin and Danny exchanged a glance, then pushed their way past Steve into the house.
"Kono!" Chin called.
She appeared from the kitchen. "Oh, hi!" she said brightly. "What are you guys doing here?"
"What are you doing here?" Chin threw back, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Just…hanging out," she said, and it was obvious she was looking through them at Steve to get him to corroborate her story.
Chin and Danny noticed, and both of them spun around at the same time just to see Steve mime throwing a pass. He dropped his arms to his sides and shoved his hands in his pockets.
They turned back to Kono, who was wide-eyed at this point. "And to watch football," she finished lamely.
"Okay," said Chin, holding up his hands. "What is going on here? Both of you have been teaming up all time now and talking in secret. Danny and I saw you two last night in your office, in the dark, I might add," he said, pointing a finger at Steve. "And now you're here, and it sure isn't to watch a football game. So tell me right now what is going on."
Kono sighed, "Look Chin, it really isn't any of your business—"
"I'll call your mother. I swear I will."
"Guys, really, there's no need to involve anyone else—" Steve began.
"And I'll call Catherine," Danny said, pointing a finger at him. "I can't believe the two of you—"
"Wait. You'll call Catherine?" Steve asked with confusion. "Why would you do that?"
Danny mouthed wordlessly at him. Finally, he managed to find his voice enough to almost yell, "Why do you think?"
Steve looked back at him just as incredulously until a sudden realization seemed to dawn on him. "Oh, you—oh my God," he said, bringing a hand up to his face.
"What?" Kono asked, eyes going between the three of them. "What is—oh, no."
"Wait, you two really thought-"
"I can't believe you both!"
Danny and Chin turned to each other with looks of confusion. "Then what's going on?" they both demanded at the same time.
Kono raised her eyebrows at Steve. He sighed.
"She's been teaching me how to dance."
An uncomfortable silence followed these words.
"I'm sorry, she's been teaching you to dance?" asked Danny. "What for?"
"For Catherine's birthday. I got her tickets to a club where they do all kinds of old dances because she loves that kind of thing. I thought I could just wing it, but after a while I started to think I'd be in trouble and look like an idiot for not knowing what I was doing."
Danny snorted.
"Anyway," Steve continued. "Kono said she knew at least the basics to a lot of the dances, and she's been teaching me."
Danny opened his mouth, closed it, and repeated the process two more times before Chin finally said, "Oh."
"Wait just a minute," Kono said suddenly. "You thought we were—that we were—"
"Well, can you blame us?" Danny asked her. "All this meeting up, sneaking around, then in his office—"
"Yeah, in his office, dancing," Kono said slowly.
"Well, when we saw it, we just assumed the worst," Chin said, looking a little embarrassed now.
"But she's like my sister!" Steve said at the exact moment Kono said, "But he's like my brother!"
"You guys are disgusting," Steve said, shaking his head.
"It was Danny's idea," Chin offered up quickly.
"Oh, thanks."
"Well," said Chin, "now that that's all over, do you care to show us what you've been working so hard on?"
Steve's mouth opened a little. Danny turned to him with crossed arms and smirked at him. Kono looked at Chin and Danny and said, "He sure would. He's coming right along."
"Uh, no, I'm not, and no, I won't," Steve stammered, holding up his hands.
"Oh, come on, let's show them," said Kono, walking up to him. "You're really doing better!"
"No, I'm really not—"
"Come on—"
"No, I—"
"Steven McGarrett, you will dance with me and you will dance with me right now. Do you hear me?"
Steve met Chin's and Danny's equally nervous glances over her shoulder. "Okay," he said mildly.
She gave him a look and pressed a button on a small radio on the counter where soft music began to play. She walked up to stand in front of him, putting a hand on his shoulder while he took the other and put his hand on her waist. Together they began to take small steps around in a circle.
"One and two and three and four," Kono counted out.
Steve looked like he would rather melt into the floor than continue, but Kono held his hand in a death grip and forced him through not one but three songs. At the final one, he spun her none too gently away from him and dropped her hand.
Danny and Chin burst into overenthusiastic applause.
"Oh, that was wonderful!" Danny teased him. "Encore!"
"Shut up."
"Still, it's a good idea for a birthday present," said Chin. "That is…"
Steve looked at him somewhat nervously. "That is what?"
"Well, I just hope she doesn't have to cancel because of work or anything."
"Ooh, cold," said Kono, grinning as a look of worry suddenly crossed Steve's face.
"Well, even if she does, you can't just waste all this newfound talent of yours, can you?" asked Danny.
"If she has to cancel, you take me," said Kono. "This has been fun."
"No way, he's taking me!" Danny burst out, barely able to keep a straight face.
"How would he?" Kono shot back, grinning. "You don't know the steps!"
"Well then for God's sake, teach him," Steve said quickly, giving Danny a push on the shoulder.
"Have fun," said Chin, pushing him on the other shoulder.
"No! Wait! No, I never meant—"
Steve and Chin laughed as Danny continued to argue while Kono attempted to bully him into trying with the same look she had used on Steve.
"Totally worth it," Steve said to Chin.
The End