Chapter One
They leave their cell phones in the hospital room because one of the nurses is already threatening to call Kono's emergency contact, and the last thing they need is Chin tracking their GPS signals. Additionally, Kono's tablet is sitting on her desk in HQ, and Steve's only technology is both ancient by Kono's standards and in his home, under Doris' watchful eye.
Oh, and they're sort of stuck in the hospital parking lot without a vehicle. That is also an issue.
Kono spots a payphone outside the emergency room entrance, and Steve shakes down a passerby for some change because neither can remember how to make a collect call. Their contact options are severely limited, but eventually Steve tempts Kamekona with the idea of being an "acting agent of the police" and he shows up to save the day.
In the shrimp truck.
"Really?" Steve asks, watching Kono hoist herself into the back of the truck. "You couldn't have brought the car?"
Kamekona shrugs. "I got tour business to take care of, brah. Need to be professional. You don't like it, next time you get your own surveillance vehicle."
After warning them to pay for whatever they eat, he heads on his merry way, leaving them with their newly acquired shrimp truck and not much else. There's no way to track Downey and his crew without doing a little digging, so their mission is now to find a computer that they can take with them and use privately.
Which is how Steve ends up sitting at a kitchen table, having awkward coffee with one of Kono's aunties while Kono schmoozes her younger cousin, Lani, for the use of her laptop and cell phone. The older woman peers at him through narrowed eyes, as the two cousins disappear into the other room. "So," she says, taking a long sip from her mug. "You're the lieutenant commander that has our Kono gallivanting all over the island, getting shot at."
Steve blinks.
"No, ma'am. You're thinking of my partner. My name is Danny Williams."
When Kono's pull as the cool, older, pro-surfer turned cop cousin comes through for them, he's already halfway out the door. "Say hello to Chin for me, dear," her aunt calls, as Steve helps her limp down the front steps. "Goodbye Detective Williams."
"Will do, Auntie. Wait, wha-"
"Keep moving," Steve orders, pulling her along and glancing nervously over his shoulder.
They return to the shrimp truck safely and Kono sets up the computer on top of a freezer full of uncooked shrimp, while Steve adjusts his sling, rotating his shoulder and scowling the whole time.
She works her magic and pulls up everything she can access with her HPD password on her cousin's computer. Lani is apparently younger than Steve imagined because her technology is as girly as it comes. The laptop is pink and slim, but Kono assures him that there's plenty of processing power hidden in that sparkly, sticker covered case.
"What can we do from here?" he asks, scratching at the face of some tweeny pop idol that's stuck next to the touchpad, until Kono bats his hand away.
"Not everything," she admits. "What do you have in mind?"
There's something that's been nagging at him since Tanner Downey first entered the equation. "His brother-in-law can't be the only one helping him out. Downey would need contacts on the island. Someone to send business his way. You don't just show up and build an illegal gun business in three days."
He can see the wheels spinning in Kono's head, feel them turning in his own. "Who would be willing to help him?" Kono asks, tilting her head at the screen in front of her. "He hasn't been here long enough to make any connections."
"His sister lives here," Steve offers. "He could have set something up a while ago. Sat on it until it was convenient to make a move."
This must have sparked an idea because she starts to type, until a chat window pops up, taking up the majority of the screen. Steve squints. "Who's sportsguy409?"
"One of Lani's friends, I guess," she answers, closing the window. "I didn't know kids still used instant messaging."
She's sort of shuffling on her feet as she works, and Steve realizes that she's been standing for an awfully long time, considering she was in the hospital for a knee injury that morning. He pulls over a tall box of what looks like cocktail sauce and orders her off her feet. With her injured leg propped up on the cooler and Steve crouching by her shoulder, she pulls up Downey's financials and expertly skims through the last few months.
"Looks like the last time Downey was here was about the same time as his sister's wedding," she says slowly, spotting the payment for an airline ticket. "While he was on the island, he made a major deposit to the bank account of someone named Nate Gillings."
"Payment for something?"
Kono shrugs. "Maybe another loan."
"Yeah," Steve sighs, "Downey's a real good Samaritan. Has Gillings returned anything?"
"Doesn't look like it."
"Okay. If Gillings still owes him money, Downey has him under his thumb. Could have him working for him..."
"...like he did with his brother-in-law," she finishes, switching over to Gillings' financials. "Gillings is unemployed, but it looks like he gets a drink from the same bar at the same time, everyday."
Steve grins. "Then we should pay him a visit."
By the time they reach Gillings' favorite bar, "sportsguy409" (also known as Nick, Casanova of the eighth grade) has messaged them twice more, and then texted to ask why Lani won't answer him. It's a good thing that Steve is driving because otherwise he would have already handled the situation in a way that Kono's cousin probably wouldn't appreciate. They jump down from the truck and Kono takes a few minutes to train herself to ignore the pain in her walk. Steve's ditched his sling in the truck. His shoulder aches without the support, but they can't afford to look impaired in front of the suspect.
He's pretty impressed with Kono's my-knee-isn't-screaming-for-mercy-at-all walk when they enter the bar, and when they spot Gillings, it almost feels like a normal day at work.
"Nate Gillings," Kono calls, flashing her badge. "We need to talk to you about Tanner Downey."
"Never heard of him."
"You've never heard of him?" Steve asks, skeptically. "Not three months ago? He didn't offer you anything?"
Gillings shakes his head, but avoids eye contact. Steve glances at Kono, who seems to have noticed, too. "Officer Kalakaua, looks like we were mistaken. Mr. Gillings has never met Tanner Downey."
"Huh. That's odd." Kono holds up Lani's bedazzled cell phone with Gillings' financials open in the browser, and Steve points at the screen. "Do you see that, Nate? Do you know what that means?"
"That you broke into a middle schooler's locker?" he asks, grinning at the dolphin sticker on the lower, right corner. Steve snaps his fingers in the general vicinity of Gillings' face and then points to the screen again. "Watch it. What's on the screen. That's your bank account, and that's Downey's money in your bank account. You still want to tell us you don't know him?"
The phone rings and the screen fades away from the account information. Nick's name flashes across the screen and the bar fills with sound of a high-pitched teenage boy's voice, backed with keyboard music and a tambourine.
Gillings smirks. "You should answer that. It, like, totally could be that cute guy from Algebra."
"Shut up," Steve growls, as Kono smoothly dismisses the call. "And listen. We know that you're working with Downey."
"Boss," Kono interrupts, eyes scanning the rest of the bar, where patrons are quickly rising from their seats.
"Just a second, Kono," he says, focusing on Gillings. "And we know that Downey isn't the kind of guy you want to be connected to when the bottom falls out of his little operation. Tell us where he is, and maybe you won't go down with him."
He hears a scuffle behind him and turns to see Kono on top of a burly, tattooed guy who just tried to jump him. Before he can reach out to help her up, Gillings grabs his bad shoulder and whirls him around, thrusting a fist towards his face.
Meanwhile, at headquarters, Danny Williams is imagining all the very fine ways he could kill his partner for refusing to allow him even an hour of peace. After the morning he'd had, the detective needed a few hours to cool down, which he expected to get with Steve and Kono safely tucked into their hospital beds, while their partners solved a homicide in a sane, logical manner. For the most part, following leads would be done in a non life-threatening way. And at the end of the day, they would catch the murderer and collect their healing partners from the hospital, and they would all live rationally ever after.
This is not how things were supposed to go.
Chin is on the phone with a nurse from the hospital, who is explaining that their resident adrenaline junkies did not bother to sign out against medical advice and instead literally made a run for it, out through the ER doors. His face is calm, but Danny's betting that's not what he's feeling.
"Their cell phones are still there, so we can't track them. The nurse said they were whispering about a 'take down' on their way out."
Marvelous. Just, marvelous.
The other man is tapping his fingers on the smart table, looking dark and brooding and not zen at all. "What's wrong?" Danny ask. "What aren't you telling me?"
"The doctor told Kono that she might need another surgery on her knee," Chin sighs. "Not a huge deal, but..."
"But now she's not thinking straight, and she's bound to be more reckless than her normal, more than slightly insane self," Danny finishes. "I get it. Same for McGarrett. Think his fragile super SEAL ego took a beating when he couldn't nab Downey at the warehouse. We'll catch up to them eventually. And maybe commit them to the hospital on a more permanent basis..."
Chin smiles and nods, turning back to the smart table and accessing traffic cameras near the hospital. "Sounds good, brah."
"Pause that," Danny interrupts. "Is that the shrimp truck?"
"You want some ice, boss?"
Kono is sitting on top of the cooler, slurping a cone of grape shave ice and pressing a bag of unflavored shave ice to her knee. At his nod, she scoops some more into another bag and wraps it in a dishtowel, which he presses against his quickly swelling face. He hurts everywhere, but his pride is somewhat restored by the fact that he and his protégé won a bar fight against fifteen full grown men, while injured. However, Gillings slipped out in the midst of the scuffle, and now they're back to square one. He sighs. "Well, that was a total loss."
Eyes sparkling, Kono grins and reaches into her pocket. "Maybe not a total loss."
"Is that-?"
"Gillings' phone?" she asks, looking like she's about to burst with satisfaction. "Sure is. I grabbed it from his back pocket while he was trying to smash that beer bottle over your head." She pauses. "Sorry 'bout that."
For some reason, he finds it impossible to care that he almost had glass shards imbedded in his head while Kono was playing pickpocket, because he's just so proud. He throws his good arm around her shoulders and smiles back at her, jumping up to sit on the cooler next to her. The phone blinks to life, and she scrolls through Gillings' messages.
"Well rookie," he says, adjusting the ice on his face. "Let's see what you got."
