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Chapter 2 – How It Began
One Week Earlier
Ellis George's presence always imbued the office with a miserable tension.
The amicable chatter of a quiet afternoon transformed into tip-lipped greetings and impersonal handshakes. Ellis was an honorable, high-ranking CIA Department Director, but it was his position as the late Jenna Kaye's boss that inspired the air of discomfort. Ellis' generous smile told Steve that he would have been more easy-going if the circumstances were different, if Jenna hadn't been manipulated and murdered by Wo Fat.
He shook Steve's hand and echoed Steve's grim nod. "Nice to see you again, Commander."
Steve stood up and gestured to Ellis to follow him to his office. "You too, Director."
Once inside, Ellis studied the bounty of medals and awards on the walls and shelves, pausing at a picture of a Jenna Kaye laughing with Kono and Danny, her arms thrown around them both. "We never recovered her body for her parents. The commune where Wo Fat used was demolished soon after you were rescued."
Steve's eyes always watered as he thought of Jenna's parents forced to have a funeral with an empty casket as he had with his mother. He'd never find peace with Jenna's murder, part of him hated her for double-crossing them and endangering the lives of his entire team and but a louder, less selfish part knew that no one deserved to die on a filthy cement floor, chained to a wall with no hope left. She hadn't even fought it.
"I'm so sorry, Director. My team would have gotten her out if they'd been able. The situation was just too tenuous I hear." The rescue was a hazed of pain, adrenaline and delirious laughter.
"I'm glad you didn't risk it. There have been enough casualties already, and Jenna wasn't there anyway. Not in the way that counted." Ellis ran his fingers through his neatly parted hair that was more salt than pepper. "Look, Commander, the Jenna that I know never would've done what she did. It was completely out of her character. She was…"
Steve interrupted with the shake of his head. "Jenna was a sweet person, and a hell of an analyst. She'd only been here five minutes and she managed to save my partner's life. It's a testament to how awesome she was that Wo Fat was able to get to her. I don't…I don't hold her responsible for anything, I've told you that. I'm just that much more motivated in bringing Wo Fat to justice. For killing her and breaking her before he did."
Some of the guilt receded from Ellis's muddy blue eyes and was replaced with an impassioned light as he pulled a manila folder out of the leather bound notebook he carried. "That's why I'm here in person. Wo Fat has been my pet project for the past few months. We've been tracking Wo Fat's known operations on the big island, China and Mexico."
"There's been some activity?"
Ellis laid the satellite photographs on his desk and huffed with disbelief. "Just the opposite, actually. Wo Fat's lieutenants have pulled out of all three locations. His operations have shutdown in the past six weeks. The DEA already raided and seized his operations on the big island based on this intel. He's all but done there."
Steve studied the high res photos of known human trafficking and drug labs that once hummed with thermal activity were left with cold readings, black smudges of abandonment.
"We think he's running scared. Whatever went down in Korea, whatever you have on him, he thinks you're getting closer and he's pulling back. Steve, this is a win."
It was the soldier who looked at the photographs again, and he could only see it as a loss of leads and Wo Fat's trail going cold. "How exactly? If he goes into hiding, we'll never find him."
"Commander, I don't think you're underestimating the magnitude of this development. You're a SEAL and I know you boys will stop at nothing to get your man. But this," he lifted the pictures, crunching them at the sides, "is a good thing. The women he trafficked are re-surfacing. He's all but stopped manufacturing drugs—that's millions of dollars worth of meth and heroin and cocaine off the streets. Even if we never bring him to justice, this is good, Steve. It means Jenna didn't and Josh didn't die for nothing. It means more lives saved. At the end of the day, that's all we're trying to do just in very different ways."
Steve never handled good news well, because as a soldier, there was always another battle, another enemy, another injustice. It was even harder to swallow now when he was mired in the case as a victim who'd been tortured, his friend and family killed. Even if he was never able to put a bullet in Wo Fat's head himself, he couldn't deny that this organization was crumbling and 'Shelburne' had left him running scared. It wasn't the punishment he deserved, but it was a damaging start.
"I think it's time for both of us to go have a beer in Jenna's name."
Ellis actually grinned, dropping the starched professionalism of a CIA director and clapped Steve on the shoulder. "Best idea you've had yet."
"Let me call my partner, we can tell you how Jenna barged in here acting with fake credentials and a power suit and tried to steal my files."
Steve dialed Danny's number and rolled his eyes as the voicemail clicked on. "Danno, hey. Ellis and I are grabbing a beer at the…" he glanced out the window to find that it was raining, "not at the Hilton, but at that bar down the street from headquarters. Meet us there."
-H50-
After Ellis' visit, Steve felt a little less of the burden he always carried. He slept easier and woke up after six nightmare-free hours of sleep and went to the cemetery to visit his parents, tell his father he was making headway. When he returned, body yearning for a run and a swim, Steve Gabby, Danny's girlfriend, knocking on his door. The normally polished curator was appropriately unkempt considering it was barely six in the morning—her hair was damp and she wore a pair of yoga pants and a Yankees t-shirt Steve recognized as Danny's.
As soon as she saw him, she rushed over with impatience. "Steve, is Danny alright?"
"No, he's fine as far as I know…why?"
Gabby wrung the strap of her purse and sighed, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses even though the sun was just beginning to rise. "We were supposed to have dinner yesterday afternoon after he picked Grace up from school, but he never showed up. He never even called. I mean, I know you guys have to work insane hours, and I thought maybe something had…" Gabby inhaled slowly in an attempt to collect herself. "I'm new to this whole 'dating-a-cop' thing, so I'm trying not to jump to conclusions, but I already leaped…and I'm scared. He always calls."
Steve put a hand on her shoulder and steered her towards the house. "Sometimes Danny gets mad at me…or the island, because he hates it, and he has to decompress. He probably turned his phone off and fell asleep watching 'Goodfellas.' Let's not worry until we have a reason too, all right?"
Gabby seemed even more distressed as he led her inside. "What are you talking about? Danny loves Hawaii."
Steve coughed to smother the laughter and offered Gabby a seat at his kitchen table and a cup of coffee. "He has a reason to now." He winked at her. "We're going to call him and if I can't get him to answer, then we'll go get him."
He was able to keep Gabby calm and smiling even though Danny didn't answer his phone or his door. He tamped down the stirrings of fear when Rachel hadn't heard from him. He refused to freak out himself until they found they activated the GPS in the Camaro and found it parked neatly on the side of a road on Danny's way home, doors unlocked, keys on the seat.
Twelve hours later, Steve sat in his truck, head in his hands and finally conceded that something was terribly, horribly wrong. They'd dumped the footage from the security cameras next to the hardware store where Danny's had left his car only to find grainy footage of 31 seconds of his partner exiting it and walking around the other side and nine hours of his car sitting there, the sun setting and rising without Danny ever returning.
A canvass of the area revealed some waterlogged muddy footprints and skids in the rocks. It could have been signs of a scuffle or it could have been there for months. Thanks to the rain, the footprints were less than useless.
At this point, Danny had missing for twenty-three hours. With no evidence to figure out who took him and no leads to try to find him.
Steve punched the steering wheel unchecked force, the horn squeaked in response. The resulting pain told him that his nightmares had bled into his reality and Danny was gone. A numbing dread cocooned him. He had the grisly inclination to press his black suit for the funeral.
Because there was always a funeral.
The devastation crested like ocean waves and Steve had nothing to chase or battle or kill and he had no idea how to cope, so he surrendered to the inexplicable fear, allowed it to poison him and overwhelm him. And then he remembered Danny clutching an automatic weapon emerging from the Korean jungle, holding Steve together on the plane to Seoul, and finally falling apart on the plane home because they'd left Jenna's body there. Danny had assembled a freaking strike team to rescue his partner, and Steve had to do the same. He wiped his face and leapt out of his truck, dogged determination and his training finally kicking in. He ran inside to grab some protein bars and the keys to Danny's house and bolted back out to his truck. As he thumped down the stairs, Steve saw it: an innocuously red clock placed on his porch railing.
He drew his gun in an instinct, checking beneath the boards and the perimeter of the house before approaching the device that flashed with zeros. He listened for ticking or irregular humming but heard nothing, save for the blood rushing in his ears. Holstering his gun, Steve lifted it with caution and inspected it, finding nothing suspicious until discovered the polaroid. All he needed to see were those broad shoulders and that ridiculous dress shirt and he knew it was Danny. He snatched the picture off the clock, all protocol forgotten, and nearly dropped it when it beeped in his hands and started counting down from ninety-nine hours.
His knees wobbled and his heart pounded and just taking a breath became a challenge as Steve whipped out his cell phone, dialing without taking his eyes off the clock. "Chin, we got a lead."