Tani woke up the next morning because of the light that shined through the curtains of her room. She immediately reached her phone to see that she was already late for work and that McGarret had tried to join her 17 times. "Oh my God, he's gonna kill me" she thought as she jumped off her bed and ran to take a shower and get dressed.
When she arrived an hour later at the Five-0 headquarter, the whole team was already working on a new case and everybody stopped looking at the screen and turned around to look at her.
"Please, tell me I'm not fired." she begged Steve as she was walking carefully towards him.
"Of course you're not fired, Tani." Steve said.
"We warned you about the number of beers you were having last night and as usual you didn't listen..." Danny sighed.
"Please Danny, she doesn't need a lecture, okay ? Besides you're not a saint yourself, so let's get back to the case." Steve replied.
Danny rolled his eyes at his partner's remark but Steve didn't pay attention.
"Anyway, here's what we got." Steve said pointing at two portraits on the screen. "Carmen and Marco Garcia, were murdered yesterday night at their residence in Kahala."
"Who found them ?" Tani asked.
The team seemed to scowl.
"Their seven-year-old foster daughter, Livia. She is the one who called the police." Lou said showing a picture of the little girl.
"God, that's terrible..."
"How long has Livia been in this family ?" Junior asked.
"Almost three months, Marco and Carmen even initiated an adoption procedure a few weeks ago. That's all we have for now. Danny and I will go to the children's center to see if we can talk to the kid. Lou, Jerry, I need you to find any information about the couple, I want to know everything about them. Understood ?"
"Copy that, Commander." Jerry said as he started typing on the large touch screen.
"Tani, Junior, I want you to go check the crime scene and see if anything could help us identify the killer."
"Yes, sir." Junior said as he was leaving the room closely followed by Tani.
"What's the matter ? You look pensive." Junior asked Tani as he checked the victims' adress on his phone.
Tani stopped looking through the car's window and turned to look at Junior.
"Nothing it's just... I'm thinking about the little girl. She must be traumatized after what she saw last night." she said
"Yeah, I understand how you're feeling... The only thing we can do now is to find who did this. It'll be a good thing for Livia."
"You're right..."
After a while, Junior decided to question her about the conversation they had last night, and broke the silence.
"So about last night... Were you really serious about finding me a girlfriend ?"
"I mean, I didn't give Ashley your number for nothing, right ?"
Junior quickly pressed his foot on the brake not to miss the stop sign.
"YOU DID WHAT ?" he exclaimed.
"Okay, don't freak out. Let me rephrase." Tani said amused. "After her interview with McGarrett, Ashley came to me and asked for your number, she was so nice and polite that I didn't resist... Also maybe because she gave me donuts..."
Tani glanced at Junior who had his eyes wide open.
"Oh my God Tani, why did..."
"Look, that's our victims' house." she cut him off pointing a finger towards one of the villas.
Junior immediately forgot about what he was about to say when he saw the huge villa through the windshield and parked his car next to the forensic's truck.
"I forgot Kahala was known to be the upper classes' district." Tani said as they both went through the temporary barriers installed by the police.
"The Garcia must have had important jobs. Or maybe they inherited from a parent. This place is really huge!" the ex-Navy SEAL added as they stood up with astonished faces in the entrance hall, entirely covered in marble.
"Pretty amazing, right ?" a feminine voice said behind them.
Tani and Junior turned around to find Ashley in her police uniform.
"Hey Ashley !" Tani exclaimed surprised as she approached the blond officer to greet her. "What are you doing here ?"
"Well, they put my team on the case so, here I am !" Ashley said with a big smile.
"That's great ! It means we're gonna work together ! Let me introduce you to Junior. Junior this is Ashley. Ashley this is Junior." Tani said as she had known Ashley for years although it has only been two days.
"Nice to meet you, Junior." Ashley said blushing a little.
"Nice to meet you too." Junior managed to articulate still trying to comprehend what was actually happening.
"So Ashley, could you tell us what your team learned about the victims ?" Tani asked to break the embarrassment that was starting to settle between her teammate and the police officer.
"Right, so Marco Garcia was the CEO of real estate company specialized in luxury houses, lofts and villas and Carmen was a housewive. They've been married for eight years and never had children because Marco was sterile according to its health record. Therefore, they decided to become foster parents. They got the authorization to receive children in difficult situation or orphans around two years ago and since then, three kids have been living in this house, Livia was the latest one. Surprinsingly, they decided not just to take care Livia but to adopt her."
"Yeah, McGarrett told us about the adoption procedure they started. Anything else about what happened last night ? Did a neighbour see or hear something ?" Junior questioned.
"We interrogated the whole neighbourhood but nobody heard or saw anything."
"That's probably true, I mean, look at the size of this property, I'm sure you could scream and nobody would hear you from miles away..." Tani affirmed glancing at Junior.
"I agree. I'm sorry I don't have anymore information to give you for now." Ashley said.
"Oh no, you helped us a lot, thank you very much, Ashley." Tani thanked her.
"I'll give you a call if I learn anything else. Noelani is waiting for you on the crime scene."
Ashley said goodbye to Tani and Junior and then left. Once they were alone Tani turned to Junior with a satisfied grin.
"So, how is she ?"
"Um, she's nice..." Junior said definitely not convinced about what Tani was trying to do.
"Come on Junes ! Make an effort ! Don't you think she's beautiful ? I mean she got them blue eyes ! And those hair ! Have you seen how soft and golden they were ? She's just like a model !"
Junior giggled at Tani's laudatory speech and then started heading towards the crime scene.
"Junior I swear to you, this conversation is not over !" Tani exclaimed as she pouted like a little girl.
Junior pretended to listen to her until they saw Noelani next to a female body in the living room, another one, belonging to a man, was a few feet away from her. When Noelani saw the two agents she got up to greet them and make her report.
"What do you got for us, doc." Tani asked.
"Well, according to the rigor mortis of both bodies, I'd say they died around midnight and 1am."
"It corresponds to the time the little girl called the police around 1:30 am." Junior said "What's the cause of death ?"
"Gunshot wounds right in the chest that lead to hemorrhage. They bled to death within a few minutes. Only two bullets were enough, one for Marco and the other one for Carmen. According to the bodies' positions, Marco was shot a few seconds before his wife." Noelani noted.
"So you're telling us, that both of them were next to each other when they got killed, maybe talking, kissing or whatever; and that the killer was either next to them and fired at a close range or as the bay window was opened, a sniper ?" Tani asked as she knelt down next to one of the dead bodies.
"I need to do the autopsy to tell you more, but to be fair, I'd go with the first option."
As Tani and Noelani kept talking, Junior walked through the living room looking for any kind of evidence. He went through the bay window on the large terrace, asked a few questions to police officers and came back to the girls.
"I agree with Noelani, I doubt it was a sniper. The firing angle is almost non existant. They probably knew the killer." he told Tani.
"Alright, I'll text Jerry that he has to look for information about family members, friends, and we also need the list of the people that work for Marco's company." the brunette said as she got her phone out of her pocket. "We should check the bedrooms upstairs to see if we can find anything."
Both agents left Noelani and went upstairs, walking down the empty corridors. After a few minutes, Tani thought she had found Livia's bedroom. It was a typical child's room except that it was a little bit too pink to her. The Five-0 agent searched through the room for a few minutes, looking under the bed, in the wardrobe, the desk's drawers and fliping through books and comics. After a while she sat on the little girl's bed a bit disappointed as Junior entered the room holding a laptop and a few files.
"I found a hidden safe in Marco's office, I managed to open it and I took all of this. You got anything ?"
"Nope, nothing." the brunette said as she grabbed the white stuffed bunny that was next to Livia's pillow.
Junior sat next to her as she looked at the cuddly toy.
"Must be her blanky." he said. "We should take it with us so we can give back it to Livia."
Tani nodded and without thinking, undid the zipper that happened to be on cuddly toys' backs sometimes.
"What's this ?" she asked surprised as she took out a small photograph out of the bunny's material.
Both agents looked at the picture on which appeared to be Livia sitting on a female teenager's laps.
"This picture is a bit old." Junior noted. "Livia is currently seven but here she looks like she is around three or four maybe."
"The real question here is: who's this girl with Livia ?" Tani said as she got up.
"Well they look alike, I guess it's her elder sister."
"That's also what I think... Let's go back to the headquarter asap. We need to see the commander."