Some of Steve's singular talents are revealed in this one...
Hurry up and wait was not something any of the 5-0 crew liked to do so they tried to do anything they could rather than sit around and look at each other while they waited on the Kathryn. Steve ended up shouting at the traffic controller of HPD for Danny's driving, while the man himself stayed in his office and cackled to himself about the justice of it all. Normally it was he having to explain why SuperSEAL had made HPD look slow, so he was very pleased it was the other way round. And it wasn't actually his fault the rookie driving had scratched the black and white, quite a bit, when he'd driven it into a wall. His training officer should have checked the VIN plates and called HPD as soon as Danny'd flicked on the lights on the Camaro but she hadn't, and egged the driver on. As Steve was explaining on the phone in his office, loudly.
Kono walked in to Danny's office with the paperwork he's asked her to complete for him, momentarily making Steve's voice louder as she opened the door, and she handed him the pages with a grin. "You're gonna have to make it up to him, brah," she told him as she sat in one of the chairs. "He's been shouting for twenty minutes."
Danny grinned at her and shook his head. "Karma is a wonderful thing," he answered her. "Especially when it goes my way."
She smiled and nodded sagely. "Very Zen," she agreed. "Chin would be proud."
He laughed again and noted the argument had ceased, so looked up to see Steve, face like thunder, stalking over to them. Quickly he picked up the top form Kono had given him and looked over it, pretending he hadn't been laughing at him a few moments previously. Kono noted the change, realised that it meant, and leant forward herself. "I think I got that one signed properly," she said just in time for the door to the office to be wrenched open again to let in their BAIC (Bad Ass in Charge).
Neither of them looked up at his arrival, both used to him by now. "This is the right one," Danny said instead, checking over the form. "That's to let us board without being charged with trespassing."
Steve, well beyond clearing his throat, simply reached over and took the form out of Danny's hand. He was not stupid, or angry enough to rip it to pieces, he had only ever done that once and had paid the price for a week. But he was tempted, very, even more so when Danny looked up at him with a patient expression.
"Steven," he said to him lightly. "Finished your chat with Lieutenant Kariah?"
"She sends her regards," Steve told him tightly, aneurism face gracing his features. "How often do you have to speak to her?"
"Weekly," Danny answered him with a smile. "When you're on top form, daily."
Steve sighed loudly and handed him back the form. "I'm bored," he stated. "I've shouted myself out. Can we go and get some bad guys now?"
Danny sighed to himself as Kono looked up and nodded eagerly. "Got any in mind?" she asked him. "We've gone down the list quite a way."
List? "Wait… What?" Danny asked them both, suddenly worried. "You two have a list of people to go after when you're bored?"
"Sure, Danny," Kono said brightly as if he should know. "It's quite extensive. Although we're running out of players."
Steve nodded thoughtfully and perched a hip on his partner's desk. "We're on week three of this month," he explained. "But it's a five week month so we added some more." He'd also added a couple to his own personal list; there were a couple of his particular targets new to the islands that he had to deal with before they got too comfortable.
Danny stared at them both. "Week three?" he asked them plaintively. "It's the tenth today, isn't it?"
Steve shrugged and tried to look innocent. "It's been a slow month," he told him as if that explained everything. And the way Kono was nodding earnestly let him know she agreed with that statement. His dignity couldn't really stand it if he ran, screaming for Chin, out of his office, but the debate raging in his head was deciding whether he cared more about his dignity than his sanity. Dignity won, although he did concede to laying his head on his desk and lacing his hands together in his hair – his do was never going to recover. "Slow month, of course it is."
Steve gently patted his shoulder and grinned, his residual anger gone. "It's okay, partner," he told him fondly. "I'm sure we can spare some for you, if you get tired of all the paperwork."
Before the Detective could fashion a suitable, sarcastic reply apart from flipping him an elegant bird with one hand, Chin himself walked in and studied his teammates. "Why are you messing up your hair, Danny?" he asked him, ignoring the other two for a moment.
"It's either this or tear it out," Danny complained, and didn't look up. "Did you know about their boredom list?" he asked. He dared not look up, just in case Chin wore the same eager expression as his cousin.
"Which one?" Chin asked him, trying not to smile. "The one about which perps to lean on, or the one about getting steam out of your ears?"
"Chin!" Steve snapped quickly, and his partner knew he was pouting from the sound of his whiney voice. "You said you wouldn't tell him."
Chin shook his head. "I don't think those were my exact words, Steve," he replied serenely. "Anyway, while you two were going your best to give Danny a stroke, I've been working on those guys that attacked you," he added seriously, finally making the other Detective look up and take notice.
"You found where they're from?" Danny asked him quickly, determined to ask Steve about lists later. "Who actually hired them?"
Chin nodded and Danny stood quickly. "Show me," he told him, all business, and followed him out to the tech table. So far they had only found links to David Fitzwalter, but, despite the amounts of drugs he had been bringing in, he was only a medium fish in a small pond. He was getting his stock from somewhere, and, as any drugs investigation aimed to do, they wanted the bigger fish, and the sharks. Anything they could get to send over to the Feds in LA would help.
Chin showed him the link chart he had plotted on the table and quickly went through it with the other Detective, Kono and Steve watching them. Danny and Chin were experts at this sort of work, squirreling out links and associations from information they had or found out. Steve was used to pulling things together from information and charts like this already given to him, working out what to do with it once the analysts had found everything out. And Kono was still learning.
There were still gaps in the charts, information Danny hadn't managed to get from Simeon, or the files the man had given him. "We'll get this lot from David's financials," he said to Chin, indicating to a large corner of blank with his hand. "Finding out who he pays his money too, if he's got any hidden accounts, and all that."
Chin nodded. "This guy is the boss of the three dead ones," he explained, and pointed to an icon. He tapped it twice and flicked up the subsequent file onto the main vertical screens. "He's been paying them regularly for a couple of years."
Danny nodded and studied the file, Ernesto Arnold Estaban did not look like someone who hired out heavies to drug dealers, he thought to himself. But he had, and he had a string of convictions to his name as well. "Based in LA," he stated as he read the guy's address.
Kono frowned. "Does he run a Goons R Us franchise or something?" she asked curiously. "Did he hire out those three thugs?"
"Looks like it," Chin answered her. "Danny and I couldn't find any other link between the three on him, or the three and Fitzwalter. All there is, so far, is an email or two."
"We may find more when we get access to Fitzwalter's computers and files," Danny added, looking over at Steve. "That was one of those forms I asked you to sign. Did you email the electronic copy off?"
Steve stared at the photo of Estaban on the computer screen and tried not to gape at the man depicted in it. He was not only human, and only someone of his special skill set would be able to see it. The demon staring out at him was using that body as a disguise, and it was pretty good, Steve looked around at his other teammates and they had obviously not noticed it. But he could see the red eyes, the horrendous skull covered over by a human face stretched over bones not meant for it, the big form, all sharp edges shoved into a sac of human skin. The expression on the file photo was aiming for bland, but Steve could see the fury leeching out of Estaban as he glared at the camera. The SEAL did have a fleeting thought about the person who had owned that body before the demon had forced it's way in, whether he had been something other than what it was now, but only fleeting. The man was dead, there was nothing he could do for him now, and it had taken some years of training and in practice for him to realise that was truth. Once the demons he chased down had taken control of a human, however strong they had been, they were gone, dead, the body just a shell, used by interlopers to hide in plain sight.
He had thought he wouldn't be seeing any more demons here in Hawaii after he had moved to the reserves, he'd hoped, he'd had enough of chasing and dispatching them during his years in the Navy, and the Kupuna were strong enough to protect the islands from any more. But here was one, staring him in the face, and he tried not to shudder. At least this one was in LA, and not here, but he wasn't convinced that wouldn't change; demons weren't averse to travelling, especially if their interests were being threatened. But he had never backed down from a demon before, his father had made sure he understood his inheritance was a duty never to be ignored. Even if he hadn't Steve had seen the results of demon infestations before; villages decimated, serial killers running rampant through towns, cities, states, getting more and more violent as they went on, war mongers trying to cause chaos and death, famine and disease as well has violence. Most of the time he'd had a specialised team to deal with them, to take them down, not just made up of SEALS and other military specialists.
Here though, here he had Chin, a Kupuna – master of earth powers (he could rustle up a tornado with a blink of his eye, persuade lava to run where he wanted it, calm a deluge, call up a tsunami), Kono, the most alpha-like out of all of them, could balance on air, use her considerable will to get people to do what she needed them to, could map out consequences of her actions in her brain in microseconds before she did anything, which was why she was such a great sniper, among other things.
And then there was Danny, his contrary mood swing of a partner, deadly in his own right, excellent father, cop, partner. There was something with him, something Steve couldn't identify that marked him out a different from the rest of them, but he had not seen any clue to what it was. He had to find out before they went head to head against a demon, but the blond had kept it secret for a reason, so he was probably not going to tell him if he just asked. It would take something to happen, the SEAL thought to himself as he studied him, something drastic for Danny to come clean. He just hoped it wouldn't be too desperate or dangerous for him to spill his secrets.
"Steve?" the man in question asked him, noting his partner was staring at him, through him, and obviously thinking about something else. "You with us?" He nudged him. "Steve?"
Steve jumped slightly and flashed him a glare that made his partner grin before he nodded. Almost as soon as they had started 5-0 they had come to arrangements with themselves and most of the other judiciary and law enforcement agencies on the islands. They used emails and electronic forms for most things, requisitions, requests for information, warrants, wire taps, and almost everything else produced by Danny mostly, checked by Chin if required, and then emailed to Steve for his authorisation. He'd either type it in or copy and paste a scanned in copy of his signature before emailing the files to the address his team had put on the first email. It worked, mostly, only a couple of procedures needing actual paper, and both Danny and Kono were working on getting those changed too – well, Danny would find them and ask Kono to deal with it. And for added security Steve didn't use his proper signature on them, and they were all read only forms, protected from changed by password and encryptions – after the crappy end to Jamieson's tenure they were all a bit more cautious with how they did things. "I sent it," the Commander assured him. "Called and checked they'd received it too."
Danny nodded. "If the Feds are looking into David Fitzwalter then I wouldn't be surprised if we don't get contacted, and soon," he mused. "They've probably got flags on him and all his associates."
"Like we have on Wo Fat and Sang Min," Kono commented.
Danny checked the time. "How long have you been working on this guy?" he asked Chin, waving at Estaban on the screen with a hand.
"About twenty minutes," the Lieutenant answered him and they both looked at each other as they calculated the time scales.
"Soon then," Danny said to him cryptically.
Chin nodded. "Probably," he agreed.
Steve frowned at them, some times, like now; jealous of the conversations they shared. He and Danny had their own conversations that consisted of expressions, hand movements, touch and the occasional well placed grunt, and he liked being able to do that. Danny and Chin, talking copspeak, came from years of being police officers, dealing with the same procedures, jargon and ways of working even though they had been thousands of miles and a few years apart. It rankled on Steve that he had, and still did somewhat, miss out on something that shaped both men, especially his lover. Danny was right, he did have control issues, he did want to know everything about him, and he wanted to be involved in everything he did, but Steve, having lost so much, an barely on the periphery of his own family for years needed to know everything about those he loved. "Soon what?" he asked them both, arms folded over his chest.
"If the Feds have flagged this guy," Danny explained to him. "Then we'll get a call or a visit from them."
"It depends on how important he is to their investigations," Chin added and Steve's continued frown. "If he's not a priority, or on the sidelines, then they'll call in the morning their time. Whereas if he's one of their targets the OIC there might be calling their offices here to find out who we are."
"And then they might send a couple of people over." Danny finished for him.
Steve's frown deepened, he didn't like the FBI, mainly because of how they had treated Danny after Matthew had made off. "I'm not handing this over to the Feds," he said firmly. "And I'm not scared of them either. This is our investigation, if they want in, then they'll need to play nice with us."
Danny grinned at him. "I like that sentiment, Commander," he agreed.
"We may not have a choice," Chin warned, the voice of reason. "But it all depends on what they want. If it's information sharing we need all we can get."
Steve had to agree with that and he nodded, albeit reluctantly. "Information," he conceded. "But that's it. We'll take whatever they've got."
Danny laughed at him fondly and patted his arm. "Sharing, Steve," he said, amused. "That might be an unusual concept for you, but it means we give them something and get something back in return."
The grin Steve gave him suddenly in return was bright and wide. "I don't share, Danno," he told him firmly. "I like keeping what's mine, mine. I don't have many treasured possessions, but I do, and will, protect the ones I have."
The other three knew he wasn't talking about information any more – Chin and Kono could guess what he meant, Danny knew. "Smooth, Dog," the Haole said, smiling still. "Very smooth."
Steve laughed and nodded, Danny had a way with his words that could lift his partner's mood in moments. "Yup," he agreed with him. "About time you realised it, Danno."
Turned out Ernesto was important enough to the FBI in LA to warrant a visit from the local Hawai'i field office. Chin got a call from reception but it was scant warning, and two agents walked into the bullpen within the twenty minutes Chin and Danny had stated, identifying themselves quickly – 5-0's reputation preceded them after all, and all four of them were obviously reaching for weapons.
Danny was the only one of the four that relaxed enough to move his hand away from his gun, but not far, and he didn't move towards them. Instead as the other three of his team moved to flank the newcomers, or, in Steve's case, stood next to him, hand on his holstered Sig, glaring at them both. "Who are you?" the Jersey Detective asked them both. "Put your IDs on the table and tell us what you want."
The pair of agents, a man and a woman, both native Hawaiians by their features and skin colour, both in almost identical black suits, looked at each other before they complied. They both slowly reached for their IDs and put them on the tech table before stepping back. Steve quickly snatched them up and handed them over to his partner, not having to look at him to know exactly where he was.
Danny took them both and studied them carefully, not planning on taking any chances. He had a friend who had contacts in the LA FBI office and he was going to call him the moment he could to double check. But he read the woman's ID and found himself grinning – Amelia Johnson, Special Agent. The guy had a more Hawaiian name – Kai Kaloa, and he glowered at Danny, almost daring him to say anything. The Detective, who lived and breathed Steve McGarrett's many faces, was not in the least bit intimidated by the taller guy, and he found himself smiling. "Special Agent Johnson," he greeted the woman with a grin and a thumb indicating Steve. "He's Steve McGarrett, not to be mistaken for McLean."
She got the joke, if no one else did, and gave him a wry grin. "Ooh, I've never heard that one before. Much," she said dryly, and Danny decided there and then that he liked her. He walked round the tech table and handed the IDs back before holding his hand out for her to shake, and then Kaloa. "Hi," he greeted them both. "I'm Danny Williams, Danny," he told them. "These are my teammates Chin Ho Kelly and Kono Kalakaua," he indicated to the two cousins, relaxing either side of him. "I'll leave you to figure out which is which. And the big guy behind me is the boss, Commander Steve McGarrett. We presume you're here because we've tripped a flag or two?"
Kai nodded. He was still not a happy chappy but had been polite enough to shake Danny's hand when offered and nod at the other three. "We've been called by the LA field office," he told him firmly. "You're fishing around a couple of their nominals and they want to know why."
Steve, standing behind Danny, bristled enough that his partner felt it from there. "Classified," he growled and glared at him. Danny could tell he was wearing his 'I'm-gonna-kill-you-with-my-shoelace' face number 5, even from behind him. "Need to know. And you and your masters in LA don't need to know."
Kai glowered at him. "Yes they do," he retorted. "And if you don't cooperate we have the authority to take over your investigation. Now."
Steve stepped up to Danny's side and smiled at the two, no humour it. "No, you don't," he replied. "And if you want to force the issue our interrogations cells are empty."
Danny fought the urge to sigh and roll his eyes, and Amelia quite obviously stood on her partner's foot.
"We're here to see if we can help, Commander," she said to the angry SEAL. "We may have some more information that you're not yet aware of."
Steve was silent for a few moments while he thought about it. "Then pass it over," he said eventually. "And if it's good enough we might let you in to observe." He didn't say where from, and knowing him Danny could guess he meant from their offices. He knew as well that his boss wasn't going to say anything else, so he stepped in.
"What do you know?" he asked them both, stepping forward. "What have you got? And do you need hardware to access it?"
Soon enough he and Chin were working with the two FBI officers at the tech table. Amelia had quickly apologised for her partner after Steve had simply left them to it and gone back to his office to simmer, had then logged on to a computer and downloaded all she could from the FBI servers. A lot of it they already had, but it was more info for their charts, filling in some more links. It was getting more obvious David was in debt to Estaban for a lot of money, not just the three mercenaries he had hired. And it also looked like Estaban was a major player in LA, David only one of his dealers/contractors. He wasn't the only person who had hired mercenaries from him on Hawai'i either. They took the details of those people too, all three of the 5-0 personnel working knew their boss would be going after those people next.
Steve looked up from his own research when he heard his office door open and managed a small smile for his partner who was walking in. He had his own sources, mostly from the Navy, and his own extensive research. He couldn't 'smell' anything off about the two FBI agents, or the Fitzwalters, but Estaban reeked of it. From the FBI's records he had stayed under the radar for most hunters, just acting like an organised crime boss, but he had managed to gobble up a couple of smaller fish in his pond (whether he had done that literally was anyone's guess). He didn't want anything like that anywhere near his partner and lover, or the rest of his ohana. At all.
Danny smiled back and walked over to him and perched on the desk in front of his boss, lover, friend. "Are you all right?" he asked him, shifting a long so he was directly in front of Steve.
Steve nodded and laid a hand on Danny's thigh. "I'm okay," he answered him. "That guy is an asshole, and he pissed me off."
Danny smiled at him a little under and covered his hand with his own. He wanted to do other things, like maybe kiss that annoyed twist to his mouth away, hug him maybe or at least rub away some of the tension in the back of his neck and shoulders, but he was aware, as was Steve, of the glass walls. And the aforementioned asshole FBI agent was watching them. "Really?" he said instead, his tone dry and amused. "I must not have noticed that one."
Something in his tone and words made the Commander relax a bit and he leant back in his chair. "We could put them in a cell for a few hours," he suggested with a smirk. "Let them out when we're done. I'm sure no one would notice, for a couple of days at least."
Danny laughed and shook his head. "However much I would like to, I think someone would notice if two FBI agents went missing," he replied, amused. "Especially if they turned up in our cells."
Steve shrugged. "Maybe that's why they've been sent here," he added nonchalantly. "Their bosses want to get rid of them for a while."
"Mmm," Danny mused thoughtfully. "Maybe we'll do it if their info doesn't pan out," he commented. "And they have given us a lot of stuff. They've probably got more in LA too."
Steve frowned again. "Why wouldn't they share it all?" he asked him.
Danny shrugged. "Could be lots or reasons," he answered him. "Maybe it's from confidential sources, covert surveillance, from victims, that sort of stuff. Amelia's checking now."
Steve nodded and then gave him a half smile. "I am so like John McLean, just so you know," he commented, virtually out of the blue.
Danny grinned and reached forward and ruffled his hair. "No you're not, Babe," he argued. "He's got all the good one liners, and you've got too much hair."
TBC...
