"Two Out Of Three"A/N: Vice Agent Jasmine Miena and HPD Detective Kate Panner are back in this chapter.
A/N: Have noticed the reviews are tapering off, I hope you're not losing interest in this story. I can only tell you that even though Kono will be found before Monday is over, this story is far from over.
A/N: My thanks, as always, to PoisonedShip for the beta read.
Monday, 12:58am - 78 hours missing
They had achieved two out of their three goals.
They'd done it right; the op was technically a success and all tactical advantages had paid off. It turned out that their primary goal had become the added bonus after taking hundreds of kilos of cocaine off the streets, and effectively out of the veins of those held in it's grasp. Plus they had found the man who had shot Adam Noshimuri and the gun involved in a cold case. But the biggest win, by far, was discovering and shutting down the adjoining warehouse. Some of the women were there by choice, but most had been brought in illegally, having been promised a better life, only to be turned into a sex slave.
There had been no casualties; well, if you counted the law enforcement side that is, because the other side just didn't count.
But their third goal; getting Kono back, still eluded them.
"Don't worry, partner, maybe you'll get to blow something up next time." Danny said from between Steve and Chin as they all exited HQ and stood in the dark night. The three men pausing a moment to breathe deep and hope to somehow feel cleansed from the dirtiness they had both heard about and seen for themselves in the preceding hours.
They had all been in an unspoken rush to finish interrogating Jun Suzuki and Richard Thurner, ready to wrap up what they all considered a side-case, some branch that had grown off of their primary case. Of course it still disgusted them to think of Kono as a 'case'. But they had to remain focused and the sooner they found her the sooner they would no longer be thinking about 'the case' at all.
"It's quite therapeutic. You should try it some time." Steve answered from his left as he looked up to the night time stars and wondered if Kono could see them from wherever she was.
"So is yoga,... or so I hear." Danny managed to say with a straight face. "Maybe Catherine could teach you."
Steve managed to keep from cringing at the very though, but did give his partner a sideways glare.
"Ooh. That's harsh, brah." They both heard Chin say.
Meanwhile...
"I warned my cousin. I warned her that she could become a liability. A liability to either you,... or to the Yakuza."
Chin's words rang over and over in Adam's head as he rolled back the other direction and punched his pillow again. Sleep would elude him yet another night, but until Kono was found safe, he couldn't bring himself to care about such a trivial thing.
As his mind drifted back to Chin's words, he ran a hand over the empty side of the bed and wondered if he would ever be able to wake up with her next to him again. Although he wanted that, more than anything, it wouldn't be possible,... not if the Yakuza had taken her.
3:58 Monday morning...
Malia Waincroft-Kelly rolled over to find her husband staring up at the ceiling above their bed. She raised her head enough to see the clock on the far bedside table, "Chin, it's almost four a.m., what are you doing awake."
"I'm not tired." Was his reply.
"True; you're not tired. You're exhausted." She clarified with a stern look.
"Why didn't she tell me?" He asked, though mostly thinking out loud.
She didn't have to ask what he was talking about, she already knew. His cousin's not telling him about her drowning had been bugging him for two days now. "She didn't want to worry you, Chin." She said soothingly as she slid close enough to lay her head on his shoulder and drape her arm across his chest.
He sighed heavily and held her arm close to himself, as if for security. "I know." Was all he could say, grateful that his wife had lived through the horrible ordeal of being shot by Delano's goon and was there to comfort him now.
Meanwhile...
Steve's Silverado and Danny's Camaro both came to a sudden stop at the crime scene at the same time, although coming from opposite directions.
"We just got the call, Duke." Steve said as they rushed up to the Sargent at the South end of the alley with matching looks of dread on their faces, referring to the report of an assault an Asian woman.
Lukela held up a hand in a placating gesture, "It's not her." He said, knowing full well that their first thought was that it could be their missing team member.
Those three words halted both men on the spot and caused them to release a huge sigh of relief as Steve bent over to put his hands on his knees, while Danny spun to face the other direction while running hands through his hair and down his face.
"A 9-1-1 call came in about two men attempting to rape a woman. The bad news is that it turns out there were three of them. The good news is that two employees from the bakery work graveyard and called it in." Lukela said, gesturing to one of the back doors in the alley where one man and one woman sat on a step giving their statements to an officer. "The rest of the good news is that those three were so drunk they couldn't find their own zippers, let alone assault anyone. The victim, an Asian female, did get roughed up pretty bad in the altercation though and is being taken care of by female paramedics right now, and the three drunk
men are already on their way to booking and will soon be drying out in a cell." Duke assured them, hoping they would realize that HPD had the matter handled and that they could, and should, go.
Danny answered his ringing cell phone. "Williams... No, Adam, it's not her."
"Seriously, does that guy have a police scanner or something?" Steve asked as his partner pocketed his phone with a shrug at the comment.
"Oh, we've gotta call Chin." Danny suddenly blurted out as he jammed his hand back into his pants pocket to retrieve his phone again. "We've gotta let him know that it's no-"
"Not necessary." Steve said, cutting off his partner's words.
"Not necessary? What do you mean, it's 'not necessary'. Of course it's necessary! He's gonna race here, just like we did, and think-" Danny's rant suddenly stopped. His partner was standing still with his arms crossed over his chest, while Lukela slowly shook his head. Then it dawned on him. "You didn't call Chin, did you?"
"I might have," Steve paused, scratching the spot just above his brow with his thumb. "...accidentally,... forgotten to make that call." He finished with a hand forward in an almost Danny-like gesture.
6:55am, 84 hours missing...
"You're looking surprisingly awake." Danny commented as they both exited their respective vehicles and headed for the HQ entrance.
"Managed almost two hours of sleep." Steve admitted with a shrug.
"Exhaustion will do that to ya. I think I managed to doze off a bit myself. I woke up to find Grace standing next to my bed with a bowl of Cheerios in her hands." Danny said.
"She force-feeding you now?" Steve quipped.
"More like guilt-feeding me. My little monkey made a big deal out of adding sliced banana." Danny explained, knowing that his partner would understand.
And Steve did understand. "Ah. I see." He said, opening the first set of doors.
"She make you shave, too?"
"Uh, yeah." Danny admitted as he ran a hand over his chin. "She told me I was looking too much like a 'scary bad guy'." Danny was too focused on their case right now to care about minor details like eating and shaving, but he did value his daughter's opinion of him. "What about you?"
"When I came down stairs, Doris was waiting for me at the bottom step with a protein smoothie. She said that if I was insistent on living off coffee, she would compromise with 'food in liquid form'." He said with a shrug as they entered through the last set of glass doors.
"That sounds more like something Catherine would say. I'll bet they're in cahoots with each other. But hey, it's better than a loco moco right now." Danny commented.
"And a lot better than yoga." Steve countered... and damn, they had better find Kono long before Catherine gets out of the hospital.
"Or at least more comfortable." Danny commented, as he noticed Chin at his desk and headed that direction. He came back out of the man's office just a moment later.
"Sound asleep, huh?" Steve asked unnecessarily, as Chin's upper body lay
sprawled across his desk.
"Chin's chin is on his phone and his forehead is on his laptop. So don't be
surprised if you get a gibberish e-mail or a big bill from him calling Mongolia."
Meanwhile...
Adam Noshimuri swam lap after lap in his pool. He needed to de-stress, still, and didn't care that he wasn't supposed to get the bandage on his arm wet. Dr. Choa would be by this morning to change it anyway.
Chin's words had continued to reverberate in his head throughout the night, so he hadn't slept much, but that had become the norm since Kono's abduction.
He paused his strokes, sensing someone at the pool's edge. He wasn't concerned though, because he knew Kenta did his job and did it well. He looked up to see Lili with a breakfast tray for him. He appreciated her attempts at getting him to eat, and even her concern, but only shook his head before continuing his therapeutic movements through the water.
He didn't care about food, or sleep, or even pain. He just wanted Kono back.
10:07am at HQ - 87 hours missing...
"You boys look like you're having one hell of a morning as well." Vice Agent Miena said as she entered with HPD Detective Panner.
Three frustrated men looked up from the Smart Table with frowns on their faces. Taking note that both women were still dressed in their gear from the previous night at the warehouse. Obviously the night's work was not yet finished for them.
Danny spoke first, "Steve has been fending off the media all morning, since the Governor's insistence they they be told about Kono's abduction. Chin just got off the phone with his Aunt and Uncle, because they can't keep the media off their front lawn and now HPD is headed over there. And I'm still knee deep in paperwork from the gun we recovered at the warehouse and the 2007 cold case murder it's attached to." He stilled his hands and shoved them into his pockets as he finished.
"We'll get her back." Panner said, getting to the important stuff first. The look of determination on her face reminded the guys that Panner was not only an HPD Detective, but Kono's friend. "None of us are giving up until we do."
With a nod of support, Miena decided the guys needed a some news to at least distract them for a bit. "You boys have some nice toys. You mind sharing for a bit?" She asked, gesturing to the Smart Table the men stood in front of.
Getting a nod of approval from Chin as they all stepped out of her way, Miena began pulling up files as Steve flew the first one of them to the large vertical monitor.
"We're taking your buddy Jun Suzuki off your hands. Between what you got out of him during the interrogation last night and the photos we received from Agent Thomas at the FBI,... we're sending him back to Japan. The State Department has some friends there fluffing the pillows in his cell right now. The attempted murder charge on him for shooting Adam Noshimuri will be added to the list of charges he faces over there, since Noshimuri had dual citizenship." She explained.
"I'm sure he will enjoy their hospitality." Danny said with some satisfaction at the tax payers of Hawaii not having to foot the bill, as Steve flew the file for Richard Thomas onto the monitor.
"We've been looking for Thomas for a long time. Although we didn't have his name yet, we were looking to cut off that branch of incoming cocaine. So, with what Five-0 uncovered at that warehouse and the confession you got out of him last night about ordering the shooting on Noshimuri and the break-ins at both homes looking for the five million,... he's going to a federal prison for the rest of his life." She said.
"And that's without even factoring in everything found at the adjoining
warehouse." Panner added, as Steve threw the next file onto the monitor. "Nine of the women were known prostitutes, and eleven more were also there to willingly participate in the pornography. Twenty-two of the women were illegals that ended up as sex slaves."
"I though I heard Duke say there were forty-six women." Chin stated, doing the math in his head.
"You did." Miena confirmed. "The other four were female perps hiding amongst the others. Plus, there are the seven men we arrested for being either guards to keep them under control or camera crew."
"Then there's the fallout from everything found in the offices." Panner began, "Files, hard-drives, and ledgers containing names, dates, hits, pay-offs, locations, and lots of other information that will take us weeks to act on."
"This is going to keep Vice, SWAT, and ATF very busy for a while." Miena added.
"Yeah. It's just too bad there was one piece of information missing." Chin said.
"He didn't admit anything about Kono's abduction. Nothing at all?" Panner asked, expressing the frustration they all felt.
"Nothing." All three men confirmed.
"We don't think the Yakuza had anything to do with it. Or if they did, Thurner didn't know anything about it." Steve said.
"You sure? Maybe he's just good at keeping secrets." Miena asked.
Danny smirked, "Steve has his own interrogation methods that are quite,... unique,... and effective." He said, garnering a skeptical look from both women who were used to interrogate suspects. "Let's just say that the inverted view from the overhead catwalk was not to Mr. Thurner's liking."
Both women looked at Steve, who was rather enjoying the memory of hanging Richard Thurner precariously by his ankles from the rather high location. It may have even been better than a rooftop. Maybe.
Meanwhile...
Kono removed the filthy strips of fabric from around her hands and used them to wipe the sweat from her face before gingerly replacing them. Sweat and dirt wasn't exactly good for the blisters that now covered her palms, but she had work to do - well, 'continue' would be more accurate - while she waited for her team to find her. She had almost gotten caught this morning, as the one-sided headache continued to pound and the dizziness had only worsened, making it harder and harder to concentrate. But she would not let that happen again, nor would it keep her from her goal.
She grit her teeth and tried to concentrate on something to distract hersel
f from the self-inflicted pain as she continued the tedious process.