Chapter 64

Doris McGarrett dragged her son into the water and then supported him as she floated his body over to her boat. She clambered back into the vessel and then leant over to grab Steve. It took a considerable effort and much determination on her part, he was a heavy mass of muscle, but she persevered and finally managed to haul him aboard. When his full weight was out of the water, it made Doris tumble back into the boat with Steve on top of her and she had to extract herself from the jumble of arms and legs. Breathing heaving with the effort, she quickly checked that the unconscious man was alright. The dart had gone, probably washed away in the ocean, and so she didn't worry about it. She checked his vitals and satisfied that all was well, the woman then pulled the cord to start the outboard motor. She made sure that her son was carefully laid out in the bottom of the boat and placed a blanket under his head to stop it banging as they rocked in the small waves. She took a seat at the back of the small boat and guided the craft out to sea and then navigated around the rocky shoreline. The boat was out of sight in minutes.

Danny frowned as he stood at the front door. He had rung the bell a couple of times and Steve had still not answered. He pulled out his cell and called him. Grace's keen ears heard it ringing from around the back of the house. Danny guided her around the back and they came in through the side gate. Steve's phone was ringing, but the man was nowhere to be seen. Grace pointed to the surf boards, "Uncle Steve has got the boards out ready, can I check which one he's got out for me?"

Steve had been talking about moving Grace up to the next level and she was very excited to see if he had got out the bigger board for her. Her dad waved her off and she rushed off to check, "Danno, he's got out the bigger one for me. I must be getting really good!" Danny followed her at a slower pace and smiled indulgently,

"But of course, munchkin. You'll have inherited your surfing prowess from your father." She looked at him sideways, not at all sure about the validity of that statement. She couldn't see her Uncle Steve anywhere and turned back to her father,

"Where do you think Uncle Steve is, Danno?" He frowned, looking around for Steve. He was always ready for them arriving, Danny suspecting that he was just as excited as Grace. His detective-eyes were drawn to the water, it looked like drag marks had been left in the sand. Grace shouted to her dad,

"Danno, what's this?" her little fingers were just reaching for something in the sand when her dad snatched her back,

"No! Don't touch that." She pulled her hand back like it had been burnt with a shocked gasp. Danny knelt down in the sand and carefully extracted the item, holding it by the very tip of his fingertips. He held it up and looked at it, recognizing it as a missile from a dart gun. He immediately stood up and ushered his daughter into the house, while calling Chin, "Chin, I'm at Steve's house, you need to get yourself down here. Something's wrong. Call Kono. I'll get hold of Joe - I've got Steve's phone here with all his contacts." Danny had reluctantly then called Rachel to collect Grace, to leave him free to investigate his friend's disappearance. His heart broke as he voluntarily gave up his weekend with his precious monkey but his boy was missing and needed him more.

They were all stood at the water's edge, examining the drag marks and the dart. Joe asked Danny, "Was there a boat in sight when you arrived? Maybe in the distance?" Danny shook his head,

"No. Nothing. I was stood right here, staring straight out to sea. I would've seen something if it had been there. it makes me think that it was a small boat that could manoeuvre round the coast line in shallower water. I think this had just happened before I got to the house, otherwise the drag marks would have been much less obvious than they were." Joe nodded,

"How quick can you get the dart analysed. It might help us if we know what was in it, plus there may even be fingerprints." Kono opened an unused plastic food bag that she had snagged from Steve's kitchen and held it open for Danny to drop the evidence in for safekeeping. She turned to Joe,

"I was with Charlie when I got the call – I'm meeting him at the crime lab now, he's already there getting all the machines powered back up," she turned and ran to her car, shouting back at them, "I'll call you as soon as I have anything." The rest of the team and Joe decided that nothing could be achieved at Steve's house and so they left for the Palace, locking up behind them.

They were crowded around the surface table and had just started to pull up anything that they could think of - old cases, Navy connections and possible suspects. Suddenly Joe slapped his forehead with his hand in utter frustration, "Damn, how did I not remember until now? Steve's still got that CIA tracker embedded under his arm. I'll get hold of Harry, see if he can activate it. I was told it had a battery life of a few hours once it was activated – Steve can't be that far away yet."

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Harry rushed to find his dad in his office on base. He quickly relayed the information that Steve had been taken from his beach, probably by small boat, "I'm going to activate the tracking device now, see if I can get a fix on his location." Eddie nearly shoved his chair over backwards as he jumped to his feet,

"Lead the way, time is of the essence - they could be in international waters in a few more hours." The two men rushed down the corridor to Harry's work station and the younger man wasted no time in bringing up the tracking program and remotely activated the device, all the while silently willing the thing to spring into life. He let out a breath that he hadn't realized he had been holding when it came up with a signal. His keen eyes watched the signal for a minute,

"It's moving, fast enough to be in a vehicle but not at the sort of speed you would expect on a main road . . . locating the coordinates now . . . yep, got the sucker." He turned to Eddie and updated the worried man, "Whoever has Steve is heading up one of the tracks at Honolulu Watershed Forest Reserve. It's really not that far from Steve's house, they're not making that much effort to take him far away. I mean, they could have transferred from a small boat to a ship out at sea and been on their way to anywhere in Asia if they had really wanted, right?" Eddie nodded,

"Let's get all this information across to Five-0. Joe's with them as well, I trust them to come up with a plan to get him back if we can keep them updated with his current location."

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Danny was happy for Chin to take the lead on planning the rescue operation. To be honest, it wasn't that complicated now that they had a lead on Steve's current location. Much as if the man himself were here, they were in the process of gearing up with enough firepower to take down a small army and at Commander White's suggestion had even got the smoke grenades and gas masks. They were going up against an unknown number of hostiles and who knew how highly trained they might be and so it was prudent to prepare for the worst case scenario. Joe suggested that they discretely case out the location where Steve was being held first and if they were in any doubt then he would call JBPHH and request a team of special operators to provide additional support.

Steve's partner had followed his teammates in a bit of a daze, muscle memory taking over as he securely fastened his tac vest around his body and filled his holsters with weapons. He was feeling strangely out of sorts after a very vivid dream the night before. When he woke up he had dismissed it as just a dream, but now with Steve missing he was finding himself contemplating what it all meant. His vision had been made up of a series of graphic glimpses into the future, not unlike what had happened to Ebenezer Scrooge when he had been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future. Danny had been an older man and had seen himself with his beloved Gracie on her wedding day and been required to talk her down from her pre-ceremony jitters . . the irony wasn't lost on him. There had been a bustling Italian restaurant with him running the kitchen and Steve in charge of the front of house, clearly it had been a joint venture between himself and his partner - that had confused him, who in their right minds would want to open a restaurant when the failure rate was so high? He would rather die in an enormous explosion following his partner into yet another crazy situation than from the stress of running a restaurant.

Then what had really stayed with him was the two of them in their very old age, just sat bickering in the battered pair of Adirondack chairs on Steve's private beach. All he could think of was would they get his partner back so he could live long enough to grow old and be granted the time to just sit out on his beach. The dream had been so real and he very badly wanted it to come true 30 years from now. Hawaii was his home now and he couldn't think of anyone he would rather be hanging out with in his dotage than his crazy Neanderthal partner. He was the only one who absorbed all of Danny's snarking and worrying and came right back at him. Steve was a master at deflecting all of that nervous energy and getting Danny's mind off the worst case scenario all the time. Danny had long since realized that many of the incendiary comments that the SEAL made were too well-timed to be coincidence, their 'carguments' a very welcome respite from all of the angst that the detective stored up when life conspired against him.

Chin had been trying to get his attention and Danny started back into the moment. He held up his hand in apology and asked Chin to go through the plan one more time.