And here it goes, winding down.
Shout out to Phoebe Miller for beta reading!
Fact #162: Survival can be summed up in three words – never give up.
-Bear Grylls
Season: 5th Season
Depression
Kono stared.
The rain plinked on the windshield of the parked rental car. Gradually, the droplets turned the road and street lights into a colorful mosaic. The glow of shop signs reflected in the puddles, passing cars sent up little tidal waves on the street, and people scurried by on the sidewalks, everyone and everything oblivious to the turmoil her life was in.
This was supposed to have been a fun get-out-of-town trip, not one of those our-bosses-got-kidnapped-and-we-can't-find-them-anywhere trip.
Her fingers picked at the lid on her cup of cold coffee sitting in the center console. She'd been living on enough coffee that she could probably keep the industry afloat all by herself. With Chin and Catherine drinking as much as her, they were definitely making someone rich.
Her brows furrowed.
Between the three of them, they should have been able to find some kind of lead. After Chin had found their phones at the bar, they had been hopeful. They at least had a starting point. Then the security footage from the bar turned up nothing. The camera picked up Steve and Danny entering, then it never saw them leave the packed bar. There were too many people, bad lighting, and not enough camera coverage. Nothing in the streets outside the bar turned up anything.
Slowly, with each passing day, they had run out of steam.
Team members getting kidnapped had happened before. It usually hadn't taken very long to find each other. They would shake the trees, break down doors, prowl through traffic and ATM cameras, and recover their missing friend in a couple hours. They would even charter a flight to South Korea and hitch a ride in a sketchy helicopter over the border in an unsanctioned rescue operation.
But here in Canada of all places?
Nothing fell out of the trees. They had no doors to kick down. Even Adam's contacts he had forged had nothing to say. If a bad guy had taken them, they had done so under the radar, way under the radar. Even the criminal underworld had nothing to say.
Kono wondered if there was any way she could get a hold of Shamrock.
She laughed softly.
Danny would chide her for even thinking about turning to a crime boss like his old nemesis. Petty criminals or semi-reformed criminals were one thing, monsters that lived in the shadows were another. Everything came at a price with people like that.
She wiped a thumb under her eye, erasing a lone tear.
The three remaining members of the team were to the point they were willing to pay a price to find them.
Four and a half years ago, she had been in the Academy following in her family's footsteps, but mostly in her cousin's footsteps. Part of her firmly believed that Chin showing up on the beach with Steve and Danny in tow had saved her life. When Steve had recruited her onto his case and then into the taskforce, she had been pulled out of HPD. At the time, there had been corruption in the department, and a lot of good cops died for not standing idly by.
She liked to think she would've been one of the ones of integrity who wouldn't have put up with the moles protecting the gangsters and drug runners and smugglers and murderers.
She probably would have died early in her career. All HPD saw was Chin's cousin. Chin, the thief. The dirty cop. The disappointment. The one who brought dishonor to their large family's name. That's what the department had painted him as.
But Steve had seen her as a capable young officer full of vim and vigor. He had seen Chin as an honest man who got a raw deal. Danny had treated her with respect and taught her things a cop needed to know. Danny treated Chin as a fellow cop and a friend.
And now they were out there. Somewhere. She refused to believe they were dead. She couldn't explain that to Grace. There was no way she could tell the worried little girl she had lost her dad and uncle in one fell swoop.
There was no way she could tell herself she had lost two of her friends in one fell swoop.
She wiped away more tears and scrubbed her hands over her face. Tears would get her nowhere. Deep breath in, deep breath out. She started the car and pulled out into traffic.
Even the Vancouver Police that they had finally had to bring in were at a loss. In a city that had been absolutely crawling with law enforcement, the fact that two officers had vanished off the face of the earth was baffling.
Now they had resorted to chasing ghosts. The local police would do their thing, the Five-0 team would do theirs. At that moment, their thing included tracking down and asking as many people that had attended the conference if they had any idea where the boys had gone.
Of course, a massive chunk of attendees had already gone home to various places across the states and Canada. It felt like an exercise in futility, but at least it felt like something.
She finally rolled into a neighborhood and followed her map to a blue house. She parked the car and hitched her raincoat's hood over her head. After all these years, she finally understood why Danny found the rain so miserable.
Another door, only one out of the fifty she had knocked on in the last few days. Her knuckles were going to get calloused.
A woman opened the door a crack.
"Can I help you?" she asked, eyeing Kono and her drawn face warily.
"Are you Mrs. Kemp?" Kono asked.
The door opened a little wider.
"Yes. Why?"
"Is your husband Kurt Kemp?"
"That's him. What do you want?"
"Is he home? I just need to ask him some questions."
The woman pursed her lips and looked Kono up and down.
"Who are you? A cop?"
Kono sighed. "Yes, I'm a cop, and I'm on a missing persons case."
The woman frowned. "Kurt's not home."
Kono shifted on her feet on the concrete step. "Do you know when he's going to be home?"
The woman's face softened. "Honestly, I thought he would've been home by now. What district are you with?"
Kono held up her badge with a small, sad smile. "Hawaii Five-0, based out of Honolulu, Hawaii."
The woman's eyes widened to such an alarming degree that Kono nearly jumped backwards off the step. The woman threw open the door and waved her inside. Kono stepped in out of the rain and shuffled her feet on the welcome mat.
The woman signaled her to follow her to the kitchen. "Can I get you a cup of tea?"
"Uh, no thanks," Kono said. She trailed behind the woman. "What's wrong? You looked like you got sucker punched when I said I was Five-0."
The woman sank down to the table in the kitchen with a pensive look on her face. She gestured for Kono to take the other seat.
Kono's heart pounded.
"Was your whole team here?" the woman asked.
Kono nodded.
"And did your missing persons go missing about a week ago?"
"Eight days ago," she confirmed.
The woman gripped her coffee mug with such a firm grasp that Kono thought it was going to shatter.
"I think my husband did something really, really stupid."
The setting sun cast long fingers of fiery orange and golden yellow across the gray water. A bank of clouds on the horizon was creeping in with their deep purple bottoms and billowing white tops. Looked like another hard rainstorm.
Fantastic.
Danny sat on the edge of the cove, watching the ocean slowly swallow the sun. Things always felt easier when the sun was up. Easier to see, easier to navigate the trails, easier to deal with things. But when it sank low in the west and night began to cover their island, his spirits dropped.
Tomorrow would be Day 10.
As a normal thing, ten days wasn't that long of a period. Ten days wasn't even two weeks.
Stranded on a deserted island, however, ten days was a lifetime. In the last ten days he had experienced too many things. More things than should fit in a ten day time span. It had been the most intense diet he had ever been on. An extremely effective one, too. Want to lose those pesky twelve pounds that just won't drop? Just get stranded on a deserted island and eat mainly kelp, snails, and berries, and maybe a few fish if the fishing is any good.
And the sad thing was, he was getting used to it. The first few days he had resisted falling into any routine, and had stared out at the water when they were beachcombing in a vain hope that a boat would pass by. There had been a few moments when he considered attempting to fly. Thankfully, his fear of the water overrode his fear of not being found.
Now, he and Steve had a routine. Wake up. Drink some water, maybe eat something if there was anything they had left from the night before. Go to the beach, check the net, see if anything interesting wash up on shore. Go get fresh water.
Then after he had found the blackberry bush, they had started making regular trips to that area. They had found some other bushes with different berries on them yesterday. It was a fine line they had to balance when they harvested the berries. Steve was insistent that they leave some on the bush.
Danny had a hard time bringing himself to care either way. He ate because he had to, not because he enjoyed it. He never thought there would come a time in his life when he didn't enjoy food.
Except for when Rachel left him.
His face darkened as did the light glowing on the waves of the ocean.
Rachel had left with Grace after a fight. They had fought before, and Danny hadn't thought that one was any different. Then he had come home from work and his girls had been gone. It had been one of the most heart wrenching days in his life.
As a cop, he had first suspected they had been kidnapped in revenge for something he had done. Maybe one of the mob cases, or something to do with Shamrock, or any other number of cases he and Mags had closed. When he searched the house, though, cold reality set in. She had packed suitcases. Took her things. Took Grace's things. Left his. She had even taken the dog. He had been able to track her down to her friend's house and, with great relief, had tried to make sure they were safe, especially Grace, but Rachel was having none of it. With the greatest self restraint known to man and dragon, he let her stay at her friend's house until she cooled off.
At least, that had been the plan.
Rachel never came home.
Grace never came home.
He was left alone in their house until the papers came.
Then he was kicked out of Rachel's house and forced to shack up in a crummy motel. He couldn't even take his dog with him because he was apparently Rachel's, too.
Day in and day out, he had tried to reason with her. It usually devolved into arguing and finally, Rachel lawyered up and blocked him from speaking to her and Grace. It took a lot of begging and a kind hearted judge to let him at least talk to his daughter.
He had dropped almost fifteen pounds during the whole ordeal, he had been such a big ball of anxiety.
Danny stared out at the sun that was half-eaten by the water. It was a shimmering disk of molten light. He probably should go back up to the shelter. Steve would be concerned he wasn't at camp once he came back from his water and berry run.
Every weight that had ever been laid on his shoulders drove him to the ground. Leaden limbs made it impossible to pick himself up. He wanted to melt into the ground and disappear. Even out here in the middle of nowhere, his demons came back to haunt him.
He could have tried harder with marriage counseling.
He could have taken more time off.
He could have quit his job.
His chest tightened. Quitting his job was the one thing he couldn't bring himself to do. He loved being a cop. Rachel had married a cop. She had known what she was getting herself into. It was when they had Grace that it all changed. His world became a thousand times brighter, hers became scarier. It was then his job became a problem. She didn't want to raise Grace by herself, so she left him.
He had fought with that logic for years.
It would have been one thing if she had left him, but almost a month after she had left him, she was with another man. A safer choice. He figured the poor schmuck was a rebound, someone to make him mad. Except, two months later and she was still with him. And when he questioned her if she loved this guy, her answer broke him.
Yes. She did love Stan.
What was worse, was she told him that Stan was Grace's new step-father.
In Hawaii.
Which they promptly disappeared to that weekend.
Matty had told him to move to Hawaii as soon as he had heard. 'Go be a cop in paradise.' Only, neither of them had anticipated how hard it was to get a job with HPD when he was a recently divorced Jersey boy with a frightfully small budget. He didn't get much further than inquiring about openings at the department and looking at how much apartments cost.
And then the grand theft auto case went sideways and Mags relieved him of his service weapon when he went back to his motel. Shamrock had been waiting for him with a proposition, one he was sure that was advantageous to her in some way, shape, or form.
He scooted a pile of pebbles on the shore into the water with his claws. He remembered standing up at the Diamond Head parking lot after he had gotten turned around on the island. Seeing the ocean stretch out before him made him feel small. And lost.
And now here he was on another island. Small. Lost.
"Hey, Danno."
But not alone.
"No, Steven, I didn't fall in and drown."
Steve sat next to him on the shore, head turned towards the horizon.
"I'd have to start building fires myself."
"Oh, I see, I'm just a furnace with legs for you, huh?" Danny said and glanced at him.
He had gone to Hawaii for Grace, but stayed for Steve. Someone else who had been small and lost for different reasons.
A smirk flickered across Steve's face. "Penny for your thoughts?"
"It'll cost you more than a penny."
"Put it on my tab."
Danny sighed and looked back out at the waning sun. "I was just thinking about how much islands suck."
Steve didn't say anything.
"I mean, first my ex and my daughter move out to one, then you show up on that very same island and get me shot immediately, and then here we are, stranded on one," Danny continued, leaving out the freshly surfaced memories. Steve probably didn't know the whole story of Rachel leaving him, but he knew the important details, and Danny didn't have the energy for that particular rant.
"Could be worse."
"Oh god, don't say that. You know what happens when someone says it could be worse? It usually gets worse, especially with you involved," Danny said.
Steve just shook his head and rolled his eyes. He plunked a pebble into the water.
"I remember being in a cave in the desert, thinking I would give anything to be back home on the island," Steve said.
Danny glanced over at him. "Why didn't you come back?"
"I don't know. I was mad at my dad and didn't want all the memories that came with being back, but every time I was left with my own thoughts, I went right back to the island," Steve said. He flicked a couple more pebbles into the water.
"When I first got to the island, I would daydream about being back home in Jersey. There was a sandwich shop that I used to go to with my friends, and I would imagine I was sitting there at one of the old booths with the collapsed seat, eating a huge sandwich with freshly made bread and the owner's secret sauce."
Danny waited for the comment about how too much of his life revolved around food.
"That sounds good."
Danny blinked. "Um, excuse me? Who are you and what have you done with Steve?"
"I can enjoy things once in a while," Steve said. "I don't exclusively eat MREs."
"Is it bad that powdered eggs would be a welcome change to kelp and fish soup?" Danny asked.
Steve stood up and nudged him. "It's not powdered eggs, but I think the fish from the net this morning is fully smoked now."
Danny heaved himself up. It had been a foot long fish that would've made a good dinner back home if it had come with rice and vegetables. It was a mere snack for two hungry dragons of their size.
His rumbling stomach told him that even if he didn't enjoy eating it, he needed it.
"Hope it's got lemon and pepper on it," he muttered.
"Sorry to disappoint you with my bland cooking," Steve said.
Danny started to follow him up the trail from the shore of the cove. He paused to cast one last look at the topmost edge of the sun slipping below the horizon. Bright specks glittered on the surface of the water and dotted the velvety sky. The dark was settling in. It would be another cold night. They were getting colder with the passing days.
He shivered, already imagining a blanket of snow on them and their already lean food sources drying up.
Weary and not ready to crawl back into the cubby hole, he lowered his head and climbed up the trail, bumping into Steve who had also paused to look back at the ocean.
"Come on, before it gets too dark and one of us falls in a hole or something," he said.
Steve was frozen stiff.
Danny frowned.
He followed Steve's eye line back out to the ocean. The last of the sunlight winked out on the horizon, leaving an ebbing glow in the sky in its wake. Bright spots shined in and out of existence on the crests of the waves.
He squinted.
Except for those bright spots. Those ones stayed bright. And were moving.
Moving towards them.
"Steve. Is that what I think it is?"
Steve didn't move.
"It's a boat."
To be continued….
Next week on "Dragons", the whole sad truth comes out.
Sorry for being a touch late again. Things happen. Hope you've enjoyed this little arc!
Thank you for reading, reviewing, faving, and following!