Chapter Eight – When Steve Met Harper

"To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage." ~ Lao-Tzu

Honolulu Police Station, the next morning…

"Are we interrupting something, detective?"

Harper looked up over her shoulder from the floor of the Honolulu Police Station's interview room to see Steve, Danny, Chin, and Kono come into the room.

"Detective Chin," the redhead greeted them with a smile, "so nice to see you again." Looking around at the rest of the group, she nodded and said, "Kono. Steven." And then to Danny, "How ya doin, Jersey?"

"Quite well, Shi- cah -go," Danny shot back with a goofy grin.

"Oh God," Steve muttered, "I don't think I can take them as friends." Then looking at Harper, he asked, "How is it that you're the first one here?"

"You gave me a phone," she reminded him, "I got a call, rented a car, and here I am. The miracles of modern technology are truly amazing."

"You haven't seen anything yet," Kono informed her, walking around the table to see what it was that Harper was looking at, "Wait until you see some of the toys we've got back at the offices."

"Ooh, toys," Harper repeated, her eyes lighting up, "The perks of being vigilantes."

"We're not vigilantes, we're a task force," Steve informed her sharply, shaking his head. She was starting already. Scrutinizing her face, he asked suddenly, "How much sleep did you get?"

"We're standing in the room where a cop killer was murdered and this crime scene happens to be in the middle of the local police department," Harper reminded her ex, trying to ignore his scrutiny, "That's really the first question you want to ask me?"

"How much?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked at her.

"Enough."

"So…none," Steve deduced, narrowing his eyes at her while the rest of the team looked on with interest.

"I was left behind here to work. So let's work," Harper said, glancing up at the camera situated in the corner of the room. Looking at the HPD officer who had accompanied her into the room, she asked, "Was that that only camera in the room yesterday?"

The officer nodded as Danny reminded her, "Which you shut off at the end of your interview."

"Yeah," she grimaced, "not anticipating that a cop killer would be murdered in the interrogation room of a police station while surrounded by cops was not my brightest move."

But Steve was still stuck on the issue of her lack of sleep and said cooly, "You've been running on adrenaline since arriving in Hawaii. If you keep this up, you're going to drop by the end of the day…"

Harper gave him a strange look and then quipped, "Thanks for the diagnosis, Super S.E.A.L. Now, can we get back to the business of finding out who killed Kai Akino under our noses?"

More than willing to oblige, Chin stepped forward and asked, "Have you spoken to the officer standing guard outside the interview room yet?"

"He's next door," she informed him, nodding her head toward the station's second interview room.

"Kono and I will take a crack at him, boss," the Hawaiian detective said, leaving the room.

Harper looked incredulously at Steve and asked, "You make them call you 'boss'?"

"I don't make them call me-…"

"I'm not calling you 'boss'," Harper informed him matter of factly.

Drawing in a deep breath, he asked, "Fine, what do you want to call me?" When Harper shot a knowing look in his direction, he held up his hands in surrender and added, "Okay, scratch that. I don't wanna know. Just as long as it's not Super S.E.A.L." Coming over to see what she was looking at on the floor when they came in, Steve asked, "What did you find down there?"

"Powdery substance," she replied, slipping back into work mode as quickly as he did, "Kono said that when she came into the room, Akino was foaming at the mouth and convulsing…like he was having a seizure. That could be drug induced…heroine, ecstasy."

"Or something else," Danny remarked, looking at the substance they were examining, "I'm doubting it was suicide, so it probably wasn't self induced. And it had to work fast…you two were barely out of the room before they came in to transfer him."

"Do you think somebody from his own gang tried to take him out?" Harper asked.

"Or someone working for Wo Fat," Steve deduced, "Someone inside the Honolulu PD."

"Wo Fat got someone to take him out that fast?" the redhead asked, looking from Danny to Steve and then back again, "He only gave up the fact that Wo Fat ordered the hit on Sammy moments before he was killed."

"Unless the orders were to take out Akino the moment he became a liability," Danny surmised, "And the moment you arrested him, he became a liability."

Steve's phone rang and he moved to answer it as Danny and Harper continued to discuss the options. When he hung up, Steve looked at his ex-wife and said, "You have to go."

"Go where?"

"Down to the Governor's office," he informed her, "Sign paperwork, all that good stuff."

"Great," she drawled, heading out the door with Danny and Steve on her heels, "What a productive way to spend a morning."

"Do you want one of us to drive you?"

"No thanks," Harper replied as Chin and Kono came up to them in the bullpen, "No sense in more than one of us having to waste their time. I'll meet you back at the offices."

She gave a little wave and was out the door before anyone could say anything else. When Steve turned around, he found his team watching him and asked, "What?"

"So we're just going to pretend that this isn't the slightest bit weird?" Danny asked, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. Shaking his head, he added, "Nope, not gonna happen. Spill it."

"Spill what?"

"You know what," Kono told him, coming up on his left side. "We want details. Not too many details, but enough to let us know what we're getting into."

"There is no way for me to get out of this?" Steve asked, turning toward Chin who was usually the most level headed of the group.

But even Chin simply shrugged and said, "If she weren't an integral part of this case, I'd let it go. But…"

"Okay, okay, I know when I am outnumbered," Steve agreed reluctantly, sitting on the edge of one of the desks in the empty police bullpen, "I told you that she is the daughter of Mickey James, right?" When they all nodded, he continued, "Well, Mickey was not always the Police Superintendent for the city of Chicago. He started out as a beat cop, worked his way up through Narcotics and Homicide, and then became a captain of the Organized Crime Division. He was a cop's cop who did not play politics and was as hard edged as they come. And in a city like Chicago those two things are going to make you some enemies. Dangerous enemies. And there is nothing that a smart enemy likes more than a cop who happens to have a beautiful daughter."

"A beautiful daughter who seems pretty capable of taking care of herself," Kono interrupted.

"Doesn't matter," Danny told her, "He a father first and when someone threatens your kid, everything else goes out the window."

"Exactly," Steve agreed, "Plus, Mickey's wife, Harper's mother, was killed because of his dedication to the job and so Mickey wasn't taking any chances on losing the only woman left in his life. He happened to be friends with my SEAL Commander at the time and I had just come back from my first mission in Afghanistan after 9/11, so…"

"So you were contracted out to babysit Harper James," Chin concluded.

"That is where our story begins…" Steve said, nodding at Chin in affirmation.

"This might just be me, but I don't see Harper reacting well to having a bodyguard," Danny guessed with a grin.

"That is the understatement of the century, Danno," Steve confirmed with a grimace, "She was a rookie at the time and out to prove to the entire Chicago Police Department that there was more to her than just a big name and a pretty face. And there was no way that she was going to get off the street or go into hiding, so her father told her that it was protection or nothing at all." He smirked at the memory and told them, "She was pissed. Pissed at her father, pissed at me, pissed at the situation. But I had my orders…keep my eye on her at all times."

"How did you manage to pull that off?"

"Being the Police Superintendent is a family business for the James' men and Mickey's dad, Frank, was in charge at the time," Steve informed them, "He did a little fancy maneuvering and I ended up posing as her partner at work and her lover everywhere else."

"I bet she was thrilled with the idea that people thought she was sleeping with her partner," Kono said, making a face at the situation and feeling sorry for the position that Harper must have been in. But then she gave her boss a look and asked coyly, "And then the charade spilled over into real life?"

"Hey, I'm only human," Steve replied, grinning like an idiot and causing Kono to roll her eyes at the 'boys will be boys' behavior of her co-workers. Catching her, he explained, "Look, we spent every hour of every day together for five months. Things happen. Plus, she was dead set on proving to her father that she didn't need his protection, so she worked the case of this guy who was threatening them. We both did. That's when I found out what a fantastic cop she is. And damn it if she didn't nail him. It was a huge bust…for her career and my ego."

"So you celebrated by getting married?" Chin asked skeptically.

"No, we celebrated by taking a much needed vacation in Mexico," Steve corrected him and then added sheepishly, "Where…we ended up getting married." He let out a long sigh and admitted, "It seemed right at the time."

"How did Big Daddy react to that?" Danny wanted to know.

"Not well," his partner answered with a grimace.

"I would say not," Danny agreed as the father in him said, "He hired you to protect her and you married her instead?"

"It gets worse," Steve informed them before adding, "I was stationed at the Naval Amphibious Base at Coronado when my mission in Chicago was over, so she moved there with me and joined the San Diego Police Department."

"She left Chicago PD for you?" Kono asked in surprise. It shouldn't have come as such a shock to her since she knew that S.E.A.L.S. were stationed in either Virginia Beach or San Diego…not Chicago. But she didn't put it together that Harper had left her job and her family to marry Steve.

"It was her choice," he replied with a shrug, trying to make it seem like less of deal than it actually was, "She said she could be a cop anywhere. But after that, I wasn't invited to any family get togethers."

"Okay," Chin said, more interested in this story than he had thought he would be, "that explains how she became your wife. How did she become your ex-wife?"

Steve drew in a deep breath and contemplated how much he should tell them. It really wasn't any of their business, but they did have to work in the middle of this mess so it was fair of them to want to know. But this was the part of the story he was dreading telling. So he decided to keep it simple by saying, "It's not easy to be married to a S.E.A.L., okay?" Even for someone as independent as Jimmy. I left for Iraq right after we got married and was gone for a long time. And then when I came back, I was always getting called away on different missions, couldn't tell her where I was, would leave at a moment's notice…" he sighed and finished, "We were moving in two different directions and we hit a rough spot. So…"

"So you skipped town and served her with divorce papers?" Danny surmised, mimicking Harper's words from the previous day.

Not wanting to get into the details, Steve nodded and answered coolly, "It's more complicated than that…but, yeah."

And that was it. It was all he was going to say and they knew it. But Steve could tell from the looks on their faces that they knew he wasn't telling them everything. And they were right…there was more to the story. Much more. More than even Harper knew. But for her sake, Steve was going to have to make sure she never found out.