Okay, so I know that TV's version of Wo Fat is cold and calculating and my version is meaner and scarier, but I took a little poetic license with the character. But let's forget about him because as one reviewer said, "Ding Dong, the dick is dead!" (Thanks When I Make it Shine!) So now, onto one of the moments you have all been waiting for...

Chapter Thirty One – Into the Deep

A man's worth is measured by how he parents his children. What he gives them, what he keeps away from them, the lessons he teaches and the lessons he allows them to learn on their own.

~Lisa Rogers

Akaka Falls State Park …

"Do you think he was just messing with him…ow!"

All eyes…except for one pair…were on Frankie James as Kono leaned over him and tried to tend the gunshot wound that had torn through his right shoulder. But as in everything else, he was not being a very cooperative patient.

"What do you mean?" his father asked, trying to hide the concern in his dark eyes. Mickey James had come into these woods and had foolishly been talked into bringing all four of his surviving children with him. The fact that only one child had sustained an injury were fantastic odds…but not perfect. And it wasn't over yet.

"Wo Fat." Frankie clarified, wincing as Kono moved his arm in order to wrap his shoulder. "Do you think he said that about Steve's dad still being alive just to mess with him and to…"

"Really?" Harper interrupted angrily, eyes blazing at her older brother, "After everything that just happened out here you still don't believe that Jack is alive? You've got to be kidding…"

"Hey…you wanna jump back into your skin there, hothead?" Frankie snapped, interrupting her tirade, "That's not what I was saying at all. If you'd just back off a second and let me finish…" His tired eyes moved from his sister's face to where Steve was standing over Wo Fat's dead body a few hundred yards away and lowered his voice as he continued, "What I was trying to say is that maybe the reason Wo Fat was in these woods today is because he came back to finish the elder McGarrett off." Glancing back up to Harper, he added, "When you escaped, he probably figured that you were dead. He didn't plan on your miraculous and completely stubborn fight to survive in that river. So when he found out that you did in fact survive and regained consciousness, he had to come back out here and finish what he started by killing Jack McGarrett."

"He had a year to kill Jack McGarrett," Harper disagreed, letting her eyes wander over to where her ex-husband stood motionless as she continued, "No, this is the ultimate mind game."

"He knew he was going to die," Tommy James responded, narrowing his eyes in thought, "he had nine guns trained on him…there was no way he was getting out of that alive. So he saved his best and most evil trick for last."

"Wo Fat thinks he won," Chin stated, nodding his head in agreement, "That he left Steve wondering for the rest of his life if he could have done something differently and saved his father."

"Again," Danny added flatly.

"Well, he didn't win because this isn't over," the redheaded detective told them all stubbornly, "There is a hidden basement out here somewhere and we are going to find it. And in that basement we will find Jack McGarrett…one way or another."

And without another word on the matter, she left the group and marched over to stand shoulder to shoulder with Steve. Glancing down at Wo Fat's body, she said quietly, "He looks almost peaceful…like the mask of death is covering up all the madness within."

Without looking up from the body of his greatest enemy, Steve answered just as quietly, "I'm sorry I didn't believe you."

Harper simply shrugged and looked up through the trees as she asked, "Are you giving up?"

"Nope," he responded and finally glanced up at her, "You?"

"Not a chance," she countered and pulled out her Glock to make sure it was reloaded, "but we'd better get moving. We're losing daylight."

After deciding that Mickey, Jenna, and Kono would stay with Frankie and Wo Fat's body to wait for the ambulance and Medical Examiner, the remaining members of the team trudged deeper into the foreboding woods behind Harper and Steve.

"I hate the woods," Danny remarked as they passed under a thick umbrella of twisted vines, breaking the silence that had enveloped them, "I'm from Jersey, you're from Chicago…what the hell are we doing in the woods? Reminds me of Hansel and Gretel. Melodramatic bullshit, man. Hated that story when I was a little kid."

"You were never a little kid," Chin joked, trying to ease the tension, "But you're right…this place gives me the creeps."

The team used natural landmarks from Kono's map to locate where the original cellar might have been. Wo Fat had to come from somewhere. The air was thick and still as the search and rescue party carried onward into uncertainty. But everyone could sense the impatience that was growing in Steve and in Harper, as well. Especially when she began stamping the ground with her feet, trying to locate the hidden door she had escaped through. The detective was listening for a hollow sound, some kind of wood or metal under the tall grass and thick, tangly weeds.

The Commander couldn't explain what feelings came over him in that moment as he watched his ex-wife stomp around like a small child throwing a fit on the playground. Steve wondered if she realized that she was searching in desperation for the very place where she herself had been kept underground.

And she was doing it for him.

Wo Fat was dead and everyone knew that the answers to Samuel Norval's death had probably died with him. Harper had known the consequences the moment she fired her gun. But she did it anyway…to protect him and his team and her father and her brothers. And now she was still searching, still reliving her own nightmarish ordeal because she knew that Jack McGarrett was somewhere close by, underneath the ground. Just like she had been.

Steve swallowed hard and willed himself to deal with all of those unsettling feelings later…when this was all over. The same way he had been willing himself to deal with all of the unresolved feelings he had been experiencing since she had come crashing back into his life…

He was jarred away from his thoughts when all of a sudden Harper pulled out her pistol and began searching for something else…something to shoot at. The men all watched her but didn't say anything. They knew that being back in those woods had to be hard for her and she needed a little release. Shooting at Wo Fat had not helped because he died with so many secrets left unrevealed. So now she had to release some venom, some stress. But there was nothing to shoot at…no underground cellar, no trap door. Nothing.

So she fired two shots into the knot of a nearby tree. Again and again, all direct hits.

"Feel better now?" Steve asked with a smirk, as apparently he was the only one brave enough to say anything to her at that moment.

"A little…" she replied with the same smirk before everyone stopped dead in their tracks when they heard something else break in on the silence.

A scream.

Someone was screaming.

Six pairs of eyes darted around and searched their surroundings, but no one dared to move or even breathe. It was coming from underneath the ground.

The scream was muffled, but they could hear it clearly all the same. It was just to the north of where they were standing and even further into the thick bramble. Harper raised her gun and squeezed out two more quick shots as another signal and then screamed out into the woods, "Jack!"

The muffled scream was louder the next time, as if rising up from the tenth circle of Hell. As the team moved closer to the source, the next sound was definitely recognizable…

"Jimmy!"

Upon hearing him calling out for his daughter-in-law, everyone simultaneously dropped to their hands and knees and began searching frantically for a hidden door, running their fingers and palms over the undergrowth until they were cut and bleeding. Harper stole a look over at Steve and saw that his hands were shaking.

Propping herself up on her knees, Harper fired off two more shots to let Jack know that they had heard him and were still there as Steve lowered his head close to the ground and called out, "Dad! We're up here! Hold on! We're coming to get you!"

"Over here!" Bobby James suddenly yelped, "There's some kind of a door over here!"

Everyone practically fell over themselves and each other as they ran through the weeds to where a trapdoor was hidden in honeysuckle and waist-high grass. The door had been covered over with an extra layer of sod and wouldn't likely have been found by a search party or anyone else hiking through the park.

Everyone else stood back and let Steve yank it open, with Harper close on his heels. The pair hurried down a deep, wooden staircase that looked like it had been there for a hundred years.

"This is it," Harper breathed into Steve's ear as he wrapped his strong arms around her waist and helped her down the last few remaining steps, "I was here. I ran up this stair case to get out."

Squeezing her hand but not letting go, the couple rounded a corner and almost ran into a second doorway. The heavy, oak door looked almost new, as if it had only been installed in the last year or two. Steve reached out and turned the handle, but it was locked.

"This is Commander Steve McGarrett of Hawaii Five-0 and I'm coming in," Steve shouted to anyone who may have been behind the door. Dropping Harper's hand, he pulled out his weapon and fired two shots into the lock until it disintegrated. Shoving his shoulder into the center of the wooden door, it heaved open slowly.

"We're right behind you, boss," Chin whispered in his deep, homicide-scene voice, "Watch yourself."

Steve led the way down a long hallway and wondered how long it had taken to get it set up that way. The space was extensive, with doors on either side of the corridor. And each door was bolt-locked from the outside, like prison cells.

How the hell had Harper ever made it out of this place?

"Dad!" Steve called into the darkness, pausing at each door as they snaked down the hallway, "Dad, it's Steve. And Harper and Chin. Where are you?"

"Steven!"

Steve and Harper clung to the walls as they inched down closer to the sound of Jack McGarrett's voice. Suddenly behind them, they heard a scuffle and a thud before Tommy James voice was heard saying, "Don't move, you son of a bitch."

Apparently Harper's brother had found Michael Sugimoto's hiding place.

Steve and Harper continued to inch down the corridor toward a faint glimmer of amber light. They turned left and stumbled down a short flight of stairs into another corridor where there were more locked doors. Jack must have been screaming with all of his might in order for them to be able to hear him from above ground.

Steve opened the first door on the right…and there he was.

Jack McGarrett.

He stared in disbelief. It couldn't be. The former Navy S.E.A.L. moved closer to the man chained up to the wall and looked into his eyes. The individual sitting before him was unshaven and reeked of filth; he had lost weight and the dark circles and the lines of fatigue etched in Jack's face spoke volumes about the misery that Wo Fat had put him through over the course of the last year. However, the eyes were the same; although they were no longer full of life, the eyes were those of his father.

Steve froze, his white-knuckled hands gripping the gun so tightly, his body straining with the effort of keeping his arms from trembling at the shock.

He's always been good at staying in control.

Instinctively, Steve retreated a step, regretting it immediately. Years of backing away and distancing himself from his father after his mother's death and the habit had yet to wear off. He purposefully stilled himself, and was suddenly embarrassed that tears (of relief? of fear?) suddenly sprang into his eyes. Blinking back the tears, he looked down hesitantly, unsure of what came next. Most of the time, either one of the McGarrett men would have spun away angrily and stalked off, leaving the other seething in rage. But this was different. This was…

Steve practically stumbled forward from a sudden force from behind pushing him onward. He turned and stared in surprise at Harper, who had unceremoniously pushed him into the room. Her bright eyes were full of tears as she looked down at Jack and then glanced back up at Steve, silently urging him ahead.

Crouching down in front of his father, Steve reached out a trembling hand and pushed the hair out of the older man's eyes. His voice held a slight tremor when he finally spoke.

"Dad…"

Slowly lifting his head, Jack McGarrett blinked his eyes several times, trying to bring into focus the image of the person in front of him. He finally managed to meet the gaze of the man crouching in front of him. It unnerved him that his son seemed to able to look right through him.

"Dad, it's me. It's..."

"Steven," Jack croaked out, finishing the thought. A slow smile spread across his haggard features as he said, "I knew she would bring you here to me. That wife of yours is something else…"

Jack suddenly found the strength that had alluded him for more than a year and pulled his son in with his right hand, embracing him so tightly that for a moment, Steve forgot to breathe. He could hear his father sniffling against his shoulder, and in his mind's eye, he could only see how the stoic expression on his father's face crumpled a split second before they embraced.

And then Steve couldn't take it anymore. All the tension and the nightmares and the pent-up fear of the past few weeks just spilled out, leaving a gaping empty space behind, and he found himself clutching tightly at his father in sheer desperate relief. The Commander buried his face in his father's shoulder like he used to as a boy, muffling the last few hitched breaths in his father's ragged shirt.

He was badly beaten and chained to a wall, but Jack McGarrett was alive.

And that was good enough for now.