Chapter 11

Emma was sleeping again as Steve and Chin gathered their thoughts just outside the room. Another HPD officer was posted outside the room, and Scott's picture was being shown to every nurse, guard, and technician at the hospital. Steve was slumped forward in his chair, forearms resting against his knees. "What day is it?"

"Sunday," Chin answered quietly.

Steve was unresponsive for a couple of minutes, then suddenly squeezed his fists into tight knots. "I want to make him disappear. I want…"

Chin put his hand on his teammate's shoulder. "Stop it, Steve. Not here."

"And no one saw?" Fury rolled through Steve's body, tightening his muscles and shaking his leg. "She worked in a precinct full of cops…she's just a kid. How did no one see what was happening?"

"Is it bothering you because of her age? Or…because of how you feel about her?" Chin said, wisely picking up on Steve's hidden emotions.

"I'm not going to say that she's not attractive. But it's not like that…I just want to protect her, you know? She's a cop, she's one of us, and someone pushed her to a breaking point and took it all away from her. It can just make you feel…weak."

Chin nodded slowly, then leaned his head against the wall behind his chair. "Steve, I'm asking you right now. Is your head on straight?"

"What do you mean?"

"As a friend. Can you do this right, or do I need to bench you. After what happened with Ito, you know I could."

Steve looked as defeated as Chin had ever seen him. "Maybe you should." His admission scared Chin; he had never seen his friend willingly back down like he was now.

"Just…stay here. Stay with her….be there. I'll get the team together and we'll get Scott Carrey." Chin stood up as Steve nodded tiredly, and he squeezed Steve's shoulder again in consolation and solidarity, before grabbing his half-empty coffee and walking away.

As Chin-ho got into his cruiser and turned it on, he was reflecting on what Steve had said, and felt his own gut churning, remembering how it felt with the brothers in blue hadn't had time for him. It was different, of course, but it was like…losing a family. And Steve could relate as well—losing his parents, then leaving his brothers in the Navy. No matter what caused the separation, it hurt.

He hadn't really known how to react when he got the news of the shootout, on the one hand it was definitely one of the rasher things that Steve had ever done, but he wasn't totally surprised. Steve had always and would always be the white knight, regardless of how distressed the damsel actually was.

This case, this damsel, was making them all reconsider just how far "being strong" could get you, before you reach a breaking point. Emma had reached hers in LA, it seemed like Steve was reaching his now. It scared Chin a little bit, to realize that things could go wrong in such a short amount of time.

As he pulled up to HPD headquarters, he saw Kono outside, talking to another cop as they ate lunch. He couldn't deny that more than once, he had wondered what would have happened to Kono in the same situation. Would she have come to him? If he wasn't in her life, would she have gone to Steve? Or would she be pushed to just…run?

Chin Ho approached her table as the other cop dumped his trash and walked away, and sat down across from her, "Hey cuz."

"Hey. What's wrong with you?" She asked directly.

"Nothing. We need to look for Scott Carrey."

Kono rolled her eyes, "Lou and I already started. We've got APBs and roadblocks up. Ran his credit cards and couldn't find anything, so I was sifting through rental car records in the last day. I'm about halfway done." She nudged the tablet with her elbow, as her hands were full with a taco from the truck up the road.

"That's thousands of cars."

"We have some criteria. Priority are California licenses, males, low occupancy vehicles…but yeah, still thousands."

"Did you check the security cameras from the hospital parking lot?"

"We did, there were a few rentals but no matches."

Chin picked up the tablet and started swiping through rental cars, glancing briefly at the licenses as he went. Scott Carrey was a cop, and judging by his police jacket, a good one, so he knew exactly where and how Five-O would look for him. He had used his passport and California ID to get on a flight, but once he was on the ground in Hawaii he had disappeared. "If I was Officer Scott Carrey, where would I be?" He said out loud.

Kono joined in, pretending to be Carrey. "I know Emma is at the hospital, under guard by now. I am controlling and dominant, so right now…I'm trying to find out as much about her life as I can. Her house, her friends, her job. Identifying information."

Chin agreed with her, "So we should have officers monitoring her home and work."

Kono licked the last of the taco juices from her fingers, "Alright, let's go talk to Lou and get some unis over." The two of them stood up and started walking to their office entrance, and Kono took a long look at him, "Seriously, cuz, what's up?"

"It's been a long week," he said, meeting her eyes. "Let's just leave it at that."

She eyed him suspiciously, taking in the bags under his eyes and the sloped shoulders, and grabbed his hand as they walked, squeezing it once before letting go. Kono could feel that they both needed the grounding human connection, something that talking just can't provide. It was the perfect medicine for Chin, who felt his shoulders relax and his mind clear. "What would you do?" He blurted out. Kono waited before answering, giving him space to clarify his thoughts.

"If there was…if someone was doing that to you," Chin spat out acidly. Even the thought made his insides twist.

"I would slice off his balls, cook them, and serve it to him on a bun," Kono said directly. Chin wasn't quite sure what to do with that—the words were said with a chuckle, but her tone was flat, here eyes were dark and the end result was…intimidating.

"For some reason," Chin replied, "that makes me feel better."

"And Scott Carrey has the same coming to him when we find him." She continued.

"I didn't hear you say that."

"Pfft. You know you'd help me."

"I'll cut off the…you know what…" Chin said mischievously as they walked through the office door. Lou and Danny were looking at the digital table, seeking patterns in the mass of information. The four of them threw ideas at each other, seeing what would stick, and followed up on every lead they had. Danny and Lou left and spent a couple of hours flashing Scott Carrey's picture in the city streets around the hospital. A detective's most relied on skill was, perhaps, grasping at straws. So, the two men were patient as they walked the streets, patient as they talked to shop owners, patient when everyone denied having seen him.

After three hours, Danny and Lou returned to the cruiser with nothing new. Chin and Kono had done the same, checking in on tourist hotspots that Carrey may have gone to. People came to Hawaii with grimy intentions, and left with the same…and a lei. The beauty was irresistible to any outsider.

Maybe not…any…outsider. The other team didn't come up with anything either. When Chin and Kono returned to the office, Lou had gone home to his family, but Danny was nursing a beer in his office, still looking over case files. Chin poked his head in, "Hey, you heard from Steve today?"

"No, I texted him a couple of times but he never replied. I was going to swing by his place when I hit bottom." He wiggled the beer bottle, about two inches of amber liquid swishing inside.

"At the hospital today, he didn't look too good," Chin brought up. "He didn't come to HPD, he didn't check in with anyone…" He didn't say it, but it was clear. I'm worried about him.

Kono, Chin, and Lou sat in the central meeting area of the office, staring at screens. A week had passed since Officer Carrey surfaced and Emma had been released from the hospital; she was staying in a hotel room under police surveillance, but everyone involved knew it couldn't last forever.

They had reached out to LAPD a week ago and, after Scott Carrey's actions, he had been readily dismissed. No one in LA had heard from him, but he hadn't been spotted on the island either. The atmosphere was tense with worry, both for Emma, and for Steve and Danny, who had spent the last few days defending their decisions and the shootout to various higher ups. The rest of the team alternated between checking BOLOs and checking over their shoulders. They were sitting on their hands, waiting for Carrey to make a mistake.

As the afternoon lengthened, their patience shortened. Chin was the first one to break the silence. "What do we do when we find him? He hasn't done anything that we can really put him away for. He hasn't laid a hand on her, he's only seen her once, and he came here legally. Emotional abuse is hard to prove in court, even in civil court. The worst thing he has done so far is rent a car under an assumed identity, if he's even done that. I hate to say it, but Emma is the one that's going to end up in trouble if we press any charges."

Lou nodded. "I thought of that. We've got a restraining order against him, so if he violates that we can take him in, but in order to press any charges Emma needs to be Carli again, and there's a lot of things that Carli would need to answer to."

Kono rubbed her forehead, like she was getting a headache. "Even if he breaks the restraining order, that would be what, a fine, a couple months of jail time?"

"She came 2500 miles away, and he still came after her. There's no way that a couple of months of jail time is going to keep him away," Lou said directly, "We've all seen it before."

Steve and Danno walked in from their deposition, the latter loosening his tie. "If I never see another lawyer in my life, it will be too soon."

Kono looked alarmed, "Is someone pressing charges?"

Danny shook his head. "Just the department covering its ass. No worries. Anything here?"

"Nothing." It hung in the air like a fog, blanketing everyone in dissatisfaction. In the middle of a case it could be chaos, but after a while, leads shriveled away and there just wasn't any new information, so the team sat and stewed, surrounded by all of the information they had gathered.

Steve was checking messages on his phone as he unbuttoned his dress shirt. "Shit….Shit!" He ran into his office, the others trailing behind. Steve was typing furiously at his computer, ignoring everyone.

Danyn nudged his shoulder, "Share with the class, Steve?"

"Emma slipped her protection detail…she left the hotel room and disappeared."