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Chapter Seven: A Mysterious Visit

Allie

The world was conspiring against me. It had rained during the night, making the sand a little hard to run in for me (though Gideon hadn't had an issue). My coffee machine had decided to go on strike, so the caffeine that I so desperately needed was unavailable, as I didn't believe in using public coffee machines. The shirt that I had been planning to wear got a mysterious stain on it while I'd been making myself breakfast. I'd been behind idiots on the road the entire way to work.

"What else?" I grumbled as I pushed my way into the Five-O office.

And then I saw.

A uniformed HPD officer stood off to the side and, sitting in the chair beside him, was someone that I hadn't expected to see again so soon.

When the officer saw me, he stepped forward and greeted me. "Officer Rhodes. This man came into HPD this morning and said that it was urgent that he speak with you right away. He said you knew he was coming."

My visitor stood and grinned at me. "Hey, twin."

The officer's eyes widened in surprise and he looked back to me. I sighed and nodded. "Yeah, yeah. I have a twin brother."

Kol feigned offense. "Can't you see the resemblance?"

"We're fraternal twins, Kol."

"So?" He turned towards the officer. "We clearly have the same awesome bone structure, hair the color of rich, melted chocolate, and perfect skin."

"And eyes," I reminded him and then nodded at the officer. "You're good to go. Thank you for bringing him here."

He nodded, still seeming a little confused by what had just transpired, and left.

Danny was the first one to speak. "So, you have a brother?"

Kol didn't move his eyes from me, nor I from his. But he was smiling, whereas I was not. "She has four brothers. But she doesn't talk about us much. I think she's ashamed of us."

"You think?"

"I also think that you're in a bad mood. Run not go so well this morning? Not enough coffee? Bad breakfast?" In Russian, he said, "It's either a bad mood or you've just entirely forgotten your manners."

I ground my teeth and then pasted on a smile that I knew couldn't look any more fake. "Kol, this is Five-O. Steve McGarrett, Danny Williams, Kono Kalakaua, and Chin Ho Kelly. Five-O, this is my brother, Kol."

"Twin brother," Kol corrected.

"He thinks that matters. And we are going to have a little conversation in my office."

"Oh no, your office." His voice dripped with mock horror but he didn't resist when I grabbed his arm and began dragging him towards my office. "It was nice to meet you all!"

Once the door was closed behind us, I shoved him towards the chair in front of my desk and then I sat in my own chair. "Why are you here, Kol?"

His expression turned serious, an unusual look for him. "You disappeared again."

"I didn't disappear. I left the bomb squad and came here."

"Without telling anybody. Which is an awful lot like disappearing."

"Don't be offended," I told him. "It's not like you're the only one I didn't tell. And I figured you'd all be used to it by now – me jumping from job to job."

"That doesn't mean I don't want a goodbye of some kind from my twin sister." He grinned. "A card. An e-mail. A phone call."

"Well, you're here now." I sighed and leaned back in my chair. "How long are you staying?"

"Not long. Couple of days, maybe. But – let me guess – you have to work and so you expect me to just go hang out at your house. You still have Gideon? Think he remembers me?"

"I'm sure he does, but you don't have to just go sit in my house. There are a ton of things to do in Hawaii."

"Like beaches?" By the grin on his face, I could tell that he was really talking about all of the hot women in bikinis that liked to inhabit the beaches.

"You're not dressed for the beach." He was dressed in black slacks and a matching blazer over a crisp white button-down shirt. His shoes were Italian leather. For all intents and purposes, he looked like some kind of fancy lawyer.

"I can change. And I've been told I look pretty good in swim trunks."

I rolled my eyes, but didn't doubt that he was telling the truth. Due to the nature of his work, Kol kept in top shape. But, as his sister, I really didn't need details about how he looked in any article of clothing. "Then go buy some swim trunks. I'll text you when I'm on my way home."

"Ah, so you do have my number," he said as he stood. "I had been telling myself that maybe you'd lost it."

"Get over yourself."

"I'll do my best." He winked at me and headed for the door of my office. Right before he opened it, he turned back to me. "Oh, yeah… Do you know why that Steve McGarrett character was looking at me like I might be the answer to all of his problems? Is he gay?"

I couldn't help but laugh at that. "No. As far as I can tell, he's not gay. He's just very curious about me."

"Ah." Understanding dawned in Kol's eyes. "And he thinks that I'll be a little more loose-lipped than you are."

"He probably thinks that you'll be a lot more loose-lipped than me. You don't exactly give off serious vibes."

"But I know how to keep a secret. Do you two have a thing?"

I felt the shock ripple through my body. "No! What do you mean, a thing? We… we work together. That's our only thing."

"Hmm…." The look on his face told me that he didn't believe me. "Okay, then. See you later tonight. Stay safe."

"You too."

He was gone less than twenty seconds later and I did my best to turn my focus to work.

Steve

It was stupid and completely unjustified, but I didn't turn around. Allie's twin brother seemed like the talkative type, and I could use that to my advantage. I obviously wasn't going to get anything out of Allie, so I needed to find other sources. What better source than her twin brother? At the very least, I could find out what was up with the giant hole of Allie's first eighteen years.

Kol was driving a rental car (I'd had Chin run the plates on the DL, but everything looked legit except for the fact that it was in Allie's name), a black Toyota Camry. I hadn't run his background yet, but only because I wanted to do that myself. I didn't want my team getting suspicious of Allie as well. She'd know that something was up.

Her brother parked in one of the many parking lots of the beach and got out, buttoning his blazer when it started to flap against the breeze. He looked out at the water and then began to walk towards it. The way he was dressed, he was going to ruin that nice ensemble with sand and salt water.

I backed into a parking space and continued to watch him… right up until he got caught up in a passing group of surfers. Once they had finished passing, Kol was gone. Vanished into thin air, as if he'd never been there at all. Surprised, I sat up a little straighter and grabbed the binoculars out of the glove box. Surely a man in a suit on the beach couldn't be very hard to find.

But as I scanned the shore, the passenger door opened and I looked over to see him sliding into the truck, smiling at me as if we were friends that hadn't seen each other in a very long time. "Steve McGarrett, right? We didn't get a chance to talk earlier." He held out a hand. "I'm Kol. Allie's brother."

I shook his hand and set the binoculars on the dashboard. "I, uh… I guess I've been made. You have experience in counter surveillance?"

"I have experience in a lot of things." The expression on his face coupled with the smug smile that would have put even Danny's to shame made me think that this was all a joke to him.

Of course it was. He knew things and I didn't.

"Like?" I fished. He already knew that I had been following him, so I really had nothing to lose.

"Is your interest in me solely because of my sister?"

Well, he was smarter than I had thought. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Ah. We're playing that game. Okay. I, uh, have experience with languages, travelling… that kind of thing. What about you, Commander? What are your areas of expertise?"

I rested my head against the seat and sighed. "I have a feeling this is going to be a bust."

"Depends on what you were after." He opened his door and slid his legs out, pausing only long enough to glance back at me and say, "But, yeah. I would probably just call this a bust, if I were you. Because I honestly can't tell you very much about Allie Rhodes."

"She's your twin sister. You two grew up together."

"Trust me, Commander…" He sighed and straightened, hand poised to close the door. "It's a lot more complicated than that." And then he shut the door and faded into the crowd as easily as he had before.

I didn't bother trying to find him again. He was good, and I didn't really have the time to just try to keep up with him all day. Banging the steering wheel once with the heel of my hand, I said to myself, "Great. Just one more mystery to add to the stack of dominos."

Back at HQ, I went straight to my office and began to do a search of Kol on my computer. Problem was… Kol Rhodes didn't exist in the system. Which meant that Allie's name was not the one she was born with, much as I had suspected early on. That would explain the hole before her eighteenth birthday.

Had she changed it when she went to work for the CIA? Or had the CIA given her a new identity before she left and provided her with a background starting at age eighteen? If that was the case, then what about her twin brother? They certainly looked like family, so I was willing to bet that he really was her twin. But had he been in the CIA, too? He certainly had the skills of an operative. Or maybe he had worked for another government program… Either way, I doubted that I would be able to find him without help.

Or his prints.

Which could have been inside my truck…

I called down to the crime lab and asked for Charlie Fong, who came to the phone only moments later. "What can I do for you, Commander?"

"Meet me in the parking lot at Five-O headquarters. I need you to dust my truck for prints."

"Sure thing, Commander. I'll be right over."

"One more thing, Charlie."

"Yes?"

"This is a favor. Not official business."

There was a pause, but then he said, "Of course. I'll text you when I make it to the parking lot."

The team was busy consulting on different cases and catching up on paperwork, so they didn't even notice when I went downstairs to unlock my truck for Charlie. I then went back up to my office and sat at my desk, trying unsuccessfully to focus on the work that I needed to do. The governor required a general report at least once a month, so I should have been doing that, but I couldn't focus. I needed to solve this cloud of mystery that surrounded Allie Rhodes.

Or whatever her real name was.

When Carlie's name popped up on my screen, I practically jumped for it and answered. "Charlie. What did you find?"

"Your prints. Danny's prints. But nothing else."

It was all I could do not to slam my fist down on my desk. So close. "Are you sure?"

"Positive. My sweep was thorough."

Of course it was. He was the best; that's why I had asked him to come. "Okay. Thanks, Charlie."

This whole thing just kept getting weirder and weirder. It was like every time that I came up with a plan, Allie (and, apparently, her brother) were several steps ahead of me. Kol hadn't been wearing gloves when he'd been in my truck, so how had he kept from leaving behind even a partial print?

Leaning back in my chair, I closed my eyes and tried to remember every move that he'd made. He had to have touched the door handle in order to get in, but that could easily be done without leaving behind a print. He'd had to close the door, but I hadn't seen how he did it. And, for the life of me, I couldn't remember him touching anything else.

Clever son of a-

"Hey, we have a case," Danny said and I opened my eyes to him standing in the doorway of my office, staring at me strangely. "What are you doin' in here? Meditating? Becoming one with the chair?"

Knowing that my real explanation would sound even crazier than that, I just stood up and began to walk around the desk. "What do we got?"

"This isn't over," Danny said, but stepped out of the office and led me to the big screen, where everyone but Allie was waiting for me.

Suspicious. "Where's Allie?"

"She went to have lunch with her brother," Kono answered me. "I just called her and told her to meet us."

"What are we waiting for, then?"

"I thought you might want to see this first," she answered and cued up a video on the screen. It was a dashcam video of a police chase, and a high-speed one, at that. They were chasing a black van without tags. Once they gained on it, however… the driver panicked and hit the cement barriers in the median. Van went up in the air and crashed to the ground, rolling a few times before stopping.

"Survivors?" I asked.

"No, the driver died," Kono said. "But, inside the van, police found three car seats strapped in."

I felt Danny stiffen from beside me. "Were there kids inside?"

"No, but there was DNA. It matched to two kidnapping cases involving children under the ages of one."

"How long ago was this?" Danny asked.

"It happened just this morning," Chin answered for Kono. "HPD had just determined that it was the same guy and they were about to call it in when the chase happened."

"And now, the only guy that knew where the children are is dead." I felt dread begin to rise in my chest. Children that young had no survival skills. Without someone to feed them, they'd be dead in no time.

"I don't think so," Chin disagreed and brought up a rap sheet with a picture of a burly, bearded man. "This was the driver of the van. He's been rumored to be the driver for a man named Paco Saldonas, a suspected trafficker specializing in babies."

Danny's disgusted expression likely mirrored my own. "You're telling me that this sick bastard takes children and sells them?"

"Not for the reasons that you think," Kono said. "He's long been suspected of taking children and adopting them out to rich families. It's easier to do with babies, and some families that can't conceive are willing to pay a lot of money to finally be able to have a child of their own. He has an adoption agency here on the island that the FBI has investigated numerous times. They've never been able to find anything to suggest that the adoptions aren't completely above board."

"So, we have to find these kids, link them to Saldonas, and put him away for the rest of his life."

She nodded. "That's pretty much it. Allie just texted and said that she's at the house of the last kid to be snatched this morning. We can meet her there. It's not far from here."

Indeed, the house was only about ten minutes from HQ, and we found Allie sitting in the living room with two very distraught parents.

Very quietly, I turned to Chin and Kono and said, "Canvas the house for anything unusual."

They nodded and slipped away.

When Allie caught sight of us, she stood and spoke gently to the parents. "Mr. and Mrs. Davidson, this is Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett and Detective Danny Williams. They work on the Five-O task force as well."

Danny and I nodded to the parents and the woman tried to say something, but a sob choked her.

"Are there any leads?" the man asked, desperation swimming in his dark eyes.

"I was hoping you could tell us," I said and looked to Allie.

She got the hint and spoke. "Mrs. Davidson had gone out this morning with her four-month-old son, Ricky. They got back home around nine and she had just gotten out of the car when a man put a gun to her head, tied her hands, and took the car seat out of the back of her car. He handed it off to another man, and they drove away, managing to avoid a patrol car that had been passing down the street. Rather than pursue the van, the officer stopped to help Mrs. Davidson. He didn't realize what had just happened."

"Mrs. Davidson," I made sure to keep my tone gentle as I took out my phone and pulled up a picture of the driver of the van that had crashed. "Did you see this man?"

When she saw him, she sobbed a little harder and nodded. "He was… he tied me and snatched the car seat. He was the driver."

It was a long shot, but I swiped to the picture of Saldonas. "What about this man?"

She studied it for a moment and shook her head. "No. The other man was mostly bald with only a mustache. And he was younger than this man."

Just as I had figured. A man like Saldonas likely had several men to work for him. He wouldn't do the dirty work himself. "Mrs. Davidson, we're going to do everything that we can to bring your son home to you, okay?"

She began sobbing anew and Allie knelt down beside her as the husband wrapped his arms around her, crying tears of his own. I motioned for Danny to follow me outside and we found Chin and Kono there. When they saw us, they shook their heads almost in unison.

"There wasn't anything unusual in the house," Kono said.

"The snatch happened outside," Danny told them. "There likely wouldn't be anything inside. Mrs. Davidson recognized the driver, but not Saldonas. She did confirm that there was another man, though. Do we know of any other associates?"

"A few," Chin said. "I'll go back to HQ and look them up."

"He's down a driver." Allie had appeared in the doorway of the house. "Right? The driver died in the crash."

"That's right," I confirmed. "Why?"

"Because guys like Saldonas don't see these men as people. They're just a means to get the job done. Did the driver have a record for driving getaway cars?"

Kono nodded. "No one had ever been able to catch him, though."

"So, he was good." Allie nodded.

"According to sources, he had only started working for Saldonas recently," Chin said. "After Saldonas moved his adoption agency to the island."

"He's going to need another driver," Allie said and, despite the circumstances, she smiled. "And that's our in."

I raised my eyebrow at her. "Yeah? Are you going to audition as his getaway driver?"

She laughed as she pulled her cell phone out of her jeans. "Not me, no. But I do know a guy." As we watched, she dialed a number and put the phone to her ear.

"Who?" Danny asked her.

Her smile was almost devious as someone on the other end answered. "Hey, twin. Turns out you came to Hawaii at just the right time. How soon can you get to Five-O HQ?"