…..

As promised, here is the other chapter that you all earned. My next two goals are: 100 reviews, or 50 followers.

Also, someone told me that the title of my last chapter said "Chapter Sixteen" when it was really supposed to be chapter 15. I tried to edit it, but can't figure out how. But, at least it really was the right chapter and I didn't skip anything.

Remember when I said that chapter fourteen was the hardest chapter that I'd written and I hoped that I wouldn't have to write another chapter as hard as that one? Yeah, I jinxed myself. This chapter was SO HARD, so I really hope that I don't end up letting you all down.

Thank you to all of you that have shown support for this story; I appreciate you all so very much.

Reminder: I only use the characters and the premise of the show, not the storyline. I'm sure you all remember, but better to be safe than sorry.

Happy Reading!

…..

Chapter Sixteen: A Different Kind of Explosion

Allie

I woke to wetness pressing against my hand and when I opened my eyes, I gasped, momentarily frightened. Gideon had his paws on the bed and had nosed my hand to wake me up.

From behind me, Steve stretched and began to sit up. "What's going on?"

A glance at the digital clock on my bedside table told me that it was 5:05 in the morning. Past time for me to get up for my morning run. "Gideon," I said and sat up. "It's time for our morning run."

He was shirtless from our night together, and his eyes held the last few vestiges of sleep. "Allie… about last night…"

Something in his tone told me that he thought it was a mistake. And, for some reason, that really hurt. I'd been shot, stabbed, punched, kicked, and choked, but him thinking that our night together was a mistake (when we hadn't even had sex) hurt worse than all of them.

"Don't worry about it," I told him and hopped out of bed, moving for my dresser. I only had underwear on – due to the previous night's… activities – so I just pulled on running shorts and a tank. "Things got a little… heated. We were arguing and it got out of hand."

When I looked back at him, his expression was one of confusion. Had he not expected me to feel the same way? Had he thought I'd be permanently attached after only one night? What type of girl did he think I was? I took a deep breath as I fixed my hair into a ponytail.

"I think that you're misinterpreting things," he finally said and looked like he wanted to say more, but didn't know how to say it.

"No, no, it's fine," I told him and moved for my closet to pull on my running shoes. "I don't expect anything. Last night was crazy."

"Well, yeah…" he slowly agreed. "It was crazy, but that's not what I was trying to say."

"You don't have to be nice about it." I finished lacing up my shoes and turned to face him, pasting a smile onto my face so he would know that I was fine. I wasn't one of those easy women that fell in love after one kiss. No matter how amazing that kiss was… "I need to take Gideon for a run. Feel free to shower or… whatever you need to do."

Before he could say anything else, I called Gideon to me and we went downstairs together. I paused only long enough to clip his leash on and then we headed out the back door and to the beach, where we took off at a light jog to warm up.

Normally, I let my head clear while I was running, but that was proving to be difficult. All I could think about was the night that I'd spent with Steve. We'd kissed for a long time – sometimes he took the lead and sometimes I did in a tradeoff of power that was simply perfect. Our underwear had stayed on, but our hands had explored every square inch of exposed skin that we could. It had been… incredible.

I didn't even remember falling asleep, but now he had woken up and regretted it. Not that I was surprised; it's not like we had planned to get together. It had happened because we'd both had a lot of frustration inside and we'd needed a way to work it out. But for some reason, that realization didn't make me feel much better.

After a couple of minutes of warmup, Gideon and I picked up our pace. Thankfully, the faster pace and the ocean air helped to clear my head. After a while, I wasn't even capable of having thoughts about Steve. I could only think about working the muscles of my body.

The run was a success and once back at the house, I made sure that Gideon had food and water before I got myself a bottle of water out of the fridge and then looked in the pantry for a breakfast bar.

I jumped when Steve said, "Can I have one?"

"Jesus," I said, hand over my heart as I closed the pantry door to look at him, wondering why I hadn't heard him approach. "What are you still doing here?" His hair was damp from a shower and he was wearing his clothes from the night before. Why had he stuck around?

He shrugged, seeming confused by my hostility. "I thought I'd have some breakfast."

I opened the pantry door again and grabbed a granola bar for him. "Good?"

He nodded and began to open it up. "Good. And I got a call from HPD. They need you on a case."

That got my attention. "They need Five-O?"

"No." He shook his head. "They need you." He took a large bite of his granola bar.

"Why just me?"

"Because you used to be on the bomb squad in New York and they have a really complicated bomb that their guys think you might have seen before."

"Why didn't they call me directly?" I wondered, but I was already heading for the stairs, opening my granola bar on the way.

He followed me, speaking around his bite. "Because when they looked you up in the system, they saw that you were on suspension, so they needed my approval before they called you in on a case."

I let out a sigh, finished off my granola bar too quickly, and moved for my closet to grab some clothes. "Of course, you put it into the system. Let me take a quick rinse and then I'll be right out."

"Good," he said. "I'll call the rest of the team and let them know to meet us there."

"Okay." I paused in the doorway of the bathroom and looked at him. "Send me the address so I can meet you guys there." And then I locked myself in the bathroom, heart already pounding.

I stepped into the shower and began to do some of the breathing exercises that my previous therapist had taught me to calm my mind. I knew that I couldn't be working with a bomb if my mind wasn't completely calm. One little tremble could set the whole thing off, which was exactly why I'd gotten out of the bomb squad in the first place.

Sure, it had been great at first. I'd spent the first year in training, learning everything that I possibly could about bombs and the people that made them. Then, I had assisted in a few disarming jobs before I'd gotten to be lead. It had gone fine for a while… and then it got too stressful. A good friend of mine had been killed in the line of duty by a dirty bomb. It shouldn't have happened… It should have been me in that building. But I'd been laid up in bed with the flu and he'd taken my shift.

It still haunted me.

"Not this time," I muttered to myself as I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. I dried off quickly and then pulled on the clothes that I'd brought in for myself. Once I was dressed, I pulled my wet hair up into a messy bun and didn't even bother with makeup.

There was no time for stuff like that.

Steve was gone and I found that he had texted me the address like I had asked him to. I left the house, got into my car, and sped over there as fast as the car would go.

I only hoped that this time, with this bomb, I could be there for the people that needed me.

Steve

"Where's Officer Rhodes?" Duke asked me when I showed up at the scene.

"On her way," I assured him. "What do we got?"

He waved for me to follow him, but we paused and waited on Danny, Chin, and Kono, who all arrived within seconds of each other. I called out to them and told them to follow us, and then Duke led us all to the middle of the public garden.

Sitting by the fountain was a child that couldn't have been more than seven or eight. She was dressed in a pink shirt and denim shorts, her blonde hair braided in pigtails. There was a bomb around her neck. She looked terrified, but not quite as terrified as her mother, who stood nearby sobbing while HPD officers tried to calm her down. It sounded like they were trying to get her to leave, but she was refusing.

"I'll try to talk to her," Kono told us and she headed off to speak with the woman.

Danny sucked in a breath and I knew that his thoughts had turned to Grace.

I knelt down in front of the girl and smiled in what I hoped was a comforting manner. "Hi, sweetie. What's your name?"

She wiped a tear away from her face and I saw every officer in the area tense. "Hannah."

"Okay, Hannah. I think that the officers here really need you to be super still, okay?"

"Sorry," she said, voice breaking. "I forgot."

"That's okay," I assured her. The last thing that we needed was for her to start sobbing and upset the device around her neck. I needed to keep her calm. "How did that thing get around your neck?"

She sniffled, but didn't seem to be in danger of breaking down. "This man had a puppy and he said that I could play with it. I was petting it when he slipped it over my head and my mommy ran over screaming… But the man took his puppy and ran away."

"Do you remember what the man looked like?"

"Not really," she said. "He was tall and had a beard. And he was wearing a shirt with flowers on it. But that's all I remember."

"What about the puppy? Did it have a collar on?" Maybe she could remember a few of the numbers on it and we could trace it.

"No," she said.

So much for that.

"Did he say anything to you about what he put around your neck?" Chin asked her.

She shook her head. "But Mommy was really scared and called the police. When they got here, they told me to sit down and that I shouldn't move very much because I could get hurt. Why can't you just take it off?" A tear trailed down her cheek. "I just wanna go home."

"I know, sweetie," I said, sympathizing with her. She was far too young to be strapped to a bomb. "Listen, my name is Steve McGarrett and I work in the Five-O task force. We're the most elite police on the island, and there's a member of my team that's coming right now to get that thing off of you so that you can go home with your mommy, okay? But we need you to be really still, and really patient. Can you do that, Hannah?"

After a moment she started to nod, but stopped herself. "Yeah. I can do that. Like when you're playing hide and seek and you have to be really still so that the seeker doesn't find you."

"Exactly," I agreed.

"Hey, a party." Allie was coming up behind us wearing her normal clothes – no bomb squad gear. But in her hands was a kit that I'd seen bomb squad members carry before. "Am I invited?" She smiled at Hannah and knelt down next to me. "Hi. My name is Allie."

"I'm Hannah," the girl said and looked to me. "Is this the person that's going to get this off of me so that I can go home?"

"That's her," I nodded, keeping the smile on my face. I glanced at Allie. "Why aren't you in gear?" I asked her softly.

She didn't spare me a glance as she reached forward to touch something on the device. "It slows me down. I've seen this before…" She frowned and then asked the girl, "Did the guy that put this on you have a beard?"

"Yeah," Hannah said. "And he was really tall."

"Did he have a puppy?"

Danny and I exchanged a confused look as Hannah told Allie that the man had, indeed, had a puppy with him. "He said that I could play with it and then he put this around my neck and ran away. And then my mommy started yelling and crying and the police came."

"Give me just a second, okay, sweetheart?" she said and then straightened up, walking a few steps away. I followed as she gathered with Chin and Danny and said, "I know who this guy is."

"How?" Danny and I asked at the same time.

"Because he set off several bombs in New York when I was working bomb squad there. We knew who it was, but we never caught him." She sighed and looked to me. "I need you to dial a number for me and put it on speakerphone. I'm going to need help with this bomb."

I nodded and took my phone out. When I was ready to dial, I said, "Go."

She gave me the number from memory and we all listened to it ring a few times. Just when I started to think that no one would answer, a man's voice came over the line. "Yeah, this is Nichols."

"Josh," Allie said. "It's Allie."

There was a pause and then a deep laugh. "Tiny Dancer. You don't call, you don't write…"

"I've been sending up smoke signals," Allie replied. "I guess you haven't been looking hard enough. Listen, I really need your help."

He was instantly serious. "Sure, sure. What's going on?"

"There's a bomb here made by Davis Bradley."

"Davis Bradley?!" the man asked. "You sure?"

"Positive," she said and began to describe the traits of the bomb that were the same as this Davis guy's. When she'd finished, Josh let out a long sigh.

"I kind of hoped that he'd died in his own blast or gotten himself arrested for something else. Okay. Let's do this. You ready, kid?"

Allie took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. "Yeah. I'm ready."

So, I held the phone while Allie knelt in front of Hannah again and told Josh every detail of what she was doing. She only made moves once he had agreed with her decisions and it took almost ten minutes, but the bomb was finally disabled and two men came to lock it up and put it away.

"I've already put calls in to the appropriate departments," Josh told her. "You've got people headed your way to try to find this son of a bitch. In the meantime, I'd suggest that you all lock down the airports and marinas."

"Done," I told him. "Thank you so much for your help."

"Allie did all of the work," Josh said. "And kid?"

"Yeah?" Allie asked.

"Remember the sunset."

It was as cryptic as a statement could be, but Allie nodded with a fond smile. "I remember. Don't worry."

"Call if you need me." Then he said a quick goodbye and hung up.

Allie stuck around to talk to the bomb squad about what she'd found and how to disable that kind of bomb, if they ever ran into it again. The rest of us decided to head back to HQ and wait on more cases. I also needed to write an update for the governor.

"We're headed out," I went to tell Allie.

She didn't even look at me. "Yeah, no problem."

"You're off suspension, by the way," I said. "In case you were wondering."

"Okay."

Clearly, I wasn't going to get anything else out of her, so I grit my teeth and walked away, shrugging out of my gear as I walked. Once at HQ, I walked into my office, closed the door, and sat behind my desk, musing. I should have been doing work, but all that I could think about was where it had gone wrong.

Allie

Remember the sunset.

As if I could ever forget.

After the very first bomb that I'd ever disarmed by myself, I'd been shaky. Even though it had been successful, I kept having nightmares that it hadn't been successful and it had blown up and killed a lot of people. I started to lose a lot of sleep, stopped eating… it was a really hard time for me.

Josh Nichols had been the guy that had trained me, and he was a long-time veteran of the bomb squad. He'd noticed what was going on, even though I'd tried to deny it and claim that I was perfectly fine. So, one day, he'd come to get me and told me that we had some training to do. I'd argued that I was done with my training, but he was still my senior officer and he'd ordered me to go with him.

We'd driven for a long time through the city and he hadn't said much – The Beatles had been playing from a CD. He'd kept repeating "Here Comes the Sun", until the words were stuck in my head. I'd wanted to tell him to turn it off, but I hadn't wanted to be so bold. We weren't really that close yet and I hadn't known how far I could push him.

We were gone all day and when we'd gotten to the beach, I'd been surprised. "It'll be dark soon."

He'd smiled at me as he'd parked and gotten out of the car. "Yes, I know. That's the point. Come on."

With no foreseeable choice, I had gotten out of the car and followed him out onto the sand. We must have looked humorous – him in his work boots, cargo pants, and black tee, and me in much the same. We had garnered some strange look from the departing beachgoers, all of them dressed in swimsuits and flip flops.

Josh hadn't seemed to care one bit, and he'd simply led me to the edge of the water before tossing down a couple of towels that he'd grabbed from the back of his SUV. "Take a seat," he'd told me and had done so himself, staring out over the water.

I'd done as he'd instructed, thinking that he was insane. "What are we doing here?"

"Wait for it," he'd told me and had taken his cell phone out of his pocket, pushing a few buttons before "Here Comes the Sun" began to play all over again.

"You must really like this song," I'd told him, pushing down my annoyance.

He'd smiled at me. "You'll see."

And then I had.

The sky had turned a variety of beautiful colors as the sun began to set, and I'd been in awe of how beautiful it was.

"How long has it been since you've seen a sunset?" Josh had asked me, watching my reaction.

"A really long time."

He'd nodded. "Every time that I have a tough case or things are starting to get bad for any reason, I come out here and watch the sunset."

"And listen to The Beatles."

"It fits," he'd told me. "It reminds me that the sun will always go down and will always come up. And no matter what happened or what's going to happen, time goes on and everything will be okay, even if it takes a little time."

I'd smiled over at him. "Thank you. I really needed this."

"I know." We'd stayed there until it was finally dark, and then he'd taken me back to my car. And from then on, after any case, he had reminded me to remember the sunset.

So, I sat on the beach behind my house with Gideon playing in the water, and I watched as the sun began to sink low in the sky. And when it finally began to turn all of those beautiful colors, I smiled and remembered the very first time that I had actually taken the time to watch the sunset.

And I turned on the music.

"Here comes the sun, doo doo doo. Here comes the sun, and I say. It's all right. Little darling, it's been a long, cold, lonely winter…"