A/N: I just wanted to add a little note here to thank everyone who left wonderful reviews on Chapter 12. Unfortunately, FanFiction has decided to play a little game with the reviews again and, for whatever reason, I can't access any reviews posted after about Noon on Jan 14th. Please know that I DO see them in my email notifications and they are ALL extremely appreciated. I'm thrilled you are all enjoying my story so much and have stuck around to see how it ends. Hopefully FF will get the reviews problem resolved quickly... again! Thanks again! You guys are the best!

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Pride, Admiration and Respect

Chapter Thirteen

He walked in slowly, casually, as if he were strolling into a cocktail party and looking around for familiar faces. He walked over to the unresponsive Danny, lowering his head and cocking it to the side in an attempt to look into his face, then turned to Annie.

"Personally, I don't see the family resemblance at all but then again, he doesn't resemble much of anything right now, does he?" He asked viciously.

He continued to walk over to Steve, who was just beginning to regain consciousness. Steve's focus immediately zeroed in on the newcomer.

"Now this one still has some fight in him, eh, Commander? Ready to come back for more?" he asked jovially as he turned his back on Steve to look down at Annie.

Annie clenched her fists, turning every knuckle pure white. The hatred she had felt only a few short seconds ago for Cordoba, intensified tenfold into a blood boiling fury as she looked into the handsome, smiling face of Alex Sanchez.

Still trying to wrench her arms free, Annie snarled at her one-time friend. "How could you? You were his friend. He trusted you. We both did!"

"Yes… yes. Necessity creates the need for unpleasant decisions but then if the payday is lucrative enough, it's somehow much easier to overlook the unpleasant necessities," he mocked her. "Now, if you don't mind, where is the flash drive you took from that office? I'm not going to ask again and, quite frankly, I don't think these two, especially your dear brother here, are up to much more of your procrastinating."

"I'll tell you what I told him," she said, not even sparing a glance at Cordoba. "I don't have it. HPD does." Annie knew Chin and Kono had no idea where they were but she remembered Steve ordering a copy be made of the flash drive. She needed to figure out a way to get Sanchez to contact them and demand its return.

Sanchez considered her words for a few moments. He knew she was telling the truth and HPD had the flash drive. He really wasn't worried about them cracking the encryption. He'd had the best computer technicians Cordoba's money could buy take care of that. It was just imperative they get the damn thing back.

"I considered bringing you into this with me, you know? It would have been so easy for the two of us to manipulate the investigation, send the forces in the wrong direction. You had access to all the files and intel, I had the inside connection with our friend here. It would have been a perfect match. But that Boy Scout partner of yours…. you had to go and request he be part of the investigation, didn't you? I knew he'd be a thorn in my side and in yours, too. He had to be eliminated for me to even approach you with the offer."

Annie actually laughed. "You honestly believe I'd have ever gone along with whatever you and this bastard had cooked up? I always thought you were intelligent, Alex. Guess I was wrong!"

Alex simply smiled at her. "No, I soon realized you would never have joined me. But you and that joke of a partner of yours had access to the files. The files that would be my downfall and the downfall of my very well connected benefactor. That could not happen. You both needed to die."

Annie's blood ran cold. "It was you! Somehow you managed to get me and Tony assigned to that detail."

"It really wasn't hard, you know. The Captain is an old friend. He was a bit ahead of me at the Academy but we became friends anyway. It was a simple matter to suggest that the two officers most familiar with the files and the way "those people" worked, would be an asset to the raid. Later, when I learned you were planning to come to Hawaii to follow Cordoba, I let the Captain know you were about to go rogue. Leaving your laptop powered up on your desk, even for only the few moments it takes to use the bathroom really isn't the smartest thing to do, you know? Anyway, it was easy to convince the Captain of my "deep concern" over your welfare if you took off on your own. So, you see, I only had your best interests at heart" he smirked. "Now, tell me, Annie. Who has the flash drive?"

"That would be my team," Steve answered, his voice shaky and shallow. He'd lost a lot of blood and the pounding in his head, along with his extremely queasy stomach told him he definitely had a concussion.

Sanchez once again turned to face Steve. Steve tried to focus on his face but it shimmered and swam as Sanchez coldly looked him right in the eye as he pulled a cell phone from his pocket. Steve immediately recognized it as a burner.

"It looks like a little rendezvous is in order then." He made a great show of pulling a second phone from his pocket. This time Steve recognized it as his own. Turning on the phone and sliding his finger across the phone's screen he immediately accessed Steve's speed dial contact list. "Let's see here… contact #1… Danny Williams. Well, that's a moot point now, isn't it? Contact #2...Chin Ho Kelly. I suppose he will have to do."

Reading Chin's number off Steve's phone, Sanchez dialed it on the burner, immediately powering down Steve's phone, dropping it on the floor and stomping on it until it was nothing but small pieces of broken plastic and circuits.

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~~H50~~~~H50~~~~H50~~~~H50~~~~H50~~~~H50~~~~H50~~~~H50~~~~H50~~

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Toast had been as good as his word and when Kono reached the bullpen she found that Chin had arrived and was already accessing the flash drive data Toast had uploaded. Five minutes later, Toast was also in the bullpen, flash drive in hand.

"Did you do it?" Kono asked as she reached for the drive.

"Yeah, just like we said." He turned to Chin and filled him in on what he and Kono had decided to do.

"I've downloaded all the information from the drive onto your server and pretty much deleted it all from this drive. But I've left a footprint of every file so it looks like it's still there."

"So, unless someone actually tried to open a file, it will look like it's intact?" Chin asked.

"Exactly."

"Good idea. That won't buy us a lot of time, but it may be enough. Ok, if all three of us work on these files together, we'll have a better shot of finding something that can help us." With that, all three silently went to work.

It's amazing how much faster it is to get through tons of data when you're not only talented in your own right, but have an expert hacker at your disposal. It didn't take long before they found just what they were looking for.

"Holy shit!" Toast exclaimed "check this out!" Toast swiped the file he'd been reading up onto the overhead screen.

"I know him, don't I?" Kono asked. "Why does he look familiar?"

"Oh my God. That's Congressman Sheldon Lankford," Chin chimed in as a photo showing a much younger Lankford and Cordoba sharing a drink at an outdoor cantina popped up on the screen. "You recognize him because he was in the files we got from NYPD. That big raid that went down in Colombia, the one that eventually put Cordoba in charge of the cartel? Lankford was the head of DEA at the time."

"There's more" Toast added, swiping another file onto the screen. "There are multiple entries throughout the files of meetings, phone calls, bank transactions; all kinds of shit. Looks like Lankford's been in bed with Cordoba for years."

"Annie and Tony must have stumbled onto something in the files. She mentioned that mysterious "him" but she never mentioned Lankford." Kono said.

"Maybe they didn't know. She said there were several files she and Tony hadn't gotten to. Maybe they hadn't found it yet. All they knew was Lankford was head of DEA, nothing else," said Chin.

"But we went through every file she and Tony had access to. There is no mention of Lankford anywhere in there besides being with DEA."

"Not every file. Remember Annie said there were files missing."

"That's why her Captain didn't send them. They weren't there for him to send. Someone got to the files and took out the damning evidence before we ever got the file transfer."

"But who?" Toast asked.

"Alex Sanchez!" Kono exclaimed. "According to Annie, he's the only person who could have possibly known about her finding that flash drive. She was sure he saw her with it and since she knows she didn't tell a soul about it, he's the only possibility."

"Ok, let's try to put this together" Chin began. "Lankford is working with Cordoba. Lankford used his power as head of DEA to set Diego Andres up for the fall that put Cordoba in power and to forge a relationship which I can only assume has been mutually beneficial."

"You can say that again," Toast added. "There are logs of multiple wire transfers from cartel accounts into a Cayman Island account which I am willing to bet my eye teeth belongs to Lankford. Won't be hard to track down, just give me a few seconds. Also there are several donations to Lankford's campaign coffers. All under the legal limit to avoid tripping any suspicion and all from what would have looked like legitimate contributors. Laundered no doubt. Give me a few more seconds for those."

Kono took over from there. "So, Lankford helped put Cordoba in power and in turn, Cordoba gave Lankford not only personal money but the financial capital to mount an election bid for Congress, which, obviously, he won. Not once, but twice! Just how much legislation did Lankford propose or vote down in order to help Cordoba's business ventures over the last 10 years?" she pondered.

"How does Sanchez fit into this?" Toast asked.

"He's the mole…. there's no other explanation," Chin said. "He saw Annie with the flash drive, he's the only other person who knew about it. I think Annie was right. That drive is only a copy and the original was somehow compromised or destroyed. As Assistant District Attorney assigned to the investigation, Sanchez also would've had access to the files and I'm willing to bet he's the one who altered them, taking out all the references to Lankford, all the transactions and entries tying him to Cordoba. The only references left tying Lankford to the cartel was on that flash drive. Is it any wonder they are desperate to get it back?"

"Toast…. I need you to do that trace. Find out where all the money came from, the accounts, who owns them and where the money went. Kono…. forward everything to NYPD and the Feds. It's time to bring down the cartel and their very influential Congressman."

There were times when Toast's brilliance as a hacker came in extremely handy, for it took him less than 10 minutes to gather all the intel he could find on the cash flow between Cordoba, the cartel and Lankford. Kono quickly got in touch with the Justice Department, choosing to circumvent NYPD for the moment. The Department would coordinate with NYPD if they felt they needed to. Within 15 minutes, the wheels were in motion to bring down Lankford.

Kono and Chin had just finished transferring all the pertinent information to the Justice Department when Chin's phone began dancing across the surface of the table. Grabbing it before it could skitter onto the floor, Chin answered it without even checking to see who it was.

"Kelly."

"The flash drive…. bring it…. Our Lady of Good Counsel Church…. Pearl City. The candle stands in the back…. drop the flash drive into the donation slot and leave….. 20 minutes."

"Who is this?!" but it was no use. The call immediately disconnected. Chin tried a rapid trace but he knew it was futile. The call didn't last nearly long enough and it was probably a burner anyway.

"Kono…" Chin yelled and when she ran in from her office, he filled her in on the call he'd just received.

"Thank God we have the wiped flash drive. We need to get it to the church. Call Duke, tell him we need him and his men at the church to grab whoever comes to clean out the candle stand collection box."

"Got it," Kono replied as she reached for her phone.

"Wait…. that may not be necessary," Toast interrupted. "I found something,"

"What? We don't have time for detours, Toast."

"Then this should take care of that."

"Get on with it, brah!"

Toast swiped yet another file onto the screen and began to explain what they were looking at.

"This is a list of legitimate real estate transactions Cordoba's representatives used to move the money around, to hide it until they could pass it along. There are entries for properties all over the country, mostly on the coasts but not exclusively."

"Toast, I swear to God!"

"Yeah…. right…. there is only one property in Hawaii. This one! There's a listing for it because it's for sale again." He proceeded to swipe the sale listing on the screen.

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99-1295 Waiua Place, Aiea, HI 96701

Clean, well maintained warehouse/office complex. There is one (1) below ground floor warehouse space available. It is 7,904 square feet of warehouse space. There are two (2) second and two (2) third floor office spaces of 1,612.5 square feet, 2,988.5 square feet, 2,905 square feet and 7,368 available. The 2,905 square foot space and the 7,368 square foot space can be combined to make a 10,273 square foot space. Two (2) fourth floor warehouse spaces of 2,790 square feet and 1,756 square feet are also available. With CAM at $.38 this makes the total cost of these office spaces significantly less than other office spaces. Parking of 1 stall per 1,000 square feet of warehouse space and 1 stall per 600 square feet of office space are included at no extra cost. Additional stalls are available for rent on a space available basis at $75.00 per stall. Electricity is separately metered.

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"I hacked into the County Clerk's office and pulled the blueprints. The property also has a sub-basement not noted in the listing. If someone wanted to hold someone somewhere, that would be the ideal place. With all that empty warehouse space above it, no one would ever hear anything going on down there."

"Toast, you're brilliant! That has to be where they are holding them. Kono…. forget the Church! Call Duke, tell him to mobilize his men. We're headed for Aiea."