A/N: Wow! I can not believe how many people have reviewed this! It means so much to me that you like it! Sorry I could not update sooner, I was on vacation with my family, and we had no wifi. I hope everyone had an awesome New Year and have a great 2015!
Danny stutters, "Kono is our main suspect."
"We need to call Chin. Get her over here as soon as possible," Steve instructs, "We need to give her a chance to explain herself." Danny nods and makes the call. Within five minutes Kono bursts through the doors with Chin at her heels.
"Why am I a suspect? What is going on?" she yells. Her eyes are panicked and vulnerable, but the rest of her body shows fury.
"Kono, calm down, babe," Danny pleads, "All of our leads are pointing to you. We just need to hear your side of things."
"I couldn't have! We were at the bust," she exclaims.
Steve sighs, "Actually, Kono, the bust happened at 10:15 last night. The kidnapping happened at 11. There was plenty of time between the two events."
"But I was at the hospital!" she retorts, "Chin made me get my head checked out after that thug pushed me into that crate. No concussion, by the way, but Chin still had to drive me home." She points to her cousin who nods in agreement.
"Okay," Steve says rubbing his hands together, "that was all I needed to hear, but I would like it if you could tell me the whole story. Might help me understand what is going on."
"Later," she mumbles. Just then, Nash and Theo walk through the doors. The moment they lay their eyes on Kono, Nash storms towards her, driving her up against the wall.
He pulls her up off her feet and yells,"Where is she!" McGarrett and Chin pull him off of her and hold him back. Kono gives him a taste of her famous knuckle sandwich. Chin puts his arm over her chest to hold her back.
"She didn't do it!" Steve screams, "She's apart of my team!"
"Wait, so this isn't her?" Theo asks.
Steve sighs, "No, this is Kono. She is on this case so long as she checks the attitude."
"It was just a love tap, brah!" She retorts.
"That's what you said about that haole when we first picked you up!" Chin says, "I checked with the hospital after we booked Sang Min. You broke his jaw!"
"What is she doing here? Theo asks, "She's psycho!"
"ADHD at best, troll!" she snaps.
"I guess here they just hand out badges!" Nash spits.
"Do you want our help or not?" Steve asks, "5-0 is a team, so it's all or nothing."
"Keep her on a leash," Theo spits.
"I should be saying that about you!" Kono retaliates. They share a death stare. The air is so thick with hate, they could slice it like butter. "Why are you here?" she asks.
"Remember Kaipo?" Theo says, "Well, he said that he found some letters in Mom's bedside table drawer. He took pictures of them and sent them to me. Figured they'd help."
"Yeah," Danny says, taking Theo's phone, "Kono, can you get these, babe?" She nods and snatches it out of his hand. She walks over to where Grover is at the smart table, and begins her work. As she types a short pang of pain runs from her knuckles through her right arm. She grits her teeth and ignores it as she feels it begins to bruise. Grover opens his mouth and points at her injured member, but she just shakes her head. Once she is done, she smiles at her work and slides the images up to the monitors mounted up above their heads.
"Ok," she explains, "so since these images are blurry and dark, I enhanced the pictures, cleared the writing, and for an added bonus, I put them in order, because they were not. They are all letters from the same guy, who calls himself, Frank Jenkins, coming from Halawa Correctional. I already confirmed that there is nobody under that name who was in Halawa at the time these were sent, so obviously an alias." She smirks and looks back at her "brothers" and full on grins at the purple mark beginning to form on the eldest's face.
"Wait," Steve says, "If these were sent from Halawa, then they were censored."
"Exactly! So, that means that someone would know who wrote them," Kono states. She points to the one on the left screen and continues, "This one is the introductory letter. Basically all it says is who he is, how he came about her address, and most importantly, that he was good pals with August March." She turns to her brothers and sneers, "Yeah, Grandpa." They glare back at her. She then moves to the next letter, "This one explains why he came in contact with her, which is to say that he owed August, and since he killed himself, he wanted to pay that debt to her. The rest are about plans for her to come and visit and how excited he is. Here and there he mentions an old golf story, but there is nothing really interesting. He never mentions what the debt is or how he is planning to pay it. I think that we need to go to Halawa and pay this guy a visit."
"That is exactly what we are going to do," Steve says, "Chin, did you and Kono find anything at the crime scene?"
"Yeah, we were on our way to Fong's when you called," he replies.
"Ok," McGarrett continues, "I want you to go drop that stuff off. Danny, you and Grover are going to take the brothers over to witness protection. If this guy is one of August March's old clients, then this could become dangerous. Kono, you and I will go to Halawa." As they all move out, Nash closes the door in Kono's face. Steve opens it, and she walks through giving him a weak smile. Once they hop into Steve's truck, there is silence. Kono feels his glances and opts to stare out the window. She hears his uneven breath as he grips the steering wheel. She knows that he is thinking about something, and that she probably is not going to like the result of his pondering.
Eventually, the tension becomes too much for her and she blurts out, "Boss, just tell me what you are thinking, because at this rate, you are going to break the steering wheel with that grip."
He sighs, "I need to know what happened. I can already tell that this is personal. I know that taking you off the case isn't going to work, but I need to know."
She puts her head in her hands and mumbles, "I know. I...I...I just…" With that, the tears begin to roll down her cheeks. She inwardly scolds herself for doing so, but can not stop. "Dad promised me that over there it'd be different. No more fighting. No more yelling. No more nights spent running outside and hiding in the tree fort in the back because they are throwing things and I'm scared. He promised me that I'd have a family better than my Ohana. He promised…" Her whole body shakes as she tries to say the next few words, but they do not come out. She closes her eyes and tries to control her breathing.
"Kono, if it's too much, then you don't have to do this right now," Steve says, realizing that what he had asked might have been more than it seemed.
After a little bit she begins again, "When we got there it was cold. We were in a small town in Colorado. I was the only Asian kid there, and I spoke Japanese and pidgin better than english. My mom made sure I was bilingual, and in school I could get away with pidgin for the most part so long as I wasn't in grammar class. I was different, and that is the perfect fuel for bullies. I got picked on a lot, mainly by my step-siblings. Can't tell you how many times I got locked outside or used as a training dummy for their karate." She looks down at her shaking hands. Her right is beginning swell up, but doesn't seem to be broken. "I eventually started to fight back. No one ever believed me. They always made it seem like I was the one starting the fight. She took me to that doctor, and everything went downhill."
"What doctor?" Steve asks.
"Some shrink," she mumbles, "He labeled me with all this mental junk and gave her ammo to send me away. My dad, well, he promised that he'd visit every weekend. He did at first, but then he stopped. After a while I'd become lucky if I saw him once a month. Then I found out that she was pregnant. Kono 2.0, new and improved. Dad always wanted a son. They could happily have their kid and I'd be forgotten."
"What about Chin?" Steve asks, "I'm sure that he would have helped if you reached out to him."
"I wrote to him every day," she answers, "He was in high school at the time. He didn't have time for me. When I left it meant that he didn't have to get suckered into babysitting me when he could be off practicing or with his friends. He really hated me for a while, believe it or not."
"What?" Steve says, shocked at what he had just heard. "You two are inseparable!"
"Now we are," she says, "He was a teenager. No teenage dude wants his baby cousin hanging around him 24/7!"
"I guess not," Steve replies. Kono opens her mouth to say more, but the words do not come. She knows that she needs to tell him, but she is not ready. Steve slips his hand into hers as he drives along. They sit in silence as the tears fade away and her hands stop shaking. As she gazes out the window, another time pops into her head.
A little girl with brown hair stares out the window of the taxi that her and her father are riding in. All around the ground is blanketed with snow. She watches as kids run around throwing snowballs and making snowmen and snow angels. Warm clothes being displayed in the windows of shops to help protect against the snow. Snowboards and skis are on racks outside of the shops. Hot chocolate and coffee is being sold to warm you up after being in the snow. Everything around her seems to have something to do with snow.
"Daddy?" she asks.
The man next to her smiles and says, "Yes?"
"Where's the ocean?" she innocently says. As a native hawaiian, she was feeling like a fish out of water.
"This is Colorado, Kaikamahine. The ocean is very far away," he explains.
"How we gonna surf?" she asks.
He chuckles, "We'll snowboard and skateboard instead. Won't that be fun?" She nods her head, unconvinced, but if Daddy says so, then it must be true. She messes with the sleeve of her new coat. It is big and puffy and she does not like it. She would rather be wearing her swimsuit. The driver turns into a neighborhood and parks outside of the first house on the corner. It is a two story wooden home with a pointed roof that like everything else in this town, is covered in snow.
Her father gets out and grabs their bags out of the trunk after paying the driver, helps her out. Upon stepping out, she nearly falls on a patch of ice, but her father catches her. She weakly smiles and picks up her bags. She does not like the mainland so far, but if Daddy says that it will be great then it will be amazing. She watches as he knocks on the big brown door and then looks down at her and smiles. He ruffles her hair just as the door opens. She watches in pure horror as Auntie Irene, her step-mom, embraces her daddy and begins to kiss him. Not like the kisses that he gives the little girl at bedtime, the kind of kisses she caught Chin giving to his girlfriend at the beach behind the rocks. Finally they remember the little girl and break up the display. As they turn around to see the little girl's face they burst out laughing.
"Aloha, Keiki!" she exclaims. The little girl gives her a smile and accepts a hug from her. "I am so glad that you and your dad are finally here! Nash, Jackie, and Theo will be home in a little bit. They stayed over at a friend's house after school."
"Howzit Auntie Irene?" she asks.
"Good! Oh, and now that you are technically my daughter, you can call me either Mom or Irene," she says. The girl nods and then is led up to the room that she will share with Jackie. She begins to unpack her suitcase as her father goes down and "talks" to Irene. She knows that's code for more kissing, the gross kind where they use their tongues and make weird noises. Its the kind that made Mommy yell at Daddy and stop loving him when she saw Irene doing it with him. Its the kind that Chin did with his girlfriend before yelling at her for interrupting, when all she wanted to do was go home. She does not like that kind of kissing.