"You're kidding me, right?" This couldn't be happening. Kono stared at Danny in disbelief. "I mean, the ink really isn't dry on the arrest charges. How could Hanolo be getting out of here? He was in a damn shoot out with us!"

Danny's return smile was grim, leaning on the desk beside her, looking away from the computer screen that was flashing the bad news. "Get used to it, Kono. Just because he's a two-bit hood doesn't mean that he can't hire expensive attorneys to twist everything around. His lawyers are saying that this is all a big misunderstanding. Consider yourself lucky he's not walking out tonight; it'll be after the hearing tomorrow. If we're lucky, he'll have to post a big, fat bail."

"Yeah, right," Kono snarled. "Like I didn't see him with a knife in his hand over a dead body."

"You wanna know what their story is? The guy crawled in from the back alley and handed the knife to Hanolo, then up and died. You didn't see Hanolo plant the blade in the guy's gut because it never happened. How's that for a joke?"

"I'm not laughing." She wasn't. "You think any judge is going to buy it?"

"Hopefully not, but I'm not sure that they'll have any choice. It's our word against theirs, and Hanolo's lawyers are going to go for an entrapment defense. What we've got in our favor is Chin's tape. The bail's gonna be set pretty high," Danny added, "and it'll take him a while to arrange. Hanolo's not likely to run. Besides, can you really see Hanolo giving up all of his expensive stuff around here to go live like a regular guy on the mainland with no money? He'd never make it there." Danny tried to cheer her up. "Try to imagine Peter Hanolo saying, 'you want fries with that?' in Backwoods, Idaho."

Small smile in return. "I guess."

Danny took what successes he could get. "So, you've filled out the arrest warrants, you've put in the paperwork, you've contacted the D.A.'s office for them to get their underpaid asses over here; what else is left before we blow this popsicle stand?" He snapped his fingers. "I know! You've got a written statement to prepare."

Scrunched eyebrows. The smile dipped, corners down.

"C'mon, Kono. You just love writing reports," Danny cajoled.

"Do not."

Not giving up. "We'll grab a cup of java," Danny promised her, "and then we'll hit the keyboard. I got one, too," he reminded her, "and believe you me, I've written like thousands more reports than you have. I got phrases memorized like lines in a play, and I can spit 'em out faster than pineapple seeds from a pina colada."

Kono had to giggle at that. "Danny, pineapples don't have seeds. They're bromeliads."

"Like I know what a bromeliad is? Ask me about factories on the Jersey Turnpike that send out perfume that a skunk would gag at." Danny gestured expansively. "C'mon. Coffee. There's one good thing about this pineapple-infested hole we're living in and you and I are going to enjoy it: coffee."

Chin clutched the small piece of paper in his hand that was his ticket to a pain-free night of sleep, allowing Steve to help him on with the remnants of his shirt.

"My best shirt," he groaned. "You think someone can patch the hole?"

Steve held up the tee shirt in the air, admiring the picture of the surfer stitched in white on a black and blue background. The picture was now less than pristine; blood smeared the front end of the surfboard with a vague suggestion that the surfer had recently battled a Great White. "This is your best shirt? Dude, it's a tee."

"What can I say? I like to be comfortable." Chin swung his legs off of the stretcher, sitting upright so that he could slide the shirt over his head. Blood drained out of his face, leaving him white and trembling. "Damn." He tried to suck in additional oxygen from the surrounding air.

"Hey, guy, don't fall over on me." Steve grabbed his friend by the good arm, steadying him. "You sure you're ready to go home?"

"I've been ready since before I got here," Chin grumbled, taking another deep breath, pretending that circles weren't wavering around his field of vision. Steve wasn't buying it, so Chin tried to distract him by changing the subject. "Kono and Danny make out okay with Hanolo?"

"'Bout like we expected." Steve still kept his hand on the man's shoulder, worried that he might yet collapse. "Bail hearing's set for tomorrow afternoon—today, I mean," he corrected, acknowledging the hour. "I hear that Danny made a bet with Kono as to who would get to bed first, Hanolo or Kono." He helped Chin to slide his head through the neck of the tee, slipping the man's injured arm with its bulky white dressing through the equally damaged sleeve.

Chin hissed with discomfort, turning it into a fierce cough. "Probably has a lawyer on call for stuff like this. He'll be sleeping in his own bed inside of twenty four hours."

"Lawyer's making our yearly salary in a week," Steve agreed.

"At least we can look in a mirror."

"Speak for yourself," Steve grinned. "Have you seen yourself? You must have hit a table or chair or something on your way down. Your face is not a pretty sight, brother."

Chin grimaced. "I should have known that I'd be in for something like this. Every time Kono's involved, the collateral damage involves me. She ever tell you about me teaching her how to ride a bike?"

"Dirt bike?"

"Tricycle." The remembering smile turned into another wince, pulling on bruised flesh. "Maybe another time. Let's get out of here." He slid his feet to the floor, putting his weight down.

Mistake. More blood drained out, and Chin's eyes started to roll up.

Steve swiftly caught the man under his arms and wrestled him back onto the stretcher, alarmed at the beads of sweat that dotted his friend's white face, calling for assistance.

A couple of nurses appeared from behind the cubicle curtains. One took a single look and instantly knew what had happened. She grinned. "You think maybe you want a wheelchair to get him out to your car?"

"They said it was the pain-killers." Steve looked at the small vial in his hand that Danny had handed over to him. "Give him a night to sleep them off, and he'll be better in the morning." He glanced over toward the closed door that led to the single bedroom, knowing that the man in the bed behind that door was sleeping so soundly that it came close to unconsciousness. "Best thing for him." He stretched creaking muscles, knowing that it was after three in the morning. "Listen, you two head on home. We'll plan to hit the office around noon, clean up whatever paperwork the D.A. needs on this. I'll camp out here in case Chin needs anything."

"Nope," Kono told him with entirely too much energy for the early morning hour. "I'm staying. He's my cousin, and besides, I've done this before." She winked at Steve. "And I fit better on the sofa. You'll hang off over the ends."

She had a point, and she likely knew where the extra towels were stored. Steve glanced over the furnishings, admiring the serene way the furniture fit together into a small oasis of calm. Was that bonsai real, or a really nicely made silk fake? Knowing Chin, Steve thought it was the real deal, just like the rest of Chin. This was a good place that Chin was living in, evolved over the years, if Steve was any judge.

Danny too had had enough for one night. "Your car, my car," he said, jerking his thumb toward the curb outside. "We leave Kono here for the night, and get some well-earned shut-eye. She can bring Chin into the office tomorrow, since I'm going to assume that he won't be driving with two of those little babies on board." He indicated the small vial of prescription narcotics that Steve set down onto the table in the kitchenette. "Might run somebody over."

With a sigh, Steve gave in. His own bed was calling with siren songs of comfort; it was late with too little sleep and too much tension for one day. He turned to Kono. "You sure you're okay here?"

"I'm good," she assured him. "Go home, Boss. See you in the morning. The afternoon," she corrected herself.

Danny parked his car in parking area allotted for the apartment complex, still amazed at this place after all the months that he'd lived here. No garages. Nothing underground, or at least, almost nothing. He couldn't imagine growing up in a place with no basements, no crawl spaces in which to creep around, playing hide and seek and hiding out from his parents. Cops and robbers; how did you play cops and robbers without a place for the robbers to hide out?

Grace seemed to be making out okay, though. Danny couldn't help the little smile that played over his lips every time he thought about his daughter. She was the reason that he was living and working in this pineapple-infested hellhole instead back home in a decent place like New Jersey. How did people live without being able to go into the Big Apple, for shows, for museums, for culture? Danny wanted to take his little girl to the better things in life, to show her a good time, to teach her more than how to split open a coconut with a machete.

Be honest with yourself, Danny, he said to himself. You wanted to see if you could get Rachel back, too. You knew that Stan made a lot of money, and you were hoping that it wouldn't matter. Does it? Hell if I know. One minute she's acting like old times, and the next she's taking me back to court.

More honesty: Grace was doing better than okay. She had a lot of friends, making good grades at school—could Danny say that she would be better off with him?

Actually, yes, he could. He was her father, dammit! A kid belonged with her father, not just her mother, and if it took living and working and trying to make enough money to eat in this place in the middle of the ocean, then he would do it.

He reached for the doorknob to his place—and stopped.

A cop's eyes, with a cop's instincts. Danny had built those instincts over the years through sweat and hard work and the occasional mistake, and they weren't letting him down now, even at three in the morning. There were tiny little scratches around the secure lock that kept everyone out of his apartment, and those scratches hadn't been there when he locked up the place almost twenty four hours ago.

Pretty clear: someone had been trying to get inside. Question was: did they? Danny gingerly reached out and tried the doorknob—unlocked.

He swallowed the curse that wanted to emerge. Random robbery? Probably. Too bad for whoever broke in; Danny Williams didn't have anything worth stealing, not unless you counted the small plasma TV that you could practically buy for the cost of a cup of coffee these days from the discount stores. Come to think of it, that was where Danny had gotten that particular TV. He sure wasn't going to try to ship everything out from back East. Cheap stuff, that was what Danny had decorated his place in. He was going to save his money for his little girl.

Or this could be someone a little more dangerous. Danny wasn't about to kid himself; he'd put away plenty of scum on this island before he ever knew that there was a guy named Lt. Commander Steve McGarrett or any kind of unit called Hawaii Five-O, and there was always the possibility that one or more of those scumbags had recently gotten out of the cell that they deserved to rot in. He'd put away a bunch more back home, crooks with more friends than smarts, and he wouldn't put it past any of 'em to decide that a vacation on a sunny beach taking pot shots at the cop that taken them down was just the thing to do for Spring Break.

Neither was Detective Williams stupid. Going in to search his place alone was not about to happen, not when he had a cell phone in his pocket. He eased that cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. He tabbed the speed dial for Steve McGarrett; if Danny was going to have to be awake for a few more hours, then so could the genius who had dragged him onto Five-O.

A shadow appeared from one end of the corridor. Danny turned, going for his gun—and stopped.

It was Hanolo's mainlander, the guy who'd escaped from the bar, his hand curled around his own gun, the barrel pointed straight at Danny's gut. Two more of Hanolo's men were behind the mainlander, equally well armed, and a third closed off the other end of the apartment corridor.

Danny froze.

"Hey, Amatullo," one of the men called, keeping his voice down so as not to disturb the neighbors. "Long time, no see, brudder."