Seconds counted. Steve no longer needed the obvious signs in the brush that someone had staggered through this path. Sound sufficed: the frenzied grunting of the feral hogs that were overrunning the preserves, the squeals that told of something—or some one—who had angered a sow and her litter. Steve had no doubt of who that someone was.
No time. Steve burst into the clearing.
The feral hog had her attention on rooting up a sturdy tree. A quick glance—yes, that was Steve's partner, clinging for dear life to a branch just barely above the reach of a couple of tusks. One more yank from the hog, and tree and man would be lying on the ground. In the background were four nearly grown youngsters, just waiting for the word from Mom to come help gore the intruder.
Steve would have preferred to do things quietly. He would have preferred to alert the hogs to his presence and have them skitter off into the bush to annoy some other hapless hiker.
Life was full of disappointments.
He snatched up a rock as big as his hand, and threw. He followed that up by grabbing a long piece of wood and brandishing it over his head to make himself look larger to the animal. Then, yelling, he charged.
Feral hogs were not known for stupidity. Large human, charging, angry? She could think of better places to be. With a snort, she left off uprooting the tree and scuttled through the reed tunnels, her litter squealing and grunting behind her.
"Danny!" Steve rushed forward. The tree had been so far pushed over that his partner was easy to reach. Steve seized the most convenient part of the man—his belt—and tried to ease him down.
Not happening. Danny's eyes were wide open with fear—but not seeing anything.
"Danny!" Steve urged. "Danny, snap out of it!"
Danny blinked. "Steve? What are you doing…?"
His tenuous grasp on the tree branch loosened, and he began to fall.
Steve shoved one hand under his partner's arm, still keeping hold of his belt, and carefully lowered him to the ground.
The breath eased out of his partner along with all of his tension; Danny was done. There was nothing left in the man, nothing to fight with.
Not good. The noise would surely attract Hanolo's men, of that Steve was certain. He'd seen trail signs a mile away, had seen that they'd taken the wrong path in searching for their target. There were four of them, according to the tracks, one limping.
Danny, though, was a mess. Steve felt his gut clench as the extent of his partner's injuries made itself known. There was dried blood all over Danny's face, and that was just the obvious piece. The shredded shirt that he wore, the same collared business shirt that he'd worn for the sting operation, covered a multitude of atrocities.
No time for that. If they didn't move quickly, Hanolo's people would be on them, and then Five-O would have two hostages to pull out. In fact, Steve's keen sense of hearing could already echo-locate the enemy possibly as little as half a mile away.
"We have to get out of here," Steve told the man on the ground.
"Right." Pause. "This means I have to stand up, right?"
"That's the general idea."
Another pause. "Am I standing yet?"
"No."
"I didn't think so." Another pause. "Any chance you can go without me?"
"No." Enough of this. Steve hooked both hands under this partner's arms, lifting him bodily to his feet.
Danny clung to his partner for entirely too long, trying to coordinate his breathing with the simple act of standing. "I can do this," he said, more to convince himself than Steve.
"You can do this," Steve agreed. "You think you can stand without me holding you up?"
Weak snort. "Just try me." Danny let go, and tried a step.
Mistake. His knee gave out; Steve caught him before they lost what little progress they had made. "Hey!"
Breathing; that was Danny's primary goal at the moment. Air passing in and out of his mouth, because the nose had too much blood inside to do the job. Fingers trembling as they used Steve's own arms as a prop to remain upright.
"You can do this," Steve soothed, unable to keep the doubt out of his voice.
"Yeah." The shuddering passed. Danny took a deep breath. "Let's get out of here."
He took another step. This time his knees held.
It was past time to go.
"Officer Kalakaua." The defense attorney strutted in front of the witness stand, disbelief oozing out of every pore. "Officer Kalakaua," he repeated. "How long have you been with the police?"
Kono gritted her teeth. "Six months."
"Ah. Six months," he repeated. "Six months."
How often are you going to say it, slime mold?
"Not very long," he mused. "Not very long at all. Are you enjoying your work, Officer?"
Kono couldn't help herself. "Not at the moment," she snapped back, then bit her tongue. Can't let him get to me, not with Hanolo glaring at me from the defendant's chair.
Too late. The attorney pounced. "I suppose you much more enjoy the undercover operations, Officer Kalakaua. The night life. The dancing. Tell me: how many drinks did you consume last night while attempting to coerce Mr. Hanolo into performing illegal acts?"
"Objection, Your Honor. Officer Kalakaua is not on trial," the prosecutor called out. "This isn't even a trial; it's a hearing on the charges."
Judge Hardaway held up his hand. "Officer Kalakaua's condition during the operation is relevant, counselor," he ruled. "Answer the question, officer."
If she gritted her teeth any more, she'd be seeing her dentist for dentures. Kono deliberately relaxed her jaw. "Not more than two," she said.
"Two," the defense attorney repeated, raising his eyebrows. "Which was it, officer? One, or two? Perhaps three or four?"
"I said less than two." Kono refused to let her knuckles whiten on the arms of the chair.
"Are you sure?"
"Let's not drag this out, Mr. Bronstein," Judge Hardaway admonished him. "As Mr. Wing pointed out, this is merely a hearing. Save your histrionics for the trial."
Bronstein accepted the admonition. "Your Honor, let's save the Court and the State of Hawaii time and money. We have here a misunderstanding. The unfortunate victim crawled into Mr. Hanolo's establishment and handed the knife to my client before he expired. Ms. Kalakaua—"
"Officer Kalakaua," the prosecutor interjected.
"—walked in after the event, which is why she didn't see any murder occur. As for the rest?" Bronstein spread his hands. "We only have Ms. Kalakaua's word for that."
"There are witnesses—" Wing rose from his chair.
"Where?" Bronstein asked. "I have several of Mr. Hanolo's colleagues, all attesting to his innocence. Where's Detective Williams to say otherwise? Where is the tape that supposedly exists? What proof is there that Ms. Kalakaua isn't making all of this up out of some misguided perception that Mr. Hanolo isn't entitled to the same rights as the rest of us?"
"Detective Williams was kidnapped from his apartment last night—"
"Really? Or is that what Five-O would like us to think?" Bronstein countered. He turned to the bench. "Your Honor, the unit called Five-O has already, in its short term of existence, garnered a reputation for working outside of normal legal and police procedure. Might this not be another example of skirting the edge of legality? Are they buying time, trying to concoct a tape recording of events that never happened, merely in attempt to frame my client? Your Honor, that tape was supposedly in police custody for the entire time, yet it has vanished. The State's only witness is a woman who, by her own admission, was not only under the influence of alcohol, but a rookie cop as well. The other witness has declined to appear before the Court, and I can produce a mountain of evidence in the form of unsubstantiated complaints against my client that the police are harassing Mr. Hanolo. Your Honor, I move for dismissal on the grounds of insufficient evidence."
Judge Hardaway looked at the prosecutor. "Mr. Wing?"
Wing wasn't happy. "Your Honor, the tape was erased, and we are investigating how that happened. Detective Williams was kidnapped from his apartment."
Hardaway wasn't happy. "One incident I might buy, Mr. Wing, but two?" He sighed, coming to a decision that he didn't like. He looked at his watch, a quietly expensive model that even told the time to the closest milli-second. "You have until four o'clock, Mr. Wing, to produce additional evidence as to why the defendant should be held over for trial. If you cannot produce either the tape, Detective Williams, or some other piece of evidence, I will have no choice but to allow Mr. Bronstein's move for dismissal."
The distance between the two Five-O men and their pursuers was steadily closing. Steve estimated that Hanolo's people had closed the gap to less than a quarter mile, making far better time over the rough land than their victim.
Not that Danny was giving in. No, his partner was still putting one foot in front of the other, grabbing onto trees and bushes and whatever else was handy to keep himself upright and moving.
The trouble was, those steps were getting shorter and slower by the minute. The only thing that was growing in speed were the gasps for breath that almost, but not quite, qualified as groans. Steve wasn't about to give himself odds that he wouldn't end up with the man over his shoulder, carrying him out of the bush.
That wasn't likely to do them any good. Steve's own car was over a mile away. At the speed they were going, Hanolo's men would be on them just before they reached it; not good enough. With four pursuers, Steve wouldn't be able to defend them.
That didn't mean that it was hopeless. Steve pulled out his cell phone, hoping that he was close enough to a tower for the call to go through. Two bars; maybe?
Time to go to ground. Steve spotted a hog's nest that looked abandoned. The tracks were old, with no sign of recent scat. It would be safe, or least safer than continuing toward his car.
Danny looked at the leafy den dubiously. "You do realize that once I'm down, I'm not getting back up for the next year?"
Steve chuckled. If Danny's sense of humor was intact, then there was hope. "You wish. Hey—" and he grabbed for his partner, catching him under the arms before he could fall. "Hey, don't give up on me now."
"Sure." Danny's voice had turned to a whisper, and he hung limply in Steve's grasp.
Steve wrestled him gently onto the ground inside the nest, pulling in some additional reeds for bedding. Next, he pulled the pack off of his back, digging inside for the canteen of warm but potable water.
Danny watched him with dull eyes. "You should get out of here."
"We have time for this." Steve moistened a cloth with some of the water to try to remove some of the crusted blood.
That woke his partner up. "Ow," Danny complained. "Take it easy."
"I am taking it easy. You're a mess, bro." Yeah, there was a lot of damage under the blood but nothing that wouldn't heal in time—assuming that there would be time. Big assumption, McGarrett. Danny's right. You need to get your ass moving. Probing under the man's shirt was even worse: Danny hissed when Steve felt along the ribcage. Steve could feel the bones grating, and winced in sympathy.
"I'm thirsty," Danny told him irritably. "Let's use some of that water for what it was meant for: drinking."
"You drink anything now, it'll come right back up."
"Hah," Danny scoffed, although the sound had almost nothing of its usual vigor. "Remember the kinds of foods I grew up eating. I can keep anything down."
"Your funeral." Steve poured out less than a tablespoon of the liquid, holding Danny's head up so that he could swallow.
Mistake, and Steve had told him so. The only positive was that a lot of blood came out along with it.
"Feel better?" Steve asked dryly.
Danny's response was unprintable.
"I'm going to assume that you're saying yes." Steve didn't wait for an answer. Instead, he used some additional branches to make the spot unnoticeable. "You lie here and be quiet. You got me? Quiet. Not a word, not anything."
"And where will you be, Superman? Flying back with your cape to get some help?"
"You're delirious, Danno," Steve told him. "Superman never needed help. He was bullet-proof, remember?"
Danny caught Steve by the arm. "Just remember that you're not, okay?" He let his arm fall away heavily, unable to summon the strength to continue.
Not good. Steve had seen bodies in worse condition, but most of them had been corpses. Not this one. This one has a little girl waiting for her daddy.
Time to go. Steve placed the canteen of water next to his partner, swinging the pack up over his shoulders once more. "Don't touch that for a bit," he cautioned Danny. "You can't afford to make any noise as they're passing by. I'm going to draw them off, then I'll come back for you. Maybe I'll even find Takahara and his boys, bring 'em back with me."
That elicited the ghost of a smile from his partner. "You do that," Danny agreed, and closed his eyes.
"What do we do now?" Kono wanted to know.
She kept her voice down. The three large men from the courtroom had followed them outside and stood in a small group, watching the Five-O detectives.
"Chill, cuz." Chin himself felt less than cool. "They're just trying to make us nervous."
"It's working. One of them's on his cell." Is he telling someone to kill Danny? Have I just killed him, with my testimony?
"They're not going to kill him until they're certain that he's more use to them dead," Chin told her, reading her thoughts easily.
"Yeah? And what good is he alive to them right now?" Kono stared back at the men who were glaring balefully at them.
"They wouldn't be hanging out here if they were planning on killing Danny," Chin said with more assurance than he was feeling. "They'd be hustling out of town and into a rat hole somewhere to avoid a conspiracy to commit murder rap. There must be something else."
"Like what?"
"Like what we're doing right now." Chin's fingers danced over his tablet, re-establishing the link between it and the main computer back in Five-O Headquarters. "We've still got this Detroit guy to check out. Look, the Evidence Room is about two minutes from here and we've got time before Judge Hard-Ass reconvenes his court. Go and investigate; I'll stay here and see what the computer database can tell us. Got it?"
"Yeah," Kono started to say when Steve's cell phone, shoved into Chin's pocket, warbled at them.
Chin had it out in a flash. He put it onto speaker so that Kono could listen in, moving further away from Hanolo's men down the hall. "Steve?"
"I've got him."
There wasn't anything more important than that. Steve had Danny, and that meant that the man was alive. Chin could see the tension relax out of Kono's shoulders. He regretted it; Hanolo's men, watching them closely, would probably realize what the story was.
Not enough. "Where are you?" Chin kept his voice down.
"Still in the middle of the preserve. Get hold of Takahara and tell him to haul ass to our location. I want back up."
"You got it." Chin motioned to Kono, telling her to call Takahara fast. "You got a location?"
"Tell him to look for my car; it's on the north edge, about a mile or two in. Tell him to be careful. There are more of Hanolo's men here, and they're going to be waiting for us. They'll probably set up some sort of ambush around my car."
"Got it."
"Steve." Kono pushed back in. "Takahara says he's at least half an hour from your location."
"Okay. Tell him that I intend to hunker down and wait for him to mosey over."
"You can't," Chin said grimly. "Hanolo's hearing is in recess."
"Kono testified?"
"For as much good as it did," Kono replied bitterly. "I blew it, Steve. I let that slime attorney rattle me."
Chin cut in. "No, you didn't, Kono. It's your word against his, and they came up with a plausible explanation. It's a stalemate, Steve. Judge Hardaway doesn't know which way to turn. Either we come up with more evidence—meaning Danny or something about the tape—or he won't hold Hanolo."
"What about the tape?"
"Nothing so far. We're still looking for a trail that leads us to the last suspect."
"How long do we have?"
Chin looked at the time stamp in the lower corner of the tablet he was holding. There was another flashing bar, indicating that more data had arrived; none too soon for his taste. "Under an hour."
"Then I need to get moving. It'll take half that to haul ass to the courthouse." Pause; both Chin and Kono could see in their mind's eye an image of Steve McGarrett looking away, calculating the odds. "Tell Takahara to move it. Tell him to keep an eye out for a few tied up suspects. I'll get Danny there in time to testify. You keep working on the tape. McGarrett out."
Chin closed up the cell, slipping it into his pocket, glancing nervously at Hanolo's men. They hadn't moved, and Chin wondered just what that meant.
He wasn't about to ask them, not at the moment. There was a lead to trace, and a prosecuting attorney bearing down on them.
Wing moved into earshot. "What's the word?"
"We've got him," Chin announced. "McGarrett's bringing Williams in. They'll be here any minute."
"Yeah? Good," Wing responded. "You let me know the instant they get here, Kelly. I'll tell the judge that we have another witness on his way; maybe he'll let us have more time to get Williams here. What about the tape? You said you were tracking that down."
"Getting closer," Kono said. "We've ruled out most of the suspects in the chain of custody. There's just one more. I'm headed over to the Evidence Room to check him out."
"Who is it?" Wing asked.
Chin didn't have to consult the tablet. "Guy by the name of Nathan Detroit. You know him, maybe in your department? I couldn't find anyone by that name associated with HPD."
Wing thought for a moment. "No. Doesn't ring a bell." He glanced at his watch. "How long before McGarrett and Williams get here? Judge Hardaway isn't known for granting extensions."
"It'll be close," Kono warned him.