Mirror
Chapter Seven

"We were not placed on this earth to walk alone."

Chin had the tablet on his lap and his phone pressed to his ear. The tablet bore the brunt of his anxiety; he tapped it more forcefully than necessary as he tried to call up any pertinent information at all. He was on the phone with Duke at the same time, asking him - no, demanding, Steve thought with a glance - to pull traffic camera records. Steve huffed under his breath, hands tightening on the truck's wheel. With no real direction to go from here, they were headed back toward the city, running an almost pointless errand to take evidence gathered back to the lab.

It drove Steve absolutely crazy. Chin, too, if his barking at Duke over the phone was anything to go by. One name. One goddamn name. That's all they needed to get a start on this. Duke was pulling a list of people with whom Reyes had some contact while in Hawaii, but it came with a warning: it's a damned long list. They didn't have the time or the manpower to simply start at the top and work their way down, hoping against hope they'd pick up on something sooner rather than later.

It was a start, though, but Steve was just about to start pounding on the wheel in absolute frustration. This was ridiculous. All that they had - all that had happened - and they didn't actually have a single thing. The prints on their dead man back at the hotel had only turned up a false identity, which was currently leading the crime lab on a merry chase. Amber's description of her attackers, along with surveillance from the motel, had been distributed, but so far there were no hits.

Welcome to real police work. Steve could almost hear Danny's wry tones saying it. Chin's hard-edged voice cut through his thoughts.

"I don't care, Duke. I'm gonna say this once and you better listen well. I don't give a damn about warrants right now."

Steve winced almost imperceptibly at Chin's words and tone. Yeah, this was going well. Best case they'd ever worked. If they didn't get someone to track down sooner rather than later, both Steve and Chin might implode. Whatever Duke said must have soothed some ruffled feathers; Chin frowned but the tense lines of his shoulders loosened enough to be perceptible.

"Yeah, Duke. Thanks." A pause. "No, it's fine. Just... just let us know what you find." With that, Chin tapped the screen and tossed his phone on the dashboard. He glanced at Steve, who looked back with a raised brow. "You know exactly what he said."

"We have nothing," Steve answered.

Chin snorted and tapped at the tablet on his lap. "We have pictures. We have fake names. We have connections to companies Reyes used. We have a network of drug running on the island but we... can't..." Chin trailed off, narrowed his eyes at the tablet, and started in on something else.

Steve waited a beat for him to continue, then spoke when he didn't. "Chin?"

"Drug houses," Chin said. He waved a hand in Steve's general direction. "Reyes was the money man. He would have been the one handling money behind the scenes, right?"

"As far as we know," Steve answered slowly.

"Which means," Chin continued, his voice edged with hope, "that he would have had his hand in real estate deals."

Steve nodded, catching on. "We've been looking for people."

"But if we start looking for *places,*" Chin said, "we might find property they'd use to hold Danny and Kono."

"The other guys used a cheap motel," Steve pointed out.

"Yeah," Chin acknowledged, "but all they needed to do was keep Grace and Amber out of the picture for a little while. Those guys were expendable. The real operation is going to be somewhere on their turf."

Steve considered that for a short moment before nodding decisively. "Look into it. We're not getting anywhere chasing down expendable thugs."

"We still might not get anywhere," Chin pointed out. "There's bound to be a long list of property."

Steve pressed his lips together. "Get the list. Then we'll narrow it down. It'll likely be vacant, off the beaten path, not too far away..." He trailed off, considering other qualifiers.

Chin didn't answer; he was already tapping at the tablet with one hand and absentmindedly reaching for the phone he'd thrown onto the dash earlier. The small phone slipped out of his fingers as Steve hit a pothole and slid further down toward the windshield. With a huff, Chin left it for later and turned his attention to the tablet entirely.

Then Steve's phone rang. He frowned at the unknown number, one eye on the road, and answered it brusquely. The voice that said his name, though, was almost achingly familiar. For a moment, Steve blinked in consternation and finally managed one word: "Kono?"

Chin looked like he nearly gave himself whiplash, turning to glare at Steve so fast. Steve, for his part, was already on the brakes, unwilling to travel in any direction until he had an idea which direction to go. "Where are you?" he barked.

After a moment, he glanced at Chin. "You don't know. Just a sec." As Chin threw off his seatbelt in order to reach the phone floating around on the dash, Steve thumbed the phone onto speaker. "You're on speaker, Kono. Chin's here."

"Hey Cuz."

Chin grunted as he fished around for the phone. It slipped just beyond his fingers and he ignored Steve's bewildered glare over it. "Where have you been?"

Kono's tone dropped straight into flat annoyance. "Unconscious in a van." Dimly, they heard Danny's voice echo behind her: I wasn't unconscious. "Can you just trace this and get over here? We could use some help."

"Working on that," Steve said with a pointed glare at Chin, who finally managed to retrieve his wayward phone. It had slid to the middle of the dash, tucked up against the windshield. Chin pushed himself back off the dash and into his seat. "Are you all right?" he asked as he watched Chin dial the phone.

"A little bruised. I think Danny broke his wrist." They distinctly heard Danny grumbling in the background.

"I can't take you anywhere." Kono ignored the jab; in the background, Danny grumbled under his breath. Steve glanced at Chin, nodding once when he finally got the phone settled. "Chin's tracing this. Hang tight. We'll be there asap."

"Better be." Kono's voice sounded tight, anxious. "We're not sure how many guys are actually around. We've got two locked in a basement."

"Just keep your heads low. We're coming to you." Steve paused and let half a smile take over his expression. "Hey, Danny?"

There was a short rustling as Kono handed the phone over. "Yeah?"

"Grace and Amber are with Lou."

Silence met the comment before Danny managed a deep breath. "Thanks," was all he said, tone clipped and short, but it said enough.

"Anytime," Steve answered. He looked at Chin, who held up one finger while he relayed instructions to whoever was on the other end of his call – Duke, perhaps, or Charlie Fong. Chin would call someone he trusted. "We're getting coordinates. Hold tight, you two."

"That's about all we can do," Kono said, a wry tone edging the caution in her voice.

Brow furrowed, Steve nearly glanced at the phone. It wasn't the comment itself that was cryptic, but the tone certain was telling him something he couldn't quite figure out. "What?" He glanced at Chin, who shrugged. "What do you mean by that?"

"She means," Danny's voice interjected, tinny and distant, "that we ended up handcuffed together and no one can find a damned key."

For a moment, Steve was silent, picturing that and knowing full well how absolutely frustrated Danny must be. "Well. At least you can't get separated."

"You're a brilliant ray of light on a dark day, you know that."

"I'm saving your ass, Danny. Try to keep the sarcasm to a minimum."

"You're not here yet. I reserve the right to bitch and moan until I'm safe at home."

Steve looked to Chin. "Please tell me this has gone on long enough to get an address? I'm not sure how much more I can take."

Kono saved Chin from having to answer. "Hate to break this riveting conversation up, boys." Steve could almost hear her plucking the phone from Danny's hands. Her voice was flat, urgent. "But we have a problem."

Steve instantly fell away from the snarking. "What?"

Danny answered, voice far away and clipped. "Truck coming up the drive." A pause; Steve held the phone in a tight, white-knuckled grip. "Kono."

"I see it." Her voice was closer to the phone, but it was obvious she wasn't paying much attention to it. "You guys better hurry with that trace."

Over the connection, a sudden shot rang out – tinny and short and dim, almost a burst of static but it was enough to stop Steve's heart. There was a clatter, the phone hitting the floor, and the thud of something heavier following it.

Silence fell in the truck. Steve looked at Chin, who stared at the phone in Steve's hand with an expression somewhere between horror and grim determination. His gaze flickered to the side, as the voice in his own phone caught his attention. He looked back to Steve, eyes hard.

"Got it." Chin tapped the tablet in a flurry of quick movements. "Right at the next light."

The engine roared.

...tbc...

Note: It's a short one, I know. It's also here mostly to prove I'm still on this thing; I had to pull a rewrite when I realized I had left a plot hole I could drift a bus sideways through. The absence is not completely due to a rewrite; there have been health issues and busy busy busy work days as well.