A/N: If you're ever in Hawaii, there's a lovely coffee shop in Manoa Valley that's worth a visit. It's a nice break from the heat of the city, very pleasant and lush, especially if you've come from Diamond Head or Makapu'u. Manoa Valley is lush and green. Downtown is hot. Most of the Honolulu side is drier and hotter than other parts of the island.
"I'm sorry, but I don't have a 'Daniel Ma' listed here."
"What?"
The real estate agent, a tall, thin woman in a colorful, form-fitting dress, consulted her clipboard again. "According to my records, the previous owner was a 'Clark Henderson,' 42 years old, unmarried."
"Any reason listed why he moved?" Steve asked as he scanned the yard for anomalies. Fresh mulch, new pots on the porch, and a new mailbox had been added overnight.
"I believe he went to the mainland to care for his elderly relatives," the real estate agent said.
Danny wrinkled his nose, but Steve forestalled any comments with a warning hand on his partner's arm. "How long has the house been on the market?" he asked before Danny could speak.
"Just this week. His items are still being packed, but he went ahead and moved last week. I'm happy to give you a tour, though," she offered.
Steve, catching a glimpse of the front room through the window, shook his head. "No thanks, we're good. Thank you for the information." He turned to leave.
"No tour?" Danny asked as they returned to the car.
"Did you see inside? Everything is different- new furniture, different colors on the walls, a large dog bed…"
"Why go to all that trouble?"
"Because whatever they're hiding, whatever Mr. Ma was doing… it must be big, Danny."
"Big enough that you'll back off and let the FBI do their thing so we can focus on finding the horse?" Danny shook his head and climbed into the passenger seat. "Don't answer that. I already know what you'll say."
Steve rolled his eyes. Standing at the driver's side, he paused before climbing in and took a long look around the street. Hedges and stone walls bordered many of the yards; here and there a gardener could be heard trimming or mowing, but otherwise the street was relatively quiet. Dark green trash cans lined the street for pickup, but aside from the Camaro and the real estate agent's car, there were no other vehicles.
"What? What are you looking for?"
"Nothing," Steve mumbled. He had been hoping for something obvious- an out-of-place shaved ice truck, a dark, unmarked car, anything to indicate other forces were at work, but the neighborhood was quiet and empty.
"We could always talk to the neighbors," Danny suggested.
"No. There's probably a 'logical' explanation for that, too." Steve had no desire to waste time on dead-ends. "They've already covered everything."
"Who's 'they'?" Danny asked.
But Steve had no answer for him.
…
By one in the afternoon, Danny and Steve had finally settled in for their long-delayed lunch. Over sandwiches at a café near the mall, the conversation drifted leisurely around sports and family before settling on the issue at hand. Or, rather, the issue that Danny insisted be the focus of their discussion.
"Friends look out for each other." Danny explained between bites. He took a long drink and tried to find the patience to ignore his partner's petulant face. "A good friend will have your best interests at heart, even if you don't. A good friend keeps you from hurting yourself."
"I told you before, Danny: I don't need to go to the hospital. I'm fine," Steve growled between bites of salad.
"Maybe you are. And maybe you aren't. Either way, it's my duty as your friend to confirm that you are, in fact, 'fine.' If you don't like it, okay, but you picked me as your partner, so you'll have to put up with it."
"So because you're my partner, you get to hound me to death over doctors and hospitals?"
"Yes. Because you need it."
"I don't need a hospital to tell me that I'm okay. And I don't need you telling me that I need a hospital to tell me that I'm okay."
"But you still need me," Danny persisted.
"Really? How? I did fine in the Navy without you."
"Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah," Danny waved Steve's comment away. "I got you a case, didn't I? And we needed a case."
"A case that I didn't want. A unicorn? Seriously?"
"Fine." Leaning back and pushing his empty plate away, Danny narrowed his eyes across the table. "How about this: you need me to keep you in line. No, hear me out," he raised his hand as Steve opened his mouth to disagree. "Without me, you would be writing all of your own reports- and they'd be horrible, by the way-, you'd be medically discharged from the Navy because I wouldn't be around to back you up, and you'd be warming a bench in lockup because you would've gotten bored or overzealous and killed someone accidentally."
"Okay, okay, I get the point." Wiping his hands on a napkin, Steve swiped his phone off the table as it began to buzz. "McGarrett." He listened a moment, then palmed over the mouthpiece and whispered to Danny, "It's Duke." Then, "Yeah. Got it. Send me the address." Dropping the phone into his pocket, he nodded to Danny. "The unicorn's been spotted."
"Where?"
"The harbor."
"The harbor?" Danny swiped a disbelieving hand over his eyes as Steve relayed the news. "How the hell does a horse- a white horse dressed as a unicorn- make it from Manoa Valley to the harbor and no one notices?!"
"Well, someone noticed," Steve pointed out. "A couple of teens called it in. They just so happened to be hanging out around there and noticed the horse. Asked Duke if there was a reward."
Danny snorted. "Hanging out." He stuffed the last bit of sandwich in his mouth. "Looking for something to steal is more likely," he mumbled around the sandwich as he chewed.
"You don't believe in Good Samaritans?"
"Not when they're fifteen."
"Oh, excuse me, Mr. Perfect Parent. So when Grace helped that woman last weekend at the playground, she had some selfish, ulterior motive?"
"What? No! No, that was different. Grace is different."
"Different?"
"Yes." Wadding up the sandwich wrapper with one hand, Danny gestured profusely as he tried to make his point. "Grace is not just any teenager; she is my daughter, and I have seen to it that she is raised in a responsible manner, unlike the other 99% of kids out there." He stopped, scowling, as a customer pushed rudely past his chair without apology. "Take that jerk, for instance," he said, pointing at the retreating purple board shorts and flip flops. "Mr. Curly-Haired Jerk clearly did not have the upbringing Grace had. Granted, this place is crowded and sometimes these things can't be helped, but Grace would at least have stopped and apologized. But he," Danny shook the sandwich wrapper at the man who had turned a corner and disappeared, "he couldn't be bothered."
"Uh huh."
"You don't believe me, do you? No, don't answer that. That was rhetorical." Misinterpreting Steve's smirk and slight shake of the head, Danny threw his hands up and exclaimed, "Unbelievable! You know, if there's one thing I can't fault Rachel for, it's Grace's behavior. Grace genuinely cares about others, a trait that both Rachel and myself have worked hard to cultivate. We may have had our disagreements, but- "
"Danny, I'm not arguing with you. I think you're a great parent. I think Grace is a great kid. But I don't know who these kids are, and I don't know their parents. They could be good, they could be bad, but because we don't know, I think we ought to give them a chance." Holding up the car key, he jingled them in Danny's face. "Ready to go catch a unicorn?"
"No," Danny grumped.
Steve barked out a short laugh. "Have some faith in humanity, man. The glass is half full."
…
Danny Williams did not just think the glass was half-empty. After sixty sweltering minutes of circling the Honolulu harbor area, he knew the glass was half-empty. There was no sign of the unicorn at the scrapyard that the caller had mentioned, so Steve had made the executive decision to drive around the area and look for the animal while Danny played lookout.
"Don't think I don't know what you're doing," Danny groused from the passenger seat, leaning forward to soak up more of the chilled air pouring from the dashboard vent. "You're just looking for an excuse to drive my car for a while longer.
"Relax, D. It's a horse. It probably wandered off somewhere."
"And where, exactly, would that be?" Danny thrust a hand out at the concrete jungle on either side of them. "If it left Manoa Valley for this rusting urban landscape, it is one dumb animal." They rounded the corner, driving down the narrow alley between two warehouses before opening into an overgrown parking lot bordering a scrapyard. "I think we should let it win a Darwin award and we can tell the party company to cut their losses."
They crawled past the scrapyard, their speed limited by an impressive array of potholes sunk into the soft, overheated pavement.
"Easy… gentle on the goods," Danny cautioned as the car rocked through a particularly deep crater. "Maybe it was too soon to let you drive."
"Some of these can't be avoided," Steve said gruffly, weaving left and right around the larger hollows.
"Uh-huh. Stop the car."
"I can drive, Danny."
"No, not that. Stop the car." Danny rapped urgently on the dash as he twisted in his seat for a better look out the window. Complying, Steve bent forward to peer out the window at the dark, dismal building that had caught Danny's attention. It was another warehouse, older than most of the others in the narrow industrial strip bordering the harbor and possibly dating back to the war. The ancient, grey wood had been repainted more times than Steve cared to count but recent neglect had peeled all but the oldest coats from its warped surface. The windows on the bottom floor had been long since been boarded over, but the upper story still had gaping holes and the occasional remnant of a glass pane that somehow escaped the rocks and bottles hurled upwards over the years.
"What is it?" Steve asked in a low voice.
"I thought…" Danny began, but hesitated doubtfully. It didn't look like anyone had used the place in decades. He studied the small, rusting door nestled in the wall behind a pile of rotting shipping crates. "Never mind," he finally decided.
Steve eyed the gloomy building with dislike. He was no happier than Danny to be circling the harbor district on an otherwise beautiful afternoon, but whereas Danny's main objection was the sweltering afternoon heat, Steve's was boredom. He wanted- no, he needed- to chase something, to shoot, to tackle… anything but sit and do paperwork for another day. He could feel his training and skills wasting away like an unused muscle and it irked him severely that no cases had come their way recently to remedy the situation. He squinted at the streaked tin roof, trying to make out the upper-story windows through the wavering heat.
Coming to a sudden decision of his own, he killed the engine, checked his weapon, and gestured Danny to follow him as he left the car and hurried silently across the asphalt toward the dilapidated husk of a building.
"Hey!"
Steve ignored Danny's loudly-objectioned whisper and crept closer, not stopping until he was positioned safely behind a stack of pallets near the door. Behind him, he heard Danny's door open and shut and the quick scrtch, scrtch, scrtch of the Detective's office loafers as he hurried to join him.
"So you saw it, too?" Danny inquired in a low voice as he pressed himself against the wall behind Steve.
"Yeah."
Danny frowned. "This thing that you saw- was it armed?" he asked doubtfully.
"I dunno. Hard to tell. Best to be prepared."
"Uh huh." Danny knew Steve. He knew that all Steve needed was a glimpse, a fraction of a second, to catalogue all the pertinent information about a potential suspect, including whether or not the person was armed. He watched his partner replace the first weapon in its holster, only to now retrieve the backup piece tucked behind him. "If you really wanted to be prepared, you'd call for backup."
Steve made no response.
"Do you even know what I saw? Maybe it was the unicorn. You know, the harmless animal we're supposed to be finding." When that failed to elicit a satisfactory response, he sighed and threw up his hands. "Fine. Let's say this thing you saw was armed. Are you going to call HPD for backup?"
"I saw a guy, Danny. Just one guy. I can handle one guy."
"Right. So what happens when we walk into that warehouse and discover that one guy has turned into four or five? What if we go in there and discover it's a major trafficking operation full of baddies armed to the teeth?"
"That's why I brought you." Flashing a quick grin, Steve gestured Danny to wait while he ran around the corner of the building toward the other entrance on the far side
Danny rolled his eyes as he began the countdown. He seriously doubted that his partner had actually seen anyone in the vicinity. He himself had only seen a flash of white that he now recognized as a torn cloth dangling from a worn telephone wire behind the building. Still, indulging the SEAL and allowing him to run around after a 'bad guy' might help calm his partner down, and that would be worth it in the end.
Gun raised, he approached the slightly ajar door and listened. Nothing. Swinging around, he stepped into the darkness and stopped while his eyes adjusted. The warehouse was empty.
From the other side of the building, he heard Steve's shout of "FIVE-O!" shortly before the taller man burst through the second door. Danny couldn't help a short laugh at the man's expense.
"Well, babe, we were severely outgunned and almost overwhelmed, but I think we've managed to subdue them all."
Steve turned in a circle. "I saw someone Danny," he insisted.
"Uh huh."
"I know I did," Steve muttered. Ignoring his partner, he kept his gun raised and carefully cleared the furthest, darkest recesses of the warehouse.
Danny watched him with an amused smile. "You wanna know what I think?"
"No," Steve holstered his weapon reluctantly, "but you're going to tell me anyway."
"I think you just wanted to shoot something so badly that you 'saw' a person with a gun, thereby giving you someone to chase and something to shoot at."
"Danny, I-"
"No, you know what?" Danny held up a hand to forestall his partner's response, "I think you wanted to go all ninja on someone so badly that you don't really care what you saw. All you care about is having someone to chase, but since we're out of bad guys, you're going to take it out on this poor horse. You want to charge in guns blazing, and you're going to scare the poor creature out of its wits." Danny shook his head as both men exited the warehouse into the bright sunshine. "Shame on you, Steven. What did the horse ever do to you? The horse isn't going to shoot at you."
As he spoke, the wall behind them suddenly splintered as a gunshot rang out.
…