A/N: Howdy! Trying to push this out before a long weekend of driving. For grannyv3, thanks! I'm one of the younger people in our swim group but not the youngest and definitely not fast. I'm just good at doing a repetitive task for hours at a time. (haha…) It's also nearly silent under water, which is pure bliss after a day at work (noisy and chaotic at my job).

…

"Hey, hey, it's da big kahuna! Howzit, brah?"

"Kind of early, Kamekona." Steve looked around the empty grass lot where the shrimp king was setting up his truck for the day. The sun hadn't yet peaked over the ridge and the beach was unusually quiet as the morning breeze blew a stray wrapper across the parking lot. "No shrimp breakfast?"

"For you, I kin fire up my grill."

"No thanks; already ate," Danny quickly lied, his stomach not quite feeling up to seafood for breakfast. He planned to snag a quick bite on the way to the office afterwards. "You said you had something for us?" He hadn't actually slept in (although he'd certainly tried) and was already up and dressed when Steve showed up unannounced at his door. Pushing a cup of coffee into his hand, Steve had explained that Kamekona had a tip and, despite the early hour, insisted on talking to them in person.

The big man wiped his hands on his apron and leaned forward with a conspiratorial whisper. "Word on da street is, you lookin' for a unicorn."

"Um, that 'word' was on the news a few days ago. That's not new information," Danny sniped, irritable that his morning and likely a good chunk of his weekend was now taken from him.

The large Samoan frowned. "I know dat, brah. You wanna hear what I got or not?"

"We're listening," Steve said, shooting Danny a warning look. He wondered how, exactly, the shrimp king could get that information at this hour of the morning when most of the island was still asleep. Late night illegal poker game, maybe? "Did the word on the street tell you where this unicorn is?"

" 'Fraid not. But I gots to warn you- them Indonesians is dangerous!"

Steve ran a thumb across his eyebrow and frowned, nonplussed. "Indonesians? Don't you mean Russians or Chinese?"

"Nah, brah, I know my geography," Kamekona nodded confidently. "It was Indonesians and they's pissed."

"Uh huh." Steve wondered if Kamekona had gotten his information wrong. "Any idea where I can find these angry Indonesians?"

"Last I heard, they gots a place in Pearl City, near da wharf."

Under his breath, Danny muttered, "Great. Wharf again."

Steve ignored him. "Anything else?"

"You want to find them? I kin draw you a map." Pulling a napkin off a nearby table, he scrawled a rough outline of the wharf and several buildings before scratching a star on top of one. "That's where it's supposed to be."

"Okay. Thanks, Kamekona." Steve turned to leave, but Kamekona had not quite finished.

"Be careful, brah," the large Samoan said. "Them's dangerous folk. Don't want you and Jersey getting' hurt."

…

"So you aren't Indonesian?"

"Indonesian? Who da hell tell you dat?" The scrawny kid didn't wait for an answer. "I'm Hawaiian, haole. You an idiot, or just blind?" and he looked down at his tanned skin pointedly. "I'm gunna sue for racial profiling, brah! You leave me chained up in here all night. You can't do that- I got rights!"

Danny ignored him and flipped through the packet that the printer had spit out a few minutes ago. "How'd you end up working for the Yakuza, James?"

"I don' work for the Yakuza." The kid tossed his long, black locks with a defiant flick of his head. "And it's Jimmy."

"Really?" Danny tapped the clipboard and cocked and raised an eyebrow. "Cause it says here that you do and Mr. Chung is your employer." The papers didn't, actually. The background check was still in progress, but HPD had left a note on James Takoa's- Jimmy's- file about his suspected employer. The paper Danny held contained the young man's school records until he dropped out two years ago. But based on the kid's almost-clean arrest record, Danny had a feeling he hadn't seen this bluff before.

"I don't work for Mr. Chung," Jimmy said in a more modest tone, not catching the trick. "I help him out now and then. And you didn't answer my question, brah: why you keep me in here all night?"

"It's a holding cell," Danny gestured at the barren room with his clip board. "It's what it's for."

"This? This ain't no holding cell," Jimmy scoffed. "Where the bed? Toilett?"

"That's why there's a drain. Tell me about the work you do for Chung."

Jimmy cast a nervous look at the 'toilet.' When he answered, his tone was somewhat softer. "I don't work for him. I help him. There's a difference."

"Right. And he 'helps' you out with a paycheck." Danny took Jimmy's silence as confirmation. "What were you doing when you were picked up?"

"Nothing."

"Except trespassing and kidnapping." Danny actually had no idea what James Takoa had been doing when Steve's mysterious friends had picked him up, nor how long the kid had been in their custody. The kid had been dropped off with no information, just a name and a birthdate on a piece of paper pinned to his shirt. Running the name, Danny and Steve had come up with a list of petty theft and miscellaneous drug charges, and a note from the gang unit that he was affiliated with the Yakuza, but nothing else particularly sparked their interest. When it came time for the interrogation, Danny drew the short straw. Steve, uninterested in the banality of the case, stayed upstairs and continued his 'research.'

"Look, I already told Mr. Suits everything I know."

"Who's Mr. Suits?"

"You know, the bossy guy. Older dude, dress real nice."

Another of Steve's 'friends,' Danny decided. "Do I look like Mr. Suits?" he demanded.

"No. And this ain't that other place, either. This place smells," he wrinkled his nose.

"Okay, so: new place, new face. I haven't heard the story yet. Tell me."

Jimmy cast a sidelong glance at the short detective. "You gonna charge me for that crack pipe?"

"That depends. How much information do you want to tell me?"

Jimmy stared at him stonily.

Not much, apparently. Danny set his clipboard aside and folded his arms. "Here's the deal, Jimmy- your boss is in some deep trouble and we've got evidence this time. It's not just about the drugs- it's about everything else Mr. Chung has been involved in lately, and unless you cooperate, I'm going to make sure you go down as an accessory." Technically, it was all lies. HPD had been after Chung since he'd first hit their radar a few years ago, but the man was careful. Danny only hoped the kid was as much as an idiot as he appeared to be and was pleased when Jimmy's eyes widened slightly at the threat.

"Jimmy, you're looking at a lot more than a few days for petty theft and trespassing."

Jimmy shifted nervously in the cold chair. Danny waited him out. For a few minutes, the only sound was the grinding drone of the AC in the background. Then…

"Look, I wasn't involved in a kidnapping. I, uh… I was busy with other things." Jimmy tried to straighten in the chair and Danny noticed the needle marks on his arm for the first time.

"You mean drugs."

"Uh…"

"So tell me about the drugs."

"I dunno, brah. I just do what Mr. Chung tells me."

"And what did he tell you?"

"Sit up there and take notes."

"Up where?" Danny prodded with a bit of impatience.

Jimmy heaved an exaggerated sigh of annoyance. "He wants me to watch this building up at the wharf. I sit up in some old place with binoculars and write down all the trucks that come in and out- times, kind of truck, cargo and license plates if I can see it. And boats- wants me to watch them, too."

"Why?"

"I dunno," Jimmy shrugged and Danny had to focus very hard on not strangling him. "I don't ask questions- curiosity killed the cat, you know."

"So I've heard," Danny ground out. "What about the horse?"

"Oh yeah."

Now Danny wanted to smack him. "Yeah, what?"

"Yeah, he said to call him if I saw a horse. Or a unicorn. But I didn't see nothin' like that."

"Which building were you watching?"

"Tan-ish one. By the water. With the big gate and fence."

"You don't know the name?" Rolling his eyes, Danny pulled up Google Maps on his tablet and pushed the device under the prisoner's nose. "Which one?"

"Oh… uh…" Jimmy skimmed the wharf as Danny scrolled back and forth. "I dunno, man. They all look the same from up here. You got street view or something? Maybe that one… no… that one?"

"This one?" Danny pointed to the warehouse where he and Steve had been involved in the shootout a few days prior.

"Maybe."

"And you watch it?"

"With binoculars, yeah. Can't see nothin' otherwise. And take notes, like I told ya." Jimmy flashed Danny a hopeful look. "So? Do I get my call now?"

"Seriously? You think that little tidbit earned you a call?" Danny asked incredulously. "We're not done yet, Binocular Boy. Where did your intel come from? Who gave your boss the information about the unicorn?"

"I don't know."

"Don't know the guy? Don't know his name? What don't you know?" Danny asked in exasperation.

"Don't know his name. He showed up at, uh… this shop, and Kao hears him talking 'bout drugs and shit."

"Hang on," Danny interrupted, throwing up a hand, "Who's Kao?"

"He's Troy's brother."

Danny sighed. "And who is Troy?"

"He work for Mr. Chung."

"And he was talking about drugs? You sure it wasn't guns?"

"Hell naw, brah. Mr. Chung don't care 'bout guns. Just the other stuff."

Danny was pretty sure Mr. Chung cared quite a bit about guns based on the weapons trafficking allegations HPD had tried to bring against him last year, but he decided to ignore Jimmy's ignorance. The kid was probably so far down the food chain that he had no idea. But part of Jimmy's inevitable community service sentence would be a couple of communication courses at the local college, Danny decided. "So he only cares about 'other stuff'?"

"Yeah."

" 'Stuff' being drugs?" Danny clarified.

"Yeah. He said the Triads and some California gang, 18th Street or something like that, anyway, they're looking for this unicorn cause they want the drugs, and somebody said-"

"Wait, wait." Danny pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to sort out what he'd just heard. "There's another gang involved in all this?"

Jimmy shrugged. "Look, man, all I know is I'm supposed to sit up there and write down these trucks and call if I see a unicorn. That's it."

"And did you see a unicorn?"

"Naw. Waste of time. Just a lota birds and crap."

…

"I'll tell you what's a waste of time." Danny sat upstairs with Steve, reviewing his notes from the interrogation. "Talking to Jimmy Takoa. That is a waste of time."

"Aw. He can't be that bad."

Danny raised an eyebrow. "Wanna bet? He makes Charlie sound like an Oscar-winning screen writer." Shuffling his notes, he paused at a small item scribbled on his notepad. "Here's what I want to know: if the unicorn is carrying drugs, who in their right mind thinks, 'I know, let's take these drugs and hide it in a unicorn! What could go wrong?' Seriously, who thinks of these things?"

Steve shrugged. The final background check had revealed nothing more about the young man sitting in the basement except that he was, in fact, of Indonesian descent, and it only confirmed their suspicions that he was a low-level player in a much larger game. "How'd he get caught?"

"Said he was high and firing off some gun he'd 'found' down in the wharf when your Men in Black friends picked him up. I guess they got everything they needed from him."

"Yeah…" Steve pulled up a map of the wharf and skimmed it absentmindedly. "To me, it sounds like the Yakuza are planning a heist."

"Yes, but we don't care about that."

"Sure we do."

"No, no we do not." Danny rapped sharply on Steve's desk to get his partner's attention. "Remember your little friends you spent several hours with yesterday? They told you to focus on the horse and stay away from everything else."

"They said I could go after the drug ring, too, Danny. We should at least go back to the wharf and check it out." Irked at being left out of the much more exciting case involving the Russians and the stolen thumb drive, Steve was itching to get out into the field and have some excitement of his own. "Just a quick look, Danny. That's all. Then we go to the hospital, I promise."

"Famous last words," Danny muttered, but he followed his partner out the door.

…

"So." Danny hummed the word under his breath with a frown, not at all pleased with their current position a few hours later. "Another stakeout." He drummed his fingers impatiently on the dash and squinted out the window at the building across the lot. "Two very hot stakeouts this week."

It was past lunch time and the sun was peaking overhead. The forecasted high was in the normal range for a Hawaiian winter, and Steve had settled on his usual cargos-and-tee combo for this outing. Maybe if Danny would ditch the button-up and wear a T-shirt like the rest of the state… but his thoughts were interrupted as Danny continued.

"Two very long stakeouts this week."

Tuesday's patrol around the docks hadn't been that long. Not nearly as long as that time in the cat lady's apartment. But Danny knew this. He was deliberately pushing Steve's buttons. Danny wanted a response. Steve didn't plan on giving one.

"And I'd like to note that we haven't visited the hospital yet. Again."

Steve shifted guiltily in his seat. He couldn't deny Danny that one, but his partner seemed to be doing fine, with only a hint of a cough, and the small inhaler was tucked away in one of Danny's pockets if needed.

Click. Click.

Steve gave an imperceptible growl as Danny began- again- to click the ballpoint pen he had found in the glovebox.

Click. Click. Clickita-click. Clickita-click. "So… about your 'meeting' yesterday…"

"I already told you, Danny. I. Can't. Talk. About. It."

"You know, you say that, but what does that really mean?" The pen clicking mercifully stopped as Danny used both hands to emphasize his point. "Does it mean you'll be court martialed for telling me? Fired? Locked up forever? Tortured and killed?"

"It means I received an order and I intend to obey it." Nevermind that the order came from an army colonel and Steve was Navy…

"So… court martial?" Click. Clickita-click.

"Danny, if you really want me to lose my job and end up in a military prison, then by all means, keep talking! But I'll go down for murder- yours- before I tell you what happened." What he didn't add, and what he desperately wanted to explain, was that the car was probably bugged and it was very likely that Romero or one of Thule's other underlings was listening in on their conversation. Without knowing the extent of the surveillance, Steve didn't even feel comfortable writing a note to his partner explaining this. Instead, he had to play the classified card- again - and deal with the fallout. And currently that fallout was sitting beside him in the form of his annoyed and irritated partner.

Clickita, clickita, click.

Steve groaned.

Click, click. "I played drums in high school, you know."

Steve grunted. He'd heard this story before, but at least Danny had let the other matter drop. For now.

"Thought about doing it in college- should've, really. Mom thought so, anyway."

Maybe he has Alzheimer's. Steve cast him a sideways glance when Danny wasn't looking. Maybe it's early-onset dementia and that's why he tells me these stories over and over again.

Clickita-clickita-click.

"What do you think? Should I have done drums in college?"

Steve grunted noncommittally. Should've taken that pen out of the glovebox, McGarrett, he chided himself. Should've hidden it somewhere.

"I could've rocked that uniform." Clickita-click, click

Steve grunted again. Blunt force trauma might do the trick.

"Did you ever play anything besides guitar?"

Steve shrugged. A quick blow to the back of the neck. No one would ever know.

"I only took lessons for a few months. Then I-"

Steve interrupted. "We've got movement." They didn't, actually, but Steve threw the binoculars at Danny and made a show of staring so intently at the building across the street that the detective finally shut up and followed suit. It wasn't the warehouse where Steve and Danny had been involved in the shootout earlier, but it was nearby and dilapidated enough to draw their attention. It matched Jimmy's description, aside from a few details that Danny had imagined could have been omitted while he was shooting up in some dark recess of the building, came pretty close to what Kamekona had drawn on the napkin for them earlier.

Rather than go in guns-blazing, however, Steve had reluctantly decided that the safest play would be staking the building out and waiting to see who came and went. Unfortunately for them, no one had come or even approached within a thousand yards of the building in the past several hours.

If Danny had his doctor's clearance for field duty, the situation would have been quite different.

There were a few minutes of blissful silence. Then-

"I see him. Northeast corner, third floor."

Steve frowned. He had been lying about the movement. Leaning over the dash, he peered upwards at the indicated window. Sure enough, a dark shadow passed by the open window of the condemned structure. Go figure.

"How do you want to play this?" Danny was already in tactical mode, deciding his next step, trying to lay plans that the SEAL would probably ignore in favor of a grenade or rocket launcher.

Steve checked their surroundings again with obvious unease. They were parked under a grove of trees at the edge of the wharf. To their left, an overgrown field backed up to a new neighborhood of shiny, white duplexes. To the right, a series of warehouses and offices padded the shore between the road and the edge of the wharf, terminating under the cluster of trees where they now sat. The building in question was an abandoned, 3-story brown building with vines sprouting from its second-floor windows. The upper floor commanded a sweeping view of the parking lot and covered the only entrance that Steve could see into the place.

"I don't like it," Steve admitted. "Not enough cover. They'll spot us before we make the door."

"We don't even know if it is a they," Danny pointed out. "Maybe it's just some homeless guy."

"Or maybe it's a cartel hideout."

"Then maybe we should call for backup."

Steve snorted.

"Oh. Right. You don't do backup."

"You are my backup, D," Steve spoke the familiar refrain without really thinking. He took a moment to weigh their options. "What if I cause a distraction? I'll draw the guy's attention, keep him at the window while you go up the stairs and nab him."

"Distraction? What kind of distraction?" Danny asked suspiciously. "It better not be anything like the last time you used that word."

"Danny, that was just a small explosion, and the governor was completely fine with it."

"That's not how I remember it," Danny muttered. He fidgeted with the binoculars in silent thought until Steve suddenly reached across him for the glovebox. "What are you doing?" Realization dawned and Danny shook his head vehemently. "Whoa, Rambo! I don't think so. Put the grenades away; I've got this."

Before Steve could protest, Danny slipped in his earpiece, tucked his weapon out of sight, and slid out of the car. Loosening his tie, he shrugged a crick out of his neck, then bent over and scooped something off the ground. Squinting, Steve could see that it was an old beer bottle. He watched Danny shake it out and refill it with water from a puddle before sauntering slowly down the road. Once safely distanced from the car, Danny let loose a massive belch and began to sing randomly in a horribly off-key tenor.

Steve's eyes widened in shock. Pulling out his phone, he began discreetly filming the unusual performance. "You know, Danny, I think you might have picked the wrong career," he joked into the mic. "Maybe you should give acting a try."

Danny waved his finger drunkenly toward the sky.

Steve couldn't help a grin, knowing the gesture was meant for him. "How much will you pay me to keep Chin and Kono from seeing this?"

"For your information," Danny hissed in a low voice, "this got me out of a bad situation with a gang in the Bronx once."

"Ah. You never tell us the good stories, Danno."

"You never ask." He sounded slightly miffed.

"You never needed me to ask before." Steve turned the binoculars toward the building and was pleased to see that their shadowy scout had returned, standing just within Steve's line of sight, his focus on the drunk man below. "He's back," Steve muttered and slid out of the car.

Slipping across the empty lot, he vaulted the chain link fence and quickly entered the back entrance of the decaying structure. A lone stairwell took him to the third floor. The stairs opened onto a dim hallway. Sand, leaves, and old wrappers littered the floor, but there was no Indonesian gang, no homeless man, and no wild shootout.

Steve crept forward while Danny continued to sing into his mic. He cleared the floor methodically, room by room. Piles of rags, trash, and cardboard festered in the corners of each room and the stench of old urine, cats, and dead pigeons weighed heavily the air. He treaded carefully, testing each step and avoiding the jagged holes scattered across the floor. The old wood bent dangerously under his boots and his progress slowed to a crawl.

"Steve?" Danny stopped singing. "How we doing? Any 'angry Indonesians' yet?"

Unable to respond without risking his position, Steve tapped the microphone twice. Danny must have understood because the singing resumed a few seconds later. Steve moved forward again. Four rooms left. Now three. Now two.

The door to the last room was open.

A/N: Have a great weekend! Thanks for the continued reviews and support!