A/N: Thank you for all of the alerts and reviews!

Five Days Earlier…

"Where were you last night?"

"Hmm?" Danny glanced up distractedly to see his partner looming in the doorway to his office.

"Poker? Last night? My place? This ringing any bells?" Steve prompted, crossing his arms with a flourish. "You never showed."

Danny waved a dismissive hand at Steve before turning his attention back to the piles of mind-numbing paperwork on his desk. "Sorry. I forgot."

"You forgot?"

"Yup. Forgot." There was no response, so Danny continued scribbling his signature to the cover pages of each of his reports. A soft sigh from the doorway once again pulled his attention upward to see Steve still standing in the doorway, a scowl on his face. "What?"

"Where were you last night?"

Danny blew air out of pursed lips before making a show of putting his pen down on his desk. "Here. I was here. Then, I went home, grabbed a bite, and fell asleep. It was a long week. I was tired."

Steve quirked an eyebrow as if disagreeing with Danny's excuse. "I know it was a long week, Danny. I worked it too. Chin and I managed to stay awake for some cards."

"If you were so desperate to play, you should have called Kono."

"We did."

Danny smiled. "She clean you out?"

"Completely."

Danny's smile grew. The team learned early on that Kono was deadly at poker. Danny had lost more than a few bucks to the young rookie, and he could only imagine Steve and Chin's dismay at having to ask her to sub for him.

Steve regarded his partner a moment. Though Danny had insisted he'd gone home to sleep, his appearance declared otherwise. His eyes were slightly sunken and darker than normal, and his usual immaculately styled hair was a bit disheveled. And if Steve wasn't mistaken, Danny was wearing the dark-blue shirt that he usually kept in the bottom drawer of his desk for those few times the team has been stuck working on a case through the night. It appeared as though Danny hadn't even gone home last night. Steve smiled.

"Look, if you'd wanted to spend time with Gabby, you could have just told me so."

Danny rolled his eyes and reached again for his pen, determined to finish the piles of paperwork on his desk before noon.

"Drop it," he grumbled.

Steve's interpretation of dropping it was walking into Danny's office and settling down on the chair directly across from him, crossing one leg over the knee of his other and getting rather comfortable. Danny attempted to ignore him, a feat that was impossible when Steve started bouncing his raised foot, causing it to tap repeatedly against the desk. If that wasn't enough, Steve began poking at items on his desk… his photo of Grace, the lamp, his empty coffee mug…

"Where's your mug?"

"What?"

"Your coffee mug," Steve clarified.

Danny didn't even bother to look up, merely pointing at the white porcelain cup now in Steve's hands. Steve, for his part, eyed the mug as if it was a hostile force invading Danny's desk… a force that he wished to dispose of immediately.

"This is not your mug. Where's the one I got you for your birthday?"

"I lost it."

"You lost it?" Steve repeated skeptically. "Or you 'lost' it."

"If you don't get out of my office right now, I am really going to lose it."

Danny threw one more glare toward Steve, but movement over his partner's shoulder grabbed his attention. Danny slowly stood to see Rachel standing in the entryway of Five-0's headquarters; one hand propping the glass door open while the other was resting on the handle of a navy blue stroller.

Their time together lately had been brief; no more than muted instructions on when and where to pick up Grace and what time to have her back home. Neither of them ever addressed the elephants that hovered over them whenever they were forced into some kind of awkward conversation while waiting for Grace to pack up her things or if they ran into each other at one of her school functions. And why should they? There was too much to talk about, but no hope of, ever resolving anything.

How does one get past a failed marriage, a re-kindled romance, losing a child that wasn't even yours to begin with, and the fact that you shot her new husband?

You don't. You don't get past it. You ignore it. Or try to, anyway. But Danny was finding that hard to do when his ex-wife was staring at him like that. It was that look of pity mixed with justifiable anger and just a dash of love that blended into the perfect combination that drove Danny crazy. But it was the look that she carried each time they encountered one another, so one would think that he'd gotten used to it by now.

No such luck.

He couldn't explain why he found himself rooted to the spot when he saw her here. Why was she here, in the one place that he could normally count on to avoid her? Now even his own office was no longer sacred? She had to torment him here, with her look of unwanted duplicity, and her son, that was undoubtedly so perfect that he hadn't even uttered a sound to allow his mother her stealthy entrance, and why was he so angry?

An awkward silence hovered for an eternity before Steve cleared his throat, stood up, and moved toward the door.

"Hey, Rachel," he said in his most casual voice as he threw a 'what's the matter with you?' look to Danny, who was still standing motionless in relative safety behind his desk. "Is there something we can do for you?"

"Um, yes. I was actually hoping to speak to Daniel." She looked imploringly over to Danny. He managed to raise a single eyebrow at her, but didn't budge. "In private."

Danny waved her in and she smiled gratefully at Steve as he held the door open for her. After getting settled in a chair, Danny sat behind his desk and regarded his ex-wife carefully. She looked tired as she nervously fiddled with the large rock on her ring finger. Danny suddenly felt a surge of fear well up within him.

"Is everything okay? Where's Grace?"

She looked up with watery eyes and smiled. "Grace is fine. She's in school. I'm… I'm here… it's just that…." Rachel sighed as she stumbled over the right words. "It's Stanley. He's… he didn't come home last night."

"Oh?" Danny was happy that his voice hid the relief that washed over him. Rachel's demeanor exuded worry and fear, and the fact that his little girl was safe and sound settled Danny's racing heart. "Is that unusual for Stan?"

Rachel noncommittally shrugged.

"Rachel, I'm assuming you came here for my help. If that's the case, you need to tell me. Is it unusual for Stan to not come home?"

"He works late sometimes and he'll end up staying overnight in his office instead of coming home. And of course his many trips abroad keep him away from home on occasion, but this is different. He told me he'd be home in time for dinner, but he didn't show. I thought maybe it was because he and I had a… disagreement earlier in the day. I thought maybe he was still mad and decided to stay in the office again. But when I called, they told me he'd already left."

Rachel stopped to grab a tissue out of her purse. Though she had struggled to begin telling Danny about her problem, she was really on a roll now, her words coming quickly as she rambled.

"He wouldn't answer his cell phone last night and he's still not answering today. I know that he and I have had some… difficulties lately, but he's never ignored me. Not like this. I'm just… worried about him."

"Well, Rach, I don't know what to say. If you guys had a fight, maybe he just needed to cool his heels. Maybe he got drunk and slept it off someplace, like Tahiti or Indonesia or wherever else he likes to jet off to all the time."

"Honestly, Daniel!" Rachel stood so quickly that she bumped into the handle of the stroller, causing it to jerk forward. Charlie, who had been soundly asleep up until that point, began to cry and she swooped down and picked him up, softly soothing him as she bounced lightly in place. "I came here to ask for your help, not to hear your petty opinions about my husband. Do you think I enjoy admitting that my husband is not taking my calls, potentially because we had a spat? Especially to you? HPD already said they couldn't do anything, I don't need to hear it from…"

"Wait, wait," Danny interrupted, putting his hands out to wave off her rant. "You already went to HPD about this?

"Yes. Before I came here. They said that I could not file a missing persons report until a 'reasonable amount of time' has past. What in the bloody hell does that mean?"

Rachel was near hysterics now, and with Charlie not handling the sudden rise in his mother's voice very well, Danny's office was quickly turning into a chaotic mess. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Steve in his office, staring anxiously in Danny's direction. Stepping quickly around his desk, Danny tentatively reached out and placed a hand on Rachel's arm.

"Okay, okay, just… calm down. I'll see what I can do, alright?"

Rachel sniffed and nodded, cradling Charlie close to her chest. After a few more minutes of gathering what information he could from Rachel, Danny ushered her out, promising to be in touch with her as soon as he found out anything. Once she was out the door and out of sight, Danny rubbed his face with both hands before motioning to Steve that it was safe to come out.

"Hey, everything okay?"

"Yeah, uh… listen, can you do a trace on Stan's phone? See if it's on?"

"Sure, partner." Danny recited the number to Steve as he activated the trace program on the central workstation. "You want to tell me what's going on?"

"It's probably nothing," Danny admitted. "Stan didn't come home last night and Rachel is worried that something dark and sinister has happened to him. HPD isn't doing anything about it because he's a grown man and can take care of himself. So now here I am, using time and resources to track down my ex-wife's husband, who is probably passed out drunk at the penthouse in the Hilton."

Steve looked up from the trace program to address his friend. "You really think Stan would do something like that?"

Danny sighed heavily. "I have no idea. What have you got?"

"Well, the phone is on," Steve reported, flicking the map from the console up to the main screen. A single red dot blinked ominously near the western shore of the island. "He's not moving, but GPS shows him in Wai'anae." When Danny didn't say anything, Steve asked, "You want to go check it out?"

"No." He paused. "Let's go."