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Chapter 4:

He was still covered in mud and blood, he was thirsty, he had to pee and he was sweating like a pig in the ever growing heat inside his prison box, but Steve was trained to ignore all these fundamental needs of his body. But what he was not able to ignore was the simple fact that his body demanded some proper air to breathe.

By now he was sure that the box was indeed sealed airtight, judging from the fact that he wasn't any longer able to control his breathing rate. The more he tried to slow down his breathing, the more his body screamed for oxygen and soon he found himself drawing in air in fast, deep breaths, unable to deny the needs of his body.

Not that it actually helped much, if anything his increased breathing rate made the whole situation even worse.

Steve knew that the biggest problem in his current situation was not the lack of oxygen but rather the increase of carbon dioxide in the air. With every single breath he exhaled, the amount of carbon dioxide inside the box increased until the concentration was high enough to affect his health and ultimately kill him.

Knowing that a carbon dioxide concentration of about eight percent in the breathing air led to death in thirty to sixty minutes, Steve made a rough estimate of the time he still had available, finally coming to the conclusion that initially there had been enough air for four or maybe five hours if he was lucky.

Pressing the button of his wristwatch, he quickly blinked away the bolt of pain that rushed through his head when the faint light stung his eyes. His vision was still blurry and every time he looked at his watch he needed more and more time to bring the display into focus but after closing and opening his eyes a few times he finally managed to read the numbers. It was almost nine o'clock which meant that probably more than half of his time had already passed.

Exhaustedly Steve tried to find a more comfortable position in his narrow prison, but that was an almost impossible task. Either he was able to stretch his legs, but then he had to bend his back and his head in an unnatural and painful angle, or he stretched his back and bent his knees, a position which soon led to cramps in his calves. Besides all this he tried to raise his head as much as possible, because of the simple fact that carbon dioxide was heavier than air and would therefore concentrate on the bottom of the box.

It was definitely not easy to find the best position and to top it all, every time he moved in the crushing darkness, Steve bumped either his broken wrist or any other part of his aching body against the wall which left him panting and cursing with pain.

He had twice more tried to pry open the lid of the box but it was to no avail. All he achieved from his exertion was another increase in the need for oxygen and that was something he definitely couldn't afford at the moment. If he wasn't able to free himself, he would need every tiny bit of air and every damn second he could get.

McGarrett could feel his heart beating in his chest a lot faster than usual as it tried to deliver the much needed oxygen to all his vital organs. The skin of his face was flushed but he couldn't tell if it was from the elevated blood pressure or from the fact that it was incredibly hot inside that stupid box.

The metal floor plate he was lying on was cool, almost a little bit too cold for his liking, but when he touched the lid of the box, it was so hot that Steve almost burned himself. From the bit he had seen before his crazy captor had tasered him and he'd lost consciousness for the second time, his metal prison had been buried deeply into the moist soil and was now obviously exposed to the mercilessly hot Hawaiian sunshine.

Wiping the sweat from his face with trembling fingers, Steve sucked in the stuffy air in greedy gulps – 'air hunger' really was the perfect description for this symptom in the early stage of a carbon dioxide poisoning.

But he hungered not only for air but first and foremost for his Ohana – or someone else, he really wasn't too picky at the moment – to find and rescue him.

"Danno, if I ever needed you, now would be the perfect time to show up," Steve whispered into the darkness, his labored breaths the only sound in his narrow, pitch-black prison. "I really need back-up, so please hurry up, brother."


"Whoa!"

Danny exclaimed with a start, feeling Kono wincing next to him when the single shot echoed loudly through Five-0 headquarters. The weapon slipped from now limp fingers, clattering onto the floor at the same moment as the lifeless body of the unknown woman dropped down, hitting the floor with a sickening sound.

Standing stock-still, Danny stared wide-eyed at the ugly pool of blood and other stuff he rather would not think about that slowly formed around the woman's head, blinking in bewilderment when he tried to process what he had just seen.

"What the hell is happening here?" he asked hesitantly, his voice hoarse and low as he tried to shake off the cloud of confusion that filled his mind.

Slowly following Chin and Kono who had already rushed to the woman's side, Williams pulled his cell phone out of his pocket as he looked at Chin who just crouched down, pressing his fingers against the woman's neck. "Do we need an ambulance?" he asked quietly even if he was pretty sure that the woman was beyond any help.

"No," Kelly replied after a moment of silence, sadly confirming the obvious. "She's dead."

Breathing out a shaky sigh, Danny ran his hands over his hair as he exchanged confused looks with his teammates. "I'll call HPD and Max and then let's find out who she was and what she was talking about," he suggested, already busy dialing a number on his cell phone. While he waited for the call to connect he watched each of his teammates slipping on a pair of black disposable gloves.

Chin started to carefully search the woman's pockets while Kono had a look into her black and red backpack. By the time Danny had finished the calls and had stowed away his cell phone, Chin stood up from his crouched position, a single key dangling from his gloved fingers.

"That's the only thing I found," Chin said, taking a closer look at the small black and silver item. "Chevrolet car key, nothing else."

"No ID?" Danny inquired, looking pensively at the key in Chin's hand.

"No," Chin confirmed with a slight shake of his head. "Maybe in her backpack or we'll find something in her car, provided that we find the car. Otherwise we just have to hope that her fingerprints will reveal her identity."

"Max is coming over as soon as possible, but I don't think he'll be able to tell us anything new. After all we know perfectly well what the cause of death is," Williams said dryly. "And HPD wanted to know if we're able to handle this alone because at the moment they are obviously short of staff because of some internal training activities that are scheduled for today."

Raising his eyebrows, Chin looked at the younger man in surprise, "Seriously? They won't send someone because of internal training activities?"

"That's what the nice lady on the phone told me," Danny replied, slightly shrugging his shoulders as he spread his hands in a wide gesture. Once more pulling the cell phone out of his pocket, he threw a look at the clock on the display as he said, frowning, "I'll call Steve – I think it's finally time that he stops his childish behavior and moves his ass into the office. After all he's the boss, he should be present when a lunatic woman strolls into our headquarters, aims a weapon at our heads and then kills herself after babbling strange things about…"

"Hey guys, I think you should see this," Kono interrupted him hesitantly as she slowly rose to her feet, throwing her teammates a worried look out of big dark eyes as she presented two items on her outstretched hand. "Do these things look familiar?" she whispered, clearly terrified, her gaze darting between Danny and her cousin.

Staring for a long moment at the car key and the black iPhone, Danny's eyes grew wide when realization finally hit him like a kick in the gut. "Is this…" he stammered, clearing his throat as he frantically hit the speed dial on his phone. "Don't tell me it's Steve's…" he begged quietly as he apprehensively stared at the device on Kono's palm as if it would jump at him at any moment.

"No, no, no, no, no," Danny exclaimed hoarsely a second later when the iPhone started to vibrate, threatening to drop from Kono's outstretched hand. Quickly closing her fingers around the phone, Kono breathed out a shaky sigh as she watched Danny who still stared numbly down at her hands.

"Damn!" she whispered, exactly expressing what anyone in the room was thinking. "What does that mean?"

"If this is Steve's phone, I think we can be pretty sure that this is his car key," Chin said, pointing at the key in Kono's other hand before he let his gaze slowly travel to the discharged weapon on the floor. "And that is probably his weapon." Looking up, he added grimly, "The only question remaining is, where is Steve?"

Staring blankly at the dead body on the floor, Danny shook his head over and over again until he finally took a deep shuddering breath. "Dammit Steven, what have you gotten yourself into this time?" he asked angrily, addressing no one in particular. Raising his gaze Danny looked first at Kono then at Chin, his eyes glazed over with worry for his partner, "What do we do now? Where on earth is Steve and how are we supposed to find him?"

"Perhaps we can find his car," Kono suggested excitedly. "Or maybe his cell phone will reveal something useful." She was literally bouncing on her feet, ready to jump into action at any moment.

Closing his fingers around the woman's car key in his hand, Chin looked at his two teammates, "Listen, if something has happened to Steve, it's important that we take it one step at a time, okay? We don't want to miss something important, so let's keep calm and focused." Waiting a short moment until he was sure that Kono and Danny caught his words, Chin turned around and headed toward the exit. "I'll search the parking lot, maybe I'll be able to find her car," he said over his shoulder. "I suggest you two start with the woman's ID. And then let's find out where Steve is and what she did to him."


It had been surprisingly easy for Chin to find the woman's car, the light blue Chevy Cruze had been parked directly next to Danny's silver Camaro in front of the Palace. The car was neat and tidy and except for a small brown purse on the passenger's seat, Chin literally found nothing.

But at least the purse contained the woman's driver's license and not even ten minutes later Chin returned to the office, a satisfied little grin playing around his lips. "Hey, I got an ID," he said contentedly, waving the driver's license in his hand. "The woman's name is…"

"Claire Sacotte," Kono interrupted him, a grim smile on her lips as she nodded toward the screens on the wall. "Her fingerprints were in the database because she had been arrested about seven years ago for DUI."

Slightly shrugging in defeat, Chin approached his teammates as he looked curiously at the displayed information. "What else do we know about her?"

"Unfortunately not much," Danny sighed in frustration, leaving it to Kono to explain their findings.

"Claire Sacotte, 56, single mother to one son who died a few years ago. She grew up in Baltimore and apparently never moved away from there. Apart from the information on her arrest there's only one other point of interest," Kono said, scrolling through the data until she found what she was looking for. "She had been in psychiatric treatment from 2003 to 2011..."

"Psychiatric treatment? I wonder why," Danny interrupted her sarcastically, his gaze flickering to the dead body on the floor. He just hoped that Max would show up soon, it was really more than awkward to do one's work under the present circumstances.

"Anything else?" Chin asked his cousin, completely ignoring Danny's interjection. "What about her bank account and credit card? Any unusual transactions? When did she come to Hawaii? Had she been here before? Any connections to Steve?"

"No," Kono replied as her fingers danced over the display of the big computer table. "As far as I can tell she had never been here before. She flew in about three weeks ago with Hawaiian Airlines; her return flight is scheduled for tomorrow. However I cannot find any information about her stay on the island, no hotel bookings, no rental car, absolutely no credit card use since she came to Oahu."

"That's unusual," Chin murmured pensively, skimming again through the information on the screen.

"So we have absolutely no idea what she's done during the last three weeks or what her connections to McGarrett are?" Danny asked, running his hands over his hair in utter frustration. "How are we supposed to find out what she was talking about? She said something like 'I want him to suffer', right? I mean, let's presume she was talking about Steve – and given the fact that she had not only his keys and his phone but also his damned weapon and that Steve still hasn't shown up yet – I'd say the chance that she was indeed talking about our fearless leader is pretty high."

"Why don't we try to reconstruct what she said," Kono asked, already starting to type snippets of text into the computer. "I think I can remember most of her words… come on guys, help me fill in the missing blanks. Is there anything else you can think of?"

After five minutes of scribbling and changing the word order several times, Kono was pretty sure that they had managed to write down everything exactly as Claire Sacotte had said when she'd come into Five-0 headquarters not even half an hour ago.

Reading the text out aloud a few times, Kono's voice finally trailed off as she looked at her teammates, her dark eyes glistening with worry and concern.

"Okay," Danny puffed out, pensively nibbling on his lower lip. "I want him to live in darknesscrushed and suffocated by the darkness… the first thing that comes to my mind is that this sounds a lot like a description of someone who is trapped inside a narrow, dark room?"

"You're right," Chin agreed as he slowly nodded his head, his eyes glued to the words on the screen. "I just hope that we don't have to take the word 'suffocate' literally."

"And I absolutely don't like the implication of the last sentence," Danny added, fidgeting nervously with the cup of long gone cold coffee in front of him. "He will die slowly and painfully really doesn't sound like something we want Steve to experience."

"What about that sentence?" Kono suddenly asked, highlighting a few words on the text. "Claire said she suffered the last ten years. What's happened ten years ago?"

"Let's have another look in her file," Danny suggested, intensely staring at the screen while Kono activated Claire Sacotte's file.

"Ten years ago, then we're looking at some event in 2002…" she murmured, quickly skimming through the few dates until she finally gave an excited shout. "There it is, her son died ten years ago."

"And exactly ten years ago to the day, if I'm reading that date correctly," Chin threw in, nodding towards a special date on the screen.

"You're right, cuz," Kono said slowly, her eyes dark and wide. "I can't believe that this is coincidence. Do you think Claire's son is her connection to the boss?"

"Well, that's what we need to find out," Danny replied hoarsely. "Is there any information about the son? Everything might be important."

"Let me quickly call up his file," Kono said, impatiently drumming her thumb against the edge of the table while she waited for the new information to load. "Here it is… Roger Sacotte, born 1980 in Baltimore, he joined the Navy when he was 16, he… oh God!"

Danny's head jerked up when he heard Kono's surprised cry. "What? What is it?" he asked, his eyes hectically darting across the screen. "He was a SEAL?" he asked incredulously a short moment later, shifting his attention from the information to his two teammates. "I think he definitely might be the connection we are looking for."

"Is there any further information about how he died?" Chin asked quietly. "Can we find out if he possibly served together with Steve? Maybe they were on the same team?"

Sliding her fingers over the display, Kono narrowed her eyes as she bent further over the table. After a few more minutes of searching all available files she sadly shook her head. "I just got access to one other file, everything else is classified," she said, looking up when Williams' angry voice interrupted her explanations.

"Great!" Danny exclaimed in frustration, his hands drawing large circles in the air. "If I hear the word 'classified' one more time, I swear I'm gonna kill someone."

"Stay calm brah, okay?" Chin said, putting a steady hand on Danny's shoulder and squeezing until he felt the younger man relax a little bit under his touch. Turning toward his cousin, Kelly asked, "What do we know about Roger Sacotte's death?"

"The exact circumstances of his death are classi…" Kono interrupted herself and cleared her throat, throwing a sympathetic look at Danny before she returned her attention to the information in front of her. "They are not in the file; all it reveals is that Roger's death obviously was some kind of training accident." She looked up from the display, tentatively shrugging her shoulders as she added lowly, "Sorry, but that's all I have."

Gloomy silence filled the room when everyone was caught in their own train of thoughts, trying to process what they had learned about the dead woman and her possible connection to Steve. After a while, Danny heaved a deep sigh while he tiredly rubbed his hands over his face.

"Okay, now we know that Steve might have known Claire or rather her son," he said, summarizing what they had learned in the last few minutes. "But all that information doesn't help us at all to solve the mystery of Steve's disappearance. How on earth are we supposed to find out where McGarrett is?"


Steve's chest heaved rapidly with heavy panting and his heart hammered painfully fast against his ribcage but none of the measures his body was taking helped him to supply his organs with enough oxygen. The blood was rushing in his ears and his ragged breaths reverberated loudly inside his metal prison, the sound adding to the blinding, agonizing headache that was constantly torturing him.

He felt sick, ready to throw up at any time, and even if it was pitch-black inside the small box and he wasn't able to see a thing, Steve had the feeling that the walls around him moved and shifted, sometimes he wasn't sure anymore where was up and where was down.

Somewhere in the back of his mind McGarrett knew that he was experiencing the first few symptoms of carbon dioxide poisoning, but that knowledge didn't help him at all to feel better or even find a way out of this mess. And knowing what he would have to expect during the next few hours – starting with hallucinations, convulsions and unconsciousness right through to death from paralysis of the respiratory center – made it difficult to keep the upcoming panic at bay, which was already fuelled by the fact that he sometimes felt his heart stutter or do an extra beat.

Exhaustedly leaning his pounding head against the wall, Steve was way beyond caring about his uncomfortable position. Sweat was running down his face, the air inside the box was getting hotter and hotter with every passing minute, making his constant struggle for breath even more difficult. He didn't care anymore if the muscles in his legs cramped painfully or if his back hurt from the long stay inside the too small box, all he was bothering about was the task to draw in enough air and find a way out of his blasted prison.

Gathering all of his remaining strength McGarrett raised his trembling hands and let his fingers run over the smooth metal surfaces that surrounded him. Finding the small unevenness he was looking for, a rivet in the corner just above his head, he tried once more to open it with his bare hands. But as the many times before the small round rivet stayed where it was, not moving the tiniest bit, no matter what he did.

Steve had tried to open the rivet with literally everything he possessed; he had broken every single one of his fingernails up to the point where the tips of his fingers were nothing more than a bloody mess. He had even used the tiny metal pin from the release of his watchband but it had proved much too weak and had broken after the second attempt.

"Dammit," he growled desperately between two gasps, letting his hands tiredly drop down to his side, no longer caring about the pain that shot through his broken wrist. He slowly felt a leaden heaviness settling down onto his mind and body, robbing him of his last, frail amount of energy.

Steve wasn't usually the guy who'd give up easily, but in his current situation he plainly and simply had no other choice. He had tried every method he could think of to escape from his dark, narrow prison, but all he had achieved was to cause his already broken body more injuries and pain.

The darkness swirled around and inside him as he struggled for every painful breath. Sure, he would fight until the bitter end, drawing in the last bit of stuffy air into his lungs until his body finally couldn't take it anymore and ultimately betrayed him, but right now he just had no more resources to try another escape.

All he could do was waiting in the crushing darkness, hoping and praying for help to arrive before it was too late.

(tbc)