Ho'ike
by Sammie

All notes in first part.

Thank you to everybody who has read and who has taken the time to review! I apologize for not having the chance to respond individually.

THE SHOE STORE SCENE: ripped shamelessly from "Law and Order: Criminal Intent". :-D

BRUCE: Yes, Danny's going to be upset. And no, this story was not released to coincide with the rerun of "E Malama". After they reran it in July, I really had no idea they'd planned to run it again.

BILLIE: I'm glad people still like her. I didn't want her to be irritating - intelligent, but not irritating or un-childlike emotionally. She's not especially creative (no unicorns or monsters in her drawings; she simply draws what she sees), but her attention to detail comes from her two reporter parents. Benedict Cumberbatch once said in an interview that, after playing Sherlock Holmes, he finds himself more attentive to small details; I would imagine Travis and Olivia Holden, when they point things out to her, note details, which becomes something she just naturally does.

Just two chapters after this one.

"I got nothing," Danny exclaimed in frustration to Chin as he came in. "I played two different recordings. Billie was firm in that this wasn't the guy she heard."

"No reaction?" Chin asked, frowning in puzzlement.

"No reaction whatsoever." Just then the door opened again, and Danny looked up. "Well, well, if it isn't our posh Mr. and Mrs. Smith," Danny intoned as Steve and Kono returned. "You look like a Kennedy," he snarked at Steve, indicating the light linen-colored clothes. "Just without the diplomacy."

Steve gave him a look about the diplomacy crack, then switched topics. "This is actually pretty comfortable," he commented, glancing down at his linen clothes.

"I've half a mind to stay in this outfit all day," Kono commented on her own clothes brushing off her light silk sundress. She held up her left hand, "Good taste in rings, boss. How come you aren't married?"

"It ain't the ring, it's the guy offering it," Danny snarked.

McGarrett made his aneurysm face as Kono high-fived Danny on the way to her office. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere?" Steve retorted at his partner.

"I'm done," Danny replied, then returned back to the clothing topic. "Kono's got pretty good taste." He raised his voice so she could hear him in her office. "Perhaps you can get Commander Cargo Pants to start dressing like a normal human being."

"Yeah - how often does he even bother wearing a shirt?" Chin could be heard mumbling under his breath into the screen of the tabletop computer.

Danny chuckled and held up a hand, which Chin high-fived without even looking up.

"Wouldn't picking his clothes be Catherine's job?" came Kono's question.

"Thanks," Steve replied sarcastically.

"You let Kono meet Catherine? I haven't met Catherine," Danny groused. "Kono met Catherine before I did?"

"Focus. Case." Steve pointed at the tabletop computer.

"You're really not that scary without the cargo pants," Danny snarked. He did pull his phone out, however, and set it down. "I played two different recordings of Bruce Lonoehu's for Billie. She didn't recognize either. What about you?"

"We went to Noble House," Steve replied. "Talked to the clerk."

"He confirm it was Bruce?" Chin asked, looking up.

"Oh, yeah." Kono brought up the images from Steve's iPhone onto the screens hanging from the ceiling. "Bruce Hoffman, housing commissioner. Said the man comes in, likes Italian shoes - Gucci and Ermenegildo Zegna - and Italian silk. Gets his clothes tailored there."

"What about Lonoehu?" Chin frowned.

"Saw him in the store once, four years ago." Kono waved at Chin. "We do know Lonoehu wears Burberry - that's a British designer."

Chin gave a frustrated sigh, then ran his hand through his hair. "So why all the stuff from Lonoehu in Holden's possession?"

"Beats me," Kono replied. "A setup, perhaps? Lonoehu's lower down on the scam, so Hoffman's setting him up to take the fall?"

Behind them, Danny stared at the monitor, then turned heel and left.

"I know, I know, I'm back yet again." Danny gave a sheepish, apologetic smile when the hotel room door opened. "Sorry to disturb you."

"That's quite all right," Livy Holden replied in a genuinely welcoming but puzzled tone, opening it wider to let him in. "We're just finishing a meal. Something new?"

"Yeah. I've got another voice I'd like to run by Billie, if that's all right."

"Yeah, sure."

"Hey, kiddo," Danny greeted from the doorway, and the small child looked up with a big smile. "Whatcha working on, hm?" He looked down at the half-finished drawing, sitting to the side of her plate. "Did you go to the beach?" he asked, looking at the (badly drawn) seascape.

"Uh-huh. Off'ser Aukai and Off'ser Ualani go-ed wif us to see do'phins. And fishes."

"HPD Protective detail," Livy Holden murmured in explanation. "We were going a bit nuts in the hotel room so they took us out."

"And did you see a dolphin?"

She nodded, her eyes shining as she chewed on another bite of food.

"And did you see fish?"

She beamed. "I like playing wif' fish." A thought seemed to occur to her, and she frowned at her plate. "Don't wanna eat fish. 's bad."

The bewildered cop looked over at Livy Holden, who shrugged, just as confused as he was. "She's always eaten fish sticks before," she murmured. "Sudden change of heart."

Danny shook his head of the odd thought, then refocused on his job. "Billie, I'm going to need you to help me. We're going to play the game we played earlier, OK? I want you to listen to something and tell me if that was the bad man who scared you."

"OK."

Danny pulled out another box of Cheerios, opening a napkin and putting some on it and sliding it in front of Billie. He moved the picture and the crayons out of sight and quietly handed the lion to the child while moving the panda out of sight.

"I - the Cheerios?" her mother asked.

"She was eating Cheerios at the time of the scare. Memories can be linked to smell, so I'm trying to rejog that memory." Danny carefully picked up the CD player he'd brought and set it on the bed behind the desk and hit play.

"Nope," Billie intoned as she heard the first voice.

"OK, good." It had been Stan's voice. He paused it. "Now listen to the second one." He pressed play again, and Hoffman's voice started going.

He looked at the child, but he could only see the back of her head. She sat very still. "Billie?"

She sniffled.

He hit pause and quickly stepped over to the child, pulling out her chair from the table and turning it to face him. She was shaking now, clutching her lion toy. He crouched down in front of her and gently brushed the stray hairs from her face. "That was kepolo, wasn't it?" She nodded shakily, tears running down her face. "You know we won't let him hurt you or your mommie. Uncle Steve promised you, right?"

Billie nodded again. She hugged her lion.

He smiled gently. "Give Uncle Danno a hug."

She reached over obediently and wrapped her small arms around his neck as he hugged her, rubbing her back comfortingly. "We'll get him."

Chin looked at the man sitting in the chair, lit in the blue lighting of the interrogation room. The veteran cop held open a file, then silently took one of the faxed sheets and brought it up to Lonoehu's face, holding it there for several seconds. He followed, methodically, with the five other faxed sheets of numbers. He then held up the prescription bottle and then a photo of the shoe print in the soil. He then put the pictures into the folder and closed it.

"You lied to us," Kono said bluntly. "You told us you had no contact with Travis Holden."

"That's obstruction of justice, Mr. Lonoehu." Chin crossed his arms, tapping the folder against his side. "We get more, we tie you even more intimately to what happened to the murder of Travis Holden." He uncrossed his arms, leaning in towards the man. "Think of your wife and your children, of the bank. A scandal will bring them all down."

The man sighed, then looked down at his hands.

Kono held out her hand for the file, which her cousin handed to her. She pulled out one of the crime scene photos of Holden, blood on the floor, his sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling, a hole in his forehead. She put it in front of Lonoehu. "Look." When he didn't, she insisted, "Look!"

"His three-year-old daughter spent over twelve hours alone in a saferoom because her father couldn't come to get her," Chin said as Kono pulled the photo away. "Then some lapuwale comes along and threatens to kill her mother if she tells what she knows. We found her running away, crying as she went."

"We know the housing commissioner's involved, and we know you're involved." Kono leaned down slowly, her dark eyes intense, filled with fury. "You know something, you better tell."

After looking at them, Lonoehu looked down at his hands, shamefaced. "Travis was investigating the housing commissioner, Bruce Hoffman," he said quietly, "and my boss."

"Frank Wheeler?" Chin asked, his voice rising a notch as he took in this new information. He exchanged looks with his cousin.

Lonoehu nodded. "Wheeler was helping Hoffman."

"And you?" Kono asked. "What were you doing in this little party?"

Lonoehu pinched the bridge of his nose, then studied his hands for a moment before looking up. "I was helping Travis."

Steve opened the front door to his house and came in, tossing his bag onto his couch. His gun was out instantly as he noticed a man sitting there. He flicked on the light, then threw up his hands in exasperation. "Danny, what the h - "

"Want dinner?" Danny held up a bag. "When I called, Chin said you were on your way home to change."

"How'd you get in here without setting off the alarm?" This alarm system sucked.

"Yeah, about that," Danny commented. "Your birthdate? Seriously? That's your password for your security system?"

Steve rolled his eyes and shut and locked the front door. "So where'd you go when you ran out on us?" he asked as they made their way to the small table in his kitchen.

"To talk to Billie."

Steve started to ask a question, then saw Danny's quiet, wistful face, and said nothing. During dinner, they talked about everything and nothing, avoiding the case at hand.

It wasn't until they were done that Danny finally spoke, leaning back in his chair. "Grace's eyes were blue when she was a baby." He shook his head with a small smile. "She looked a little like Billie when she looked up at you." He thought about it, then waved as he finished with the explanation, "Her eyes changed color later."

"Had you wrapped around her little finger, didn't she." Steve looked amused.

"Oh, yeah." Danny chuckled. "And Matty, too. Man - he'd come up with excuses to spoil her. National Chocolate Milkshake Day, he gets her an ice cream maker. National Pancake Day, he gets her a waffle iron. Rachel kidded that he was giving her hints about her cooking."

Steve smiled, watching his friend as he reminisced. "Good times?"

"They were great." Danny gave a bitter chuckle. "Look at us now."

No wonder he kept wanting to go back to New Jersey. In the very least, the memories were better - Hawaii was just a reminder of the loss of his wife and the loss of his brother.

"I keep thinking about Holden, and how that could've been me." Danny breathed in and slowly let it out, even as he leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. "Billie's three, Steven. Holden's going to miss everything: kindergarten. Multiplication tables. Sports teams. Dances. Everything."

He snorted softly. "I don't know if I could do it," he said quietly. "Potentially miss Grace's life for the sake of doing something right."

"Isn't that what you're doing now, being a cop?" Steve pointed out mildly.

Danny smiled weakly. "I suppose." He stopped. "Still - I could've been Holden." There was a long silence. "Some would say Holden chose the job over his daughter." He said it without conviction.

"You really think that?" Steve asked quietly.

He snorted. "I find it hard to call a man a workaholic when he took off from work so he could be at home with his daughter when his wife went out of town. He left a lucrative job in Los Angeles to move to this pineapple-infested hellhole so his previous work wouldn't endanger his family." He snorted mirthlessly. "Ironic."

"I didn't say I believed he was a workaholic," Steve said mildly.

Danny shook his head. "He wanted to correct an injustice. He considered the truth more important than - than everything." He paused and said in a faraway tone, "I don't think I could do that." The Jerseyan seemed to become self-conscious after that moment of sharing, and he straightened and tossed down a disc. "Bruce Hoffman." He pushed it over to Steve. "Billie identified him as the man at her house and the man who threatend her."

Steve picked up the disc, his brow furrowing as he looked at Danny. "How'd you get a tape of Hoffman's voice?"

"Do you remember, uh, the witness in the Brenner case?"

"Yeah. Julie Masters."

"The car hijacking?"

"Yeah." He hadn't wanted to talk about it then, so Steve hadn't pushed.

"Stan - the trouble Stan was in? He taped a conversation he had had with the housing comissioner, who was basically forcing him to pay bribes for building permits."

"That's why Hoffman had Rachel and Grace carjacked," Steve murmured in realization. "Trying to send a message to Stan."

"Stan, like the idiot he is," Danny groused, "just didn't get it. Didn't think it would escalate."

"Why hasn't Hoffman come after Stan since?" Steve asked suspiciously. "Danny!"

"You don't need to know. Just - here are the tapes." Danny pushed a series of tapes over towards Steve. He sat forward, leaning on his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers and resting his forehead against them. He closed his eyes briefly, then looked at Steve. "Hoffman will have no problem killing Billie Holden, if he thinks she can finger him for the crime."

Steve leaned forward, his mind churning. "If Holden was investigating - " he stopped. "Lukela - that early morning meeting. You said they'd asked Holden if he knew anything about a housing development that was supposed to go up a while back."

"Yeah."

"That developer must have been having problems with Hoffman. Stan's another one." Steve looked at Danny. "There has to be more people out there having problems with Hoffman. Holden must have been looking at all of them - their money transactions."

"He's a reporter. He can't get private information like that," Danny pointed out.

Steve shook his head. "When I left, Chin and Kono were working Lonoehu. He's talking. They're going to take him to gather evidence and meet us back at headquarters."

"Wait." Danny shook his head to clear it, then asked, "Lonoehu was HELPING Holden?"

"As the CFO of Hawaiian National Bank, he can access accounts - including the one Hoffman had at that bank - and interpret other financial data. They checked up on some of what he said, and they think he's being truthful about having been Holden's informant."

"The faxed sheets," Danny said in confirmation. Steve nodded. Danny pressed his lips into a thin line. "Lonoehu'll be in a big trouble if this gets out."

"No kidding." Steve took a deep breath, then rubbed his arm as he looked at the tapes. "Bruce Hoffman, huh."

"Yeah." Danny breathed in, then out. He sat forward, then clapped his hands on his knees. "I better be going." As he went to toss his things in the garbage, he stopped, looking at a cheerfully colored picture on the fridge. He blinked, then turned slowly to Steve, who was oblivious, working on getting his table cleaned up. "Refrigerator art?" Danny asked, holding it up.

"She insisted," Steve muttered.

"Well, that's her, and her lion, and her panda, and I'm assuming that's Kono, and that's you. Who's the brunette woman?" Danny asked, then paused as realization set in. "It's Catherine? Wait, how did Billie meet Catherine? Am I the only one who hasn't met your Ramboette?"

Steve looked exasperated, then explained sheepishly, "I forgot Catherine was coming that night."

"What night?"

"The night you called me!" Steve exclaimed. "You know, 'how do we know that Billie's lying? Perhaps there's really a guy trying to kill her'?" he imitated Danny.

Danny blinked, then looked at him incredulously. "Your solution was to bring a female coworker and a traumatized three-year-old to your house the same day your gal pal was showing up?" he asked with a furrowed brow.

Steve rolled his eyes, then shifted on his feet before repeating sheepishly, "I forgot she was coming."

"You forgot she was coming," Danny replied incredulously, his eyebrows raised in disbelief. "How do women even put up with you?" he muttered.

"Women like me just fine," Steve retorted.

"I just don't get how women like you. I just don't," Danny mumbled as he gathered up his things.

"Nobody needs YOU to get it," Steve groused.

"Completely inexplicable, the things that go on in women's minds," Danny continued, right over Steve's comment as he went out to his car. "Completely unfathomable. Baffling."

"Don't worry, there's no way you could be Holden," Steve hollered after him. "He was a lot taller and better-looking."

"Do you want a fist to the face?"

The office was fairly dark. The only office with lights on was his own, and the windows only let in the dark sky.

"Lonoehu here?" Steve asked as he blew into the darkened office.

"Right over there." Chin also held up his iPhone. "I asked him for a recording of Wheeler's voice." He played a short clip, which had Wheeler greeting a charity audience and thanking them for coming.

"He's got a deep voice," Steve agreed.

"I noticed it when we first went to speak to Lonoehu. Wheeler was there. He had kind of a - rumbling type voice."

"Different from Lonoehu's but still deep," Steve confirmed.

Chin nodded as he followed Steve to his office, where Kono was already perched on the side of Steve's desk, Lonoehu sitting in a chair in front of it.

"Mr. Lonoehu, Steve McGarrett," Chin introduced. "Boss, Bruce Lonoehu, CFO of Hawaiian National Bank."

"Sir." Lonoehu greeted him, then remained standing until the others sat.

Steve eyed the pile of disks. "Evidence Mr. Lonoehu was gathering for Holden," Kono said in response to his unspoken question.

Steve leaned back in his desk chair, watching the man in front of him intently. "First question, Mr. Lonoehu. Why didn't you give us this when we first questioned you?" he asked without preamble.

He closed his eyes briefly and bowed his head a little. "I was hoping," he began, then stopped. He then started again. "I was hoping that Travis had not been the target for what we were working on."

"Hope," Steve repeated incredulously. "And how's that working out for you?"

The banker heaved a sigh, then looked at Steve with an expression of stoicism which still hinted at his feelings of guilt. "I'm here now."

"Tell us how you met Travis Holden."

"At a charity event, over two years ago, for Shriners Hospital for Children."

"Punahou Street," Steve replied. "A hospital. Was this one of Livy Holden's charities?"

Lonoehu nodded. "Yes. Travis was there with her. We were put at the same table and talked. We later golfed together in a charity event." He paused, thinking back. "He's a terrible golfer."

Chin chuckled softly.

"When did you first start helping him?"

"His article on the local drug wars. He'd - I don't know how he got it, but he managed to find all kinds of financial data on how the money was being laundered. He needed explanations. That's where I came in."

"Did you supply him information?"

"Nothing that big. Most of them wouldn't be moving huge amounts of money in Hawaiian National Bank anyhow. Too conspicuous. We screen our major clients much more closely." He shrugged. "I kept an eye on their local accounts, but that was it."

"And this recent series on the Mexican drug wars? What was your role?"

"Purely explanatory. The Mexican drug dealers obviously didn't have HNB accounts."

"What about this housing thing?"

He took a deep breath. "Travis approached me about five months ago. Said he'd heard some rumors about bribery in terms of land zoning or deeds or something to that effect."

"Rumors?" Steve asked. Danny had said that some of the cops approached Holden for help with a proposed housing development.

"I assumed he got them from his HPD contacts," Lonoehu replied. "I don't know."

"What kind of things was he mentioning?"

"Assignment of government contracts. The long time it took for permits for some contractors, not for others. He seemed to have done a great deal of work already on it. There was once or twice I - " he shook his head. "The way the contracts had been assigned, and to whom, made no logical sense. Why some applications for land permits took longer than others - again, no rhyme or reason to the delays."

"Unless the commissioner had been taking a bribe."

"Yes. The one contractor was simply better, more efficient in that type of building. I just don't get why he didn't get the contract. Some applications were much clearer, better written, had better proposals - took forever to get passed."

"What happened with Holden?" Chin cut in.

"Travis gave me a few names. We looked at their accounts. Then he mentioned the housing comissioner, who also has an account at HNB. One thing led to another, and I found out my boss had been helping Hoffman."

"Helping how?"

"There were a lot of dummy accounts," Lonoehu said quietly. "They were opened at late hours at night. We have somebody here in the main offices around the clock, but that's only one person or two people, and different people on different days. We're not a big bank."

"The people working nights didn't open the accounts," Kono confirmed.

"Yeah, they didn't open them." Lonoehu sighed. "There was only one person who could have opened all those accounts on all those different nights." As the team exchanged looks with each other, the banker sighed. "That's when I began to suspect my boss."

"Frank Wheeler, CEO," Chin identified the man, giving to Steve a folder with that information.

"There was always money coming in, shifting around. And while the money going from account to account could have been transferred by the late shift, Frank was the only one who always was there in the late hours. He also had a regular deposit in his own bank account every month - besides his paycheck."

"What happened when you approached Holden?"

"He had suspected this already. He figured that in this day and age, for bribery on that level, Hoffman would have needed help to move money around. He had dug a little - apparently Wheeler and Hoffman were very close." Lonoehu got quiet. "In February, Travis and I decided to stop meeting in person."

"What happened in February?"

"I don't know. Holden - he picked me up one night. We ended up driving around Oahu for an hour. He seemed paranoid to me, but perhaps he wasn't, given...all this." Lonoehu waved.

"Did something happen?"

"He said a contractor - something about the contractor's wife and a child getting carjacked. I remember very specifically that he said the car and the purse were returned intact. I thought that was great. He said it was bad - if it had been a simple carjacking, they would have sold the car off in pieces and taken the woman's purse."

Steve frowned, his brow furrowing. Chin and Kono exchanged looks.

"They hadn't taken the stuff, he said, so the carjacking was clearly meant for another purpose. He said the woman's husband was a business contractor. Builder. He figured Hoffman was trying to send the guy some kind of message."

"Did he mention a name?" Kono pressed.

"No." Lonoehu shook his head. "But the whole thing rattled him. It really did. He just kept saying, 'She's only eight. She's only eight.'"

"About the child who was carjacked," Chin confirmed.

"I'm guessing."

"What happened after that?" Steve asked, leaning forward, folding his hands in front of him on the desk.

"He handed me a prepaid cell phone; he'd already programmed the phone number of his prepaid cell phone into it. He also had my number programmed into his phone. No communication over the Internet."

"How DID you communicate?" Steve held up some of the faxed sheets. "We found these hidden in generic faxes about the Hawaiian economy and other things about your bank."

Lonoehu smiled then. "Those were urgent - information he needed right away. I faxed them over myself, then called him the minute I was outside the office to make sure he'd gotten them." He shrugged. "Most people don't always pay attention to the 'page 1 of 4' marks at the top, as long as the entire document reads continuously, so I sent over documents and sandwiched the pages he needed in between the big documents. I sent over three like that."

"Any other communication methods?"

"My son goes to UH here in Manoa. His friend works in campus mail."

"You sent things to Holden by way of Holden's intern, Jeremy Kahaloa," Chin cut in.

"Yes. Not that either of them knew exactly what. I'd put encrypted discs in sleeves, and then put them in a larger envelope with Travis' name on it. That folder went into an even larger envelope with Kahaloa's name and box number. He'd open it, see the envelope with his boss's name, take it to him."

"They never opened the envelopes or questioned this?"

"Jeremy and my son are good boys. They obey their elders," Lonoehu replied.

"You used campus mail?" Kono asked incredulously.

"They were the only ones who wouldn't question weird packages," Lonoehu said quietly.

"How many of these businessmen - housing contractors, whatever - did Holden know?" Kono asked.

"A lot. I know some of the same people, and I'm sure I know several of the people he most likely spoke to, but he never mentioned names to me unless he wanted some specific."

"The question is how many are going to be willing to vouch for all this in court," Steve muttered, glancing at Chin.

"They won't testify if they don't think we can bring Hoffman down," Chin replied. "They'll try to stay on his good side if they think there's any chance Hoffman'll come out on top."

There was a long silence, and then Lonoehu asked quietly, "How is Billie?"

"Night terrors," Kono replied. "Hoffman threatened to kill her mother if she said anything she knew about her father's murder."

"She was there when her father died?" Lonoehu looked horrified.

"Her father hid her. The shooters never found her. But she heard everything and, while she didn't witness the murder directly, she saw the people coming in. The killer then found her at HPD the next day and tried to scare her into silence."

"But she talked to you," Lonoehu confirmed.

Steve nodded.

The man gave a soft chuckle and shook his head. "Travis is - was - always like that. His wife, too."

"Like what?"

"Like holding a live wire, when they got on the trail of something." Lonoehu smiled sadly. "Travis - he adored his daughter. I think that carjacking he told me about worried him - because of the child in the car. But he just - "

" - he wouldn't give it up," Steve finished.

"He wouldn't give up," Lonoehu repeated in agreement. He gave a small, bittersweet laugh. "That was most likely the only thing he held as more important than anything else - the truth." He shook his head. "I told him once that truth changes - for example, that we all knew, say, FDR was a great president and then we knew about his affairs, so we now we know he wasn't exactly moral in his private life. 'Truth changes,' I said."

"He didn't agree?" Kono said, a trace smile on her lips.

"'Bruce, the amount of truth you know has changed,' he said. 'The truth itself never did.' Just because we don't know something, he said, doesn't make it not true. If a child's being abused, he said, that abuse is a truth, whether or not somebody knows or even believes it." Lononehu shook his head.

"Starry-eyed optimist?" Chin suggested with a small smile.

"I thought that at first," the man acknowledged, remembering with a small nod and smile. "Came to realize he wasn't optimistic in the slightest," Lonoehu corrected. "He was quite a cynic, actually. 'We'll always have cops and comedians', he said once. 'There will also be bad people and dumb ones.'"

He shook his head. "He was a crusading type, but he was one of those - he never put a cause before the truth. He made a mistake once about a guy - in his drug wars series. He was sure the guy was dealing. Went after him like a hunting dog. When it was over, Travis found he'd been wrong, and had accidentally ruined some of the man's job opportunities. For the next six months he served as a job reference, even went to one of these guy's interviews, to tell the interviewer he'd made a mistake on the article, to clear the guy's name. Didn't even like the man."

Lonoehu shrugged. "That's why people liked Travis. Self-deprecating, never afraid to admit he was wrong. And when you needed him - for something legit - he was there."

Steve pursed his lips. "And how many of these people are willing to step up and testify to that in court?"

"Enough, I hope," Lonoehu replied. "Travis deserves that much." He reached into his pocket and handed Steve a business card. "You can count me in."

"About done, sir?" The elderly lady smiled up at her boss.

Stan Edwards grinned. "Closed another deal. Now I can go home to my family and enjoy my long weekend off."

"Well-deserved, sir." The secretary smiled, then leaned forward. "There's somebody waiting for you," she whispered, her eyes darting towards his office. "He insisted."

Stan looked at his watch. "It's almost 9 pm."

"I know. I apologize." The woman looked piqued. "He was very, very insistent. Says he knows you personally."

Stan looked towards his office, a shadow there. "OK, thanks. You go on ahead. Enjoy your evening." He trotted over, then opened the door to his office. "Hello, how can I help you?" he started, offering his best businessman smile.

The man turned around, his arms crossed, a trace smile on his face. "Hello, Stan," Danny Williams greeted him.

TBC