He's surrounded by strangers. Can feel them watching him, even though they're shrouded in darkness. They don't speak.

They watch.

This scene is familiar to him. Too familiar.

But it's different now.

Two faces are free from shadow. Closer to him.

A blond man. A pale woman.

I know them.

No. Strangers. Don't know

I know them

NO.

The blond man smirks at him, runs a hand over his hair. The woman grins and winks, grazes her lip with her teeth.

An electrifying pain courses through him, but it's too late.

He knows. He knows he knows them.

He knows them.

"Hey Fong. Did you get anything off that phone Lukela's men brought down?"

Charlie turned to smile at Chin Ho. "It's been a while! I'm surprised to see you in person. Though I'm surprised to see you and not one of your men."

Chin shrugged and smiled tightly. "I just spoke with the chief. Kono and I are running this show now, given our prior run-ins with Sang Min, and she's a little busy right now."

"Oh." Fong's face fell slightly. "It's been a long time since I've seen her, too. How is she?"

"She's…" The tech seemed to understand Chin's inability to answer, and he sighed. "Anyhow, about that phone."

"Right!" Charlie turned back to his computer screen. "It didn't contain much of interest. Nothing was stored in the phone itself, and the SIM card is practically brand new. Only one number was dialed, and it was to a burn phone."

"Of course it was."

"But luckily, that one phone call gives us a rough location. According to the map, Sang Min made a call from somewhere at these abandoned warehouses." He grabbed a print-out of a set of warehouses and shrugged. "That's about it. Tracking down that burner hasn't worked yet, but I'll let you know if it does. I also have some prints running."

"Alright. Mahalo," Chin said. He turned to leave, but a beeping noise stopped him in his tracks. "Is that more for me?"

"Yeah. Well, kind of." Fong pulled up a search on one of his screens and sighed. "There were at least five distinct fingerprints on that phone that didn't match Sang Min. I've been running them since last night, but the search just came back empty."

"Maybe the phone was stolen?"

"Or borrowed. Or it could just be secondhand. There's really no way to tell at this point, especially with the replaced SIM card." He shrugged. "Like I said, I'll let you know if I get something."

"And I'll get some people and get on those warehouses."

"Hey." Chin Ho looked up to meet Charlie's eyes. They were full of emotion, emotion that Chin knew all too well. "Tell Kono that I miss her, yeah?"

"Will do, brah. Aloha."

He made his way out to his car, pausing to let some of the sun's rays soak into his face. Malia had given him strict orders to soak up more Vitamin D after yesterday's standoff, telling him that it would help with the stress. It certainly warmed his skin, but his insides were still cold with fear, sadness, and just a tinge of bitterness.

When he finally sat in his car, he leaned his head back in contemplation. The fact that Fong hadn't seen Kono was news to him, especially since Kono had claimed to have weekly lunch dates with the man. It wasn't a surprising leap in logic to assume that she was spending the time holding Adam's unconscious hand, but it was a discouraging one. He had rather hoped Kono was starting to recover from her mourning period.

After yesterday, however, he realized that she wasn't even close to recovering. Wasn't even trying to recover.

Could he really blame her?

He wasn't ready when Catherine answered the door instead of Kono. "Aloha?"

"Hi, Chin!" Catherine smiled brightly. "Danny and I just got here. He and Kono are talking with Grace in the back, but she said to expect you."

"Oh." He stepped inside but immediately turned back to stare at Catherine. "But why are you here?"

Her smile faded. "I saw what happened yesterday, and this morning I tracked Danny down to see how he and Grace were doing and to confront him about your collective lack of effort to contact me."

"Look, about-"

"I know." She shrugged. "Danny already explained it to me. In fact, that's exactly why I'm here now. I want to help."

"Catherine, if you've spoken to Danny then you probably already know about the governor's gag order," he said impatiently. "If Kono or I are caught investigating anything to do with Wo Fat unless he gets thrown into the midst of one of our cases, he's going to take us down for treason. After all, we did go into North Korea on an illegal mission, and we used military resources to boot. He could have prosecuted us already, though the upgrade to treason is a bit much."

"Don't give me that crap," she replied. He narrowed his eyes, but she merely snorted. "You're allowed to dig into Wo Fat as long as you keep it pertinent to your current case, and that's exactly why you went to your boss and begged yourself and Kono off regular duty and onto the Sang Min case."

He froze. How had this woman who he had met only a handful of times seen through his motives? Even Kono had seemed like she bought his scenario of being forced onto the case, and she knew him better than almost anyone.

Malia had talked him into it. On accident, at least; his wife was quite content with him on mostly low-level cases that didn't put him in the path of a bullet on an hourly basis.

But before they had left for work that morning, she had pulled him into her arms and grinned at him, telling him that she was surprised he hadn't run to his boss the moment Sang Min had dropped dead. "The dangerous side of the man I fell in love with, he wouldn't have breathed first," she had chuckled before kissing him and walking to her car.

Her words had stirred up so many emotions in Chin Ho that he hadn't been able to move for a full minute.

She was right. The old Chin Ho Kelly would have been all action, as soon as he had the opportunity.

The old Chin Ho Kelly. The real Chin Ho Kelly.

Until that moment, Chin hadn't realized that he had changed. He wasn't sure when the change had happened. When the governor disbanded the team, when he got married, when Kono had nearly died…but he wasn't the same man.

That man knew when to stand down. He still knew that.

But he had also known when to take a stand. And Chin had forgotten how that worked.

"Sang Min almost killed Kono." Catherine's eyes widened. "She died several times that night, actually. I would have given anything to put a bullet through his head…but someone did that for me."

"When?" she whispered. "She seems okay now."

"A little over a year ago." He narrowed his eyes when Catherine went limp and staggered backwards to lean against Kono's door. "What?"

"That's why…that's why she was so strange," she said faintly. "She was the only one I could find…I didn't know…"

"What are you talking about?"

"I all but attacked her for information on Steve. It had to have been after the shooting, since it was just before I was due to check in for my latest deployment." Catherine wiped her eyes. "She just told me, point blank, that Wo Fat had him. I…I don't really remember what I said. I know that it was terrible, but I'm mostly blank on how I got from her doorstep to Pearl."

He put a hand on her shoulder, and she looked at him with dread-filled eyes. He recognized the expression from the mirror, after any of his too-often fights with his cousin. "It's alright. Besides, you're kind of right about my motives."

"What?"

His expression hardened. "Sang Min was working for someone. And he was killed by someone else. I'd bet anything on this green Earth that Wo Fat was at least one of those parties." Her eyes widened again. "And where Wo Fat is…"

"Information on Steve is."

A/N: And that's it for the postapalooza! I'll see you all in a week with Danny, and the story should stop being so much about developing backstory and get back in the action from then on.

Aloha, my friends!