Hidden In Plain Sight Chapter 7 "Thinking & Naming The Kitten"
A/N: Wow, I love the reviews, the favorites and follows – I am very grateful, and feel humbled because writers are an insecure lot, and we always assume nobody will like what we write, or at least I do. Hope springs ever eternal, so reviews (good or bad) let us know how we are doing.
Kitten finally has a name! I got some suggestions, and all were sooooo good! One name came up a couple times, and since it is one I had personally considered, I went with it. To all who made suggestions, you have my heartfelt thanks!
CBS still owns H50, and I still do not.
Hidden In Plain Sight Chapter 7 "Thinking & Naming The Kitten"
An hour had passed since Steve McGarrett had learned what had happened, and why Danny had not come to visit him, and why he would not be coming to visit him. He was glad to have his team working with him, but his heart was heavy. It had taken him a long time to begin to come to grips with the effects of the undercover operation gone wrong, which had led to Danny becoming a living donor of half his liver to his partner, Steve, because without it, Steve would have died. Six months had passed, or almost.
It was one thing to deal with near death in the line of duty. Several times during a case he had faced thugs who had tried to kill him. But this was the first time he and Danny had been drugged, and Danny taken away, while he was put in Danny's car with a guy physically of Danny's body type, and had the car pushed or whatevered over a cliff. Somehow, Steve had been thrown from the car before it nosedived over, while the Danny Body Type poor soul had perished from impact and fire, or possibly before. Max had hinted to Chin that the body had sustained incongruous injuries, especially to the head. Chin had suggested to Steve's doctor that he contact Max Bergman, the Medical Examiner, about the chemicals he was testing for in Steve's blood and urine. It might help to have two sets of tests run, especially since the same chemicals might show differently in a dead body versus a live patient. Cornett, thoughtful, had taken his suggestion.
Steve was resting in his hospital bed, as per Dr. Cornett's orders, and was alone for the moment. Chin, Kono and Abby had taken this interval to rush home to shower and change, grab a bite to eat, and would be back if he knew them well within another thirty minutes, bringing his breakfast. He hadn't asked them to, but he knew they would. And they would likely bring something tasty for the police guard and the hospital security officer he now had on his door, because Chin had insisted, and Kono and Abby had backed him up, and Cornett had joined in and pulled rank because he was his doctor; four determined wills against one. If a person or persons had tried to kill him once, what was to stop them from trying again? Even Steve could not successfully argue with that.
Once his team returned, it would be a very busy day, even if Steve had to spend it under observation in the hospital. He glanced at his right arm, held in a sling over the plaster cast. His arm hurt, and frankly a lot of other things hurt too, but he was not even allowed acetaminophen, because Cornett did not have the lab results back to say what drugs had been used to keep him unconscious while he was supposed to die behind the wheel of Danny's Camaro. There was no way to know what might cause an adverse reaction, so he would have to tough it out.
He didn't mind. It was the least of his worries. He needed to know if Danny was unharmed, and he needed to know it yesterday. He needed to know who had taken him, and why. He needed him found NOW. Alive. Unharmed. Steve knew he himself had a long list of enemies who might want him dead, and Danny had 87 successfully solved cases of bad guys in Newark, perps behind bars even before he came to Hawaii six and a half years earlier, so he had his own private list. Since then, they had both made more enemies following the founding of the Five-0 Task Force.
So which one had tried to kill Steve, and taken Danny? And why take Danny? It implied death delayed, preceded by very bad things. Torture. Maiming. These were all things that kept Steve from really resting. What was his friend going through?
Five-0 needed to find him, fast.
Steve was resting his left hand over his abdomen, over his liver. It was an unconscious effort to be close to his partner. "Where are you, Danno?" he asked the air. "C'mon, give me a clue. You know I won't rest until I find you. None of us will. So take some comfort in that. And if you can give us clues, do."
The strangest part was the other body in the car, the one with Danny-like proportions, face destroyed even without the fire. The watch found on that body might or might not belong to that person, but sooner or later they would get a match from DNA if no other method worked … assuming the guy's DNA was in the system.
It would be so easy to prove that the body was not Danny's. So why go to all the trouble of finding someone with his proportions? Why not kill Steve and have Danny vanish? That is basically what had happened, except that the killing Steve part had been botched.
Why toss in an extra body?
Unless it was a warning of what would happen to Danny later on.
No. Steve could not quite reject that thought, though. He had to deal with real possibilities. Danny's eventual death, sooner or later, was an un-ignorable possibility. If the kidnappers had enough time to get to that.
Steve would do everything in his power, use all his resources, to see that Danny was found quickly. Unharmed, alive. If found harmed, he hoped to find him alive enough to survive and recover fully.
Anything else was unthinkable.
"So hold on, Danny. We're going to find you just as soon as we can figure this out."
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H50 H50 H50 H50
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Danny did not even have his eyes closed. He lay there, staring at the blanket, seeing it and the box and the kitten. His heart was too heavy to lift.
The kitten waited a few minutes, and then squirmed until she was sitting on the blanket, staring at Danny. Danny did not look at her. But he felt her pat him, repeatedly, on the hand. Danny did not respond. But when he felt the little fuzzy thing wriggle and burrow her head under his hand and then sit up, he stopped his hand from falling off her head.
"I am not in the mood for play." He curled into a tighter ball, and tried to ignore everything but the sadness and despondency that had gripped him.
The cat suddenly did many things, in quick succession, such that he had to pay attention to her. She attacked the chain, and grabbed it with her paws and bit it and kicked at it, while the chain made a muted rattle sound as the links klinked together. Then she looked at him. She had his attention, but he was looking mostly puzzled. So she trotted to him, jumped onto him and shoved her head into the pocket with the note in it, and used her teeth to pull it out, then ran across the room with it, clumsily dragging it.
"Hey! Give that back, you thief!" Danny sprang up and came to her, but she was already attacking the note, biting it, holding it in her front claws while she kicked it. The paper sounded like paper being kicked by a baby kitten intent on doing it great harm.
"Stop that!" Danny was annoyed, but the kitten kept attacking the note until finally Danny took it away from her and looked at the damage she had done to it with her tiny arsenal of claws and teeth. "You don't like this, do you?"
"Growl/Meow" followed by the kitten once more coming to push her face into Danny's, starting up a determined loud purr.
"I don't think your cute purr is going to get me out of this box. Besides, my best friend is dead, and I'm dead, and we're going to die in here. There's no way out."
Immediately Danny was startled when the cat grabbed the note and attacked it again, then ran over to the chain and attacked it again, then came back to him, shoved against his face and purred loudly.
"You don't like the note, or the chain?"
"Meow!"
"I don't like them either." Danny's voice was sad.
The kitten looked him in the eyes, and purred very loudly, considering she was a small cat and only had so much to work with in volume. She batted at the note, which by now was showing rumples and scratch marks.
"You never met Steve. I don't know if you would have liked him, but he was my best friend. And I got him killed."
Kitten growled, and grabbed the note and shook it until a tiny piece of it was bitten off and she dropped the note.
"So you don't want me to say Steve is dead?"
Purrrrr and face rub.
"So you, a little baby cat who never met Steve, are trying to forbid me from saying Steve is dead? I cannot believe I am trying to figure out what you are trying to say."
Kitten purred while sitting down on the crumpled note.
"I guess what this note says doesn't have to be true. You have a point there. I don't know that Steve is dead."
Loud purr. Danny carefully extricated the note, finally having to pick up the kitten and hold it to accomplish it. He read again the note, which now had teeth holes and a few thin scratches marring it, along with the hole. "Okay, I am a pessimistic idiot."
LOUD purr.
"Just because this note says Steve is dead does not make it true. I have no way of knowing, so I might as well … go with my heart, which frankly does not feel like he is dead. I am not dead yet, either. And saying there is no escape does not make it true."
LOUDEST purr yet, head rub, and kitten then running over to attack the chain before looking expectantly at Danny.
Danny picked up the chain and inspected it. "I have to get this off."
Happy kitten.
"So you expect me to think positive, and get the chain off, and find a way out of the box?"
"Meow!"
"The 'ayes' have it, then. Okay, let me think."
Kitten ran to Danny, who had smoothed and folded the note and pocketed it again. She reached up and patted his mouth. Then she went to her water bowl and drank. Then she ran back to Danny and licked his face, once.
"You still have water."
Smack of paw on Danny's nose.
"Ow. You want ME to get a drink."
Meow/purr/roll exposing tummy of ultimate cuteness, complete with paw curls.
"You think I am an idiot, don't you?" Danny asked wryly. "Okay, I will get some water." He had not realized how thirsty he was. While he was carefully filling up his bottle, he was feeling a lot better. He knew now that he was going to go down fighting to survive, rather than give in to despondency. There might not be a good way out of the box – and he was getting some ideas – but any way was acceptable. He had to plan carefully, and keep close track of his supplies, and stretch them just as long as he could.
Before he took that first drink since being put in the box, he smiled at the kitten, who had curled her mostly white self onto the blanket. "You must be my little angel."
Purrrrr. Roll on back with paw curls.
"Oh, so you like being called my little angel!" He sat down next to her while he slowly drank sips of water. "Then you have a name: Angel."