Chapter 11 "Danny's Alive"
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A/N: I think I have the best readers and reviewers on the whole site! Thank you so much! I never lack for inspiration to keep going, even when my headcold has turned into one of those "it's never going away" ones. I know it will. And my spirits are up because you all are the best. Every follow and favorite makes me feel astonished and happy!
Sue2556 reminded me (thank you soooooo much!) to let people know how long Danny has been missing. Eeeps, sorry, I should have been doing that, as chapters do make it seem longer than it has actually been.
Danny went missing on the evening of Tuesday, 20 December; Steve was found in the wee hours of Wednesday, 21 December, and now it is about 10 hours later, which means Danny has actually only been missing about 16 hours when this chapter begins. I will put reminders in the content of the chapters as often as it fits, and in these notes every chapter. It really does seem like it has been longer!
Usual disclaimer: CBS owns Hawaii Five-0.
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Chapter 11 "Danny's Alive"
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Tuesday, 21 December 2016, 11:30 am
Steve stared at his ringing phone, making what Danny would definitely have called "aneurysm face" while trying to figure out what to tell Grace. Kono had no advice, making her own version of a face on the verge of uncertainty and panic.
"You have to answer her call!" Kono blurted, when the phone had rung 4 times.
"I know! I just … oh God." Steve rubbed his left hand over his darkening beard stubble before he hit talk, and his voice changed into his 'I'm talking to Grace' voice, only much more nervous. "Hi, Gracie. Are you at school today?"
"Hi, Uncle Steve. I'm hiding out in the girl's locker room bathroom, so I could call you. I need to talk to you, if I'm not interrupting something, that is." She sounded worried.
Grace Williams was a newly minted fifteen, attending The Academy of the Sacred Heart, the Catholic private school she had been attending since she was nine. Her mom, Rachel, and step-father, not terribly affectionately called Step-Stan, had transferred her from a similar Catholic school in Newark, New Jersey to this one in Honolulu after their move. Danny had scrambled as fast as he could to follow with his own move to Honolulu, to be near his daughter.
Grace had been this little child when Steve had first met her, and now she was fast growing into a young lady, able to look her Dad in the eyes if she wore heels he approved of for a fifteen year old. When she wore heels she liked, she did look Danny in the eyes. She had long, straight hair of a light brown, brown eyes, but the shape of her face was pure Danny's contribution, except in a feminine way. Grace was lovely, and every bit her father's daughter, even if she only got to see him every other weekend, and any other time Rachel and Step-Stan needed her picked up or taken to school because they had something that prevented them from doing that. Danny was always happy to do anything that let him spend extra time with Grace, and his little 4-year-old son, Charlie.
Grace had been calling Steve McGarrett "Uncle Steve" since her father had become friends with the partner he had at first loathed. Steve thought of her as something between a daughter and a niece.
"No, no, I'm not busy, Gracie." He grimaced and sent Kono a panicked look when he asked, "What can I do for my favorite cheerleader?"
"It's about my daddy," she said quickly. "I know something is wrong. Don't treat me like a kid and tell me everything is okay, because I know it's not. I feel it, Uncle Steve. Daddy didn't call me last night to say goodnight, and he didn't pick me up for school this morning like he was supposed to. Mom said she left a message on his phone last night, when she was at the airport and saw that the flight was delayed two hours. And then Danno didn't come this morning, so I had to ask Step-Stan, because Mom was having morning sickness and the housekeeper had already left for the grocery store." She hesitated, but continued, "Step-Stan was angry and said Daddy is unreliable, which isn't true at all! But I know something is wrong. I called him three times, and his phone must be broken again. This is the first chance I got to call you. Please tell me what's wrong?"
Steve heard the plea in her voice, and completely chickened out on telling her anything yet. They had the day to search for any leads, and there was even the possibility Danny would be found before Grace had to know her intuition was right. "I'm so sorry, Gracie! Danno got called out on a case last night, and he's off island, and he did break his cell phone, uh, he, uh, ran over it with his car, thinks he dropped it and it was under the wheel when he pulled out. Uh. He's replacing his phone soon as he gets back into town. I know you will be the first person he calls!"
"Uncle Steve, are you sure? Your voice sounds funny."
"Of course it does, Gracie - I'm at the hospital where I just got a cast on my right arm, almost exactly like yours! I fell and landed all wrong, and I was going to come and compare casts with you just as soon as I got the chance! I want you to sign it."
Kono was giving him one of her rare disappointed looks, but then shrugged and quietly called her cousin Chin.
The diversion was successful. "Uncle Steve, you broke your arm, too?"
"I did! And guess who my doctor is? The dad of the nurse who took care of you when you broke yours!"
"How cool! He did Daddy's liver transplant too! You and Nurse Becca need to meet, Uncle Steve." Her voice grew conspiratorial. "I think Dad likes her, and I know she likes him. A woman can tell. Promise to help me think of a way to get those two to start dating? -Ooops, gotta go. The bell rang for class! Tell Dad to call me after school! Bye! Love you!"
And just like that, Steve was staring at an ended call while Kono was finishing up a call to Chin and Abby. "She knows something is up. I could not tell her, Kono. I froze. All I said was 'cluck, cluck, cluck.' Dammit, I hate to lie to her like that."
"I can't judge you, Boss. I don't think I would have been able to tell her, either. We don't know much yet, and she was at school. But if we don't find Danny today, or get some solid leads, she is going to be massively upset with you." Kono added, "Chin is swinging by your house, so they'll be here with your clothes by the time the papers are signed. I hope he remembers to bring you underwear and shoes. Hurry up and get your shower. Don't forget to put the plastic sleeve over your cast. Need help with that?"
"Yes, but first I gotta call Chin! He won't know which boots."
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As soon as Danny hissed and swore, Angel sat up on the blanket, eyes wide, ears flatter than normal. She watched him closely. "Sorry, kitten. It is impolite to swear in front of females. I apologize, but this is not good. I've got to fix it so it won't infect, and I have zero bandages or … wait. Maybe I do." He had pulled up his right pant leg, folding it out of the way once he could see the gouged cut on his knee, which was jagged and deep enough that it definitely needed stitches. It was bleeding freely, so he let it, while he avoided stepping on the blanket on his way to the stash of things left in the box. He left a trail of little red drops.
Danny singled out the roll of paper towels and the toilet paper, and one of the little paper plates, and brought them over to the edge of the blanket, where he sat down so the blood did not get on the garish pineapple print blanket. Angel came over to sit beside him, sniffing but not touching his supplies.
He made a pad out of a half square of paper towel, and held it to his leg while he used a very small amount of water to wash the cut, hissing again as it stung fiercely. The pad caught the water and blood as it ran down his leg. Then he folded the pad to expose a cleaner side and put that directly over the cut, holding it in place by leaning the side of his other knee against it. It stung and throbbed, but there was nothing Danny could do about that.
He had to use the material from the right pantleg to make the ties that would hold the bandage in place, so he ripped off his pant leg, just above the blood stained knee. The legs were straight, and he tore from the top of the cut in the fabric, over to the inseam, ripped through that, and continued across underneath to the outer seam, which he ripped through with more effort, as it was double stitched. Then he tore across to meet that, which left him with a tube of rolled up pantleg. As a starting point to tearing the tube free from his leg and the chain, he used the cut the metal had made. He ripped it all the way down to the hem, and after that the fabric was free of his leg and the chain that would otherwise have trapped it. He thought briefly about how stupid he would look with one long pant leg, and one in knee shorts, but who was there to see it anyway? Angel might find it amusing.
It took Danny a bit of desperate tearing the long way, but eventually he had six thin strips to wrap around his knee, that would serve to hold a pad in place. He used another half square of paper towel, which would barely cover the cut, and then made a covering for that with folds of toilet paper. He laid these aside and made a bandage cover from the paper plate, folding it into a square that was reinforced by all the round parts folded inwards. He worked on the plate until it had a softness to it, or the stiffness would end up being a problem, not an aid.
All that was left to do after that was to wait for the cut to stop bleeding freely. The half square of folded paper towel was catching things, and looking like another should be used, but Danny was in Extreme Conservation Mode, and so that square had to do. The fabric left over from the torn pant leg was folded and laid aside. It would be kept with the paper towels, the food and water in what he was starting to think of as the pantry.
Angel carefully sniffed his knee without touching it. Danny petted her and she hopped into his lap, doing her flop of bliss along with her happy purr, especially when he talked to her. "Your human is not the most resourceful one out there, actually," he admitted wryly. "That would be Steve, who you have yet to meet. See, he's a superSEAL, which means that HE would have made an antiseptic paste out of catfood and pineapple juice, used God only knows what to create a surgical needle and sutures for this wound."
Danny sighed. "He would probably also have considered you as a potential source of food, which I promise you I will not ever do. One does not eat one's guardian Angel, right? Even if you are just a baby kitten unfortunate enough to be stuck in this place with me, it still seems very rude to even think of one's cell-mate kitten as food."
Angel sneezed, cutely, and out of childhood habit Danny said, "Bless you." Angel sat up from her flop of bliss and carefully crawled up his chest until she could pat his face gently, and gave his chin one of her love bites, the teeth barely squeezing enough to more than pinch. Her purr told him she was telling him she loved him. He gave her chin a rub, which she purred double-loud for, and Danny knew he had found her favorite way to be petted, especially when she flopped down in ultimate bliss and began curling and opening her white front paws so tightly, first one and then another, that she felt she could pick up a Q-tip in each. And then drop them and pick them up again.
If anyone had told Danny yesterday, or any previous time in his life, that he would fall head over heels for a kitten he had to share a box prison with, he would have told them they had lost it entirely and suggested psychiatric help. But Angel had purred her way into his heart, and he was no longer thinking of a life that did not have the kitten in it. "If we -cross that out- WHEN we get out of this place, you are staying with me."
The bleeding had been steadily slowing, and when it became a mere drip now and then, he covered it with the paper towel pad, then the toilet paper pad, and then the softened paper plate. He tied four of the thin fabric strips together and wrapped that around his knee, adding a fifth to get the length he needed to keep the pad in place. It was crude, but it would keep the wound from getting dirt in it. Soon, blood had seeped through the paper plate, barely, but it did not spread, so Danny hoped it would do the trick. It hurt, but not in a worrisome way. Since he would have to move around on it, he hoped it didn't start to hurt worse.
Danny was worried about infection, there was no denying that. So he would have a way to quantify that the gouge was getting better or worse, he palpated the area around it and right over it, drawing a diagram in his notebook and writing down the level of pain. He knew what infection felt like, so he would be able to tell if it was getting worse.
Danny turned around to put the notebook further behind him on the blanket, and oddly enough that was the moment he realized this was not a normal shipping container. He patted Angel and settled her in the middle of the blue pineapple print, and studied the walls, which he also noticed were not as sweaty. Apparently the rain had stopped. The floor was drying, too. The metal floor.
Shipping containers had wood or plywood floors.
They also had 'corrugated' steel walls, while his were flat. It was as if a second layer of metal was fixed onto the corrugated outer walls and floor. It made Danny wonder what this box had originally intended to hold, since he could not even imagine anyone going to the trouble of reinforcing a box just to hold him. That would be insane. The logical explanation was that this box had been custom built to hold something unusually heavy.
He got up and limped to as close as he could get to the door, after he put the rest of the cloth pant leg with the rest of the stuff in the pantry, and dropped the gory folded paper towel down the latrine hole, lifting the mesh lid and letting the thing go after he rolled it up. When the mesh was lifted, there was the possibility that Angel could fall through the hole, so he pulled her catbox over on top of the mesh, so she would not be able to suffer that fate.
Then he studied the door, which he could not reach with his chained ankle. Apparently there was a reason for that: the only wall that was normal was the end that was the door. Once he was free of the bolt keeping the chain from allowing him to reach that door, he would have to cut his escape hole from that wall, because it was the only one not plated with an extra layer of metal.
Danny wondered if th who had locked him in this box had double-plated it, or merely found a shipping container already customized this way. It was probably already customized. It really was the only answer that made sense.
Sighing, and limping, he returned to the corner where the bolt still held his ankle chain. He had to switch sides as he worked, so he could keep his right leg slightly extended to avoid putting pressure on the wound, which would encourage it to stay open rather than close and heal. He had to choose a different link, so in essence he was starting over again on cutting through the link.
He went at it with determination, using the notebook as a fan. He could also see that the glow stick was dimming, which meant it was probably close to noon, and he only had two hours of light before he would have to try to sleep. During those last two hours, the light would grow ever more dim, until the chemical reaction stopped altogether and he was plunged into pitch darkness that would last until dusk turned on the Christmas lights.
He hoped. He desperately hoped those Christmas lights would come on at dusk, because he had no idea how he was going to get through the dark hours without a complete claustrophobic panic. His palms were already sweating, and it was not from the rain-dampened air. The floor and walls were now almost dry, and he could feel that warmer air was entering through the air pipe.
Panic was a real concern. "God, help me not to lose it when it gets dark. I'm stuck in this box, and –" He paused as Angel crawled into his lap, not minding the jostling she got as he scraped away at the metal link. "And thank you for the kitten named Angel," he finished his prayer, adding another fervent 'thank you' at the end, as he hugged and petted Angel for a minute before resuming his anxious work on the link, while his knee continued to very slowly bleed and hurt. Only 18 hours in the box, but it felt already like it had become an eternity.
He worked steadily, and while he did, he thought of Five-0, and especially Steve. Surely they knew something was seriously wrong by now, since Steve could have told them they were drugged.
He had to take a break to let the metal cool, so he closed his eyes and pictured Steve's face. "Steve, you better be okay. The note has to be wrong. Even Angel thinks it is wrong, and you are still alive. Angel is the kitten stuck in this box with me. She is my guardian angel, but she is a real kitten, and I am going to keep her. Listen, Steve, this box is seriously weird, meaning reinforced with flat metal on the walls, and floor, and my right ankle is chained to the corner, and I am working to get that off. I hurt my knee, so … could you and the rest of Five-0 please find me soon? I would really really really appreciate it if we could be home for Christmas, because Grace especially will be very very worried. I wish I could give you a clue who did this, but I don't have any, Steve. So, find me, okay? I have no idea where I am. I smell salt air, but that describes pretty much all of the State of Hawaii. And just so you know, I am keeping positive, and trying my best to get out of this box. Consider this a race, okay? I win if I get out before you find me, and you win if you find me before I get out. Either way works for me. Okay, buddy? Thanks. I hope the note is wrong and you do not think I am dead. I'm not dead. Steve, I am not dead, but that will change if I do not get out of this box. I am sending you mental snapshots of the inside of the box, to see if that helps."
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Steve had been sprung from Tripler, and he was riding in the passenger seat of Chin Ho Kelly's 2-door, 1965 red Ford Mustang, while Chin drove.
Kono and Abby were coming in Kono's also red car.
They were quiet, because they had gotten word that Max had finished the autopsy on the body found in Danny's charred car. The original plan had been to head first to Danny's house, to see if it jogged Steve's memory. They had a full afternoon ahead of them, trying to figure out where Danny was.
Steve was leaning back with his eyes closed, grabbing a little rest before they arrived at the Honolulu Medical Examiner Office, a couple miles north of Queen's Hospital, on Iwilei Road. They were all used to the place, having been in it too many times to count, but Steve still quietly disliked the place.
Danny not so quietly disliked it.
"Where are you, Danny?" Steve asked the air, eyes closed, trying to focus on anything that might add up to a clue to who had taken him. And why. It was early in the investigation, but Steve still felt it had been forever. "Sixteen hours without a single rant, Danny. I can't take it." And he meant it, too.
In his mind, he saw strange pictures he could not identify, but he knew they were from Danny. Danny was trying to get in touch with him, using that partner sense they each had. He could hear Danny's voice, in his head. "I wish I could give you a clue who did this, but I don't have any, Steve. So, find me, okay? I have no idea where I am. I smell salt air."
That described the whole of Hawaii, except the forests and places on the big island that were far enough inland that the salt freshness did not penetrate.
"And just so you know, I am keeping positive, and trying my best to get out of this box. Consider this a race, okay? I win if I get out before you find me, and you win if you find me before I get out. Either way works for me. Okay, buddy? Thanks. I hope the note is wrong and you do not think I am dead. I'm not dead. Steve, I am not dead, but that will change if I do not get out of this box. I am sending you mental snapshots of the inside of the box, to see if that helps."
Steve opened his eyes and turned to Chin. "Danny's alive. I can feel it. He's alive, and trying to get free. He doesn't know where he is. He's in a …a box. I can see it, but not well. He's alive, Chin. But he doesn't have a long time."
Chin understood partner connections. "He's alive? Is he hurt? Can you sense anything there?"
Steve closed his eyes, and felt his knee throbbing. "I think he is, but it could be me and my injuries. I don't know. But he's alive! And he needs our help to stay that way."
Chin nodded and focused on driving. "We will find him, Steve. You tell Danny not to worry. We will find him alive and well."
At least he hoped so.