Chapter 10

Time seemed to be running out for Steve, who had asked Charlie not to come to Hawaii while Joe was there. The dragon caretaker hadn't been thrilled with this request, but Steve's arguments had convinced him.

Indeed, in the evening his innocence had been proven, Steve had stayed at the 5-0 offices to have a beer with the team. Joe had come to find him alone after they'd discussed Wo Fat.

"Who's Charlie?" he'd asked.

"Who?"

"The owner of that phone you've tried to reach at least ten times tonight."

Steve had remained silent and waited for Joe to say more, such as why he had that phone in his hand. His mentor had looked at him for a long moment before handing him the device.

"So?" Joe insisted.

"A friend passing by," Steve replied, trying to hide the tension that had overtaken him.

"He knows how to protect his data," the older man had simply said, handing back the device.

Steve had watched his mentor leave the premises and hurried off to join Charlie, who had no recollection of running into Joe. Concerned, the soldier had asked him not to come to Hawaii if Joe was around. The wizard had finally agreed, on condition that the two of them spent the rest of his week's vacation together in an out-of-the-way place. Steve had agreed, taken a medical leave of absence and let Charlie, at last, speed up his recovery before the two of them headed off to a magical island in Hawaii. They'd spent four days in the bungalow they'd rented, making love, eating and swimming with magical sea creatures.

The soldier had returned from those four days as relaxed and happy as he'd rarely been, but he hadn't seen Charlie for several months. He was discovering more and more about Wo Fat, wondering who Shelburne was, and had more and more reason to distrust Joe. He missed his man, so he threw himself heart and soul into his job and his personal investigations to forget his annoyances. The only good news had been Catherine's departure on a mission far from Hawaii and Kono's reintegration into the team.

He'd believed it when Jenna told him she'd found her fiancé, so he'd hopped on a plane with her and sent Charlie a message just before turning off his phone.

"I have something to do, it may take me a few days, I'll call you as soon as I get back to Hawaii. Te iubesc."

He spent the first part of the flight studying the terrain, preparing their itinerary and intervention-the exchange was planned in the forest on the outskirts of a small mountain village-and then thought about Charlie. Jenna tried to find out a little more about his private life, but he didn't say anything - he didn't know her well enough yet to confide in her - and she even mentioned the name of her boyfriend, which made him tick, but she didn't reply to his colleague. She didn't insist, and they finished their journey in silence.

Steve realized something was wrong as soon as the car carrying Jenna's fiancé arrived, and knew that the hooded man was not her fiancé, nor did he have the build. He repeatedly prevented the young woman from jumping into the trap before spotting a man ready to open fire on them. Steve machine-gunned the Koreans without hesitation, causing a firefight to break out. He took cover, hoping Jenna had done the same.

When calm returned and the click of a gun sounded behind Steve, a vicious doubt crept into his mind and the soldier turned around with a slow , incomprehension and the pain of having been betrayed flooded him as Jenna apologized and prevented him from anticipating the coming of a man to his left who threw a punch. Steve was thrown to the ground, still conscious but stunned, and recognized what appeared to be his nemesis: Wo Fat.

The man kicked Steve in the ribs, bending him in two, before his henchmen hauled him to his feet to tie him up and search him.

Hands tied behind his back, a rope around his neck, shirt open, he was forced to follow these armed men through the jungle to a bunker. He couldn't help glancing at Jenna behind him in search of an explanation, each time garnering a look of shame from the young woman and a swipe of the machine-gun butt from the guard following him. He also tried to find out more from Wo Fat, but the man in the black shirt and black suit pants kept his mouth shut.

He still had no answer when they arrived at a bunker hidden by thick jungle and pushed Steve through first. The soldier resisted as much as he could in the corridors, but the floor was slippery, he was still tied up and there were two of them pushing him. They locked him in a room where a third man was waiting. They asked the American to remain motionless while they removed his bonds, but it was not in his nature not to defend himself, and he attacked as soon as they had cut his bonds, aware that surrendering would mean his death. The three men responded with electric truncheons that knocked him to the ground, though he tried to resist, eventually falling into unconsciousness. A rain of blows brought him to his senses, Steve was handcuffed, his arms above his head, suspended from the ceiling so that his feet, lightened of their shoes by his jailers, barely touched the ground. His torturers beat him in the face and stomach, without question, until one of them entered with Jenna and chained her to one of the cell walls. The two were left alone, she on the floor, he suspended and bleeding. His need to understand became imperative and overrode his anger.

"Why?"

"I had no choice," she replied, sorry.

"We took you in, made you one of us. I trusted you. I followed you without question."

"Wo Fat told me Josh was alive."

"And you believed him?"

"He showed me his ring and some photos, but more than anything, I had to believe it. I would have done anything to save him," she cried.

"So you decided to trade him for me," Steve concluded bitterly.

She looked into his eyes for a few seconds, before replying.

"Yes."

Steve nodded, but it wasn't enough for him to understand.

"So, where is he?" he asked in a broken voice.

"You've got to understand. This reporter contacted me about Josh's operation. One of her sources said Josh was alive. And I thought, if anyone could survive... He's a lot like you, a fighter, you know? One night, we were supposed to have dinner in Washington, at the Capitol Grill. It was raining, he was late and his car wouldn't start. So he jumped on his motorcycle and had this horrible accident. He was hit by a car and got pins in his knee. I yelled at him when I got to the hospital, he was always going two hundred miles an hour for no reason. Then he pulled out a ring and said 'it wasn't for nothing."

"The journalist who spoke to you, was her name Bethany Morris?"

"How do you know that?"

"Well, she's dead. Her neck was broken. Did you know?"

"No," Jenna cried.

"Wo Fat was his source. He sent Morris on you to get your hopes up that Josh was still alive."

"And my hopes killed her."

A tense silence settled, the military man could feel Jenna blaming herself, he understood her reasons, but couldn't get pass the betrayal, from where he was because she hadn't trusted him.

"Would you have done differently if it had been Charlie instead of Josh?"

The whisper hurt Steve in the heart like a blade would have. Until then, he'd been sure she didn't know about him, she'd never met him and he'd never told her.

"He knows about him," she continued. "He knows you've been together for a long time."

A fear he'd never known before, not even when his father was taken hostage, crept into Steve. He felt as if his body were freezing from the inside as his heart burned, but he forbade himself from reacting.

"What he doesn't know is where to find him, but if he can, he'll use him against you."

Steve was terrified, but was even more so when he heard the next sentence.

"It wasn't me who told him about Charlie, I promise you, I don't want him to take Josh's place."

Steve believed her; he was afraid for his lover, afraid that someone else close to him would betray him as soon as his back was turned, but he couldn't worry about that at the moment.