CHAPTER ELEVEN

AT ELEVEN-FOURTEEN THE PHONE GOT TURNED OFF

FIVE-0 HEADQUARTERS - DOWNTOWN HONOLULU - O'AHU

Lou, Jerry, and Junior watched Steve storm back into HQ. "Where is it?" He asked the three men that were gathered around the technical table.

"Right here." Jerry pointed at a small cardboard box that stood on top of the technical table.

Steve peered inside. There was a smartphone in it, parceled in bubble wrap. It was the same make and model as the cell phone Danny used and any other team member, but so did a large part of the world. "Are we sure this belongs to Danny?"

With a gloved hand, Lou pressed the home button on the screen. "I would say yes." It lighted up and showed a backdrop picture of Grace and Charlie.

"How did it get here?" Steve questioned.

"Security brought it up," Jerry answered. "It was delivered downstairs twenty minutes ago. And before you ask who delivered it. Standard courier company, no track and trace code on the package. No way of knowing who sent it."

"Junior, get Eric down here and have him dust this thing for fingerprints," Steve demanded. "Maybe we can I.D the person who sent it."

"On it," Junior nodded and strode away.

"Speaking of Eric, did CSU find anything on the Camaro? DNA? Prints?"

Lou shook his head. "The mechanic's prints were all over the damn thing. Everything else was wiped clean."

Tani rushed out of her office. "Guys, check this out," she said, joining the team around the technical table and started typing on the screen. "I ran Danny's phone records. Obviously, there are a bunch of missed calls from McGarrett and me, but it turns out that the last incoming call was from an unknown number. The call connected for less than a minute on Saturday morning, at eleven-ten, and right after that, at eleven-fourteen, the phone got turned off."

"Call that number and run a trace," Steve instructed, hopeful.

"Unfortunately, that's where the good news ends. It comes back to a burner phone," Tani shared and added. "It's out of service."

"Keep a tab on it in case it gets turned back on," Steve stated and faced Lou. "Anything in his financials?"

"No hits. Nothing out of the ordinary. The last live transaction was made on Thursday night at the hospital pharmacy. The other transaction's from yesterday, automatic monthly invoice."

Jerry started typing on the screen. "I did find something else, though."

Steve looked aside at Jerry. "What is it?"

"There's a traffic camera on the intersection of Meheula Parkway and Lanikuhana Avenue that has footage of the Camaro," Jerry showed them the footage on the screens standing in front of them. "And this right here," Jerry paused the footage and made a screenshot. "Is not Detective Williams behind the wheel."

Steve studied the screenshot. It showed a young guy, surfers haircut, and about the age of a twenty-year-old driving the Camaro. "The kid fits the description we got from the mechanic," he concluded. "How'd you find this?"

"Well, at first, it didn't seem suspicious. But I found an open ticket for speeding and running a red light."

Steve shrugged his shoulders. "Why didn't it seem suspicious?"

"Let's be honest, you guys get speeding tickets all the time," Jerry noted. "You wanna know how many red lights you ignored over the past month?" he asked. "Twenty-nine, to be exact."

Lou's eyes widened. "Twenty-nine? Man, that's reckless."

"We can judge my driving later, okay?" Steve commented, dead serious. There was no time to be joking around. "Jerry, run that photo through facial recognition. See if we can get something."

While Jerry executed the task, Tani suggested. "We should check other traffic footage. Track his route back to see where he's coming from," Tani pointed at the screen showing the screenshot of the kid driving the Camaro. "Looking at the timestamp, it's safe to assume he's on his way to the body shop."

"Yeah, I already did that," Jerry mentioned. "Ran out of camera coverage two blocks before this. No way of knowing which direction he came from."

Steve leaned with his hands on the technical table. "All right, what's the latest on the scrub of our cases?"

Lou responded. "I'm into it, but there's a lot of meat on the bone. Lots of cases to go through."

Jerry signaled at the facial recognition software. It was done flicking through the database. "Looks like we have a hit," he pulled up the information and swiped it along with the picture of the kid onto the screen in front of them. "Kyle Kahele. Minor incidents with HPD, priors for larceny, and a few drug offenses, and according to his record, he's twenty-one years old."

Steve observed, then asked. "Do we have an address on this kid?"

Jerry typed fast and said. "That would be 1462 Kolopua Street."

"Does he live there alone?"

"He does not," Jerry confirmed. "He lives there with his parents."

"Anything that connects them with Danny?" Lou wondered.

"As far as I can tell, no connections, but I'll dig into it," Jerry offered and added. "However, there's a hit from TSA. According to them, the parents took a flight to Los Angeles three days ago. Haven't returned yet."

"So it's just the kid, then?" Steve theorized.

"Probably."

It was all Steve needed. "All right, Tani, you're with me."

1462 KOLOPUA ST. - MOANALUA - O'AHU

Standing on the porch, Steve pounded on the front door. "Kyle Kahele! Five-0! Open up."

Together with Tani, he waited, but nobody answered the door. It should've been answered, as Steve was sure someone was at home. There was physical evidence of that as there was light and distinctive shouting coming from inside the house. Steve breathed in the crisp night air and pulled his gun out of his holster. He jacked a round into the chamber and clicked the safety off. Tani did the same. She was right there on Steve's shoulder, standing ready with her TTI Glock 19. Steve nodded and cannoned his foot at the front door.

The door burst open, and Tani slid past Steve and went inside. Steve followed, aiming his SIG-Sauer P226 Navy. Tani jumped left into a room, and Steve went right to check out another room. It turned out to be the kitchen. The room was clear, and Steve went back to the hallway. Tani was there waiting, staring ahead at the entry of the living room in front of them. She had the Glock in a fixed two-handed grip, arms straight out. Steve stepped forward, and Tani tapped him on the shoulder. They were good to go.

Together they entered the living. They turned left and spotted the kid sitting on the couch. It was faced the other way, so Steve and Tani approached him from behind. The kid was riding the couch, headphones on, playing a video game that boosted on the flatscreen hanging on the wall in front of him. There was no doubt, this was the kid they were looking for. He matched the description. He looked about twenty-one. His hair was shoulder length. He was wearing a baggy white t-shirt and a pair of faded baggy jeans.

Steve pointed his gun at the kid. "Hey, hands up."

Nothing happened. Kyle didn't turn around. Instead, he stayed focused on the game.

Tani shared a look with Steve. "Are we being ignored?"

"Looks like it," Steve said and holstered his handgun and focused back on the boy. "Yo, Kyle? We do not have a warrant, but we're gonna search the house anyway. All right?"

Kyle punched his left fist in the air. "Yes! Whoo, hell yes!"

Tani holstered her own weapon too. "I did not expect such a solid answer."

"Let's go tear this place down," Steve ordered.

They searched the house all within a few minutes. From top to bottom. From left to right. Every corner, every inch. Pulled open every drawer and checked every cabinet. They searched swiftly but thoroughly. They came up clean except for an illegal amount of opioids. Steve went back to the living and gave Tani a signal that she could go ahead.

Tani killed the power. The entire house went pitch black. "Whoops, my bad." She shouted.

There was a three-second wait before the power switch flipped back on, and lights flooded the house again. Kyle had jumped off the couch and was now facing Steve.

Kyle pulled his headphones off. "Wow, dude?" the boy said. He sounded mellow. Not high as a kite. Just cruising gently a couple of feet off the ground. An experienced user probably knew how much was too much and how little was too little. His thought processes were slow and right there in his face. First: am I busted? Then: no way. He relaxed and dropped the headphones on the couch. "What are you doing in my house?"

"Seriously?" Tani said, entering the living. "You literarily gave us your permission to search the house."

Kyle stared dumbfound at Tani. "I did?"

"You sure did," Steve walked around the couch, now standing in front of the tv. "You see this?" he tapped onto his badge. "Five-0," Steve pointed at the couch. "Now sit back down, or you coming with us."

"Oh man," Kyle whined and dropped back onto the couch. "I knew you guys would trace that phone back to me."

Steve eyed Tani. Then looked back at Kyle. "You send us that phone?"

"I should've kept my mouth shut, no?"

"It's too late for that, Kyle," Steve stated. "Where'd you find that phone?"

Kyle crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You don't? Then why did you send it to us?"

"All right, maybe I did send it to you."

"Listen to me, kid, I really don't have the time to play dumb, okay? That phone belongs to someone very important to me. My partner. A sergeant detective, who's missing, so if I were you, I'd start talking."

"Missing? I swear I don't have anything to do with that." Kyle pleaded.

"Than what did you do?" Tani pressured. "Where did you find that phone? Was it inside that car you stole? A black Camaro?"

The boy stayed quiet. They really didn't have the time for that. Steve raised his voice. "It's not a difficult question, Kyle. A simple yes or no will suffice."

Kyle didn't answer. Then he lapsed into a fit of helpless giggles. "Okay, yes, it was inside the glove compartment," he might be a little higher than Steve had thought. "Would you even believe that? A car. A phone and a gun. All that in just one score. Pretty dope, huh."

Steve frowned. "What gun?"

"This one right here." The kid pulled out a SIG Sauer from the back of his pants. He straightened his arm, pointing Danny's back-up gun right at Steve.

"Hey!" Steve was twice as fast and leveled his own weapon back at Kyle. "Put the gun down."

"Relax," Kyle lowered down the gun and tossed the weapon onto the coffee table in front of him. "I wasn't going to shoot you. I'm not that dumb, okay."

"That's a discussion for another time," Steve mocked, putting his own gun away. Then he quickly snatched the gun off the table and tucked it in the back of his waistband. "Now tell me, why'd you send us that phone?"

"Because someone told me to."

"Try being a little more specific than that," Steve snapped. He was getting impatient. "Tell us the full story."

"Whatever," Kyle breathed out. "I was driving the Camaro. The thing goes from zero to sixty within five seconds. Did you know that? Total beast. Anyway, I was driving, and that's when I heard the phone ring. Wasn't my own phone, so I pulled open the glove box, and that's where I found the phone."

"We know you answered it," Tani said. "Who was on the other side of that call?"

"A man, I think, but how the hell should I know?" Kyle shrugged. "The voice was all robot weird, like what they do in movies and stuff when they want to hide their identity."

Agitated, Steve sighed and placed his hands on his hips. They really had to pull every little piece of information out of this kid, and patience was not Steve's strong suit. "And what did the voice say?"

"That I had to turn off the phone, put it in a box, and have the package delivered at the i'olani Palace," Kyle paused. Steve didn't respond, and for the first time, Kyle went on without being asked a question. "I did turn off the phone, but I had a hangover, dude. I forgot the address and then remembered it a couple of hours ago. I swear that's it. You have to believe me."

It pained Steve to say it, but the kid was telling the truth. "All right, I believe you," Steve admitted. "Where'd you find the car?"

By the look on Kyle's face, he was thinking hard. Then he shook his head. "I don't know, near some sports fields, I guess."

"What fields?" Steve questioned.

"Really, what's with all the questions, dude?" Kyle asked in return while he stood up from the couch and reached for some pills lying on the coffee table.

"Hey Einstein, sit your ass down," Steve pushed Kyle by his shoulder back onto the couch. "We're not done, you understand? Not until you tell me what fields? Or where you found that car?"

Kyle waved Steve's hand off his shoulder. "Fine, yeah, I think they're called the Nakamura fields."

Tani interfered. "What were you doing all the way over there?"

"I guess I was at a party the night before?" Kyle said doubtful, and suddenly his face slackened, and then he smiled. "Oh yeah, that's right, I crashed on their couch. Planned to take the bus back home when I spotted that Camaro, sports edition and all. I mean, it was right there in the parking. It was so shiny, you know. I just had to take a closer look. So I did, and that's when I saw the keys were still in the ignition."

"The car was open?"

"Yes, it was right in front of me, unlocked, begging me to take it for a ride," Kyle said, and he seemed the most lucid he'd been. "Hey, if the car was unlocked, that means I didn't steal anything. Basically, just borrowed it."

Steve hauled Kyle off the couch by his arm. "Tell that to your lawyer. It's game over, kid. You're coming with us."

Kyle turned his head to the tv screen. "What? No!" big and bold letters were blinking on the screen. GAME OVER. "You guys killed my last life?"

Tani inhaled deeply. "He was talking about real life, not the video game, you moron."

NAKAMURA FIELD - MILILANI TOWN - O'AHU

Steve drove fast. He wasn't sure what to find at the fields, but it felt essential to check out. So after the arrest of Kyle Kahele, Steve and Tani took the kid with them and drove straight to the Nakamura Field located at the residential neighborhood Mililani Town. Arriving, Steve stopped at the side of the street and killed the sirens and light bars. Steve glanced at Kyle's reflection in the rearview mirror before he turned in his seat. The boy was seated slumped in the back.

Steve snapped his fingers to get Kyle's attention. "Yo, you with me?" Kyle looked sluggish and nodded. "Good, now show me exactly where you found that Camaro."

Apparently the drive over had been long enough for the kid to sober up that even with the nighttime gracing the sky starry black, Kyle managed to point them to Danny's last exact location. Or at least where the Camaro had been. Emerging from the road and entering the parking, Steve parked his silver Silverado into the middle of three vacant spaces on the left row. He let the engine run, and the headlights switched on. He made himself perfectly clear that Kyle needed to stay in the car. The boy behaved and stayed put as Tani and Steve climbed out of the Silverado.

Steve opened the back, climbed into the open cargo, fumbled around the toolbox, and came out with a pair of flashlights. He climbed back out, locked everything up, and slapped a flashlight into Tani's palm, the way an OR nurse feeds tools to a surgeon. They clicked their flashlights on one after the other, and two beams powered into the night and showed an almost empty parking lot. Steve looked around. The parking wasn't big, especially not in contrast to the sports fields. Steve counted the slots. Eighteen in total. Definitely not that big.

"Tani, go take a look around," Steve instructed.

"On it," Tani said and walked off while Steve strolled over to the parking spot Kyle had pointed.

Steve shed his light ahead, and with a pure solid beam that cut right through the darkness, he scanned the slot. There was nothing there to see. Aside from the cracks in the black top cause by sun heat there was nothing else to see. No tire tracks. No oil leaks. No signs at all of the Camaro being there. Steve felt a flutter of panic. They were not getting any closer to finding Danny. And the longer it took for them to find clues, the more unsettled Steve became. He could feel a scratch at the back of his brain. It was nagging at him. Telling him something was awfully wrong.

"Steve," Tani said, and Steve looked over his shoulder. He shed his light on Tani. She stood not more than fifteen steps away. Tani's face creased with alarm as her own beam of light shed down to the blacktop, near her own feet. "I've got blood."

NAKAMURA FIELD - MILILANI TOWN - O'AHU

The blood could literally belong to anyone. It wasn't even that close to where the Camaro had been parked, but Steve wanted to leave no stone unturned in the search for his best friend. So Steve phoned it in, and the call turned the parking into an active crime scene. In no time, the parking was cordoned off with crime-scene tape, barricades, police cars, and even a few police officers standing guard. CSU members were processing the scene. Eric was one of them. Steve had tried and stop the boy from entering the scene, but Eric was good at his job, and right now, Steve wanted the best of the best searching for Danny.

However, Steve knew that without following the strict set of procedural guidelines, it was almost certain they wouldn't find Danny based on the blood drops. The evidence had been out in the open for days. Nobody had guarded the blood drops against damage, or contamination, or loss. Luckily it hadn't rained the past few days, or the evidence would've been washed away, but time wasn't on their side either. Nobody had maintained control of the scene or documented everything that had occurred. Without following those procedures, CSU lost its best chance of getting the evidence needed to identify and convict anyone.

With that knowledge, Steve walked over to his only Five-0 coworker on scene. "Tani, I want HPD to keep canvassing the block. Have Jerry find some cameras. I don't care how, but scrap together enough evidence this time," he mandated. "We need a lead."

Steve realized he probably wasn't the nicest person to be around right now, and the way Tani responded confirmed that. She didn't reply at all. She simply nodded, pulled her phone out of her back jeans pocket, and took off in the direction of the HPD officers. Steve placed both of his hands on his hips and let his head down. He had never minded being the leader of the Task Force or being in charge of a team. He even had been ambitious about it ever since he joined the Navy. Yet running a team never worked without the second one in charge. Someone that would back him up regardless of what any other member would say or do. Someone that he could spar and level with. Someone that could bring out the best version of himself. And without someone like that, a team don't function properly or at its very best. That, someone, had been Danny for the past eight years, and despite the perfectly qualified and capable members of the Five-0 Task Force, not one of them could replace Danny. They were stuck, and Steve knew that they would've cracked this case if Danny had been here.

"Commander McGarrett?"

Hearing his leading rank drew Steve's focus back to Earth. "What?" He snapped and turned to face a CSU investigator.

"Sir, it's too dark. For a full search it's probably best to wait till morning."

Wait till morning. The words repeated themselves inside Steve's head. The words made his blood hum in his veins as anger took over. It's a given known that anger's the bodyguard of sadness. Something Steve wasn't aware of right at this moment. But he was aware of the ticking clock they were dealing with, and adding another eight hours so that they could search with daylight was not something Steve was ever going to agree on. That same ticking clock was ticking loudly in Steve's head, and it was a countdown to an explosion.

"You wanna wait?" Steve's eyebrows pressed together as he stared at the investigator. "My partner is missing. So no, we will not wait till morning. Instead, you're gonna help light up this place, and I don't care whether you do it with a ton of flashlights or construction lights. I want every inch of this parking lot searched for. Are we clear?"

"Absolutely, Commander." The investigator said and trailed off like a dog with his tail between his legs.

Before Steve could compose himself, Eric called out and waved Steve over.

Steve jogged over to the boy. "What you got, Eric?"

Eric shed his flashlight at the two lines burned on the blacktop. "There's a set of tire tracks," he pointed a few feet in the other direction. "It's right near where we found blood."

Steve could feel his heart starting to pump faster. He knew this was a possibility, but up until this point, they had not found any actual evidence. Steve's throat closed as he stared at Eric. The kid's face creased with concern. And fear. Meaning Eric knew it as well. He had connected the dots himself and said.

"Uncle D's not just missing, is he?"

Steve swallowed hard. "No, somebody took him," with the words said out loud, the reality landed, and Steve went rigid with panic. "Somebody took Danny."

SKATE HANGAR - O'AHU

The man-mountain retreated, and Danny rested his head on the concrete. Danny felt no satisfaction about it. None at all. He hadn't beaten the man-mountain, but he would take the win for now. If Kim hadn't stopped the fight, Danny would have been dead inside a minute, and they all knew that. Perhaps that was the main reason why Kim called back the giant and put his leash back on. Kim didn't want Danny to die, neither did he want to die himself. What he did wished for all of this to be over. He could forget about that, though, as he was almost sure that the man-mountain would return for another fight. Or maybe he wouldn't.

Maybe Danny would already be dead before any of that could be set in motion. That wasn't based on his negative thinking. No, it was based on what he was feeling because, besides, feeling no satisfaction. Danny felt exploding pain throughout his entire body. His head, mostly his chest, but also his knee. Danny had heard the crunch, and it was no good. That giant had kicked so hard that it smashed the kneecap deep into the joint, bursting it, rupturing the ligaments, tearing tendons, dislocating the joint, or at least it had felt like that. His knee had made a certain movement the way no knee was designed to go, that was for sure.

Having his ACL torn a few years ago, Danny knew a thing or two about knees. He knew he didn't have to worry about the bones. They heal up quickly. It's all the other parts that he kept in mind. Ligaments. Tendons. Cartilage. But mainly ligaments. If his ligaments were damaged, not too severely, of course, there was still a chance of a decent repair. But only if he'd been a famous sports player, with limited money and immediate access to a hospital. And he was not a top sports guy, and he didn't have limited money or immediate access to a hospital.

Feeling the white-hot pain flaring within the already swollen knee, Danny realized he was screwed. He also realized he was once again left alone, and if he wanted, he could try and escape. Danny wanted to, badly. Only he didn't think he could. There was no way he could run off, not with that knee. And sure, he didn't need to run off. Walking away would be fine too, but Danny didn't even think he could get up by himself. And despite his strong desire to live, he just stayed as still as possible.

Which was already a task on its own because the surface felt cold beneath him. Too cold, actually. It made him shiver, just a little, but continuously. Small crawling chills all over his skin, like he had a fever. He was sweating too. At least he guessed because it was hard to tell whether it was sweat or blood that was making his body sticky. Yet, he felt worse than all of his previous sufferings put together. Which made no sense. No sense at all because nothing was being done to him at the moment. He was just lying alone on a cold concrete floor, drenched in his own sweat and blood. Meaning something was definitely wrong.

Danny looked down at his aching torso. Between the blooming bruises and congealed blood on his chest, Danny's eye caught something worse. Something that was not supposed to happen and something he wasn't certified to deal with. There was blood sneaking its way out of his chest through the tube. Danny quickly checked to see if it was still secure, and it was. Except there was not supposed to be blood coming out of the chest tube.

However, he was clearly actively bleeding.

Or, in other terms… it was game over for him.

— TBC / HAWAIIFIVE0 —

A/N: Chapter twelve will be online next Monday. New week. New Chapter.

Mahalo for reading!