Rewrite

AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Guys, guys, I gave you the wrong idea. I know he's gonna go looking but he's not going to find her yet, he'll come close though which might be worse. I'm almost to the half-way point. Once the incident happens well be half way through them being apart. I'm thinking it'll be another 40-50 chapters before I get them back together, I'm trying to get them back together by or around 275th chapter but it might be closer to the 300th. So don't get discouraged, it is coming, just not as quickly as you think. Sorry about that! Don't forget to leave a review and I'll see you guys sometime later today or tomorrow!

Chapter 242

To cheer him up after Rowan's birthday and the passing of his Aunt Deb, the Five-0's had agreed to a day of surfing. They had gone up to the Kaiaka Bay Beach Park where Kono made them all look like amateurs.

Steve had been trying really hard not to think about how hard the search for Rowan was. He had gone to the Liang's to look at the frames that Rowan had sent Nahele. He had Paris, which Steve already knew she had gone to, then Rome, and Venice and Berlin. Judging by her party, she was in Colombia now. The problem was, he had her a no fly list and not a single agency had reported her going out of the country so how was she flying anywhere when she should have been stopped.

Then he found out that her No Fly ban had been removed. He didn't know if was a hack or if someone else had done it, but he was trying to get it renewed. Problem was no one would renew it. He had a meeting scheduled with the Governor to talk about it, but he wouldn't see why the hell he'd be blocked from filing a No-Fly-ban. It was worrying him.

But being out in the water had taken his mind off of everything and he was grateful for that.

As they changed they made small talk. Chin asked how Steve was doing. He missed his Aunt already but they suspected he missed Rowan just as much if not more. Kono and Chin attempted to talk about the weather and how the North shore surfing in January was especially good that day. Well, at least they thought so. Danny not so much.

"Yeah, I'd say it can get a little bit better." Danny was running a comb through his hair. Chin was still towelling off, Steve had just peeled his swim shirt off. Typical Danny pessimism before they could even get properly changed.

"What are you talking about? You were smiling out there," Chin whined. But Steve knew exactly where this was coming from. Daniel Williams was never happy with anything.

"No he wasn't," Steve announced to the crowd. "That was more like an anaemic grin."

That got a chuckle from Chin but Danny wasn't on the, be-nice-to-Steve-because-the love-of-his-life-left-him-for-his-nemesis-and-his-aunt-died train.

"Well, let me explain that anaemic grin," Danny said to Steve. "That is because you, my friend, are a wave hog."

Steve stopped mid-way through getting his shirt on, that comment hit him that hard. It was so unexpected and out of the blue. He was almost certain he didn't hear it right. "Excuse me, I'm a wave hog?"

"That's right. Wave hog."

Chin nodded. "The man had a point."

To his horror even Kono nodded and once she had her shirt over her bikini top she added: "Yeah, you weren't um, the most patient in the line-up out there, boss."

This won them both an empathetic: "Thank you," from Danny who then turned a giant smug grin onto Steve. "See you're a wave hog."

Wow. His friends were all piling onto him now. This… come on… it was a supposed to be a cheer-up-Steve party, not a rag-on-Steve party.

"Okay. Fine. Let's talk about this. Want the truth? You wanna know why I was doing the party wave thing?" he asked them. "It's for his benefit. In case he gets into trouble."

Danny was not impressed. As he buttoned up his shirt he groaned at him. "Oh. I see, I see. So you being a pig out there, stealing everybody's waves, that's, uh, for my benefit?"

"Yeah so you wouldn't drown. Listen to me, you want me on that wave. You need me on that wave."

"I see what you're doing there," Danny said mimicking the pointing Steve had been doing into Danny's face. "That's uh… he's doing Jack Nicholson."

"He is," Chin agreed.

"Yeah, he's good. It's very appropriate. The last six years of my life have been like the Shining which is a film, that if you've seen, you'd know that Jack Nicholson spends the whole movie torturing a little boy named Danny."

"Like you're torturing me now?" Steve asked drily as, to the side, Kono and Chin finished getting dressed and just stood there laughing at Danny and Steve's bickering.

"Gentleman, as much as I'm enjoying this… and I am enjoying this… we should probably get going before traffic gets bad."

"You're absolutely right," Steve said and they all picked up their stuff and began to walk away. They were walking for two minutes. Danny and Steve were volleying "Wave hog," and "Party wave," at one another when Steve interrupted the bickering with a loud exclamation of: "Whoa!"

"What's up?" Chin asked.

"Traffic's jacked already," he announced. "Kamehameha is a parking lot from Wahiawa all the way through Pearl city. We gotta take the 83."

Danny groaned again. "No, I don't wanna take the 83. Drive around the whole island? It's a nightmare."

"Oh, okay. It's another half an hour drive or another hour sitting in traffic," Steve snapped.

"Yeah, at least it's more scenic," Kono added hoping to stop the argument before it got out of hand.

"I've got a short cut," Chin said hoping to find an alternative.

"I'll take the shortcut if it gets me out of the car with him earlier."

Steve made faces at the back of Danny's head while Chin explained his shortcut. "We'll cut through the coffee fields in Waialua."

Steve shook his head. "Wait a minute. The service roads?" he asked which won him a mhmm from Chin. "What are you, crazy?" he cried. "One wrong turn up there, we'll be back here. It's be midnight by the time we get home. No, it's a maze up there."

Chin scoffed. "Well, maybe for a haole. But I used to ride those trails on my dirt bike when I was a kid," he said cause Steve to cry out in indignation. "We're going to be back home before you guys even reach Turtle Bay."

"Boss, I think he just threw down," Kono said but Steve had already gotten that.

"Oh yeah, he threw down," Steve agreed. "You care to make this interesting, my friend?"

"What did you have in mind?" Chin asked.

"A little wager."

"Sure," he said with a shrug. He didn't care just so long as Danny and Steve stopped bickering.

"Good. First car to the Palace wins. The losers pay for dinner and drinks at Side Street. How about that?"

Chin turned to Kono who nodded deftly. He turned to back to Steve with a smile. "I like it. We're in."

"Whoa, hey, hey. Cool your jets, Turbo, there are some rules in this game. Okay?"

Chin rolled his eyes. "Okay."

"First one, no speeding." "Okay…" "—Good. Second one, no sirens." "-Okay." "Next rule, no HPD escort."

"He's going to break all these rules," Danny interjected before Steve got any more technical. Chin started laughing but Steve was not deterred in the least.

"Hey, right here, look at me," he said getting Chin's attention again. "Okay, you got it?" Chin nodded. "Okay, good, so we're all set?" Steve asked. Chin nodded again. "Alright. On your marks get set go!" he cried and then took off for the Camaro leaving his three friends in the dust.

"See, he's cheating already," Danny said with a sigh. They watched Steve as he practically slid over the hood of the Camaro and then hopped into the driver's seat through the open window.

"He just Bo and Luke'd that. Sweet," Kono sighed but Danny was just shaking his head. What was the point? He couldn't leave until Danny got in the car. But that wouldn't stop Steve for laying on that horn until Danny got there.

The things Danny was willing to put up with to put a smile on his best friend's face.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Rowan got herself out of the pool where she had been swimming and accepted the towel that Conejo was passing her. He never went swimming with her but he watched. It seemed to Rowan that, the second January ended and February began, he had started acting weird. Suddenly he was quiet and withdrawn, no longer joking around with her as much as he had before. She was certain, the last two nights she had heard him crying in his room, but she couldn't fathom what it was that he would cry about, and when she asked him about it, he'd just glare at her and then change the topic.

On top of that she hadn't seen Wo Fat or Armando in days.

"Where's Wo?" she asked him and his eyebrows raised up quickly. "Not that I don't love your suddenly silent and foreboding company, I haven't seen him for a while and…"

"Diego called a truce, he and Armando are negotiating the details of that truce. They've also been fortifying all assets in case he plans to go after them while the two are distracted."

Rowan blinked her eyes. Okay that sounded like a good reason for him to be gone for so long, even though she didn't like it.

"It's getting dark, we should go inside," he ordered more than offered.

Rowan slipped into her flip flops, wrapped her towel around her. Swimming and running had been helping her slim down. She hadn't felt this good about her body since her younger skating years. Too bad she didn't have any guys to impress with her smoking hot body now.

"Hey Con, can I ask a question?"

"Another one?"

"Yes," she said softly. "Why don't you ever swim with me?"

Conejo turned to her, he was a few steps ahead of her. So the confused glare he had on his face shined down on her from above like a ray of disappointed sunshine.

"Why does that matter?"

Rowan shrugged. "It doesn't I just want to know," she said.

"I'm not being paid to swim, I'm being paid to watch you and I can't do that from in the pool…"

"You can't swim can you?"

Conejo's eyes widened in surprise, probably because he hadn't realized how observant she had been. "You get nervous when I go to the deep end and you make a face whenever I ask you to join me," she explained to him and he nodded.

"Okay to clarify. I can swim, I just don't like water. I have a thing about water, okay, don't make me explain it, I don't like it let it go."

Rowan sighed but let it go. "Well thank you for telling me that much. Care to tell me why you've been so grouchy lately?"

They came to a stop right outside her room where he smiled patiently and simply said: "Goodnight Rowan, you call me if you have another nightmare."

She hadn't had a nightmare in a while, not since Diego had kidnapped her. The last vision dream she had, had been a sad one, of Steve's Aunt Deb dying. That had made her cry but that hadn't really been a nightmare. Normally she wouldn't think twice about going to Con the second she had a nightmare, but he had been acting weird and she didn't feel comfortable doing so anymore. She felt like she had annoyed him too much and he no longer wanted her near him.

She missed Wo Fat, she wished he was here with her.

Instead of complaining she merely smiled, told him she would, said good-night to him too. She let herself into her room, went to the washroom where she dropped her towel in the sink before slipping out of her bikini to shower. Once she got the chlorine off of her and out of her hair, she stepped out, used that towel to try herself off before changing into the soft grey PJs she had been wearing.

She spent her time blow drying her hair so it would be nice and smooth in the morning. She did her face routine for the night, brushed her teeth and then headed for her bed.

She took a step out the bathroom and towards the bed and she wasn't in her bedroom anymore. But she also knew that she wasn't in the real world. This had been happening a lot recently. Ending up in a dream world instead of the real world. It was a little nicer than having nightmares all the time, but having waking, walking nightmares was not better.

"Get out of the hole!"

Rowan turned, two men were beside her. Both scruffy looking. A pink string travelled between them. Brothers. The elder was protective of his younger sibling as he was weaker and in the elder's opinion dumber.

Both brothers were both pointing their guns a second pair of pink-bonded relatives. Chin and Kono.

They were standing, a hole they must have dug in between them and the brothers. Chin and Kono held hands and then the brother's fired.

Rowan held up her hand, stopping the bullets midair. She stepped between them and used her hand, rolling it over and over, to rewind the wholes scene from the beginning.

Alright. Chin and Kono arrive on scene, they were lost and looking for directions. They found the two brother's instead, who were attempting to hide the body of a cop they murdered.

They took Kono's wedding ring, made them dig the grave for the cop. The elder brother took Chin away to help him carry the body back to the grave. She watched the older brother as he noticed the flasher's on Chin's car. She watched Chin run into the trees, but she knew he'd get caught.

She stopped the dream there and walked out of it and into reality again. She went for her phone a plan already formulating in her mind, a million strings severing and retying to the new possibilities.

Could she stop this situation before it happened? Hell yeah. Was she going to?

No.

Those bastards were going to take Kono's wedding ring. Why? What purpose did that serve other to be a complete asshole?

Well now Rowan was pissed off and she was going to test them. She went to the vanity that Wo Fat had bought her months ago and picked up her phone which had been left charging.

She pulled up a contact on her app and pressed connect.

As soon as the person picked up she started talking. "Hey! Yeah no I'm fine. I need someone for a messy job. You got anyone up for that? It's gonna be worth double what I paid for the last one…. Yeah? Good. Patch me through."

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

The Camaro flew down the one-lane highway, weaving in and out of traffic. There was no way that Steve wasn't speeding. He swung the car out and into oncoming traffic, narrowing missing the car coming at them as he weaved back in completely cutting off the truck, he was desperate to get in front of.

Danny swore. "Hey! Hey! Hey! What about all the rules you made? Huh? No speeding you said!" he reminded him and Steve shot a glare at him.

"I'm not speeding, it's fine," he said.

"Not speeding, what are you doing?" he cried. "I'm guessing above seventy."

"Hey, have you seen a single sign since we left the beach?" Steve asked but that wasn't what Danny asked. It was a clever excuse but not what Danny wanted to hear, because Steve was a cop and he knew better.

Danny craned over to try and see the speedometer and Steve lifted his hand to block him. Danny started laughing. "Oh my god, you are a child!" he cried but Steve ignored him. And forged forward.

After a second's pause Danny said: "Okay it's me and you now. You wanna tell me what's got you all worried?"

Steve half winced. "Uh… well… I told you about the No-Fly, how it lapsed some how and I went to put it up again and got declined?"

"Yeah, you said the Governor asked to talk to you about it."

"Yeah, well… I went into her file and… uh… there's a note on there that if she's arrested over-seas or she's found that Five-0 is not to be contacted, but instead, to contact HPD or the Governor directly."

Danny took that in and then stared at Steve. That didn't sound good, not at all. "Okay… uh… who put that note on her file?"

"I asked about that when I called about the No-Fly ban," Steve said. "He said he had the note put on her file."

"Why?"

"I won't know the answer to that until I have that meeting with him," Steve replied.

Danny sat back to think about it. Steve was obviously worried, that's why he had been so off lately. And Danny knew him well enough to have some sort of idea what this was about.

"But you have a theory, right?"

"I think he's going to tell me to drop the search for Rowan," Steve whispered. "I don't know why he would, but I think that's what he's going to do."

Danny took that in. It did sound like that was what the Governor was gearing up to do, but he also couldn't figure why he'd do that. Wouldn't he wanted to get Steve and Rowan back together? Everyone else was on the same page, why wasn't Dennings?

"Kay, but he hasn't shut you down yet, so… you know what are you doing to try and find her?"

"Well… uh… I know where she was travelling and kind of got a time frame of when she might have gone. So, I figure if the No-Fly lapsed I'd be able to run facial rec on people going in and out of the countries she's been in around that time."

"That's a good plan," Danny said. "Would take a long time to run that command."

"It's been running since last night," Steve said and Danny nodded. Steve and Danny were quiet a moment before Steve whispered: "I don't know what I'm going to do if the Governor tells me to stop Danny, not now that I know she might… I unno… want to come back."

Danny nodded. "Well he hasn't told you to stop yet, so I see that as a green light to do as much as you can to find her before he pulls the plug."

Steve nodded and they fell silent again before Danny turned to him once more. "Okay, you know what pull over," Danny ordered and Steve scowled at him.

"Pull over? I'm not pulling over. Not when we're making great time."

"Well I need to pee," he snapped. "So pull over."

"Oh, who's the child now?" Steve cried.

"Just pull the damn car over so I can go, please."

"Pee in a bottle cause I'm not stopping."

As they devolved into arguing about whether or not Danny was going to pee in that bottle or Steve was going to stop, Danny found himself thinking about what Steve had said. He had no idea what was going on, but Danny had a feeling if Governor Dennings shut down Steve's search for Rowan Steve would not talk it well.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Chin, unfortunately, got lost in those service roads like Steve said that he would. And they had found a car and thought that whoever was driving would be able to help them navigate onto the road hopefully in time to beat McGarrett to the Palace.

The problem was, these guys had guns. They were cocky, they were mean, and they were digging in the ground. Well, now they had Chin and Kono digging. They took away everything valuable they had, which included Kono's wedding ring.

The bastards.

They got a pretty deep hole going, before the main brother, the older brother suddenly decided one of them needed to go with them. Chin had offered to go, so long as they promised Kono would be okay.

Then he found out exactly what it was that they were digging a hole for. They had a body in their trunk. Chin was to help the eldest brother move it. While they were pulling him out of the trunk, a badge fell out. Not only had they murdered someone they had murdered a cop!

Chin had tried to get into the man's head. Told him about this guy he knew who went in for manslaughter and ended up killing himself. He figured the elder brother would be okay, but not the younger brother.

He shouldn't have said anything at all, because it meant they paused. Paused long enough for him to notice the lights on his car. Now he knew that Chin and Kono were cops too.

Chin dropped the body's legs and ducked into the tall grass. Chin ran through the trees trying to lose the older brother chasing after him. Then he slid to a stop. A complete stand still as he stared down the barrel of a gun.

He was silent a moment and behind him came the crash of another body coming through the foliage after Chin. He half opened his mouth but already the barrel of the gun had swung away from him, and then just as the older brother came into view, it went off.