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A/N: Well guys, in this chapter we get to figure out what kind of Rowan-gram, Rowan called for. What the Governor wants to say to Steve and how Chin and Kono get out of this. We're cooking now. I just have to get us through the Valentines chapter (which is coming up in the next chapter) and then after that we're halfway. And we get to all the void drama, which I'm personally very excited for. What are you guys excite for? Leave a review and tell me, and I'll see you guys on Monday. (Hopefully).

Chapter 243

Winner, winner Side Street dinner.

God Steve was pathetic, but he was just so happy that he and Danny had beat Chin and Kono to the Palace. Danny had tried to tease him about it, but Steve had refused to pull over and he had made Danny pee into a bottle when he couldn't hold onto it anymore. Danny didn't want that ever getting out to their friends so he let it go to allow Steve his chance to gloat and crow over his win, even before the losers came into the building.

But that elated happy feeling left Steve almost immediately when he got the results of his search. Everything involving Rowan had the ability to ruin his mood and that day was no different.

He came into Danny's office, changed into his office attire of a charcoal blue polo and his cargo pants, with the pictures he had and stared at his friend's face. Danny took in his hooded stare with a sigh as he turned his eyes back to the paperwork he had been working on before Steve had come in.

"I heard some swearing, what's going on," he asked. Well Steve had sworn a few times he didn't think he was that loud.

"I got the results," Steve said, moving forward to put down all the pictures that had popped with the face-rec to Rowan's face.

"Here she is entering, Paris via Charles De Gaulle," he said, "This is her getting off at the Santa Lucia station in Venice. Then here she is again in Hauptbahnhof Station, and a couple weeks later in the Calais station before disappearing on what I presume is a private charter to Colombia."

Danny nodded. These were all pictures of people entering the country, all from security camera feeds. "Okay, so she's mostly taking trains and they wouldn't be checking her passport."

"That's what I thought, except they are," Steve said. "Rowan wants a stamp in each country she's going to, she goes to a customs agent every single time."

"Okay… but the No-fly had lapsed…"

"Not for her flight to Paris, or the train ride to Venice or her trip to Berlin. Also, according to Wo Fat's file, in Venice he was suspected of killing an undercover cop. Authorities were looking for him. I think that's why they double back to Paris before going to Berlin," Steve said.

Alright so people were looking for them. So what? People were always looking for Wo Fat. He didn't understand what about this could have set Steve off like this. "Steve what are you saying?"

"I pulled up the passports that were scanned when she went through customs. I can match them to the other person and in each and every group there was one outlier and no Rowan."

He put the passport photos down, the ones of people that were from different places in the U.S. All women, all different looks. None of them could even be remotely confused for Rowan.

"Okay… so the system is pulling up someone who isn't Rowan? Wouldn't the Customs agent know that though? I mean… none of them look like her and none of them have the same name… they're not that dumb are they?"

"I unno, I unno what's going on," Steve said. "I mean, it makes sense. Fat probably figured that I'd put some kind of restriction on her and he's done something to combat that."

"That's one sophisticated bunch of something," Danny said and Steve nodded. That was a lot to take in, and Danny didn't know what to do. And it didn't look like Steve knew what to do about it either. Not with the looming meeting with the Governor.

When the silence got to be too heavy, Steve asked: "Hey… uh… have you heard from Chin and Kono yet?"

"No, why?"

"Because they're not answering their phones and they should have been here by now."

Danny sighed as he thought it over. "Maybe they, uh, had car trouble."

Steve was silent for a second as he though it over. It was plausible and he'd give Danny that but something felt off about this. "Yeah, but why wouldn't they answer their phones?"

"That's what I mean. You warned them about those service roads, maybe they got car trouble and they got no signal up there."

Steve paused, thought it over and gave Danny an apathetic "Yeah," which really just translated into him agreeing but not really. And Danny knew this.

"If you're worried, we'll go up there. We'll drive back to the North Shore and find them," Danny said just as his phone chirruped.

"Is that Chin or Kono?" Steve asked. "I've been blowing up their phones why wouldn't they text me?"

But it wasn't Chin or Kono texting him. It was a text message seemingly sent by no one.

"It uh… like those blank calls you were getting," Danny said. "Except it's just a text."

At the suggestion of Rowan, no matter how subtle, Steve went ramrod straight. "What does it say?"

"Its GPS coordinates and C+K SOS, go NOW."

Steve was already going for the door. Now he knew something was wrong. Very wrong.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

A gun had gone off.

Kono had been digging silently, try to think of a way to talk the younger brother out of killing them all and maybe turning his on his brother when the gunshot had shattered the silence. Kono was immediately afraid for Chin, but she had her own worries to worry about. Because as soon as that gun went off the other man appeared. This guy, looking like he just walked out of one of Steve's Guns and Ammo magazines, was in camouflaged body armour and held a high powered gun.

The younger brother, who had been left to supervise her, froze. Even Kono froze, because she didn't know what was happening.

"You, drop your gun and get over there," he said gesturing to a place beside the hole Kono was in. "And you, shovel down and stand beside him."

The obeyed the ordered and then they waited. The younger brother kept asking who this guy was or what he wanted, but the man said nothing. Kono was just surprised that he had shown up, and that he had taken the time to paint cammo pattern onto his face. It was kind of… ridiculous.

After an agonizing wait Chin came into view, the older brother's arm slung over his shoulder as he helped him walk. The older brother had been shot in the leg but Chin looked to be okay. Behind him was a woman, looking like this Nubian queen in all leather with a tricked out looking pistol in her grip.

Who the hell were these people?

"Alright, let him go," the woman ordered and Chin reluctantly moved away. "Go stand with your friend."

As soon as he was by Kono's side she reached for his hand. Chin held it back without a second thought and together they watched the woman kicked the older brother into the hole.

The younger brother was grabbed by the cammo man and he too was dropped into the hole. When the cammo man returned for Chin and Kono he had rope in his hands.

"Wait, you don't have to do this," Chin said. But the man said nothing at all. Instead he tied their hands together, and then tied them to a near-by tree. Once that was done, he returned to the woman with the large caliber pistol and got in the hold behind the older brother.

The woman put something into her pocket and then slowly took out a knife and put it to the younger brother's neck.

"Do you know what you've done?" she asked him. "Do you know why we were sent here?"

The older brother had no idea but Kono felt like she knew.

"These people are under the protection of the Professional and the Sanctuary network," she told him and he just looked… well… confused. Which meant he probably had no idea what they were talking about. "Yeah, she had a feeling that you were too low on the food chain to know about them. Here's the short version for you. These people are protected by a very bloodthirsty, very powerful individual, who knew you were going to be here and sent me here to fuck your shit up."

The older brother growled at her but he didn't say anything, he couldn't not with that knife against his younger brother's throat.

"But you know… had you just not taken it, had you just left her alone, we would have just roughed you up, but now, now I gotta kill you."

Taken? What the hell had they taken? They hadn't really done anything to Kono except get handsy with her. So what was she talking about? What vision had Rowan had?

"Now look at your brother and tell him it's going to be okay," she ordered.

The older brother stared at his younger brother. He had gotten shaky, like he had realized that this wasn't going to end well for them.

"Don't… don't worry, she's not… they won't… they wouldn't dare. Not with two cops watching!"

"That's right!" Chin called. "You don't have to do this. You can just let us go and we'll deal with them."

"Exactly. Ro… the Professional, she wouldn't want this!" Kono added.

The woman regarded them for a moment before this glittering dangerous grin illuminated her face. They tried to stop her but when she turned back to the brothers she had on their knees in that hole they knew that they wouldn't be able to stop what was about to happen.

She slit the younger brother's throat, as his older brother screamed and then let his body fall into his brother's lap. His older brother held onto him, he tried to quell the bleeding as he screamed. Screamed at the two watching on passively, screamed for them to help him, and when his brother died seconds later, when his body stopped twitching, he screamed at them for what they had done. He screamed insults and names at them, and when he was breathlessly sobbing over his brother's form, the man behind him pulled out his own pistol and shot him through the throat.

For a while there was nothing but grunts of pain and gasps for air but when that too went quiet Chin and Kono were left alone in the silence with two people who were probably going to let them go. Maybe. They weren't entirely sure.

Sure enough, both the cammo man and the angry Nubian queen got out of the hole and came towards them. As the man went about untying them, the Nubian queen fished something out of her pocket and then offered it out to Kono. It was her wedding ring. Kono took the ring from her and put it back on her finger where it belonged and then carefully stared at the two standing in front of them.

She didn't know what they wanted, or why they hadn't left yet. Usually once the contract was completed they'd leave. None of the new Rowan-grams had stayed past confirming that the situation had been dealt with.

The woman took in their stares of confused and then turned back to two bodies they had left behind. She turned back to Kono and half scoffed. "Obviously you don't know your friend very well. Because this," she said pointing back at the bodies in the hole. "This was exactly what the Professional asked for. Well… only if we confirmed that they had taken your wedding ring. Had they left it they would have gotten away with all of this."

All of this had been over her wedding ring? Really? Goddamn! Kono had been upset they took it, but not THAT upset.

The Nubian queen told them that their partners were on their way, which meant Steve and Danny had been informed of the situation somehow, and which also meant that their contract was completed. They took pictures of Chin and Kono before turning around and leaving them in the trees, no doubt to escape before Steve showed up and arrested them both.

As they left Kono found her eyes drawn to the damage that had been left in the wake of the latest Rowan-gram. She was officially worried. This was the most violent one yet, and she had a feeling, with Rowan being surrounded with big time criminals like Wo Fat and his associates, they were only going to get worse.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

I didn't fly all the way down here for deep dish pizza. I'm here to get a confession out of you. And I'm not leaving till I get it.

It was the first thing he said to Clay after he woke up. Well that was a lie, the first thing he said was: Wakey Wakey, but he liked the other line better. It sounded more badass. And it wasn't like he didn't say it, he did, it just wasn't the first thing. But when he retold the story, he was going to tell everyone that that was the line he opened with.

Lou had flown down to Chicago, drove all the way to Hyde Park, broke into Clay's house, waited for him to come back and then ambushed him. He knocked him out, duct taped him to a chair and then put smelling salts under his nose until he woke up.

Lou had gone done down with a plan. He knew that he was probably never going to get Clay for killing Diane, but he might be able to get him on something else. And then it hit him.

Five years ago, they busted a stash house in Little Village. They had killed the perp and split up to search the place. Clay found two bags, each with 250,000 in cash inside or more. All the number on those bills were sequential, until it got turned into evidence and a whole stack of number went missing. Everyone had started talking about how a bag of that money had to have gone missing but no one had ever found it.

Back in the day he hadn't questioned it. Clay was his partner, he wouldn't have thought him that corrupt. But now that he knew Clay would go as far as to kill his own wife, well, Lou had a feeling that he knew exactly where that money had gone.

But he had taken a sledge hammer to that house and he still couldn't find it. Leann had dropped by twice. The first time he got Clay to get her to leave the house. The second time when she came back Lou had no choice but to grab her too. Once he had taped her to her own chair he had tried to explain why he was there, why he had to do what he was doing. He could see the doubt in her eyes, too. She knew that if Clay could kill his wife to be with her, that he might be able to kill her to get with the next girl. Why not? He got away with it once.

But that wasn't enough. He still needed to find the money, and he couldn't. He was loosing hope too. He was starting to think that he wasn't ever going to find it. And then the text came in. A text from a blank number. Steve had told him all about the blank calls he had been getting from someone who wouldn't speak, how he had thought it was Rowan, and how stupid it was for him to have told her to stop calling. Because she had listened.

Steve had been heartbroken, and none of them had been able to tell him it was his own damn fault for telling her to stop. All of them also sort of felt a little jilted that Steve had been the only one getting blank calls. Well now Lou could say that he had gotten one of the blank messages too.

Too bad it was fucking useless.

If you're still having trouble finding that money… remember the car. Why is it inside the garage in the winter?

Good God, Rowan and that fucking car… that stupid beat up old jalopy. The thing barely fucking ran, it was junk… it was…. She was right, t was in the garage… in the middle of winter as Clay's brand-new car sat in the drive way.

Now why… why the hell would he put the new car outside and keep the junk car in? Maybe… maybe Rowan really was onto something.

Smiling Lou left the office where he had been demolishing the walls and came down the stairs to where Clay and Leann were waiting for him. Not that they had much choice, he had tied up them up there it wasn't like they were going to go anywhere. When he got close enough he smiled warmly at Clay who was still smirking at him.

"You remember that little girl I told you about, the one from Hawaii?" he asked. "That little girl with the magic touch, could see into your very soul? I sat her in front of you and she said she got nothing off of yah. Nothing except a car. A car in the garage in the middle of winter. At the time it meant absolutely nothing. Even now it seems crazy. Hell, even I forgot about it… and then this came in."

He showed Clay his phone with Rowan's text. "And then I started thinking. Right? Now… well… now I have some questions."

"You're telling me you're going to listen to some crazy woman? Some woman you think is psychic? You think that she's got all the answers? She didn't have the answers then, and she doesn't have them now!"

Lou just chuckled. "Oh yeah? Then answer me this, buddy. Why do you have your beautiful brand-new mustang sitting in the driveway in the middle of winter in Chicago? I mean, do you just like scraping ice off your windshield every morning and starting your car and having to let it run for 15 minutes before you go to work?"

Clay was still silent to Lou took a hold of him and rolled him towards the garage, while the new girl he had replaced Diane with called out for them to stop, to not hurt him.

"I mean, here you have a brand-new car, sitting in your drive way, and you got an old rust bucket, get out and push that belongs in a junkyard somewhere sitting in your garage just sucking up heat? Explain that!"

"I've been working on it."

"Been working on it. You haven't done a damn thing to this car in ten years!" Lou shouted. "Ten years ago I took a picture with you at a BBQ at your house, this car was right next to us. It looks exactly the same."

For a second there, Clay just stared at him, and Lou saw a look in his eyes that had him feeling all sorts of triumphant. Cause he knew he had him and Clay knew it too.

Lou took out his phone again and showed him the message. "I finally figured it out. All those months ago when she was going on about why is the car in the garage in the dead of winter. I didn't get it then and I might not have gotten it tonight but she reached out Clay. That girl got a message to me, and now I finally get it. You're not crazy. You don't have this rust bucket in here soaking up warmth for no reason."

He picked up a crowbar and went towards the car, just by the headlight where it looked like Clay had been doing work.

"What do you think you're doing?" Clay cried, for the first time trying to stop Lou. Who had been tearing up the house all evening.

"This ain't a car. It's a safe!"

It took two swings. One to reveal the money just under the bodywork, and the second had the money falling to the floor. Lou smiled, he couldn't keep it in, because it was right where Rowan said it was, because he finally had something to pin on him.

Clay glared at him. He had no more witty one liners, he tried to bribe him but it wouldn't work. Not on Lou. Lou wanted him behind bars. He would have rather had him going to jail for Diane's murder, but this was what he was going to have to settle with. And he thought, yeah, this was good enough.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Steve was shown into the Governor's office the second he arrived, which he felt, did not bode well for him. Dennings wasn't on the phone, or preoccupied, he waited for Steve to sit down in front of the desk and once he was comfortable, he began.

"I presume you're wondering why I asked you here, and why there's a precautionary note on Rowan's file…"

"And why I can't put out another No-fly ban on her."

"I presume that you've been doing some research on her," Dennings asked. "What have you learned?"

Steve handed him the file. "When she scans through customs she reads as someone who isn't her, I don't know what the customs agents are seeing on their screens, but that's how she's getting through security," he told him. "Uh, I can tell you she's been to Paris, and Venice, and Berlin and that she's now in Colombia."

"And I presume that you've heard that Wo Fat is wanted in connection to the murder of an undercover Interpol agent?"

"Yes. I heard that too," Steve answered. "Sir, I'm sorry if I'm speaking out of turn ehre, but what the hell is going on? Why are you trying to stop me from looking for her?"

The Governor closed the file Steve had handed him and then folded his hands on top of them. "Steve. Why are you looking for Rowan? Why do you want to find her now?"

Steve blinked his eyes. "I… because…" he stuttered. He didn't know how to tell him that it was because he saw a video of her crying and figured her to be unhappy. "I just… I wanted to… I unno talk to her and clear things up… and I can't get a hold of her so…"

Dennings nodded and with a very heavy sigh, he whispered: "And that is why the note is on her file."

Steve's heart fairly stopped in his chest. "What? What are you talking about?"

"Steve, we spoke about this when you and her broke up, or left you, the first time. You cannot use Five-0 resources to stalk Rowan. She broke up with you. You are essentially stalking your ex and using the tax payer's money to do it. This isn't legal, it's harassment."

Steve sat there, back ramrod straight, taking that in. He was right. Because he wasn't presenting Dennings with a logical, legal reason why he'd be looking for Rowan now. He realized that if he wanted to keep the search for Rowan going, if he wanted to be notified of any movements or of her where-abouts, he was going to lie.

"But there is a legal reason!" Steve cried. "You just said that Wo Fat's wanted in connection to a murder, right? Well the easiest way to find him is to find Rowan. He won't be far from her…"

"So that's the real reason then? You want to get Wo Fat, not that you want to talk to her."

"Well I mean I do want to talk to her, I won't lie about that, but it's more important to arrest Wo Fat. And… well…she's… she's his weakness. To get him we'll need her."

Dennings nodded. It was convenient, the switch in attitudes and Steve knew that. He could tell that the Governor didn't really believe his words and to be fair, Steve didn't believe them either. It made him feel sick to his stomach to have to use her this way but if it was the only way for him to actually get to her this was what he was going to have to do. He was more than willing to let everyone believe that he's after Wo Fat if it meant that it put him face to face with Rowan at some point.

"Here's what we're going to do instead," Dennings said. "Instead of a No-Fly ban, I'm going to connect her file to Wo Fat's so it comes up when you search him. Wo Fat will have the No-Fly ban, Rowan will be held for questioning and observation if she's found. Okay?"

It wasn't okay. This wasn't what he wanted, at all. But it was all he was going to get and he knew that. But there was one thing that he needed to make this a little better. "And Five-0 will be notified if they manage to apprehend her?"

The Governor's eyes found his, a dry glare of suspicion on his face. "Yes, I suppose that is the best course of action. You do know Wo Fat's M.O. better than anyone else. You'll be able to prepare them for what will most likely be a vicious attack from him in his attempts to get her back."

Steve nodded. "Alright, good. Let's do that then," he agreed even though that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted Rowan back and having it set up this way would make things harder. It also didn't address the issue with her passport. If she was coming up as someone else how would anyone know that she was the right person to grab?

But Steve couldn't say any of that. Not with the Governor championing her harassment suit even though she wasn't here. This was what Steve as going to have to be content with, and he knew, if he did his own extra digging and Dennings found out, he'd probably pull the plug on even watching out for Wo Fat.

Steve was just going to have to hope that Rowan left Colombia soon, and that if she did leave, someone would grab her and call him.