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A/N: Hello My wonderful readers and welcome to Episode 17. You're getting a whole month of updates to start off the new year. I hope you enjoy the McGarrett Family craziness in this one. Don't forget to leave a review and I'll see you guys next week!

Chapter 465

Steve opened the door to the interrogation cell and ushered Eddie in first.

"Come in, come in," he called to the others dragging along behind him. "Let's go, keep it moving." To Eddie though, he lovingly said: "Sit," and the dog obeyed.

The emergency alarm continued to buzz at the others filed into the room.

Tani, then Grover, then Junior and then Jerry.

Steve kept an eye on his watch, timing their progress. Everyone took a place. Grover took the interrogation chair, Jerry went to his right, a massive black backpack on his back. Junior and Tani chose a wall to sit against. Steve stayed at the door waiting for the last member of their team who was also, coincidentally their slowest.

Something Steve was certain he was doing on purpose to annoy him.

Jerry opened his backpack and Tani immediately said: "You better have snacks for everybody."

"This? No. This is a bug-out six-person doomsday survival pack. It doesn't have snacks. It has rations. It's got your stroganoff, your shrimp fried rice, your traveler's stew, just add water, you're good to go."

Steve leant out the door again. Where the fuck was Danny? Why the fuck was he taking so long?

"We don't have no water in here, Jerry," Grover said bluntly and Jerry just blinked at him.

Junior, ever the optimistic, said: "Well I think that sounds tasty."

"I have cold packs," Jerry offered but no one took him up on it.

Finally Danny made it to them. Sauntering down the hallway and leisurely walking into the interrogation room, a coffee to-go mug in his hand and a nod in Steve's direction.

Steve just stared at him, eyebrow cocked, entirely unimpressed.

"What's that look?" Danny said as he looked Steve up and down.

"You really have to ask?"

"Yeah, what the hell's the matter with you?"

"Why don't you take this seriously? Just for me, once, that's all."

Danny looked surprised by that response. "I showed up. I'm standing here."

"Yeah, but you're not, you're not moving with any type of urgency. I mean, if this were… listen to me," Steve said, trailing off as Danny took a sip of his coffee like this didn't matter. Like this couldn't save lives. "If this were a real actual nuclear attack, instead of a mandatory drill, you would've been vaporized. How about that?"

"I'm pretty sure if this was an actual attack, we'd all be dead."

Jesus. Danny and his fucking negativity. He couldn't even survive in a hypothetical situation.

Still, not reading the room at all, Danny continued. "I mean, you think that this room is gonna withstand a nuclear attack?"

Steve looked around at it. "Yes," he said confidently. "I do actually. Absolutely."

Danny's "Okay," was skeptical and he was ready to pop holes in Steve's beliefs. "Um, let's just say that, uh, a missile that would, uh, completely destroy everything, eradicate this island form the planet, somehow does not penetrate this 12-by-20 foot cinder block box. Then what? Then what are we gonna do? You wanna survive that?"

Beside him Eddie just lay down. Danny had depressed the dog into lying down. At this rate, even Steve wouldn't want to survive. He'd gladly take death if it got him away from Danny.

"What do you think, uh, Armageddon is gonna look like? What's gonna be left?"

Grover raised his hand. "Twinkies and cockroaches?"

"Maybe," Danny said and then turned to Jerry. The resident conspiracy and doomsday nut who promptly and in the most monotone way possible gave him the answer.

"Nuclear winter."

"Nuclear winter," Danny echoed. "That's correct. A big, empty, radioactive wasteland, just a barren ugly space, but we will be safe and cozy in this miserable box. I mean, that sounds worse than death to me, you know, being stuck in here, respectfully, with all you people. And let's… okay. You remember, um, uh, quarantine? It'd be like that, only forever, for the rest of the flick, just stuck together in a room."

Clearly. Clearly Danny just liked to ruin things for him. He saw when Steve was enjoying something, saw a smile on Steve's face and thought to himself how do I ruin this for him?

"Let's just say that we make it past the nuclear fallout. Let's say that that goes away and then we step outside. What if it's just us? What if we're the only people left on Earth? Then what? What are we supposed to do? Uh, repopulate?"

"That's a hard no," Tani snapped. Though none of the men in there with her were surprised. Steve's nose crinkled at the idea of having to do anything sexual with anyone other then Rowan. But he knew better than to comment on that.

"What's the opposite of a motivational speaker? Because whatever that is, you're that, okay?" Steve snapped.

"Yeah, uh, I don't know. No think my man got a point," Grover said.

Steve's eyes scanned everyone's faces. Did Grover mean that? And by the looks of it, everyone else was going to agree with him.

God damn it, Danny.

"Okay, okay, hold on, holding. First of all, don't listen to him. Second of all, it's highly unlikely that we would be the only survivors. Jerry, right?" Jerry gave him a noncommittal kind of half shrug, half nod that Steve was just going to run with. "Thank you, thank you. Okay? So we would be alive. We would be, uh, roughing it a little bit, but we'd be alive. We'd have each other. We would rebuild because that's what humans do, right? We fight? Right?"

He waited for them to get motivated, to feel like he did, like he could survive anything, but Danny had effectively nuked that out of all of them.

"Yea, I think I'd take nuke death," Tani said and everyone else agreed with her. Even Eddie gave him a bark of agreeance with the others.

"I didn't ask you," Steve snapped to his dog. A little annoyed that Eddie couldn't even take his side.

"Babe, I love you. But we all think this is stupid. And I know it's stupid, do you know how I know it's stupid, because in an actual situation like this, that alarm is going off, a missile coming towards us, do you know where you'd be?"

"I'd be down here," Steve growled.

"No, you wouldn't. You'd be nowhere near here! If that alarm went off, you wouldn't go into a bunker, you'd fucking go find your wife."

Steve inwardly groaned. Danny was right, of course, if a missile was coming towards them, impending nuclear winter on the horizon, he'd have gotten his wife. He'd've had her open a portal and gotten her there or gone to her.

"And while we're at it, she's probably the only safe place to be if we had a missile coming at us. She'd be able to open..."

"Shut up!" Steve hollered before Danny could blab the secret in front of three people who were very unaware of Rowan's main powers. Jerry might have known she was psychic, but he didn't know about the portals. And Tani and Junior didn't believe in the psychic portion at all.

Luckily Danny went quiet though, his eyes darted to both Tani and Junior who looked very, very confused and then he cleared his throat.

"To, uh, a fiery apocalypse. Love you," he said raising his to-go mug of coffee up in the air. After he took a sip of it, though, he added: "I'm not wrong about you going to find your wife though."

Steve sighing because he wasn't wrong. Instead he let Danny leave the room. The Alarm was gone, the drill was done and he guessed they kind of passed it.

"Well, it looks like it's just gonna be you and me, commander," Jerry said, as he was the only one in the room that hadn't picked missile. "I hope you like ice cream."

Jerry began to list off all the different flavours he had in his survival pack, and Steve shook his head.

"Come on, Eddie," he said, tugging the dog's leash so he'd get up and follow him.

Steve sighed to himself, Danny really did ruin everything.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

With the drill done, Eddie was handed off to Junior to take for a walk outside. Steve had gone to Danny to argue mostly.

Firstly about how he ruined the drill. Then it was about what he had found out that weekend after he walked in on Rowan and her accountant going over the restaurants books. Let's just say he got one hell of a shock.

Who knew that there were things that Danny had been hiding from him? Was that something Danny would do to him? Yeah. Should he have expected it? Also yes. Did he feel entirely betrayed. FUCK YES.

Danny, however, didn't seem to understand why Steve was upset.

"Why would you look at the books?" Danny asked him, concern furrowing his brow. "I only gave them to Rowan to show her guy… you weren't supposed to be the guy."

"She did show her guy, and I happened to be there as the guy explained what was going on. Which, by the way, according to the finance guy and Rowan… you've been fucking things up."

"Excuse me, I have not."

"You have. You really have."

"This isn't any of your business."

"It is my business, Danny. We're in this business together, firstly. Secondly this is legit my job in our business. It's the business side of things. The kitchen is your job, which is why you should've, uh consulted me before you did half the fucking shit you did."

"You're being ridiculous, and Rowan's wrong. She just doesn't understand my system."

"Rowan and a whole ass accountant don't understand your system. That means your system is flawed."

Danny stopped walking towards their offices and turned on him. "Alright tough guy, Mr. Business all of a sudden. Name one thing that's wrong with my system."

"You gave your Uncle Vito a per diem," he said and Danny whirled away, muttering under his breath. "You're paying the guy when he still owes Rowan money. He still owes her for what he did to our restaurant."

"I gotta give him money. He's working."

"Yes, working on destroying our restaurant."

"That's not true," Danny cried. "It's not true."

"Okay let's recap here. He blew half our design budget on a pornographic statue…" " —You're just mad cause Rowan likes the statue. She likes the statue and put it on your dad's desk." "… shut up. He was arrested for bribing the liquor commissioner. Rowan had to pay his bail!"

"Okay, so it's been bumpy. I understand that, but the man is still working and as such we should pay him."

"Danny. The money we pay him is going to my wife. We're essentially paying my wife but using Vito as a middleman."

"We probably should be paying your wife anyway. She's doing a lot of the heavy lifting right now, especially for someone who doesn't want to actually invest in the business." Steve huffed at Danny, not wanting to get into another argument about Rowan and how she wouldn't sink much of her own money into their business. It was a sore point that she had so little faith in them. "Okay, listen, listen to me. I get that you're worrying, I get that thinks are bumpy right now. But I understand how this guy works. I know that it's not how you work, okay, and that worries you. I promise you, on opening night, you are gonna be eating a nice plate of agnolotti saying that god we had Vito."

"I think I'm going to be saying thank god for my wife, but whatever, Danny. You better be right, except for the agnolotti. I don't eat veal."

Danny had reached his office, he had the door open to go in, but he paused to turn back to Steve, a narrowed look on his face. "No, Agnolotti is not veal. It's like a ravioli and you should know this because we're opening an Italian restaurant. Do your homework."

Steve didn't even care at that point. He could see he had a visitor in his office. Adam was sitting on the couch, arms crossed over his chest, his leg bouncing as he waited. It was a tick that Steve had when he was nervous or upset.

It wasn't like Adam to be upset or unnerved, so he had to guess something had happened. So he let Danny go into his office, as he went to his own, apprehension already skating up his spine.

"Adam," he said as he opened the door. Adam stood the second he saw Steve, the worry etching lines into his face. Whatever this was about was a big deal then. "Everything alright?"

"Actually no," he said showing Steve the folded newspaper in his hands. "I think… I think I fucked up."

"What do you mean?"

"Did you hear about this?" Adam asked as he pointed to an article. Steve looked it over.

"Yeah, the break-in at I-X Chemical. Why?"

"It was me and Jessie."

Steve's eyes glanced up to him. Yeah, wasn't expecting that. But he was guessing that it had something to do with the job and Hideki. He took in Adam's posture, the way his lips were twitching and just knew that something had gone wrong. He wasn't there to give Steve a progress report, he was there for a favour.

"Alright… on a scale of one to Ro, how much help do you need?"

"Uhm… I mean… I don't think we're right at Ro level yet, otherwise I would have went there first."

Right away he knew what that meant. "Ah…" he cleared his throat. "You could have asked them yourself."

"Honestly… he was really annoyed after the rescue… kinda nervous about asking him for more help."

"And you think having me ask will be better?"

At that Adam shrugged. "Well, he's less likely to shoot you. Ro would kill him if he did."

"Yeah, but he actually likes you," Steve reminded him.

He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to go over there when things were already so tense between them all. Adam, however, wasn't going to let Steve wiggle out of this.

"Can you just come with me… please?" he asked, his voice low and pleading.

Steve sighed deeply. "Fine but explain to me what happened on the way."

He went to desk to fish out his keys, loving the way Adam's shoulders lowered with a sigh of relief. At least one of them was feeling better.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Wo had the day off. Well, actually he had been sent home and told to stay there as he had punched a coworker yesterday, but he didn't mind. The idiot had deserved it and he got to spend more time with Jian.

They had been having lunch together, Wo reading a self-help book and drinking a cup of soothing matcha tea, after having made Jian a simple omelet over rice. She was eating more now, like their talk and unstopped whatever had been blocking her. She was eating, talking more, slowly regaining her spunk and attitude.

Yes, there were moments where the sadness took over, and the anger, but she was talking to him more about it and less lashing out. Everything seemed to be slowly moving towards a better outcome, except for the resentment directed at Rowan. She still wasn't okay with Rowan which was causing the most amount of tension, to be honest.

They were part way through that quiet lunch when Steve let himself in with Adam following behind him. He could tell just by the look on their faces that they were about to say something entirely stupid. And as soon as the story started to spill out of Adam, he knew he was right.

"You broke into a chemical plant to steal chemicals? Did you take Con with you?" Wo said interrupting the explanation he had asked for.

Adam glanced to Steve who only stared at him. Steve had said nothing to Wo outside of: "Adam's got a situation. Can you hear him out?" He wouldn't look at Wo and seemed to be uninterested in helping Adam talk this out. Not entirely surprising, Steve had been entirely too awkward around him since the miscarriage had happened.

After staring at Steve for a moment Adam seemed to realize that he wasn't going to help him and turned back to Wo. "Well, no…"

"What have I told you about going anywhere without back up. Especially if you're going to do things like that?"

"Wo I was fine…"

"You got kidnapped out of your house less than a week ago. I had to fucking rescue you." Adam turned an exasperated look to Steve who simply stood there, hands in his pockets as he shrugged. Wo rolled his eyes, my god these men were useless. No wonder Rowan stepped in to help all the time. "Alright, why did you steal the chemicals? What could you need them for?"

"It wasn't for me. I needed to help my CI get them… she's undercover with Hideki."

A beat of understanding went through him. "Ah, he wanted them. What did you lift?"

"Chlorine Gas."

Wo nodded. "Right, what is he getting into? Bombs or meth?"

"Meth."

Jian had been silent through that exchange, but leaned into Wo to whisper: "How did you know that?"

Adam was put on the backburner immediately, Jian got his full attention right away.

"Chlorine gas is a multipurpose chemical, but when it comes to the underworld, there's really only two reasons why anyone would knock off Chlorine. That's either to cook meth or make a bomb. Should have just guessed meth though, man like Hideki doesn't have the balls or the brains to handle bomb production let alone the selling of them." He then turned back to Adam. "If you want them back just contact his cook. I can give you a list of the ones that are currently on the island, you can figure out which one is his."

"Wait… why do you have that list?" Steve asked finally finding his voice.

Wo cocked an eyebrow at him "Because it's good for business."

"What fucking business, Wo?!" Steve cried but Adam put a hand to his arm to either calm him down or shut him up. Either way it worked.

"The reason we're here is because we have a problem."

"Yes I gathered that. What is the problem?"

"Jessie—my CI—turned the Chlorine tanks over to Hideki's people and I managed to track it to a meth house in Kalihi."

Okay, so if he already knew where the tanks had gone, why the fuck was he there bugging Wo?

"Good for you. That doesn't explain the problem."

"I'm getting to it Wo!" Adam snapped and Wo half sighed at him. "The Problem is, I've since discovered that one of Hideki's soldiers, Kazuya Nimoto, went behind his back and sold a couple tanks to someone else."

Wo sighed deeply. "Let me guess, you're thinking that the people he sold them to probably want to make a bomb. Right?"

"Yes. Which leads us to why we're here…" "—You want me to help find them."

Adam's lips pressed together when Wo interrupted him again, took three deep breaths to steady himself, but eventually said: "Yes, but we don't know who this buyer is or how to find them."

"Quickest way to find them is to ask Ro," Wo said absently as he picked up his book again and reopened it. "She'll do the strings thing and find them."

"Yeah, we know, she's our back up," Steve said.

Wo put his book down again, a narrowed look of distrust on his face. "What did you do?"

The implication was clear, if Steve wasn't going to Rowan first, something was wrong. Wo doubted it was a medical issue or something related to her pregnancy because Rowan would have told him, so that meant the only other option was Steve had pissed off Rowan again and he was too afraid to go to her when she was mad at him.

"Nothing," Steve snapped right away. "I just don't want to bug her right now. I want her rested not stressed about one of my cases. If it's really bad I'll ask her, but both Adam and I figured we'd ask you first."

For a moment he stared at Steve wondering if he should trust him. His fingers itched to pull out his phone and call Rowan, but he also wanted her unstressed and he didn't want to call her in front of Jian who still wasn't okay with Rowan.

He turned to her, ready to ask her if she was okay to have him leave when he had meant to stay home with her.

She smiled patiently at him. "If you want to go play today you can."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course," she said quickly. "But… do you think… maybe I could come with you today? I'd love to see what it is you do for them."

"Ohh… babe I'm not sure," Wo said with a wince. "Doctor says you're supposed to be on bedrest, so letting you downstairs was a gamble in the first place. I wouldn't want you with me if I get into a shoot out or have to chase a perp down."

"Really? A shoot out? Chasing perps," she echoed sounding quite excited. "You might have to do that?"

"Maybe. If it's terrorists. They won't go down without a fight," he said with a shrug.

"We're probably just going to need you for the interrogation if he refuses to talk," Steve said. "Or uh… you could check your contacts, see if they've heard anything about a terrorist group searching out bomb making supplies."

At that Wo did go into his pocket for his phone. "I could ask, sure," he said and then turned to Jian. "If all they need me for is an interrogation, I'd be fine with you looking in. But you have to ask Steve, it's his team and Op, he'll get the final say."

Jian turned hopefully eyes up to Steve but before she could ask Steve said: "I mean, If you really want to come for a ride-along I'd be okay with it."

Jian clapped happily. "I'll go get changed," she sang out rushing away from the table.

"I'll have to change too," Wo told him and Steve nodded. "Just so I know, how much product did they get?"

Steve turned to Adam again. "They got 2 tanks each, 150 pounds, which is roughly 25 gallons of liquid chlorine."

"Okay, so that probably adds up to a couple thousand people. This is a lot bigger then you guys let on," Wo said. Steve and Adam exchanged glances and Wo shook his head. "And you're sure we can't ask Rowan?"

Steve shot him a glare and Wo nodded. Right that answered that question. "Right, I'll change, put out a few feelers and get Jian prepped. You go get your perp and I'll meet you at the Palace, okay?"

"Sure," Steve said. "Thanks."

"Wait," Adam said quickly. "Do we want to loop in Con? He might be of use."

Despite himself he felt his hackles raise at the mention of his younger brother. "No," he said stiffly. He glanced to Adam and saw that the response seemed to confuse him. He didn't want to get into why he was mad at his brother, because he knew it was irrational, so he gave the best excuse he could think of before they could ask him what was going on.

"We need someone to stay here and watch Rowan."

Adam's eyes narrowed at him. "Shouldn't we tell him to stay with Rowan and why?"

Wo found himself glaring at Adam not liking that the younger man was questioning him when he normally didn't. He was usually much more respectful. Steve put a hand to Adam's shoulder, got his attention and then quickly shook his head, a signal to get the man to stop asking stupid questions.

"We'll meet you at the Palace, okay?"

Wo nodded at Steve, saw the two men out and then locked the door behind them. He knew at some point he'd have to confront his own issues, especially the one with his brother, but right now, right now he had a distraction.

He could deal with all the complicated stuff later.