Chapter Text
Usually there wasn’t a night of the week the place wasn’t hopping by now. Tonight, though, the crowd was so thin he could see all four walls in the main room and that was not a good sign for former Newark police detective Daniel Williams, owner and proprietor of The Winking Hole. He had sent all but one of his bartenders home, not wanting to waste their time or his money. Rex stayed, as his magnificent physique and gorgeous face were both infamous on Waikiki and always drew new folks, locals and tourists alike. No, Danny revised with a scowl, not always. Almost always. He glanced at the clock on his phone, grumbled under his breath and drummed his fingers on the bar top.
Relatively new to the sole bar ownership thing, he knew he’d lucked his way into success through scant skill of his own. Not that he hadn’t learned a thing or two since opening the doors a little under three months ago, but he knew a huge part of his business achievement was sheer, unadulterated happenstance. Right place, right time, wrong sign.
He’d only wanted a small, unobtrusive but friendly neighborhood bar, enough to scrape by and keep him on this godforsaken collection of rocks. His target market had been cops and firefighters, hardworking and underpaid civil servants. Danny grinned wryly to himself. Oh, he drew in some of his original intended client base – he could usually spot a cop from a mile away. They came, but they didn’t make a show of it. Social progress aside, it was still a bit tricky to come out in certain environments, and Danny never acknowledged the covert cops as anything other than paying customers.
Planned clientele or not, the rate at which the place had taken off had been a pleasant surprise. Considering the sweet monthly lease amount he’d managed to get for the space for the first year, the regularly crowded atmosphere was allowing him some buffer for when the lease would undoubtedly increase next year. He could be preoccupied by the downswing without panicking. He could. He drummed his fingers on the bar some more. Okay, the string of off nights had him a little worried, but he also had a good product (he eyed Rex’s high, tight ass surreptitiously) and confidence that the people would be faithful to that.
When Danny had first stumbled into ownership of a gay bar, he hadn’t had a clue how to ensure consumer loyalty. The only experience he’d had had been in a place he and several others had co-owned for extra money back in Newark and he’d thought he’d be able to translate running the front of the house to running the whole kit and caboodle. Hah. It became quickly apparent that men tended to think with their dicks and spend with their eyes, though. Once curiosity over the name of the establishment got them through the door, they often returned for the duration of their holiday if they were tourists and repeated business if they were locals, all thanks to the fact he only hired the best.
He wanted to feel bad for the blatant objectification, but, well. No.
So, he wasn’t an expert but he was pretty sure it was too soon to say two nights in a row of lousy business meant he was going to go down (not like that), but he was a man with many financial obligations. Any bad night seemed doubly so to him. He poured himself a shot of whiskey and slammed it down in one long gulp, also aware he wouldn’t do any good by drinking the second most valuable merchandise himself.
“Hmmm,” Rex said, eyeing him with a lascivious leer and absolutely no surreptitiousness. The tip of his tongue poked against his perfect, pouty lower lip as he stared at Danny’s mouth. “I’d like to see what you could do with…”
“Rex,” Danny said, cutting the other man off before he could go precisely where they both knew he was headed. Honestly, if he didn’t know the demigod with golden, tan skin and amazing, deep eyes was essentially a professional tease, he’d be flattered. “I don’t pay you to flirt with me.”
“On da house, boss.” Rex grinned, the shameless grin only the breathtakingly beautiful could pull off without looking like total bastards. Or maybe they looked like total bastards but no one cared. “You know half our regulars come in for a glimpse of dat ass of yours, and that light you think you hide under the bushel. The tailoring is getting better, but this is island living, brah. Those pants are still all wrong in so many ways.”
“Rex.” Danny felt the blush working its way up his neck. He didn’t realize he was doing it until it was done, pivoting his hips slightly to block Rex’s roving eyes from his crotch. He shot his employee a wry look. “Even if any of that were remotely true, you are bordering on sexual harassment here. I’d hate to have to fire you.”
Rex stared at him for a few beats, face still somehow beautiful even as he contorted it to demonstrate his displeasure. Annoying. He shook his head, snatched the glass on the bar top in front of Danny, set it gently in the bin and swiped at the table with a damp towel.
“Hey,” Danny said, “I was just kidding. You’re bank, babe. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Oh, I know that,” Rex said, with an air of cockiness that didn’t match the scowl. “I was more thinking about how I’d like to wring your ex’s neck for whatever he did to make you believe you’re not as fine a specimen as anyone in here, even if you suffer from the terrible luck of being a haole. You’re a fun-sized treat.”
Danny shook his head, ignored the fun-sized remark and rubbed the nape of his neck. As much as he wanted to blame Michael for any self-esteem issues he might have – and, okay, cheating on him with a stuffy real estate mogul, declaring said stuffy mogul his one true love and then playing the birth father card to pick Grace up and move to this rock in the middle of the Pacific might, might have put a ding in Danny’s ego – he had always been a bit sensitive to certain things. His height, sure, but now his hairline was wreaking havoc as well. He wouldn’t say he was insecure, but he also couldn’t say he didn’t overcompensate sometimes. And that was all on his own (broad and strong, thanks very much) shoulders, not on Michael’s and not on any of the other failed relationships before that.
A bar wasn’t the only thing he’d taken ownership of lately.
“Don’t worry about me, Rex. There’s nothing Michael has ever said or done that really hurts me anymore in that regard. I know my strengths.” Danny bobbed his head to the lone man hugging the bar. Goddamn slow nights. “You got another customer. Make him count, yeah?”
“I make them all count, boss.” Rex waggled his eyebrows. “I know my strengths, too.”
He watched Rex begin his schtick for a moment, amused and also grateful. For as big of an attitude his best bartender had sometimes, at his core Rex was a stand-up guy, pretty close to a friend. Danny was careful to maintain a certain amount of distance from his employees, and they didn’t usually hang out off premises or anything, but he’d do anything for them and he liked to think he was the kind of boss who’d instill the same in reverse. He grabbed a bottle of water out of the bar fridge and left Rex to do his job. Just because it was slow didn’t mean he didn’t have things to do himself.
As he headed back toward his office, Danny did a quick patrol of the main bar area. He exchanged a head bob with Honu at the door, who also favored him with a shrug that implied win some/lose some in reference to the sparse crowd. It didn’t give him much comfort to know that everyone else saw what he was seeing. To him, it meant he was going to have to put his nose to the grindstone to figure out what was going on, and what he could do to get back into the swing of things.
He poked head into what he always mentally referred to as the Den of Iniquity. Back in his own bar-hopping days, the even more dimly lit recesses of clubs and, in some cases, alleyways serving as “outdoor recreation areas”, had never appealed to him all that much. Danny wouldn’t lie and say he’d never been sucked off in a filthy, disgusting alley before, but it hadn’t taken long for him to outgrow that kind of anonymous sex. For the most part. Usually. That was why, since he knew it was going to happen whether he wanted it to or not, he had decided to create the space as he saw fit. Others had laughed at the idea of safety regulations and said it would kill business before it started if word got out there’d be no sucking or fucking without condoms allowed. The opposite had proven to be true.
Danny was still a cop in everything but title. Just as he enforced a strict alcohol cut-off limit and had a deal with Holo Cabs for patrons who got a bit too shitfaced, he enforced his equally strict condom rule. Hell, he provided copious amounts of them throughout the club though he knew they cost him a bit each month. He could take the financial loss for the peace of mind he gained. There was also comfort in knowing he wasn’t the only one who appreciated that a good time didn’t have to be unsafe, and that condoms didn’t detract from spontaneity.
He didn’t linger once he’d established that things were running smoothly, uninterested in voyeurism. He really did have a lot to do. He’d thought paperwork in his former profession was bad, but it was nothing like the amount of it, real and virtual, that came with being a small business owner. Danny was excellent at details and he didn’t mind the busy work so much. On nights when he worried at the viability of this venture, always tied in with his own viability to stay close to Gracie and to give her as much as he could in the limited time he had with her, keeping his mind occupied was a good thing. It was as if he thought staring at numbers would give him some genuine insight into something that was dependent on too many factors to boil down to a quick fix like swapping out the Smirnoff for Ketel One or whatever.
He made it all of two more steps on his journey, attention still primarily off to the side, when he ran smack into a solid object. There was a slight give but not softness, definitely not. In the half a second of contact, Danny discerned plenty of toned muscles worthy of a much longer feel. He hadn’t run into anything inanimate, but a person – a well-formed person who let out a dramatic oof and stumbled back a step. Damn it. Danny rued the day he thought up his self-imposed rule about not mixing pleasure with business, because though the guy wasn’t traditionally handsome, he was hotter than shit. Eminently doable.
Until he opened his mouth.
“Ho, watch where you’re going, little fella.”
Little fella. Really. Okay, Danny was working on the attitude. He sincerely was. It wasn’t one hundred percent fixed yet, though. He balled his fists and looked the guy up and down, as menacingly as possible. There was a time, and not all that long ago, when he would have risen to the bait those words so obviously were intended to be, if the smug, heavy-lidded expression the guy was flashing was anything to go by. He did a mental count of ten, reminded himself that as the boss, he had to lead by example. Starting a brawl was not how he wanted his establishment to be run, especially not because some jackass denigrated his height.
He stepped aside, swept an arm up to indicate the guy should pass and also tacitly accepting fault for the run-in. The customer was always right, as they said, even when the customers were gigantic jerks. Danny wasn’t in the mood for that kind of altercation anyway. The phone fight he’d had with Michael earlier still lingered as pain at the base of his skull and that one, verbal only, was plenty; he didn’t need to add a physical one to it, though the idea of a release was tempting. He snarled a little when the guy purposely bumped into him again as he passed.
“Fucking Neanderthal,” Danny muttered under his breath, sparing the man a sidelong glare as he turned to his original destination. A hand on his arm pulled him back. He stared down at the hand, large, strong fingers which wrapped all the way around his not-insubstantial bicep, then up at the slightly angered face of its owner.
“What did you say to me?”
In the dimness of the club lights, the man’s eyes still managed to be incredibly alluring. A zing of something basic, primal, shot through Danny at the sharp eyes and the heat of the hand through his dress shirt. For some reason both pissed him off. If circumstances were different he’d … but they weren’t, and he didn’t sleep with his patrons any more than he was close friends with his staff. He knew, then, exactly why he was pissed off. He was frustrated, damn it. He could really use that anonymous sex he didn’t usually do, take the edge off – from the financial worries, the custody bullshit with Michael, having to live here. Just everything. Not for the first time, he wondered what his life might be like if he broke more rules than he followed. He noticed ink poking out from beneath the guy’s tight shirtsleeves, designs that were probably intricate in the broad light of day but were mostly blobs here. He wanted to examine them – there was one on each arm – up close and personal.
“Hey. Hands off, buddy.”
“Not till you tell me what you said.”
Danny blew out a long breath and was going to run his fingers through his hair, a nervous habit, when he realized one hand held a bottle of water and the other was attached to the arm the guy had a lock on. He wrenched himself free, glad when he didn’t meet much resistance. He could hold his own in a fight, of course, but that was what he was trying to avoid. What he should have done was make something nonoffensive up.
“I said you’re a Neanderthal,” Danny said, enunciating every syllable, staring at the guy pointedly and gaining a modicum of relief in the brutal act of telling it like it was. He’d still rather pull the guy into the fun room and lick into his mouth, but beggars and choosers, as they said. “Try not to let that stop you from having a good time, though, okay? Just don’t plow anyone else unless they say yes first.”
For one fleeting moment, there was a look of pure astonishment on the guy’s face, the same kind of look Danny got whenever he said something with a blunt honesty most people didn’t expect. The surprise then quickly morphed into delight. Jesus, the asshole was gorgeous no matter what expression decorated his mug. Danny’s mouth went dry as he watched the man grin, somehow both sincere and the worst front he’d ever seen at the same time. He narrowed his eyes, assessing as he always did, but the guy suddenly flapped a hand at him, pivoted and walked away. His gait was stiff, controlled, and out of place in a man on the prowl for cock. Any alarm bells he got from that were put on snooze as he noted the incredible view of the guy’s ass and his brain automatically went into a scene bending him over (or being bent over, he was okay with either) and…
Danny unscrewed the water bottle and took a long drink as he tried to beat his healthy imagination into submission. Beat. Submission. Both words simply fostered more images in his mind. He had a collection of ties at home that would look great around that jerk’s wrists, restrained nice and tight to his bedframe. Danny wasn’t even into that kind of thing all that often, but he made exceptions. He might like to show that guy exactly who was boss. Jesus, he was not helping himself at all. The eye candy finally moved out of his line of sight and he breathed a sigh, of relief and maybe a little disappointment. He was really going to have to take that damned edge off soon, and with more than his right hand. With a real person, someone nice and kind and uncomplicated.
He finally made it to his office. Faced with the piles of paper on his desk, reason and professionalism soon righted themselves. The more Danny looked at the pluses and minuses of his business venture, the more his libido went back to where it was housed more often than not these days: the proverbial back burner. As he sifted through the monotonous work of reconciling accounts, though, a pattern started to present itself. At first he thought that he had some subconscious need to prove it was some outside force causing the drop in business, but the numbers didn’t lie.
His latent detective brain kicked in. He’d moved on to a new career due to circumstances, not choice. He couldn’t seem to turn that part of himself off, and found that he didn’t really want to. Soon Danny was sifting through the online newspaper archives instead of doing bookkeeping, reconciling the cyclical downswing of business in his club with current events and wishing like hell he had access to police databases.
H50H50
Truthfully, he had lingering doubts that he’d made the right call about staying, especially after he’d shot and presumably killed the man responsible for his father’s too recent death. The thing was, though, Victor Hesse’s body had never been recovered. The vengeance felt hollow. He had no way of knowing if Hesse was actually dead but he’d been locked into an agreement with the governor by that point anyway. He’d taken Jameson’s offer to run the task force she’d intended his father to head on total impulse, he could admit that, but at the time it made sense. The moment he’d run into that idiot detective in his dad’s – his now – garage, he’d known there was no way in hell he could leave that guy in charge of the investigation. Steve had already known who was responsible, but Detective Kaleo seemed just the type to fuck it up so much the evidence would start telling the complete opposite story. He’d learned long ago to listen to his gut, and his gut had not trusted Kaleo one little bit.
Why he continued to stay when logic told him he needed to hunt down Hesse’s damned corpse himself went deeper than a work commitment he knew he could have negotiated out of easily.
Two big reasons stood side-by-side at the tech table right now. Steve watched Chin Ho Kelly and his young cousin Kono Kalakaua exchange a few words. He smiled at the way they already worked so well together, and he was as close to happy as he’d come in a long time. His father had always spoken highly of Chin and Steve got why now – Chin was a fine cop who’d fallen victim to some awful circumstances. Steve didn’t believe for a minute the seasoned cop was guilty of any of the corruption he was accused of. He was glad to have run into Chin early in his time back on the island, and to have brought the shunned man onto the task force, given him another chance to do the job he loved.
His dad would have approved of the decision, even if he wouldn’t have ever broadened that approval to other aspects of Steve. No matter how strained his own relationship had been with John McGarrett, how nebulous his father’s affection or disapproval, Steve knew John had thought the world of Chin. He also knew if he returned to active duty now, Chin would be back playing tourist shop cop in a heartbeat. Whatever personal ghosts that had been resurrected in his coming back to the islands, Steve could deal with them on his own. He wasn’t going to run away and leave Chin to languish in the same kind of hell in which he’d been existing.
As for Kono, without Chin and him, she’d have to fend for herself at the Honolulu Police Department, with an inherited black mark over her head, tainted by her relation to Chin. While there was a strong belief that cops looked out for one another without question, Steve knew that wasn’t one hundred percent across the board, and not just because of Chin. He had no doubt in his mind that Kono would be able to handle whatever life threw at her, but that didn’t mean he wanted to claim responsibility for forcing her to in this instance. She had too much raw talent for police work and, if his eye was as good as he thought, skill enough to be a sharpshooter to have to fight tooth and nail for respect.
So, no. He wasn’t going anywhere just yet. He thought he’d done enough running in his lifetime, though he felt like he was waiting for a yet undiscovered indefinable and real something to tell him it was the right decision to stay.
He wondered sometimes, what would have been if he hadn’t taken his father’s exile all those years ago and absorbed into one of his own making. The reasons he and his sister Mary had both been shipped off to the mainland all those years ago were complex. As an adult, he now understood that a little better than he had when he was barely sixteen, lost and confused and hurt by more than just his mother’s untimely death from ovarian cancer. The need to protect from the unknown has been for both of them as far as Dad was concerned, but Steve was sure with him there was another layer of complexity. It was a layer that he’d built upon until he was a human variety of sedimentary rock. So far, he’d kept himself from splintering into sharp but fragile pieces.
“We’ve found more that fit the MO,” Chin said as Steve entered the bullpen. His face was hard lines and planes, frustration making him look grimmer than usual. “They’re from all over the island, and go back almost eleven months. John Does, for the most part, and none of them met any missing persons reports descriptions then or since.”
“Damn it.” Steve ran a hand through his hair, an odd feeling it was too long still striking him as he did so. He was relaxing into mostly-civilian life, perhaps. “You’re sure?”
This case, though, was chipping away at those layers and he wasn’t ready for the base of this long-buried thing to be exposed. He wanted to be granite, but he was sandstone. It was a part of himself he barely acknowledged, had years of hiding under his belt, because of Dad and then because of broader, institutional military policies still in force. The problem was that Steve was the only one of the three of them who could do undercover work for this case. Kono was the wrong gender and Chin hadn’t been out of police work long enough that he wouldn’t be recognized. He just wasn’t sure how much it was ultimately going to cost him, personally. He tried to add another layer, as he remembered the thrill of being the clubs these past few nights and not having to hide, all under the guise of, well, hiding, in the line of duty. Somehow, standing there in a too-tight white T-shirt and snug jeans, a uniform of sorts, he felt naked.
“All of them were found like the others, boss,” Kono said, her eyes dark and liquid with rookie emotion – sadness, anger, need for justice unchecked and unguarded. That wouldn’t last long. Soon she’d know how to shield herself from the worst of it.
He wasn’t planning to tell either member of his new team that a few nights ago he’d gone out after his recent foray into Honolulu’s gay club scene, wound up from the throng of hot bodies, pounding music and latent tendencies he didn’t want but also wanted so damned much it hurt, looking for something on a much more personal level. Peace from his own demons, or a release from them, in a less hyped atmosphere. Steve almost smiled. The name of the place and its sheer ridiculousness had pulled him in, but what he’d found hadn’t given him what he needed. He was starting to believe nothing ever would.
He pictured an angry face with icy, light eyes staring at him, broad shoulders, remembered the acerbic tone and the immediate surge of desire that had shot through him. Then again.
“Naked from the waist down, violated with a foreign object, beaten brutally with blunt force trauma to the head and dumped.” Kono’s voice was thick. “Chances are good every last one of them was on the fringe in some way, if no one reported them missing.”
In hindsight, the signature was remarkably obvious, but Steve couldn’t help continuing to wonder why HPD hadn’t picked up on it sooner anyway. The fact that none of the victims had anything in common, physically, shouldn’t have mattered. These men didn’t deserve what happened to them, and they didn’t deserve to be overlooked.
“That makes how many total?” Steve scowled at the screen. “Shit. Twelve.”
“So far.” Chin frowned. “There wasn’t much of a discernable pattern when this all started and I’d be willing to bet most of the first victims were homeless. We could be looking at more as I refine the parameters of my search, but so far, the only commonalities of the more recent victims are that they’re all men in their late twenties to late thirties. There’s no good way to know if the first vics were gay or bi, of course, but the last few definitely have been and weren’t nameless or faceless in the community.”
“Makes you wonder what changed,” Kono said, thoughtful and quiet. She glanced at Steve, as if he could assure her of something. “What would make someone go from targeting men who, for all intents and purposes, were invisible to those more likely to be noticed?”
Steve was a man of action. He wasn’t well versed in police procedure or how any civilian body would proceed yet, he only knew how he felt. He was less concerned about the whys and more concerned with how to stop it before another man lost his life in a brutal, humiliating way. Whatever the pattern, whatever the motivation, this monster was escalating both in his timeframe and his victims. Three in the last few months alone, including one late last week, the one that landed the case with Five-0. His stomach clenched, and the layers crumbled just that little bit more.
“It might help to get inside this guy’s head,” Steve said with a quick bob of his own head. He didn’t relish the thought. He was no profiler, but there seemed to be a lot of rage in their killer. Rage might be simple homophobia, but then again…didn’t he know better than anyone how internalized emotions could build and warp? “For all we know, he’s escalating the cycle because he wants to get caught. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
“Mmm,” Chin said, nodding. “Something obviously triggered him. Not only is his timeline increasing, but the post-mortem damage he’s inflicting on the victims’ bodies has become more extensive and vicious.”
“He’s getting angrier and that could be to our advantage. He could slip up soon,” Kono said. “Leave us some trace.”
The problem with that was it required waiting for someone else to lose his life, and Steve was not willing to sit tight for a DNA windfall that might never come. So far, his time undercover had yielded nothing case specific, but he had gotten an up close and personal view on what these murders were doing to the community. Dollars to doughnuts, if they interviewed club owners, they’d find out there’d been a marked decrease in revenue each time a body was discovered. Both clubs he’d hit, on and off duty, had been relatively quiet. The police or media might not have noticed something happening, but those intimately affected sure did, and they hadn’t felt safe enough to come forward.
“I don’t want to wait for this guy to screw up,” Steve said, perhaps a bit too sharply judging from the way Kono snapped her head up. He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Sorry, long day. Long week. The point is, we might never know what made him up his game, but if we’re out there maybe we’ll see something, hear something. Put a stop to it before he gets to someone else.”
“How long can you go all day and almost all night?” Kono worried at her lower lip.
“As long as it takes, Kono.”
“Maybe we should ask HPD if they can…”
“Police presence will only spook him. Steve hasn’t raised any red flags yet and he’s right. We may never know what set our killer off on a personal level, but…” Chin frowned as he trailed off. He began calling things up on the tech table, clearly on a focused train of thought. After a moment or two, he shot a few things up to the monitors and pointed. “There. I thought I remembered something.”
Steve squinted at the images, then drew his lips into a thin line. Oh, hell. He felt the figurative splinter starting. He pinched the bridge of his nose to help him keep it together.
“He’s been more active in the last two and a half months, which is just about the time a new club in Waikiki opened its doors.”
“The Winking Hole, for real? What is that, sounds like some kind of euph…”
Chin cleared his throat and shook his head.
“Uh,” Kono said with a blush. “Sorry, not important. A little weird, but not important. We haven’t surveilled that one yet. Do you think there’s a connection between that club opening and the increased killing?”
“I think it’s a stretch,” Steve said, throat dry as he recalled one certain angry, diminutive but wholly capable-looking man he’d encountered. The one he did not get a serial killer vibe off of, so much as a vibe-vibe. “We have no sound reason to think there’s a correlation. Tomorrow we’ll interview the most recent victims’ families and friends again, see if the men had been there lately.”
“And tonight you can go check out the place, Steve,” Chin said. “Same set up as before, with either Kono or I monitoring outside. At least one of us will catch a break and get a full night’s sleep.”
An all too familiar thin spiral of fear coiled through him. Steve’s hands were damp and cold, he almost felt fifteen again, torn between denial and the need to let it all out. Back then, he’d denied and it hadn’t mattered; he’d still been met with reproval. He and Dad never talked about it openly, but from that point to the time he’d been sent to the mainland, the tension had been palpable. At thirty-four, he should be more able to handle the thought of rejection. In some ways, though, it felt worse now. He’d lived a lifetime of not being who he was. People liked and respected him when he wasn’t who he was. Exposing that part of himself he’d carefully buried wasn’t easy. He wasn’t ready for it.
Chin and Kono were basically the only bright spots in his life at the moment. He didn’t want to lose them the way he lost Dad.
“Ah, I think you guys…” That was as far as Steve got before his throat went drier, as dry as the fucking Mojave. He worked through several painful swallows. He wasn’t fifteen, damn it, and these two people weren’t his father. “I think you should know something.”
“Steve?” Chin’s dark eyes, as calm as ever, somehow also looked condemning. “What is it?”
“I’ve been there. I went there a few nights ago,” Steve said, so fast his words ran together. “After we wrapped up.”
For a few seconds, there was that dreaded dead silence filled with judgment. Steve had to fight from taking a step back, as if the tension existed in a small box and if he just removed himself from it everything would be okay. By some miracle, he stood his ground. He ran his palms down the front of his jeans, though, and he was sure his pounding heart was audible in the room.
“Without back-up? You’d ream me for that,” Kono said slowly.
That was his out, he realized, and in his panic it hadn’t occurred to him. Steve managed to bob his head sheepishly, and rubbed the back of his neck. He gave Kono a half smile, but when he turned it on Chin he faltered at the other man’s steady, assessing gaze. Chin gave him a barely perceptible head tilt, which he wasn’t sure how to interpret. He looked away quickly.
“It was stupid, I know. I just thought you guys should know, in case I run into anyone who might recognize me tonight,” Steve said. “You might have thought it strange.”
Coward. He was a fucking coward and he hated it. He hated that layer of himself almost more than anything else.
“Should we scratch it off our list?” Chin asked. “What did you find out?”
“No. I didn’t stay long since it was almost closing time. And I, ah, I knew almost right away it was a bad move.” Liar. He was too good at lying, to everyone and himself most of all. “From what I could tell, it was different, though. The atmosphere, I mean. Very quiet, but it seemed partly intentional, not just a slow night.”
“Maybe it’s not a very good club,” Kono said.
“Maybe,” Steve said, except he didn’t believe that. He couldn’t believe that, not knowing that something about the place made him want to go back. The bar had lent a certain air of safety, made him feel as comfortable as was possible. It was that, not anyone he might have run into there. “There was a clear alcohol restriction policy posted and, uh, how should I put it? Best practices for sex acts.”
“How responsible,” Chin said. He looked thoughtful, though. “Doesn’t sound triggering, but for all we know there’s something about that kind of quiet acceptance that makes the lifestyle seem more accessible. More quote unquote normal. To most, that would be a reassurance, but this guy, he’s angry. I’ve been thinking maybe he’s gay himself and doesn’t want to accept it. Maybe he was raised to believe homosexuality is evil. A club that puts it all out in the open instead of catering to the camp side or the dark, illicit side could bother someone like that.”
Steve swallowed back an argument about how it wasn’t so easy to put it into little categories like that. He swore he could feel Chin’s attention on him. He nodded, the barebones profile perhaps too close to describing him for him to add to it.
“You up for another visit?”
With someone out there, listening, Steve wouldn’t do anything that would split off any more layers. He was almost certain of that, and he was almost certain he did not want that person out there being eyes and ears with him to be Chin. Except he didn’t want it to be Kono either. He didn’t want it to be anyone, and that was a problem.
“You stick here, find out what you can about the club and the owner,” Steve said. “Send us the intel, then go home and get some rest. Something has to break soon so we won’t have to sleep in shifts. But for now, we’ll scope the place out, see where it takes us. Plan?”
“Plan.”
Chin looked for a moment like he wanted to say something more, but instead cleared the tech table and locked it down. He headed for his office to do his work as Kono grabbed her gear and walked with Steve toward the main entrance to their headquarters.
For the life of him, Steve could not tell if Chin’s gaze following him all the way out of the door was real or imagined, supportive or judgmental, and he had no idea if he felt more like he was marching to his downfall or his salvation.
H50H50
There’d been a time he would have wanted the lines of communication between him and his former partner to be open, ironically as recently as when Michael was already fucking Stan and Danny was the biggest chump in the tri-state area for not knowing it. Now, as much as he hated the “have my lawyer talk to your lawyer” method of communication in general, he’d be happy to never have to see Michael’s cheating face ever again.
And if part of that was because he still, somewhere deep down, loved that damn face and the perfect family he’d once had, well, he wasn’t particularly proud of himself for it. Glancing at Gracie’s sweet, sleeping face, though, he also couldn’t fault himself for wanting that kind of life again. Fragments of his heart might as well have splintered right off when Grace made a snuffling noise and burrowed her nose into his neck. The very last thing he wanted to do was hand her over right now. He tightened his hold.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t let himself become wrapped up in the idea of a what if, not after he’d spent months rebuilding himself figuratively while he’d been building the Hole literally. That instant chemistry he’d had with Michael still existed, but the rational part of his brain knew it wasn’t love. Fireworks were meant to be fleeting, a brief burst of color and light, magic that quickly faded. Their passion too often ended in hate rather than love and he finally recognized it, though he had to remind himself time and time again. He needed more. He deserved to not be made to feel like an asshole for being who he was.
“This is out of my control, Michael,” Danny said as calmly and quietly as he could. It wasn’t easy. Volatile was a word often used to describe his personality, never more so than when he was being maligned for no due cause. “You know that. I can’t plan for someone else’s illness. The business is too new for me to be hands-off.”
“My point is that there’s always something with you, Danny.”
Michael was throwing his best wounded bird expression now, as if he was the long-suffering victim and Danny the aggressor. It was a tactic that would normally bait Danny like nobody’s business, but he refused to get angry in front of his girl, sleeping or not. There were some lines that were not to be crossed; he knew that if Michael either didn’t seem to or didn’t care.
“Something that is out of your control. It’s never just you, failing to come through. Case in point, your sleaze bar being more important than Grace.”
Jesus. Danny couldn’t win. They’d been happy once, but standing on the doorstep of Michael and Stan’s palatial home, it felt like twenty lifetimes ago. Michael, as it turned out, hadn’t had the stomach to be with a cop and Danny understood that. He truly did. As the son of a first responder himself, the fear and nagging anxiety he’d grow up watching his mother live with was something that had struck him and he’d felt it too once he’d gotten old enough to understand it. But he’d also felt the pull to help others, and he was … had been good at it. He refused to let Michael make him feel bad about that.
Now, in a far less dangerous profession, he still wasn’t good enough.
This was the final nail in the coffin of his fantasy of regaining his perfect life. It had to be. Danny couldn’t keep on kidding himself, because as it turned out his memory was faulty; there hadn’t been perfection so much as dysfunction and misery.
“Michael, stop right there. You know there is nothing on this planet more important to me than Grace. Disrespect anything else about me to make yourself feel like the bigger man in this situation, I don’t care,” Danny said, “but don’t, do not ever disrespect the devotion I have to this little girl.”
Danny winced when said little girl muttered and moved restlessly now, venturing closer toward waking. He cupped a hand at the back of Grace’s head and nudged into her hair with his nose. She was sweet and perfect and everything.
“We’re not having this … discussion here. Anyway, I’d think you’d be happy. After all, isn’t it your whole goal to keep me from my daughter as much as you can?”
Something like hurt flashed through Michael’s dark eyes, but Danny couldn’t trust it. He had little reason to trust the man he thought had been The (fabled, as it turned out) One these days. He regretted many, many things about his relationship with Michael, but the biggest was caving in when it had come to who would be the biological father of their child. Michael had said that being bi gave Danny more opportunities to one day have his own child – a monumental hint about their demise he hadn’t even picked up on, idiot that he was. And Danny also hadn’t anticipated how that would be used against him, how he now had what little time he had with Grace based primarily on Michael’s disingenuous good will. The law was not on his side and both of them knew it.
“Danny.”
“Let me take her to her room?” The question was begrudging. Danny had to ask permission to tuck his own daughter into the enormous, fluffy bed Stan had bought her. “Please.”
“Make it quick,” Michael said, stepping aside to let Danny through. He ruffled his long fingers through Grace’s tousled hair once as Danny moved across the threshold. “It’s late.”
As Danny passed, he smelled Stan’s cologne all over Michael. To this day, he had no idea how he’d missed that detail, pre-divorce, because it had to have been there. Denial, most likely. He’d been like an ostrich with its head in the sand for far too long back then. Hell, not just back then. Now. His stomach turned over a few times. This was his life now, and for one random moment he had no idea how that was possible. He’d lived his adult life as an upstanding person, had committed no crime but was now serving a life sentence. He frowned. Rex was right about him, he was damaged goods and until he was able to complete the rebuild by shoring up the cracked walls, he’d never truly move on.
He needed something to move on to.
Danny ascended the stairs with Gracie still wrapped around him like an octopus. She stirred a bit as he awkwardly pulled her sheets aside and lay her on the mattress. He set her overnight bag on the floor next to the bed, pulled the sheets over her small frame in one motion, and wasn’t surprised when she shifted. He watched her briefly, the light in the room diffuse from the hallway, as she turned her head his way and opened her eyes.
“Danno.”
“Go back to sleep, sweet pea.” Danny leaned and planted a kiss on her forehead, then rubbed his nose against hers. “I’ll see you Saturday.”
“Mmkay,” she said sleepily. Her little hand patted him awkwardly on the cheek. “Love ya.”
“Not as much as I love you,” Danny whispered.
Genetically speaking, Grace might not be his. In every sense that mattered the most, she was. His heart was hers, wholly and completely. Danny hated that she’d wake up in the morning here instead of at his place and not remember why. He mentally cursed Rex for no-showing tonight as he tiptoed out of the room and snicked the door shut behind him. He was almost as irritated with his employee as he was with his ex, who had vanished from the foyer. Danny knew that had to be by design. Seeing that he had no desire to continue down the argument path at the moment, he simply let himself out and headed to work. He tried to shake off the bad feelings his run-in with Michael produced, not wanting to bring that energy to the bar.
He found the Hole moderately busier than it had been in a while, which jived with the pattern he was almost one hundred percent certain he’d uncovered. Danny frowned. If he was also right about that pattern amping up, it wouldn’t be long before another man was found dead and the whole cycle would start again. He needed to make sure he was right before he contacted HPD, who might not believe him anyway. They’d probably dismiss him as a former cop looking to brownnose his way into a job they’d already told him didn’t exist. He forced those thoughts out of his head. For the next several hours, his priority was the business, not the sidelining freelance (unpaid) detective work.
He and Honu exchanged their customary head bobs as he entered through the front door rather than the employee entrance in the back. Something about a dark alley was even less appealing than usual, now that he was sure there was some sicko out there hunting gay men. He wondered if that was why his place had boomed so quickly, at least during the non-post-murder weeks; it was the safest place he could think of. Danny noted Andy and Keoki looked like they were handling the bar okay, but he wanted to check with them before he did anything else. Without Rex acting as his assistant manager – the guy was a bit over the top, but he knew his stuff and Danny knew he could count on him to cover the nights he had Grace – certain procedures might have slipped with the absence of anyone in charge. With a potential serial out there, safety was even more important. He wanted that enforced and known, so the members of the community didn’t feel like they had to stop living for a time.
Danny did a visual circuit of the main bar area. It took him all of three seconds to ID the guy at the far end of the bar, tucked away with a vantage point of the whole place. It was where he would have gone, if he were … his hackles raised. So did something else, because the man was as well put together as ever, but damn it, no. Not going there, and he was pissed that he had to check himself already. He recognized the broad shoulders and, yup, the hint of ink on both biceps showed as the man twisted slightly in his seat to survey the room much the same way Danny was doing. The stiffness of the man’s shoulders the last time their paths crossed made sense now. He was irritated about his failure to notice that the first time, but then he’d been thinking largely with his dick.
He strode over, as yet unnoticed himself, and straddled the empty stool next to his target. Danny grabbed the man’s wrist firmly, held on as its owner attempted to wrest free.
“Hi,” he said, leaning close so he could be heard. Danny watched closely as several things flitted across a face he had remembered as being inexplicably and ridiculously hot – surprise, pleasure, alarm … that wild-eyed look of a man cornered. Bingo. “You’re in the wrong place.”
“It’s a free country,” the guy said, his features back to blank. The transition was quick, but also too slow not to go unnoticed. He tipped his glass back, exposing his neck, a move that garnered attention from several of the men at the bar, including both bartenders. He pinned his eyes on Danny. “You have no right to tell me I can’t be here.”
“I didn’t actually say you couldn’t be here, but regardless – you bet your sweet ass I do have the right.” Giving a healthy squeeze first, Danny then released his hold on the guy and slid off his seat. “Come with me, please. Now.”
For several seconds, the guy didn’t move. He tilted his head ever so slightly to the left, a tell an experienced cop would never give. This guy was either new, or maybe not used to this particular kind of undercover work. Danny hated that his radar was apparently broken, if he hadn’t connected the dots the first time he’d seen the other man. An uncomfortable straight guy in gay clothing. Sheesh. Worse, if this plant was back, that likely meant HPD or maybe the Bureau thought whatever was happening to queer men in this damnable city had something to do with him or at least someone here. His night was just getting better and better.
“You work here?”
“Yep, I sure do,” Danny said loudly. “Now are you coming, or are we going to have a problem?”
“What if I said problem?” the guy asked, standing. He crossed his nice, toned arms over his nice, toned chest and drew himself to his full height.
Danny smiled. He simply adored it when people thought he’d cow under size intimidation. He raised an eyebrow and tipped his head to the side, appraising the man. There appeared no obvious place for a wire, but there was no way they’d send someone in without some kind of back-up. He raised his right hand and beckoned the guy closer. Fuck his libido, why hadn’t it shut down now that he knew he was dealing with a fake? Fuck, fuck, fuck it, his intuition couldn’t be this far off. He wanted to climb this guy like he was a palm tree. The man blinked, but actually followed his gesture. Up close, Danny smelled a slight tang of salt coupled with something fresher. The beach after a rain. In the miasma of booze and sweat, it was a haven.
It was also not something he needed to be romanticizing.
“You’re a cop,” Danny said into the man’s ear, which was as nicely-shaped as the rest of him, damn it. “I doubt you’re here on your own. Is your dick wired for sound? That’s the only place I can figure it could be. Should I just go ahead and…?”
He bent slightly, not that far, really, due to the annoying height difference that didn’t matter because this man was not on the menu.
“Shit! Okay, okay, don’t do…” the guy’s voice choked off. He skittered back until his elbow slammed onto the bar top. He winced. “Don’t do that.”
Ah, what he thought as the first genuine reaction he’d seen from the guy was complete with redness at the tips of his ears, visible in the low light. Danny couldn’t help it. Even if the guy was off limits, he found the whole embarrassed and bashful thing incredibly amusing. Also, attractive in a weird sort of way.
“Follow me,” Danny said.
“Shut up, Kono, I got made,” the guy grumbled quietly, clearly not speaking to him. “It isn’t funny.”
Danny smiled grimly. Kono, he noted, must be the back-up. The more he watched this guy, the more he revised his assessment. He wasn’t sure his mystery man was a cop, exactly. Someone on that side of the fence, absolutely, but he had a different sort of hard edge. He flicked his attention to the short hair just trying to grow longer than a few centimeters in length. The tats, the stiff shoulders. Hell, he was probably military.
“Hey, you said you work here, but who are you?”
Those piercing eyes were on Danny. Fuck, what was wrong with him? Straight guy, and based on the overreaction at the very thought of another man’s face in the vicinity of his dick, one who might harbor some deep seated hate of his own. Great. Danny was always attracted to the wrong sort.
“Danny Williams. Owner of this fine establishment.” Danny turned, but tossed back an, “I’m sure by the time we get to my office, you’ll have enough intel on me to hold a grown-up conversation.”
He caught Keoki’s attention with a hand wave signaling where he was going. Keoki grinned back and made a lewd gesture. Danny chose not to respond beyond rolling his eyes. In his head, he heard Michael’s derisive comments about his sleazy bar. Michael liked to selectively forget they’d met in a much seedier place than the Hole ever would be. Andy jabbed Keoki in the ribs with his elbow and shot Danny a shaka. Assured the floor was being handled, he weaved through the crowd. The pulse of the music and the corresponding bodies moving in time with it made him feel slightly dizzy. Or it was the hot guy trailing behind him.
Cop, cop, straight undercover cop, he reminded himself as he led the way toward his office, and people are dying out there. He had to maintain a line on the priorities. Standing at the door, he ushered his guest into the small room. Danny barely had the door shut when the guy was all up in his space.
“What did you mean about me being in the wrong place?”
This one was a walking contradiction, Danny thought. Uncomfortable with him getting close, yet his mystery cop was the one pushing across personal boundaries now. Damn if those eyes weren’t all sorts of spectacular in the brighter light. The feeling that he needed control and he needed it now overwhelmed every other thing racing through him. If the guy was military…
“Step back,” Danny barked.
As he’d suspected would happen, the man pulled himself up and away in what looked like a reflex action more than anything, a response to the tone of Danny’s voice. As messed up as it was, Danny almost felt guilty for using that tactic.
“You know, it’s polite for people to exchange names before engaging in business.” Danny slid around the guy and took a stance on his side of the desk. He adjusted his voice into his fallback of sarcastic. “It separates us from the animals, keeps us from going all jackal and hyena on each other.”
“Jackal…”
“Animal Planet, whatever. Also, not the point. You know who I am, and chances are you now know that I was a cop in my not-too-distant past, which is how I made you so easily. Now who are you?”
The guy twitched, his expression a familiar one. Huh. Danny thought maybe the alarmed retreat out by the bar hadn’t been the first glimpse of the real person he’d seen. This was the dumbfounded yet delighted look he’d gotten the other night. One of the many things that had had him jacking off several times since. Now he wondered if maybe his proverbial radar wasn’t totally broken.
“Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett, Five-0. Governor’s task force.” He stood on the other side of the desk from Danny, almost at attention. “You’ll have to take my word. I don’t have ID on me.”
“Of course you don’t,” Danny said. He let his eyes roam across that skintight white T-shirt, the hint of chest hair peeking out of the V neckline, and down the snug jeans. “Where would you put it?”
There wasn’t one bat of one single long eyelash at that, no ticks or tells or any emotion at all, good or bad, on Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett’s face.
“You need to tell me what you meant now, Mr. Williams.”
Danny didn’t know this man. He had no basis for snap judgments, really, but he could say without hesitation that he didn’t like this no-nonsense version of him that had presumably taken over while they were walking through the club. It was as if any and all personality had been drained out of him once the gay-guy-on-the-prowl act was no longer needed. It felt extreme. Wrong. The man had been something of a jackass before, but in a lighter way, the push/pull kind of way that Danny tended to enjoy in a person. He liked to egg people on and be egged in return. As far as turn-ons went, he didn’t think it was that bizarre. Who didn’t enjoy someone that challenged them? The man now standing before him seemed more robot than human.
“Sure.” If that was how they were going to play it, Danny had no problem being a raging asshole himself. He’d been attempting self-improvement for months, but after first being dragged down to work and then dealing with Michael because of it, he could use this as a venting mechanism. If he couldn’t expect a sexual outlet anytime soon, he’d take the anger. He was only human. He spread his hands out in front of him. “So, like I said, by now you know I was a police officer in the great state of New Jersey, before I ended up on this miserable rock. You probably know that my solve rate was nothing short of remarkable. Steve … do you mind if I call you Steve?”
As he’d spoken, Steve’s jaw had begun clenching and unclenching. Good. A slight narrowing of eyes and a nod of the head were his answer.
“So, Steve, you can imagine that I, as a decorated and accomplished former cop, might notice something was going on around here. Oh, yeah. I connected dots. You want to know what I didn’t notice, though? I didn’t notice the horrific murders of twelve – it is twelve, yeah? – men in the exact same manner making any kind of splash in the media or with the HPD. Or, they hadn’t. I guess that’s changed, if the governor’s very own elite task force is on the job now.”
“Yes, we are,” Steve said when Danny paused to take a breath. “If you’d kindly get to your point?”
Danny grinned and didn’t mean it.
“How polite. Very good, thank you. Since you asked so nicely, my point is this: if I have it right, and I think I do, none of the first victims were likely to be heavy in the club scene. I’m guessing my fine bar wasn’t the first on your list, so you or someone like you has been out there casing all of the gay bars. See any street people out there? No. In my experience, if they have cash and want booze, they want bang for their buck, if you know what I mean. Wherever this guy’s finding his victims, it’s not here, or Hula’s Bar and Lei Stand down the road, or any place that’s explicitly or subtly gay. Maybe it’s changed, I dunno, it probably has. But I do know if you can find the thread of commonality with the first victims – besides being nameless and unwanted and lost, I mean – you’ll have better luck catching this SOB.”
Releasing all of that felt great, actually. As he’d put piece after piece of the puzzle together, he hadn’t had anyone to bounce his suppositions and theories off of, which had always been an integral part of his job and one he loved. The silent stare, on the other hand, felt uncomfortable and he knew what was coming – a dismissal. He’d had enough of that in his life to know the warning signs. Danny wasn’t a cop anymore. He didn’t know what he was thinking, pretending to be again. He sat, the energy draining right out of him. He glanced at his hands, conscious of Steve’s attention on him and the muffled thrum of music coming through the door. He glanced up at last, ready to wish Steve luck on the case, but he froze at the look on the guy’s face.
“You should work with muh … us,” Steve said, eyes bright with something Danny hadn’t seen from him before.
It was difficult to tell which of them was more surprised by those words.
H50H50
Steve stared at the neat, methodically written notes he’d requisitioned last night and cursed himself for being such an idiot. The notes were thorough and demonstrated clearly the keen intelligence of the person responsible for them, and he was impressed every time he looked through them. But it was a lead, nothing more than that, nothing more than they would have come up with on their own soon enough. He, Chin and Kono could have easily handled it. They would have, except he’d opened his stupid mouth meaning to thank the man for his diligence as a civilian and be on his merry way, and instead had invited Dan … Williams to consult with him to hunt this serial killer down. The man who’d, before Steve had known anything about him except for his sharp eyes, sharper tongue and a broad set of shoulders, gotten to him in a way he hadn’t expected.
He still couldn’t believe he’d done it. Maybe that was why he couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
Worse, now that he knew more, so much more thanks to Chin’s research, Steve also knew he’d been right before he’d walked into The Winking Hole again last night – every last protective layer he’d accumulated was about to be split off. His eyes went blurry on the words written with a strong hand, after staring at the notes for too long. Williams was intelligent and surprisingly analytical. Steve bet he was great at everything he set his mind to. He felt another layer bite the dust.
“You okay, Steve?” Chin asked.
Steve blinked a few times and shifted his gaze to Chin, who stood at the door wearing an expression of cautious concern. Coward that he was, he’d successfully avoided major interaction with Chin all morning. He didn’t think he was ready for the look in the other man’s eye even now, but he couldn’t run forever. That much was becoming the recurring theme in his life; every path he took had to end somewhere. To his own chagrin and shame, he saw exactly what he’d expected in Chin and it turned out he had been right to steer clear of the other man and his dark, evaluating eyes. He had no idea how, but he was positive Chin knew things no one could know. He’d been careful, damn it, his whole life built by layer and layer of protection.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He affected a puzzled look on his face. “Why?”
“You’ve been holed up in here for a couple of hours and quieter than usual.” Chin crossed his arms over his chest and took a step in. For a second, it looked like he wanted to say more, but then his face settled into a placid mask. Anyone who knew Chin knew he epitomized that old ‘still waters run deep’ adage, so that particular look of his could be as alarming as anything. “That’s all.”
“This case is catching up with me. Like Kono said, we’ve all been burning the candle at both ends for a couple of weeks now.”
Chin looked at him, didn’t say a word for a good few seconds. Steve knew he was probably projecting. There was no actual way Chin could know about him or the proclivities he had spent a lifetime hiding and denying.
“Okay, fine. I might also be reconsidering the wisdom of bringing a civilian onto the case,” Steve said, which was an incomplete truth, but a truth nonetheless. He ran a hand through his hair and gave Chin a sheepish smile. “It was an impulsive move.”
“Maybe, but it was also smart. The groundwork he laid here alone demonstrates that Williams was a formidable detective. His jacket from Newark only confirms that. He knows his stuff and I’m sure he’ll bring a lot to the table. Fresh eyes are never a bad thing,” Chin said with a shrug. “Not sure how you’re going to explain it to Governor Jameson, but that’s not my job. We’re an unorthodox group already. Williams will probably fit right in.”
Jameson. Steve perked up. Oh, he should have thought of that. She might be the only way out of this for him. Sure, she’d given him free rein to create and run this team as he saw fit, but surely she might have some objections to bringing in a civilian, even that civilian came with recent and stellar law enforcement history. He glanced at the phone, his fingers twitching to reach for it. Before he could make the call which would help prevent his own demise, he heard voices from the tech room and he checked his watch. Ten AM. Shit.
“Boss,” Kono shouted. “Company.”
Steve took a deep breath and stood, caught Chin being inscrutably solemn at him again as he rounded the desk and brushed by him and out the door. He’d made his bed, now he had to … bad analogy, he thought, as he moved his eyes up from the floor and was met with a perfect view of a perfect butt. He stared for a millisecond at the curve of a strong back leading to, to … he would defy anyone not to call it magnificent. Williams turned and destroyed the view just in the nick of time, before Steve could give himself away for all to see. He could do this. He’d been doing it for years; now was no different, no different at all.
“This isn’t relevant to the case, but I have to know. It’s been driving me crazy. What the hell is with the name of your club?” Steve heard Kono ask Williams.
“Ah, that. To be honest, it was a mistake. My brother was out visiting and insisted on helping me get set up. Despite knowing he’s a colossal mess at details, I let him order the sign. What I wanted was The Winking Haole,” Wiliams said. His face was faintly pink. He ducked his head and shook it. “You know, as kind of a passive-aggressive kiss-off to everyone who labeled me that, including the Honolulu Police Department, thank you very much…”
Williams looked like he would have continued on for a long time, but he saw Steve approaching and trailed off.
“McGarrett. Nice place you have.” Williams lost the rueful look and gave him a crooked smile instead. “Very, ah, scenic.”
He watched Williams ogle first Kono and then Chin, openly and without any trace of shame. Steve wasn’t proud of the envy he had, or his thoughts of how this man must have had a much easier life than he had if he could be so comfortable with something that had been hard coded as badwrongdon’t for himself. He wasn’t supposed to want that kind of comfort, he knew that. He wanted it anyway, and there was something about Danny that made him yearn for it even more. He forced himself to ignore the leering and smile back.
“Williams,” Steve said, extending a hand for a shake.
A prickle of something hit him when their skin contacted, similar to what he’d felt when Williams had grabbed his arm last night. Steve let go quickly, which prompted the other man’s smile to broaden slightly. He clenched his jaw once in annoyance, distractedly rubbed his hand on his hip and tried to tell himself it was all in his head. There was no physiological, tangible reaction between people. It just didn’t work that way.
“I take it you found it all right?”
“I’ve been on this pineapple infested island for several months now. I did know where the Ali’iolani Hale was, thank you.” Danny’s attention turned briefly to Steve’s hand, still brushing off on his hip, then up at his face. His eyes were brighter, less icy in the daylight than they were in a darkened club. “All I had to do was spot the enormous truck in the parking lot – a classic symbol of overcompensation if ever there was one – and considering our interaction so far knew it had to be yours. It was a matter of basic deduction to determine your office was situated nearby.”
Kono emitted an odd sound, part laugh, part cackle, part choke and turned so her hair hid her face. If she was hoping the hair would also act as a sound barrier, she was sorely mistaken.
“I have no need to overcompensate,” Steve said, perhaps a hair too defensively. Damn Dann … Williams and his ability to set him off kilter, including the shit-eating grin being tossed his way as the man obviously saw right through him. “This is my team.”
“Chin Ho Kelly, veteran cop rumored to be dirty, and Kono Kalakaua, former beach bunny,” Williams said, grinning more at the collectively offended stares boring into him. “What, you’re going to tell me you didn’t google the crap outta me? I like to know who I’m working with, even temporarily. That said, I doubt anyone who was actually dirty would want back on the force and, well, anyone who can ride a damned plank of foam and fiberglass is clearly crazy enough for this job.”
Chin recovered first, a slow smile spreading across his face. He assessed Williams without a word, switched his attention to Steve for a moment, then went back to Williams. He stuck his hand out and said, “Brah.”
Williams twitched, but shook Chin’s hand then moved to Kono. By Steve’s estimation, the guy’s physical contact lingered too long with both. The irritation was irrational and he knew it, but it made him itch. He didn’t say anything. He knew what it would look like if he ripped Williams’s hand away from Kono’s. He knew, too, that he would never be able to keep his internal layers in place if he obsessed over stupid things like whether or not Williams wanted to get into Chin’s or Kono’s pants. It wasn’t where his focus needed to be.
“I assume you’ve looked over the stuff McGarrett absconded with last night.”
“Absconded,” Kono said dazedly.
“So maybe we should start with you catching me up on the angles you’ve already explored,” Danny said, not pausing a beat at Kono’s interruption. His hands flew with what seemed to be pent-up energy. “Even though they’re probably wrong, there might be something worth keeping in there.”
“Your modesty is truly astonishing. Seriously, it’s a wonder how you keep your ego under wraps,” Steve said, hackles rising. He couldn’t keep himself from taking the bait. He mentally cursed his mouth and sighed. “But it’s a good idea. Chin.”
The only word Steve would apply to how quickly he returned to his office was flee. He fled, that was precisely what he did, needing some distance to get himself in some kind of order. He needed a plan to keep Danny … Williams … oh, hell, Danny from getting under his skin. He sat on the edge of his chair, back ramrod straight and looked at the phone. He still had time to bring this to Jameson’s attention, but now he wasn’t sure she’d do anything about it. Danny’s words rang in his head – the team was comprised of a disgraced cop, a pro surfer turned rookie and a Navy SEAL with a mother lode of mental issues. Chin was right. Danny fit, and temporarily adding a civilian gay bar owner probably wouldn’t make the governor flinch, at least not one with Danny’s extensive background.
Steve had to get over it, get over the mess in his head and get the case done. Catching the killer was far and away more important than his own issues, and it seemed impossible that years of caution (repression) could fall away so quickly. He was just exhausted and he wanted to put this monster behind bars or in the ground. If it came to that, he would have no qualms.
He chewed on his thumbnail, looking from the phone out to the three people gathered around the tech table. Step one was to get his ass out there and do his job. As Steve stood, he saw Danny shift into a ray of light. His stomach clenched at how the light caught on the golden hair on Danny’s arms and the backlighting managed to create a silhouette of his torso through his ridiculously tight dress shirt. The effect was one of an overall soft glow. Jesus, there was something so beautiful about the guy and something so, so wrong with himself for being unable to quell his reactions. He stood for a moment to compose himself, watched the easy exchange of conversation between Chin, Kono and Danny and could practically sense them bouncing thoughts off of each other. It hit him like a bolt of lightning. Oh, shit, Steve understood one more thing he wasn’t prepared to handle.
In the short time Steve had known him, Danny had likely become an indefinable and real something that was enough to keep him here.
He couldn’t have an epiphany that would break the case open. No, he had to have one that was like a chisel and hammer to his already splitting layers. Steve paused at the threshold of his office. Looking at Danny, still radiant in the late morning light, he was terrified now it was too late to put anything back together, and that once it all lay at his feet he wouldn’t have an identity. Not one he could recognize. Not one anyone would consider a leader, a SEAL … normal.
As if sensing him gawking, Danny looked up and caught his eye. In that one moment, there was none of the snipey arrogance that usually oozed from the guy, only something vulnerable and genuine as he dipped his head once, a soft smile on his lips, before he turned back to Chin and Kono. Steve was a logical person, yet he found himself intrinsically certain that the Danny he’d met in his club and the one who joked at his expense a few minutes ago was mostly a shield and that small glimpse was who he was under it all. Maybe he wasn’t the only one guarding secrets. The possibility alone made him feel like there was hope for him. He stepped out of the office, made it only part of the way to the tech table when his cell rang. All eyes turned to him, as he fumbled the phone out of his pocket.
“McGarrett,” he answered.
“Commander McGarrett, it’s Sergeant Lukela.”
“Duke.”
Instantly, Chin and Kono stiffened then headed for their gear. Danny furrowed his eyebrows and shifted his attention between the three of them alternately.
“We’ve got another one,” Duke said. “This one was found under a park bench at Ala Moana Park.”
“Shit. That’s way more public than ever before,” Steve said. He nodded at Chin, who was thumbing toward the door. “You sure it’s our guy?”
“Same MO. It seems pretty likely. This poor guy, he’s … well, it’s bad.”
“We’re on the way. Text us what part of the park.”
Grimly, Steve brushed by Danny to get his own pack. He should have anticipated the other man would latch onto him, but the strong grip on his forearm startled him anyway. He glared at Danny. As much as he begrudgingly, bemusedly enjoyed the other man’s acerbic nature, there wasn’t time for any delay. Reasonably, he knew their latest victim wasn’t going anywhere but the morgue, but it was the principle of the thing.
“Williams,” he said.
“You might as well call me Danny,” Danny said, “and I’m coming with you. Do not try to pull that ‘you’re a civilian’ bullshit I can see is already crossing your mind. I am part of the team until we put this asshole away, okay? We don’t really have time to argue.”
“Fine.” Steve stalked to the door, just closing from Chin and Kono’s exit through it. “But keep a low profile … Danny.”
Danny looked like he wanted to argue the directive, but Steve didn’t give him the chance. He took off after Chin and Kono, checked his phone for Duke’s text, and trusted that Danny would be at his heels.
“Hey, gigantor,” Danny shouted when they reached the parking lot. “Would it impede the investigation if we took my car? I know how these things go and, well, I have somewhere I have to be in a couple of hours. I don’t want to be at your mercy.”
Steve huffed, to disguise the unbidden swell of desire at the particular way Danny said that and the particular words he used. He had no doubt the short tenure of their working relationship would be nonstop antagonism, but he didn’t know why the idea excited him rather than made it easier to keep himself together for the duration. That wasn’t strictly true; the part of him that wanted to stay buried knew all too well. He valiantly tried to ignore the images of Danny splayed out beneath him, maybe gagged and perhaps tied to his headboard, completely into it and completely at Steve’s mercy. Stop. Stop. Wrong. No. He perused the parking lot, spotted Danny’s car in a heartbeat. Two could play Pin The Vehicle On The Driver.
“And you gave me shit for overcompensation,” Steve muttered as he headed for a shiny, silver, late model Camaro.
Danny popped the trunk as Steve walked by, so he tossed his pack in and clicked the trunk shut. He slid into the car as Danny started it up and the engine roared to life. The car pulled to the parking lot exit, where Danny put on the brakes and looked at Steve.
“Where am I going?”
“Ala Moana Park.”
Danny nodded and resumed forward motion. As they drove, the atmosphere in the car became less fraught with whatever Steve thought he was feeling for Danny and more tense with the weight of where they were going. If this was one of their killer’s victims, and he had no reason to think Duke was wrong about that, it was a dark day. His frustrations were primarily introspective – he should have been able to catch this asshole by now. Some cases could turn around in a day. This one had dragged out, and his failure to put a stop to it had cost two more men their lives. The only sliver of positive he could find was in knowing that Danny was on board now. Beyond all of the confusing, unwanted attraction, last night he had seen the drive in the other man’s eyes, and Chin was right about this too – the fresh perspective would do them all good. He was sure of it.
“Chin and Kono catch you up on where we’ve gotten on this?” Steve asked.
“Partly. You know the Bureau’s going to step in,” Danny said as he made a rude gesture to another driver and then maneuvered his car like he was a stunt driver, both activities so much the antithesis of Hawai’ian drivers they seemed extreme.
“Governor’s holding them at bay. Jesus, where’d you learn to drive?” Steve all but gasped it as Danny weaved around three drivers. He was actually kind of impressed, though, and took mental notes on how to hone his own skills. “NASCAR?”
“Something like that.”
They returned to silence. Steve surreptitiously checked out Danny’s profile several times during the trip, made longer by the traffic Danny muttered vulgar imprecations about. Strong jaw, stubbornly set. A bit of scalp showing through the slicked back hair was somehow endearing. He caught himself staring too long once and jerked his eyes forward. He couldn’t both want to rebuild layers and split more of them off by ogling like a damned teenager. Those things were mutually exclusive. Especially when they … he was on a case like this. He was quite definitely fucked in the head.
“East side,” Steve said as they approached the park.
Once they had pulled up next to Kono’s car, Steve practically vaulted out of the Camaro, striding toward the yellow tape and Dr. Max Bergman, the medical examiner. He caught Chin and Kono already leaning over the body, gloves on and tired, angry expressions on their faces. Again, he didn’t wait for Danny to follow. He ducked under the tape keeping the general public and, shit – now they wanted the story – reporters at bay. Vultures. He shot them an angry glare and didn’t care if it made it on the news with an unflattering caption or voiceover.
“Max.” Steve gestured to where he knew Danny was, to his left and just behind him. “This is Danny Williams, he’ll be consulting with us for the remainder of this case.”
“Ah, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” Max said. He quirked his head and held out his hand, giving a little bow.
Danny never took the offered hand. He shoved the pack he must have retrieved from the trunk at Steve.
Steve fumbled with the bag and turned, saw Danny’s jaw was clenched and his focus was behind Max, on the body. He looked … pinched, the lines around his eyes deepened into grooves and skin pale. Without a word, Danny spun around and walked away quickly, shoulders stiff and hands balled into fists at his side. Steve stood there and watched him go, confused.
“Was it something I said?”
“Where’s new guy going? I thought he was a seasoned veteran back on the mainland.”
Max and Kono’s questions were spoken almost on top of each other, but Steve really had no good answer for either of them. Then he looked at the body and it made horrible sense. Damn it. He frowned unhappily and tossed another glance over his shoulder, saw Danny pacing by his car in tight lines that seemed controlled from a distance but were probably evidence of him barely holding it together. Steve knew he needed a few minutes, maybe more.
“He is, Kono, but Danny knew this guy,” Steve said. He glanced at Kono, feeling adrift and angry for Danny, at levels that seemed disproportionate. “Our vic worked at his bar.”