And since it's my birthday tomorrow, here is a present for all of you! I promise that the next chapter has Steve/Danno interaction for all of you hardcore shippers (I make that seem as if I'm not one bahah.) This chapter is slightly lighter while ALSO…features me trying to incorporate my mad crime-solving/writing skills which unfortunately are non-existent. I'll try to work on it, though.

- Maddie.

Seven | Stubborn

Steve stared down intently at all of the information that Chin had faxed over to HPD while listening to the previous call on a loop as he tried to figure out what they would do as leverage if they couldn't get what the man called Adam Calwell, as he had learned, wanted.

Kono, on the other hand, watched Steve. Steve was tapping his pen on the table, his face leaning on the palm of his other hand. He was restless, she could tell, but she also knew that he was fighting in his mind – more over his previous decisions when it came to Danny rather than anything to do with the case, where his mind actually should've been focused.

"Still thinking about him?" Kono asked, breaking the silence.

Steve didn't even look up and said, "No, I am not thinking about him. Why would you think that I was thinking about Danny?"

"I didn't say Danny," Kono answered, trying to conceal her smirk.

Steve looked up, genuinely surprised and paused the recording. "Oh, uh…who did you mean? Calwell?" he asked, feelings his cheeks redden.

Kono then took the moment to shoot Steve a satisfied grin as she said, "Simple psychological question. I didn't say a name, but someone automatically came to your mind, said person being Danny, who you suspended and basically convinced to resign a few hours ago."

Steve looked at her and then said, "I'll convince you to resign pretty soon if you don't drop it."

"Face it, boss, we need him. This is his daughter and he needs to have this one. He needs to be the one to get her back – do you know how worthless he'll feel if his daughter is kidnapped and he wasn't able to get her back? Because you know that he won't be able to. Not without us."

Steve looked at her and sighed, saying, "He won't get her back, you're right. And not only because he's not working with us, but because he's not allowed to touch the case, no matter how emotionally involved he is. He's off the case which means that he is off the case. It's not his business anymore. He's supposed to sit tight and wait for our information."

Kono raised an eyebrow. "Boss, I know that you and Danny haven't been partners as long as some other cops on the force but you know him better than anyone – do you honestly think that Danny is going to 'sit tight and wait for our information'?"

"No," said Steve, "but it'll do him some good to stay away from this case for a while. Look, Kono, I understand his relationship with Grace, I do. I know how strongly he feels about her, he's her father, it's natural. I know he'd go to the ends of the Earth or kill for her, but this isn't good for him. This only going to wreck him if we keep letting him around it all when we're not even close to catching the guy. He's only going to keep taunting Danny until he finally snaps."

"Until he finally snaps? What do you call what he did at the ransom call?"

"I don't mean that sort of snap – that, I get from him everyday. I mean emotionally and mentally, he won't be the same. Honestly, if you want to break Danny Williams, the only way is through Grace. And this guy got him good."

Kono sighed and ran her hands through her hair and said, "You didn't do this on the case with Mecca. He was pretty personally involved in that one, too,"

"Yeah, but Grace is still alive and he'd like to keep her that way. That time he was just avenging Mecca. If he was like that with Mecca , who was dead, the entire case, imagine his reactions now – not that you exactly need to, considering that you've already seen him on the phone."

Kono nodded slowly and looked down at the files in front of her when she said, "I still think that you shouldn't have suspended him, though."

"Kono, can you just – I'm trying to listen to something here," Steve said as he had pressed 'play' again the second that there was a gap in their conversation.

"Sorry," she murmured.

Steve listened intently to the recording on a loop, focusing on something in particular which Kono couldn't point out. He was all but pressing his ear up against the speaker.

A few minutes went by and Kono said, "You're really in love him, aren't you?"

The first person that came to Steve's mind was Danny and he said, exasperated, "Kono, I am not in love with Danny."

Her grin almost extended off of her face as she said, "I didn't say anyone's name."

Steve pressed paused and looked up at her, a look of horror on his face.

"Another simple psychological question. Good to know that I was right, though," she said gleefully.

Steve glared at her. "You're not right about anything, so drop it," Steve told her. "He hates me anyways," Steve added, muttering.

Kono did everything but squeal as loud as she possibly could. "He does not! He loves you, too! Tell me the truth, that's what happened last night, isn't it? Come on, you can share this with me!"

Steve's eyes widened. "Kono, if anything did happen, the last person I'd tell would be you. No – I wouldn't tell anyone for that matter, those things are personal."

"Okay, you wound me, boss. Come on. You have to give me something or I'm just never going to drop it."

"Kono, nothing happened," Steve lied. "So you'd better drop it soon or you'll just be disappointed when you realise that you're winding something that didn't happen, up."

"But-,"

"No," Steve said, cutting her off. "Just let it go because nothing happened and nothing will ever happen, okay? It'll be luck if he ever speaks to me again. I'm not about to push him for anything and I don't care how cute you think it is."

Kono frowned and murmured, "You're such a child."

"Sorry? What was that? I can't hear you over the only evidence we have," Steve said as he tried to turn the recording up louder.

Kono rolled her eyes and had her attention diverted when her phone vibrated on the table.

She picked it up to find a text message from Chin.

Danny was here – what happened?

Kono glanced up at Steve and said, "I'll be back."

He nodded absently.

She left; ready to fill her cousin in on everything, swearing him to secrecy while she was at it, of course.

"Why, what's wrong?" Kono asked after Chin's strange reaction to hearing about Danny's suspension.

"He was here," Chin sighed, "And he didn't tell me that he was off the case. I gave him what I had found, all of the information. No doubt he's working on the case without us as we speak."

"Oh, right…" Kono said, biting her lower lip. She watched Steve through the window and then said, "Cuz, I'm sure that it won't be that big of a deal, I mean you know those two…and Steve knows you and you didn't know, so everything will be alright."

Chin sighed. "Let's hope so. How are things going on your end?"

"Well, I can recite the recording to you, from start to finish, considering how many times he's played it but other than that, nothing. The boss seems to think he'd heard something, or that he's onto something, but even he doesn't know what yet. So basically, we're really nowhere. How about you?"

"Hey, I got you the name of the guy; I'm clearly doing more work here. Let's not interrogate me!"

Kono rolled her eyes and chuckled. "Yeah, yeah. Do you have anything new to report-,"

"I'VE GOT IT! THAT'S IT! KONO! COME IN HERE!"

"What's that?" Chin asked, hearing Steve's shouting from the other end of the line.

"Uh, I think the boss found something," she said, her voice rising with excitement as she hurried back into the room. She put Chin on speaker and asked, "What? What is it?"

"Is that Chin?" Steve asked, his eyes lit up with excitement.

"Yeah, yeah, it is, what is it boss, what did you find?" Kono asked.

"Drills!" he exclaimed.

Kono stared at him, her face now blank. She had no clue what he was on about. "…Great!"

"No, Kono, you don't understand! Drills! There's a faint sound of drills for like zero point five seconds in this recording each time that a door is opened, whenever either Calwell walks in or out, bringing Grace with him. This means that he takes her outside and then brings her back in and the drills that we can hear means construction! Outside of where they are!"

"You managed to hear that from a second of recording?" Chin asked, trying not to sound as surprised as he was.

"I didn't notice it the first few times I heard it," Steve said.

"The first few thousand, you mean," Kono muttered.

"Yeah, I didn't notice, I looked over it mostly because I was trying to pick up hints from what they were saying and trying to figure out if something meant something else, I listened to Grace's voice and if there were any hints being dropped, but I'm sure she was too scared to say anything. I then listened even harder in case I missed something that was said quieter, possibly between them captors but I didn't hear anything. It was only after the first couple of listens that I started paying attention to the background noise and noticed the drilling and all of the people. I'm sure that I heard a faint boat horn in the distance and the drilling accompanied with that…it has to be near a dock somewhere or near a beach. We need to narrow down all of the places that are doing construction near a docking point."

"You want me to narrow down all of the docking points on the island? You realise that we are in Hawaii right?" Chin asked.

"Yeah, but not every dock on the island is getting construction done. They need government approval before they perform any sort of construction or maintenance to the land so look through archives and recent proposals for this type of thing and if we can narrow down the area, by tomorrow, we should be able to get a whole team together for back-up to surround the area to make sure that it goes off without a hitch."

"But he has Grace hostage," said Kono. "We can't guarantee that she's going to be okay by just busting down the door, if we find it, and grabbing her. And plus, this'll scare her if she sees all of the guns and if a shot does go off, which it probably will considering that Calwell is probably armed, we can't guarantee Grace protection. We need to give them what they want."

"But we don't have what they want, Kono," said Steve. "We can't get what they want. This is so far the best way."

"But it's not the safest," Kono argued. "If anything happens to Grace-,"

"It won't."

"—But if it does…think about Danny. That's his daughter."

"I know it's his daughter, Kono, but we don't have any other options!"

"Well, actually…we do," came Chin's voice for the first time since Steve's plan for the next day in order to save Grace.

"…Well?" Steve asked.

Chin explained to the two how there was a drugs bust ten years ago and that all of the money obtained from the bust was locked in a storage room in the HPD after the case went cold. Nobody had touched the money, having no reason to, and that all of that money was basically just sitting there in cash, gathering dust.

Steve said, "Okay, but what about the drugs? He wants all of his drugs back, too and there was a lot of it at the site when we busted in."

"It's white powder," Chin said. "Do you know how many white powders there are out there that look exactly like cocaine? All you have to do is get the packaging right."

"Chin, are you suggesting that we package hundreds of kilos of flour as if they were drugs and hand them over to Calwell?"

"You don't exactly have much of a better choice," said Chin, "Taking the money is a big enough deal. Taking drugs is a whole other ball park. Trust me, bruh, they're not going to notice the difference and you only need it for show. Calwell isn't going to go ripping it open to make sure that that is what he wants. He doesn't have time for that. He won't even get a chance to notice that it's not his – once the switch is made, we go in."

"Okay, but then we need him to call again and negotiate a drop off point," Kono said. "We can't just show up to where he is, he'll know he's surrounded."

"He'll call again," Steve said. "He wants this stuff. He'll definitely call again. If not tonight, then tomorrow. Either way, he'll call. Chin, I still want you to narrow it down where they could be. I want people to scope out the area and start figuring out vantage points for snipers and places where we can block off should there be an escape route for him and to make sure that the immediate neighbours and people in the area are evacuated. We won't have time to do all that if he calls again tomorrow and wants the stuff within a few hours."

"Got it, boss," Chin replied and hung up.

Steve looked at Kono. "You got a couple hundred kilos of flour?"

"I have a kilo or so of icing sugar?" Kono offered.

"Right. You go get that and when you get back, I'll get a few HPD officers to help you pack it all." He lowered his voice as he leaned in and said, "I'll be in touch but around four to five AM, you and I are going in to get that money, okay?"

She nodded and didn't comment on that further, only asking, "What are you going to do now?"

"I have to see Danny."

"You're going to get him back on the team?" Kono asked hopefully.

"No," Steve replied. "Not now at least. And he quit, Kono. But he is…the parent. It'll do well to inform him that we're getting somewhere."

Kono tried to conceal her smirk that appeared as she said, "Why not get him and Rachel together then? They're both the parents."

"…Chin will talk to Rachel. They're divorced; you don't want to get them together considering they'll only argue…you know…yeah."

Steve left the room with Kono calling after him, "Use protection!"

"You're fired!" Steve called back as Kono struggled not to laugh hysterically.