Chapter Three

Gillings gives them a hard time about stealing from the elderly hardware store owner, for some reason doesn't think they've been suitably punished, so Kono picks his pockets again and comes up with a wallet filled with cash. Steve takes some with him for breakfast, and Kono develops a swear-jar-like system that has Gillings paying five dollars for every inappropriate comment he throws in her direction. Her boss would prefer to beat the little weasel to a pulp, but Kono insists they use her idea. He'd press harder to get his way, but he's picked up on a correlation between Gillings making an unwanted advance and Kono "accidentally" tipping him over so his face smacks against the floor and figures that she can look after herself.

When it's his turn to use the convenience store restroom, Steve jumps down from the truck and orders someone (he's not sure if it's Gillings or Kono) to behave. He looks down at himself and scowls at what he sees, knowing that there's no way he can play unobtrusive when he's visible injured and covered in green paint. Steve knows he looks bad, but Kono probably turned a few more heads, having taken a few paintballs to the face and chest when she turned around to command him to move and come out looking like a dalmatian. So that's sort of a comfort.

The clerk looks at him suspiciously when he first enters. However, he's pleased to see that the blonde woman seems only slightly more wary of him than any other customer that comes in at 4:30 in the morning. Kono's own grand entrance probably prepared her for strange things to come. He ignores her glare when he enters the "customer's only" bathroom, because he does plan to buy something. The fruit Kamekona keeps in the truck for smoothies and such hardly looks fresh, and Kono can only sustain herself on frozen water and flavored syrup for so long.

Steve finds a banana and a protein bar for himself, almost buys the same thing for Kono, but instead decides to be realistic and throw two stale malasadas from the display case into a to go box. On an impulse, he grabs a packaged multivitamin from the first aid section, hoping it will both assuage his guilt for enabling their rookie's fried dough habit and earn him brownie points from Chin when this is all over.

While the clerk is punching his purchases into the cash register, he pulls a newspaper from the stand next to the counter, figuring he has some time until the lighting's right for them to move in. He nearly drops it when he sees the front page.

Five-0 Seeks Missing Witnesses in Warehouse Explosion: Psychological Evaluations Pending

Apparently, Danny has been handling the press.

Steve puts the paper on the counter, front side down, before he takes the bag with the rest of his purchases, wondering if he should have sprung for coffee. This is already turning into a long day.

The clerk looks up at him while she rings up the paper, before leaning to look out into the parking lot, where the shrimp truck is visible, parked in three different spaces. She looks down at the paper again, and Steve realizes that they probably released the shrimp truck detail.

"Misunderstanding," he explains, smiling in a hopefully charming manner.

She gulps and nods slowly. "I'm sure it's a big one."

Back in the truck, Kono and Gillings are watching some teen drama that's streaming from the computer. Steve gives her an odd look, and Kono shrugs.

"Lani had is downloaded on the laptop," she explains. "And it keeps him quiet."

He lets it slide and unpacks the bag, watching Kono's eyes light up at the box of malasadas. She digs in happily, but stares at him like he's lost it when he drops the vitamin into her palm. Maybe he has. Sleep deprivation and all that...

"What? Nothing for me?" Gillings complains loudly. With an aggravated jab of his finger, Steve points to his injured eye. Gillings shrugs. "Fair enough."

"You can have this," Kono offers, tossing the unwrapped vitamin in his direction.

Steve sighs.

He checks his watch and discovers they still have time to kill. Gillings is occupied, and they've been fed, so they can start preparations and finalize their plans. "Come here, Kono," he says, pulling an elastic bandage from the convenience store bag. "Let's re-wrap your knee."

"Umm," Kono hesitates. "That's not really necessary, boss."

Clearing the top of cooler of various wrappers and tech gear they've accumulated, he doesn't really pay her protests much mind. Kono bites her lip when he helps her up onto the cooler, looks at him nervously when he starts to roll her pant leg back.

Steve pushes the fabric aside, reveals her injured knee, and pictures the many agonizing, drawn-out ways that Chin Ho could possibly kill him.

Because he is going to kill him.

"Kono," he says with exaggerated patience, gently prodding her knee, which has swollen to the size of a softball. "I thought you said the doctor told you that you were good to go."

She shrugs. "I also told Gillings he might have a chance with me if he shut up and went to sleep."

"Hey," Gillings protests, sounding offended. "I'll have you know, after ten minutes with a man like me..."

Kono pulls a face and pockets a five from his wallet.

Her knee is black (just black, not blue, which is not a good sign), and Steve's not sure how he's going to get the leg of her jeans to fit back over it. He has to use context clues (namely the fact that it's between her shin and her thigh) to recognize it as a knee at all.

So Kono's not going to be chasing anyone. Or running from anyone.

They need a more creative plan...

Gillings has the paper in front of him, leaned against a cardboard box. "Is this about you two screwballs?" he asks triumphantly, smirk in place.

"Shut up," Kono snaps, hissing as Steve presses against a particularly tender spot and dumping shave ice down Gillings' back.

...and fast. They need a creative plan, fast.

Tanner Downey wakes to the screeching of the smoke detector and scrambles to his feet, scrubbing sleep from his face with his hands. If one of those morons left a cigarette burning in the house, they're all gonna pay...

His men were sleeping on the living room floor, in nylon sleeping bags that get caught around their ankles as they try to make a run for it. They're clumsy with exhaustion and panic, tripping over themselves and others as they try to hurry out the door.

Downey slept in a warm, comfortable bed, so this is not his problem.

Especially because he catches the scent of smoke in the air.

When he hits the front door, he practically yanks it off the hinges with his eagerness. Fire and the kind of firepower that he's keeping in the garage do not mix well, but when he tries to get to the garage, he smacks into a solid wall of metal. He blinks at the logo.

Kamekona's Shrimp?

By the time he regains his senses, some of his lackey's are already heading into the kitchen where the back door is located, possibly escaping before him. This is not acceptable, so Downey pushes past them and makes for the door. There's a thick layer of dark smoke touching the ceiling, drifting down into the rest of the room and clouding in his throat and lungs. He needs to get to the door, let some smoke out and get a shot of clean oxygen...

Downey feels his way to the back door and jerks it open. But this time, he encounters a solid wall of SEAL...

With a gun.

McGarrett grins. "How's it going, Downey?"

The friggin' lunatic closes the door behind him and steps forward. Does he want to die of smoke inhalation?

He orders his men to do something, to retreat to the living room and grab their weapons, or grab McGarrett. Anything to get them out of there.

One of them has the sense to listen to him and make for the kitchen door. He reaches just as it slams shut, propelled by that hot, local cop that interviewed him yesterday, who has apparently been hiding behind the door.

Again, with a gun.

The woman grins and flicks the lock, holding her gun on the man nearest to the door as she makes her way to the window above the sink. She pushes it open and uses a dishtowel to drop a skillet of flaming something into the sink, where she douses it in water before returning to her post.

"Aloha, brah," she says brightly, holding her gun level with his chest. "Bad news about your warehouse..."

When HPD arrives, three suspects are already restrained on the floor, including Downey. There's a skillet of burnt shrimp still smoking on the stove, and a food truck parked flush against the front door. The officers pick through the weapons abandoned on the living room floor, next to crumpled sleeping bags. They search the garage and find three crates of illegal automatic weapons, along with invoices for the sale of those weapons.

Still, Steve and Kono aren't smiling.

"How long do you think we have?" Kono asks, struggling with a suspect that doesn't quite want to be pinned. Steve shrugs, grappling with his own capture, and refusing to look at Duke Lukela, who called Chin within seconds of discovering them in the kitchen. "Probably not long."

The back door opens with a bang, distracting his suspect long enough for Steve to wrestle him to the floor. The other lackeys look up in terror, but Steve and Kono just sigh.

"Freeze," someone orders, voice dropping dangerously. "Do not move."

One of Downey's men, hands locked behind his back, calls back indignantly. "Where do you think we're going, man? We're already arrested."

"Not you," Danny corrects, eyes narrowing at his prey. Steve and Kono continue to subdue their captives with slow, controlled movements, trying not meet his eyes. "Them."

Two of the braver arrests look hesitantly hopeful and back toward the kitchen door. "Hey," Danny yells. "Hey. Okay, you, too."

"You said not us-"

"So help me, the next person to move gets a bullet to the foot. I don't care who it is."

Steve frowns.

"Could use some help over here," Kono calls, because she's fallen (forcefully, onto a prone suspect's back) and she can't get up. Her left knee is pressing the much larger man to the ground, while she restrains his hands behind his back. Her right knee, however, has given up and given out, and she can't use it to support herself anymore.

Danny comes to her aid, pulls her off of the suspect and hands him off to one of the uniformed officers before he gets a good look at her face. "Jesus, this one's got the pox."

"No," Kono says cheerfully, letting him haul her onto her good foot. "Just welts, brah. From a paintball gun."

"A paintball gun," he repeats slowly, turning that over in his head. "That would explain the..." Here, he pauses to gesture towards her paint smeared clothing, arms waving weakly. "...that. That...okay." He breathes deeply. "Okay."

Hesitantly, she reaches to pat his shoulder, still gripping his other arm for balance because her knee can literally take no more. Danny looks at her oddly, so it does not look like her attempt at comfort really hit home. "Okay," he says again because that's apparently all he can come up with. "Let's get your cousin over here. See what he thinks about that."

Chin doesn't see the humor in the situation. Kono tries, though.

"When you think about it, cuz,"she starts, as Chin winds an arm around her waist and helps her limp towards the ambulance that's waiting outside. He cuts her off. "I don't want to think about it, Kono. I really don't."

Danny watches them go, but his attention swings back to his partner when he hears a hacking cough. "What? You've been smoking, too?"

"They set the freakin' place on fire," Downey complains from the floor.

Silently, the detective blinks and waits for a rational explanation. Steve sucks in some air. "That's mostly an exaggeration."

He coughs again.

Danny does not allow himself to throttle him.

Fate must be equally ticked off at them because the same nurse that tattled to Chin after they broke out is sent to check their lungs when they're admitted. Again. She finishes with Kono (who makes a face at Steve behind her back) and straightens, marking her findings in her chart. Eying them both, she huffs.

"You have visitors."

Steve glances at Kono, who shakes her head vigorously. His thoughts exactly. "We're not really up for visitors, right now," he explains.

"Nonsense. These visitors are police."

Struggling to sit up straighter, Kono gets a desperate, panicked looked on her face. "But we're the police."

"Alright," the nurse says, smiling serenely. "Could I see some badges then?"

Steve sighs. "Send them in."

They must have been waiting on the other side of the door because Danny and Chin enter seconds after getting "permission". If it could even be called that. He examines the looks on their faces and comes to the conclusion that,yes, they heard everything their partners said to the nurse. Wonderful.

"Alright," Danny says, standing in the middle of the room and looking volatile. "Let's summarize, shall we? Leaving the hospital. Whose bright and shiny idea was that?"

They stay silent, but Kono points a hesitant finger in his direction, looking apologetic. He smiles back at her. No hard feelings.

"I'm in shock," his partner deadpans. "And who went along with it?"

Chin sits on the edge of his cousin's bed and gently redirects her finger so it's pointing at her own forehead.

"Okay. So we have Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, I'll let you figure out who's who, out to save the world in their magical shrimp truck. Where does the paintball gun come in?"

He can see Kono staring wide-eyed at her cousin, looking mortified at the thought of admitting what they did in front of him. Steve takes a deep breath. He's the boss here. "Everything turned out alright, Danno. Let's just take a breath-"

"Everything turned out okay? Is that seriously what I just heard you say?"

"Dan-"

But Danny's too far gone, a rant already building in his chest, and there's not holding him back. "Everything turned out okay?! You set fire to a residential area, today. There are at least a dozen thugs with busted lips and a vandalized bar out for your blood!"

"And you," he spins to face Kono, who tries to squirm behind her big cousin. Chin, however, is having none of it. "Proverbial Sancho to his Don Quixote! Do you like walking with a limp? Is that what's going on here?!"

He stops to take a big breath. And then another. "Because you can obviously not be trusted to stay here and do as are you are told," he continues, "We've hired someone. A nurse of sorts."

Silently, he steps back into the hallway, and when he comes back in, Kamekona is by his side. "Aloha, patients," he says brightly.

"I thought you were on our side," Kono says, outraged. Kamekona shrugs. "Sorry, little sistah. I'm an entrepreneur. I go where the money is. Which reminds me, we need to discuss some things."

Danny smirks and gives a triumphant wave on his way out, ignoring his partner's pleading eyes. Chin leans in to peck the top of Kono's head, hiding a grin in her hair. They both slip out, unnoticed by Kamekona, who has started with a hard-hitting question.

"Who's the squirrely haole tied up in my place of business?"

The End.