Catherine looked up from her hands as Danny re-entered the waiting room. He hadn't looked thrilled when his phone jolted him from his nap, but now he looked positively venomous. "That good, huh?" she said quietly as he slid back into the plastic chair across from her.

"Well, let's see. My daughter thinks I'm stupid, her best friend's mother thinks I'm a bad parent, and I think we're no closer to resolving any of this than we are to finding the Zodiac killer." Danny wiped a hand over his face and rubbed at his temple. He clearly needed sleep. Hell, she needed sleep, and she didn't have a concussion to contend with.

She couldn't get him more sleep, but maybe she could ease some of his anxiety. "Don't take it to heart, Danny. Grace is having it tough right now."

"You didn't hear her." His voice was tight.

"No, but I've been an angry teenage girl. I'm sure she's just as upset over the fight as you are."

He rolled his eyes and squinted towards the clock on the wall between them. "We've been here, what, forty minutes already? What's taking so long?"

Voices in the hallway made Catherine leap to her feet; it had been so quiet that she'd forgotten where they were. "Again, Mr. and Mrs. Lemour, my sincerest condolences." A man in a lab coat stopped just inside the waiting room and awkwardly waited as a teary older couple exited. "That never gets any easier," the man mumbled. His eyes fell on Danny. "Oh, Detective Williams! So sorry for your wait."

"That's okay, Max. Seems like you were busy." Danny was slow to get to his feet, and Catherine offered him a hand, which he accepted with a grimace.

"Yes. Unfortunately, my assistant had a lunch appointment today and I needed to cover for his absence." Max led them down the hall to the morgue, pausing to pick up a folder in his office. Catherine raised her eyebrows at the piano behind his desk, but Danny seemed unfazed. "Nasty circumstances. Their son and his husband went missing on their honeymoon. Their bodies washed up on a beach several days later, or at least parts of them did. Based on the visible injuries, I can only surmise that sharks got to them after a midnight surfing excursion gone awry."

"Oh, geez," said Danny as they passed what appeared to be several limbs under a single sheet. He had gone even more pale than before. "And the family had to come down here to identify a couple of arms?"

"One left arm and parts from three different legs, to be precise. The tattoos and other body markings weren't clear enough for the parents to identify via photograph, so they needed to view them in person. As I said, nasty circumstances." Max stopped next to a table at the end of the morgue, this one holding something far more substantial than the first. "It's funny, actually. I thought I would spend a lot of time working with shark victims when I became a medical examiner in Honolulu, but the last time I had one was actually over a year ago, present company excluded of course. It was-"

"Maybe another time, Doctor," Catherine interrupted. "We're on a tight schedule."

"Oh, yes, of course. My apologies, Detective and…" Max took a moment to examine her. "I'm sorry, I don't believe we've been formally introduced."

"Right. Max, this is Lt. Catherine Rollins, Naval Intelligence. We just call her Catherine. Catherine, Dr. Max Bergman, our medical examiner. He's just Max." The doctor continued to stare her down after the introduction, and Catherine held his gaze. She was used to men not respecting her position in Intel. Danny, however, was not. "Uh, Max?"

"Ah!" The doctor seemed to snap out of his momentary trance, and to Catherine's surprise he smiled happily. "Yes, you must be a friend of Lieutenant Commander McGarrett. You remind me of him," he said by way of explanation when Catherine exchanged a look with Danny. Before she could ask what he meant, he had pulled down the sheet on the table to reveal a full, pallid face and broad shoulders. "Your victim."

Catherine had seen her fair share of bodies, but this one struck a chord in her. Perhaps it was what the man represented. The photos he'd amassed. The state of his house. The person she was pretty sure had killed him.

It was more unsettling than she had expected.

"Cause of death?" asked Danny, pulling her from her thoughts.

"Nothing surprising. As assumed on scene, the cause of death was a single shot to the back of the head at close range."

"Close range?" Danny sighed and leaned against the nearby wall, rubbing his temple again. "So there's no chance that this was a ricochet from outside or something?"

Max grasped the man's jaw and gently turned his head to the side, exposing the bullet's entry point. "You can see powder burns around the wound. I wouldn't say there was direct contact, but it was certainly within point-blank range. Definitely not a ricocheting bullet."

Catherine knelt down to get a better look at the entry point. "That's, what, a .40?" A pointless confirmation of what she already knew. After all, Steve preferred a SIG.

"I believe so. I have sent it to the forensics lab for further testing." Max returned the man's head to its original position and picked up the folder he had retrieved before. "Fortunately, identifying the man was not nearly so difficult. Meet James Kahele."

"James Kahele. So, he was in the system?" Max nodded and handed her the folder. Catherine joined Danny so he could view its contents too.

"Five years in Halawa for possession and unauthorized access to a government computer…so what, he's a junkie hacker?" Danny asked.

"Yes, which brings me to our next point." Max reached over the top of the folder and flipped to the next page. "Because Kahele was in our corrections system, I had access to his full medical history, up until two years ago when he was released. He had poorly controlled diabetes and had lost several toes to it before his stint in Halawa. He apparently blamed this for his opioid addiction."

"So we weren't just talking about pot on that possession charge," Catherine murmured, flicking back to the initial file to scan the charges.

"Yes, nor in his blood at the time of his death." Catherine and Danny both looked up, and Max turned to the final page in the folder with an impatient sigh. "Frankly, it astonishes me that he was able to shoot as many rounds as he did, considering what the preliminary toxicology report has turned up. His blood was a veritable pharmacy of illicit substances."

"Morphine, cocaine, alcohol, ketamine—that's a hell of a bender." Danny raised his eyebrows as he dragged a finger down the list. "Hell, some of these we didn't even find evidence of on-scene."

"Frankly, the levels of morphine in his system would have been lethal on their own in most men, but judging by the state of his liver and kidneys this level of intoxication may have been the norm for him." Max took the folder back and closed it. "I read the report written up by a Captain Grover. For him to have been standing, let alone spraying an armory's worth of bullets across the neighborhood is actually rather impressive."

"So it wouldn't have taken much effort for someone to sneak up behind him?" Catherine asked.

"Not in the slightest," Max agreed. "He was probably on quite the trip as he died. It does make one wonder why he was shooting in the first place."

"And why someone shot him," Danny said pointedly. Catherine nodded but remained silent.

"Well, that is all I can provide for you at this time. Charlie Fong and the lab may have more information for you shortly."

"Thank you, Max." The ME nodded in return, but gasped when he caught Danny's eye. "What?"

"Detective Williams, your face-"

Danny snorted. "Oh, you're just seeing this? Yeah, ran into the wrong end of a grouchy perp."

Catherine allowed the two men to lead the way back to the waiting room, choosing to let her thoughts take over for the first time all day. Kahele's intoxication levels certainly explained why the only target he successfully took out was thin air, but their visit gave little insight into anything else.

Or anyone else.

"Five-0!" Kono threw the door open and leaped inside, and Catherine was on her heels. A quick glance of each room showed that she was safe to keep advancing. She turned the corner at the end of the hall after Kono ducked into a kitchen. Only two doors open. The door on the left showed a man lying still.

Not Steve.

Not Steve.

Thank God.

The door on the right, then. A bathroom. An open window.

She held her weapon at the ready and scanned the area beyond. Plenty of foliage to hide in, to run through.

Except none of it was moving. All of it was draped in shadow from the setting sun.

And there was one section of brush that seemed darker than the others. Solid, somehow.

Catherine stared at it for a long moment. Two long moments.

Her heart stilled when the branches shifted the wrong way. If she squinted, she could just make out a human-shaped mass pressed against the ground. Could imagine a pair of grey eyes staring back at her.

Or was she imagining them?

There was movement behind her, and it was all she could do to keep from jumping in shock. "Clear!" she shouted, echoing the calls from throughout the house. She turned away from the window and took a deep breath.

When she glanced over her shoulder one last time, she saw the dark mass darting through the trees.

He was safe.

A/N: Aloha, friends.

It's been years. I know. I could blame it on a breakup (true), or work (true), or even on my flashdrive that held all my plans and drafts dying in a traumatic fashion (perhaps the most true). That's not an excuse, none of it. But it is a fact: I haven't written anything substantial in three and a half years now. Not just this. Anything.

The finale of H50 was the end of an era for me. It was also the first episode I'd watched in a couple of years, and it felt like…home.

I've missed them. I've missed it.

And I've missed this. I've missed writing, and I've missed writing this story. I've been dreaming and scheming for all this time, even if I haven't actively been writing it. I know where I'm going; I just need to figure out how to get there again.

I'm sorry if this is a bit rough around the edges. I'm finding my groove for this series again. I'm relearning Cath and Danny and the rest of the cast almost from scratch, and I'm relearning my staging for the overarching trilogy. I can't promise I'll update every week, or even every month. I just don't know yet.

But I do know that I'm going to finish this out.

Mahalo for reading. And I'll see you on the flipside.