NOT EDITED

Chapter Five

Monday: February 22, 2016

On their lunch break, Hilo and Tahki had decided to stick to their newest plan and head over to James Fletcher’s house. Tahki couldn’t help but hope this plan came through better than their ‘fingerprinting on our own’ plan. “Are you sure this is still our best plan?” Hilo asked as they walked up the driveway.

Tahki nodded. “Fletch is our best bet for keeping this away from any of our superiors. He’ll do a favor for just about anyone at the station, and in return, anyone would do a favor for him. You know, like a forensic analyst agreeing to run some prints without reporting the letter to Sarge. And it’s not only our best plan. Right now, it’s our only plan.”

“Okay,” Hilo said quietly. “This is… this is what we’ll do, then.”

When it came right down to it, Tahki wasn’t certain that it was their best plan, either, but she was pretty sure it was their safest bet. James Fletcher would do a favor for anyone, so long as the ‘favor’ wasn’t illegal.

Letting out a harsh breath, Tahki lifted a hand and knocked on James’s door. Several seconds of silence followed before the door opened. James’s brow furrowed as his eyes quickly scanned over the detectives. “Hey, Fletch,” Tahki greeted once his eyes settled on her face.

“Hey, Tahki.” He cleared his throat. “Is everything okay?”

“Of course. Can we come in?”

“Seems… contradicting to me. I don’t know if you guys know this, but I don’t get many visitors when I’m not actively at the station. So… something must be wrong.”

“We can, uh, do our best to go into the details of what might be wrong, but not until we’re inside,” Hilo said.

After a moment, James nodded and stepped away from the door, allowing the two detectives into his home. “Shoes off, please,” he said as he closed the door. Tahki and Hilo both complied without complaint. “Would you like coffee?”

“If it’s no trouble.”

“I just made a fresh pot about half an hour ago. No trouble at all,” James assured. “This way,” he said with a little nod. Tahki and Hilo followed him into the kitchen. He poured three cups of coffee and slid two of them over to the detectives. His own held to his chest, he leaned back against the counter. “Creamer’s in the fridge. Sugar’s on the counter. When you’re ready… go ahead and talk.”

“Thanks, Fletch,” Hilo said, squeezing the man’s bicep as he grabbed the glass sugar canister from the little wire rack above the bread box.

While he waited for the detectives to make up their coffee however they liked it, James set his own on the counter and rubbed the knuckles of one hand with his other thumb. On occasion, it completely spaced Tahki’s mind that the man had been living with arthritis for decades. It was part of the reason their chief always suggested he could be a danger in the field, as if arthritis made him entirely incapable of doing his damn job. It had always been quite the opposite, though. James was by far the best detective on the force.

“Have you watched the news today?” Tahki asked, looking down as she stirred the creamer into her coffee.

“Let’s pretend I’ve only been awake for forty-five minutes and haven’t done much more than shower and make coffee just yet,” James said.

Tahki smiled faintly, lifting her head to meet his eyes. “Sure, Fletch. Today’s the twentieth anniversary of our bank heist massacrer.”

“The unsolved case you two worked?”

“Right.”

“All right. Far as I know, that’s been rotated to another detective. Several times, actually.”

“It has. But the case itself isn’t the problem. It’s the letter that Hilo and I received this morning that is the problem.”

James lifted his head. “What kind of letter?”

“The… sender claims to be our bank heist shooter,” Tahki said. “And, uh, if we let our superiors know about this letter, he claims he’ll do it again.”

“And this time, he wants to do it without any survivors, and maybe not at a bank,” Hilo added.

James looked between the two before taking a small sip of his coffee. “I need you to be straight with me for a moment. Are you serious, or is this a ploy by Chief to prove I should be forced to retire?”

“We’re serious. We’d never take part in anything like that,” Hilo said. “As soon as we force you out of the station, I’m next, and then Tahki. Believe me, we want no part in Chief trying to prove you aren’t qualified for a detective position anymore.”

“Appreciated,” James said quietly. “You said the sender claims to be your bank heist gunman. So you don’t know for sure. What makes you uncertain?”

“Personally,” Hilo started, “it’s the letter itself. It has no details in it. Killers like this, they send notes to taunt the investigators. Jack the Ripper did that. Talked about double murders before it hit the news, added his little ‘ha ha’s, mocked the cops and reporters for thinking he was a surgeon or a doctor. Whatever it was. But he said things that let them know it was really him. He wanted them to know. He craved that. If you send a letter, it’s because you want to taunt the reader, and you want the receivers of that letter to know it’s you, not just some imposter. But this guy, he gave us no real clue that it’s him.”

“That… does seem a little out of the ordinary,” James agreed. “Why send a letter if you don’t want to rub it in the detectives’ faces that you’re the real deal?” A pause. “Unless… he thinks it’s more torturous that you don’t know if it’s real or not.”

“Why would that be more torturous than knowing it is real?” Tahki asked.

“Because if it’s real, you know why you can’t show it to your superiors. If you don’t know if it’s real, you’re living with the guilt of hiding it without knowing if it’s really the right thing to do, if it’s the only thing to do. You guys aren’t rule-breakers. You never have been. Real deal or not, the author of that letter knows that, and he’s using it against you,” James said.

Tahki let out a breath, but she couldn’t bring herself to respond. She didn’t have anything useful to say, anyway. James wasn’t wrong, and that was the only thing she was certain of now.

“What is it you guys need from me? What kind of favor?” James asked when the silence had gone on too long.

“The letter we have. We want to pull prints from it and see if any of them are in the system.”

“Smart. You guys had prints for the guy. So if it’s him that did send it, you’ll have a match,” James said.

“How do you know that?” Tahki asked.

“I’ve seen the file more recently than you guys probably have. You haven’t seen it since it went cold and was handed off to someone else, right?” James asked. Tahki nodded. “Since Chief doesn’t want me working on most of the cases that come in, Loo lets me look at old files when I’m bored. I looked at this one just a couple weeks ago. Hell, I’ve still got a partial copy of it at the station.”

“You do?” Hilo asked.

“Far as I know. I haven’t been there in a few days, so it’s possible Loo took it out of my desk, of course,” James said. “I’ll give you guys the keys to my office so you can check. If you’re not allowed to tell any superiors, it seems like he’s watching you. Or, at least, he’s pretending to be. Since I’m not scheduled to work today, I don’t want it to be suspicious for you guys to leave here and then for me to go into the station alongside you. Okay?”

“Appreciate that, Fletch,” Hilo said.

James nodded, took another sip of his coffee. “Well, in relation to this letter… you guys know I don’t pull fingerprints, right?”

“We know. But we know you can ask Jade to do it without her asking a ton of questions about where it came from. I’m pretty sure you can get her to pull prints without her even reading the words written on it,” Tahki said.

“Probably,” James said after a moment. “So it’s because the people at the station like me that I’m being asked to be involved, right?”

“That and… because we know we can trust you with it,” Tahki said.

“Right. The letter says he has his sources. I don’t know how true that is, but if he has ‘sources’ that would tell him what the superiors know, he has to know someone inside the station, and we know that’s not you,” Hilo said. “You love and honor the badge far too much for that.”

James nodded, but he didn’t respond.

“Look, Fletch, for all we know, this letter was written by some dumbass who’s lurking around out there with a camera so he can put his cool ‘social experiment’ on YouTube. But right now, we can’t take that risk,” Hilo said. “We’re coming to you because you’re one of the only people we know for sure we can trust. Please, can you just… ask her?”

“Yeah,” James said quietly. “I will… go ahead and give her a call, and then I’ll call you, let you know what she said. All right?”

“Thank you, Fletch. Really,” Tahki said.

The older man nodded. “You’re very welcome. Let’s just hope those prints match someone other than our unknown gunman.”

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Chapter Four

Thursday: November 2, 1995

The man walked down the sidewalk, one gloved hand tucked into his jacket pocket and his other hand wrapped around a coffee cup. He knew spending money on coffee when he had a perfectly good appliance for it at home wasn’t the wisest decision given his current circumstances, but he figured one more day of Starbucks wouldn’t hurt anybody.

He’d been fired the day before. Or, according to his ex-boss, he had been ‘let go’. Christ, he hated that damn term. Let go. He’d been fired, but they had chosen the more annoying terminology of ‘let go’ to keep him from getting angry at an unfair firing. He had been ‘let go’ to show the other employees that there was always the chance of downsizing, to keep them from acting out of line for fear they may also be ‘let go’ because the company was ‘going in a new direction’ or because they simply ‘weren’t what the company was looking for right now’.

He still couldn’t wrap his mind around why he of all people had been ‘let go’. So what, he’d been a little sad lately. He had every right to be! Divorce wasn’t exactly easy, and his ex-wife was trying to suck all the life and money out of him. He’d still been friendly to the clients. He’d still gone out of his way to bow down and kiss the boss’s ass. Apparently, friendly architects and ass-kissers had no place in the company’s ‘new direction’.

It was a bunch of horse shit. That much he knew.

He turned and walked into the bank with a heavy sigh. He had one last check to cash in, something that would have to hold him over until he managed to find another job. He walked up to the teller and fished the check out of his pocket, handing it over to the woman behind the desk.

He stuck his hand back into his pocket, eyes scanning the bank. How easy would it be to rob this place?

The thought took him by surprise. It certainly wasn’t a thought he had ever had before, and he couldn’t exactly say how many of those around him were wondering the same thing.

But when it came right down to it… it wouldn’t be that hard to rob the place. It wouldn’t take much to figure out the building’s weaknesses, its strengths. It wouldn’t be hard to scan over the interior, figure out how its pieces related to each other, how they all fit together.

He took his money from the teller, thanked her, and walked back out of the bank, keeping his pace much slower than it had been when he’d walked inside. The bank was on the smaller side compared to the others in New York, certainly one of the smallest in Riley. There wasn’t much security in the place, either. He’d only ever seen one guard in there—two on a Wednesday once—and he was almost certain that mild and temporary increase in security had only been because of how terrifyingly large the number of bank robberies in Los Angeles had been as of late. Even when the robberies were clear across the country, they worried people. They worried the banks.

Security aside, his ex-boss had designed the place. Finding the weaknesses the dumbass had left behind would, if nothing else, be a great way to waste some of his newfound free time. He snorted, shaking his head as he made his way down the sidewalk. He may not have had a job, but he certainly had a new hobby.

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Chapter Three

Monday: February 22, 2016

Hilo flipped on the overhead lights in the lab, fingers resting on the switch as his eyes scanned the room. It wasn’t often their analyst hung out in the dark, but that didn’t mean it never happened. Unless she got called to a crime scene, she wouldn’t be coming into work for another couple hours, sometime much closer to noon. It would give him and Tahki time to dust for prints without too much trouble.

The real trouble would come from running those same prints through the system without their sergeant or lieutenant finding out. Of course, he was certain they didn’t have to worry much about Andrew running to the police chief and tattling on them if he were to find out about the unauthorized search. Andrew was far too busy thinking about sleeping with Tahki to worry about what they were doing for their cases.

Hilo shook his head and walked into the lab. If he wanted to mentally complain about Andrew’s inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, it could wait until after they knew what, exactly, they were dealing with when it came to the letter. Until then, the letter and the envelope it arrived in absolutely needed to be his primary focus, not Andrew and Tahki’s relationship.

“Close the door,” he said, looking back over his shoulder. Tahki nodded and pushed the door shut without any complaints. Hilo cleared his throat. “We shouldn’t have any issue dusting for prints, but we have another issue to deal with that raises a few… concerns, to say the least.”

“We have to be extra careful when we run it through the system,” Tahki said.

“Bingo.”

She followed him across the room. “What’s our plan, then?”

He chuckled, but he certainly didn’t find any part of their situation funny. “I don’t have one yet.” He set the letter and envelope on the table, a frown coming to his face. “I know we, uh, leave all of this up to Jade, but now that I’m down here, I don’t think we can dust it for prints. I’ve seen paper after she’s taken prints from it, and it never looks like it’s been touched with our fingerprinting powder. The prints are generally purple, not black like the powder.”

Tahki frowned. “Shit, you might be right. I don’t think we can.”

“But if I can find out where she keeps the fingerprinting powder, maybe I can find what she uses for paper. We can do some research from there,” he said, turning to pull open one of the drawers beneath the counter. He scanned the contents before closing it and trying another one. There, he found the fingerprinting powder and the little magnetic applicator.

“Good news, found the powder,” Hilo said.

Tahki smiled. “Well, hey, look at that. A step in the right direction.”

He nodded. “So… the other obstacles that will arise after we get these prints. One of us has to be willing to handle whatever fallout might potentially come our way after we run the prints. Sarge is gonna be pissed no matter who it is. I can’t say much for Loo, and I don’t know how much Chief cares about that kind of thing.”

“Not much, I don’t think. I’ve never known her to be too much of a hard-ass. As long as we’re not actively wasting money on something, it’s our job to catch the bad guys, and that’s about all there is to it,” Tahki said. Hilo looked back at her briefly, just long enough to let her know he was still listening. “Andrew isn’t really going to care, either. He’ll probably ask about it, but I don’t think he’s planning on throwing a fit about it. That’s not how he is.”

“That’s where my mind went, too,” Hilo agreed. He chose not to add the part about how he was only certain Andrew wouldn’t chew out Tahki. He had no idea how the lieutenant would react to him. He shifted his weight to his right foot, pulling another bottle from the drawer. It wasn’t something he recognized. He set it back down. “Sarge is the one I’m most worried about. She’s… Well, you know how she is.”

Tahki snorted. “God, don’t I.” She let out a sigh. “We’ll run it through under my name.”

“Are you sure?”

“Andrew’s our lieutenant. He’s in charge of Sarge. If she has anything to say about it, he still has the final say on what happens and what has to be done. And we both know why he’d be more willing to go easier on me,” she said.

Hilo nodded. If that wasn’t the damn truth. “Are you sure he’ll even care? I mean… work-life is different than your personal life.”

“I’m sure. I’m not sleeping with Andrew for the favoritism, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have it.”

“Do you not feel uncomfortable about all of that?”

“About… what?”

Not for the first time, Hilo chose not to mention the fact that he was her superior. Instead, he bit the same low-hanging fruit he usually did. “LT is twelve years your junior, Tahki.”

Again, she sighed. “I’d be uncomfortable if he were the older one between us. The boss being older than the subordinate is a good way for everyone to say he’s taking advantage of me.” A pause. “Not that… everyone knows, but you know what I mean.”

Hilo nodded, but he certainly didn’t follow the logic behind it. He understood the premise of it on a very basic level, but everything in his mind told him it was wrong. Sleeping with a subordinate, sleeping with the boss, sleeping with anyone at the station that could be considered a superior or a subordinate. It wasn’t right.

“You’re not planning on leaking my relationship to the rest of the world, are you?” Tahki asked.

“Christ, no, of course not. I’m not like that.” Hilo frowned. “You’re like a sister to me, Tahki. I love you like one, too. We’re family. Your kids call me Uncle. Mine call you Aunt. I mean…” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t do something like that. I wouldn’t hurt you like that. I just want to know you’re being careful now, and that you’re going to continue being careful.”

“I appreciate that,” she said after a moment. “And we are careful. There’s a reason only you know about us. We aren’t stupid about it.”

Hilo offered a nod, grabbing another bottle from the drawer. It had a spray bottle topper rather than a cap, and the name sounded familiar. It at least seemed promising, more so than the other bottles in the drawer. That had to be a step toward finding the right one. “Ninhydrin ringing any bells for you?” he asked, turning to show her the bottle.

Tahki grabbed it from him, one corner of her mouth scrunched up as she scanned the tiny words written on the label of it. “Intro to Criminology suddenly seems like something that happened a million years ago, huh?”

He snorted. “Practically was.”

She leaned across the table to smack his arm. “We’re not that old, shithead.” Hilo only smiled. “But, hey… you know who is?”

“Hmm?”

“Fletch.”

James Fletcher was the oldest detective on the force, and for quite some time, their chief had been trying to force him into a desk job or early retirement. James was a bit too resilient to force into either position, and everyone at the station loved him.

Everyone, including their forensic analyst.

Hilo lifted his eyes to Tahki’s face. “You think we can get him to talk to Jade, don’t you?” he asked.

“Fletch could talk anyone in this station into doing anything. He’s spent a lifetime being kind and respectful, a lifetime buying them drinks and celebrating their birthdays. He could ask Jade to run these prints for us, keep it off the permission forms to Sarge, and we wouldn’t have to worry about the rest of it,” Tahki said.

“Yeah, it’d keep Sarge off of us, but what about Jade and Fletch? I’m not gonna throw ‘em under the bus because of that damn letter.”

“I’m not talking about throwing them under the bus. There’s no way in hell that Sarge stalks the records for what Jade runs through the system. She only checks the permission and request forms. Checking the records would keep her busy all damn day, and she’d never have time for paperwork. She’d never have time to be a hard-ass, either.”

Hilo let out a breath. “That’s… true.” He cleared his throat. “Fletch isn’t in his office today, so he should be at home. We can go there during our lunch break.”

Tahki nodded. “Good a plan as any.”

Hilo put the spray bottle back into its spot in the drawer. “Let’s go back upstairs in the meantime, focus on our actual homicide case. We have someone coming out here in about half an hour.”

“To try and identify our John Doe?” Tahki asked. Hilo nodded, carefully folding the letter up and pushing it back into the envelope. Trying to find their dear mass murderer—or ‘prankster’ civilian—would be hell in the middle of the actual case they had been assigned to, but until they knew if the letter was authentic or not, they couldn’t risk letting its existence get back to any of their superiors. The hope and possibility that it was fake weren’t worth risking the lives of any number of innocent civilians.

So as it stood, they would shoulder that hell until further notice.

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NOT EDITED

Chapter Two

Monday: February 22, 2016

At the police station, Tahki waited for Hilo to unlock their shared office before walking inside. Tahki pulled out her chair, setting her coffee cup on the desk as she sat down. Hilo sat down at his desk directly across from hers, the squeak of his chair serving as a reminder that no one in the station had received a new chair in over a decade. She turned on her computer and slid her chair back, grabbing the mail from the short cabinet there. Though the mail they usually received at the station was limited, it wasn’t exactly rare for there to be a small stack of it waiting for them.

She flipped through the envelopes, her heart skipping a beat as her eyes landed on the red envelope in the middle of the rest of them. It wasn’t familiar to her, not in the slightest, but that didn’t stop the chill the very sight of it sent down her spine. She set the others aside, unable to stop herself from staring at the ‘Harris + Granger’ written on the front. It wasn’t so much the use of their last names that unsettled her. The rest of the envelope was empty. No address, no sender. Just her and Hilo’s surnames. That unsettled her.

She turned it over to look at the wax seal she’d been able to feel with her finger. The silver-gray seal held the delicate loops and swirls of a cursive M and K, and despite how long she stared at it, she couldn’t figure out why. Lack of a sender name or not, she didn’t know anyone with the initials M and K.

She glanced up at Hilo. His eyes were focused on his computer screen, the fingers of one hand scratching absently at his trimmed beard. Letting her brown eyes fall back to the envelope, she opened it and pulled out the letter within. She set them aside for a moment, typing in the password for her computer. Even if only a temporary one, it still served as a distraction from whatever could be written inside.

Clearing her throat, she unfolded the letter.

Hello, Detectives,

It’s certainly been a while, hasn’t it? Twenty full years. Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit… Oh, I don’t know. Is nostalgic the correct word? “A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, […] for a period or place with happy personal associations.” Yes, nostalgic seems like it’s the right word.

I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic about my little… adventure twenty years ago. I fear that nostalgia will make me kill again. Well, I fear for you, not for me. I enjoy it too much for it to be a fear. I love it, if we’re being honest. It’s a… Oh, what is it that the kids say?

Lol?

Yes, it’s more of a ‘laugh out loud’ situation for me than it is for you, that’s for sure. I want to do it again. Maybe in a bank again, maybe in a park, maybe in a shopping mall. But this time, I have different plans. There won’t be any survivors this time around, and I’ll kill even more of them than last time.

I know what you’re thinking of doing right now, and I know how fast your heart must be beating. I bet you never thought you’d hear from me again, right?

Well, here I am. I could pretend I’m sorry for the distress this must be causing you, but then I’d be lying to all three of us, and that’s just boring.

Anyway, this is just for Harris and Granger. If either of you shows it to any of your superiors, I’ll kill again much sooner than currently planned, and it WILL be bigger and better than the first time. You thought thirty-seven was bad? Just you wait, Detectives.

And I know you must be wondering how I would know if you told any of your superiors about this little letter. Source one: the media. If the lead detectives reopened a twenty-year-old case? It’d hit the news faster than you could blink. Source two: I have my own personal source, one even the media doesn’t have. I’m not stupid. I’ll figure it out, and the blood I shed because of it will be entirely on your hands.

Good luck finding me in between your usual cases, Detectives. We aren’t low on murders and robberies around here, are we?

Ta-ta for now, Detectives.

Tahki read through the letter a second time, as though seeing the words again would change every single one of them. Tragically, a second read-through revealed no change. “Hilo?” she asked.

“Mm?”

“I, umm…” She cleared her throat, holding the letter and envelope out to him instead of attempting to figure out what the hell she was supposed to say.

Hilo cocked his head to the side and grabbed it. He leaned back in his chair, crossing an ankle over the opposite thigh as he read through the letter. Tahki watched him carefully, watched the complete calmness that remained on his face.

Eventually, he set the letter and envelope down on his desk, brown eyes lifting to hers. “So, let’s start by taking a deep breath, and then we’ll work through this,” he said. She nodded. “Do you think it’s authentic?” he asked after a moment.

“Authentic? I guess I didn’t… think about it being anything but authentic.”

“You were panicking,” Hilo said. “And that’s okay. We do that sometimes, especially when we’re already on edge. Your grandson’s in the hospital again, and today’s the twentieth anniversary of a very terrible shooting. You’ve been on edge ever since you woke up.”

Tahki drew in a deep breath and offered a little nod. “Yeah, yeah. That’s… that’s fair.” She cleared her throat, crossing her arms over her desk. “I dunno. Do you think it’s authentic?”

“It’s hard to say. But I know one thing for sure, and that’s that the author of this letter doesn’t give us anything unique. He doesn’t tell us anything that the media doesn’t know, that the public doesn’t know,” he said.

“Do you think it’s a citizen?”

“I think anything’s possible when it comes to this case, Tahki.”

She stared at the Hawaiian, a frown forming on her face. “Thirty-seven people died, Hilo. I’d like to think our civilians have more respect than that.”

“Look at social media any day of the week. No one has to have any respect for anything or anyone when they’re hiding behind a screen.” He crossed his arms over his chest, nodding toward the letter on his keyboard. “Or, in this case, behind a piece of paper and a red envelope.”

Tahki nodded. She shifted in her seat, moving her elbows to rest on her desk. She clasped her hands together, resting her chin on them. “What should we do?”

He inhaled deeply through his nose, one corner of his mouth scrunching up as his eyes shifted to the ceiling. “We could dust it for prints. I… honestly have no damn recollection of if our bank shooter was wearing gloves or not all those years ago, but whether or not he was, a civilian might not think to do it while writing the letter. If we can get any clean prints from this, we can eliminate our prints, and then we can see if they match anything in the system. If our original killer wasn’t wearing gloves and left prints at the bank scene, the prints from the envelope will come back as a match if he actually did write this. If not, it either matches nothing, or it matches some criminal in our system,” Hilo said.

“That’s… a good step. We should probably also work on figuring out if our killer did leave prints at the original scene,” Tahki said.

“We need to sign a sheet in the records room if we want a copy of that file. We shouldn’t do that until we know what comes of these prints.”

Slowly, Tahki nodded. “Right. We shouldn’t tell anyone,” she said quietly. “So… down to the lab?”

“Should be empty, yet.” Hilo sighed, hauling himself to his feet. “Let’s go see what we can see.”

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Chapter One

Monday: February 22, 2016

Through the car’s speakers, a woman shared a conversation she had overheard in the grocery store, something about the odd things young children tended to say, especially when out in public. Detective Hilo Granger didn’t much care for the stories on the radio, but he did care about the weather, and if he had to listen to a thirty-second story to receive it, so be it.

According to the radio host—Jordan Powers—the temperature had dropped several degrees in the last hour, but it was still something one could consider nice for a New York winter. The sun was out and the wind was blowing around four miles an hour. Hilo couldn’t help but be thankful for that. With the snow that had come in the night before, it was certainly nice to know it wouldn’t be blowing all over the damn road immediately after they plowed it. Not only did it make the daily commute safer for his fellow brothers and sisters in blue, but it also kept things safer for the civilians they were set out to protect.

Hilo let out a breath and lifted his brown eyes to the rearview mirror. He hadn’t styled his hair quite as well as he had thought. Styling it wasn’t all that difficult of a task, either. It fell just below the tips of his ears in length, and he usually styled it just enough to keep it out of his face without slicking it back entirely. But to his credit, he hadn’t expected to be picking up his partner that morning. Not that he minded. Tahki Harris was like a sister to him. He just preferred more than a half-hour warning if he needed to make an extra stop on his way to work.

He fixed his dark brown hair as best he could before grabbing the coffee cups from the center console and sliding out of the car. He closed the door with his elbow, suddenly more than aware of the cold. A smarter man would’ve grabbed a coat before walking out of the house in a short-sleeved button-up near the tail end of winter, but his daughter had gotten it for him, and his stubbornness for showing his support of children-given gifts far outweighed his intelligence.

Looking both ways beforehand, Hilo jogged across the street. He walked up the snow-dusted stairs of his partner’s home and rapped his knuckles against the door. The lock clicked a moment later before the door opened.

A short Native American child stared up at him, a smile on her face. “Morning, Uncle Hilo.”

He smiled. “Morning, Emma-bear. Your mom out and about?”

“Mmhmm. She’s in the kitchen.”

“Thank you.” Hilo stepped into the house, kicking the door closed. He wiped his shoes on the doormat and made his way to the kitchen.

Tahki stood at the island, hands on the counter, eyes on her laptop. Her shoulder-length black hair had already been done up in a braid, as it was most days. Despite her hair being done, she hadn’t put on much more than a dress shirt, one that wasn’t even hers.

Hilo cleared his throat.

She lifted her head, her shoulders relaxing. “Hey, Hilo.”

“Hi.” He set the cardboard cup holder on the counter, grabbing his coffee from it. “That caramel BS is yours.”

Tahki snorted. “Thank you.” She grabbed it, raising an eyebrow. “What about number three? Emma’s a little too young to start giving her coffee.”

Hilo chuckled, though the actual reasoning behind the third cup was less than humorous to him. “You’re right. But Bossman is not too young for coffee.”

She let out a harsh breath before looking down at her shirt. Realization sparked in her eyes. “Aww, Christ. Guess there’s no reason to pretend he’s at work, huh?”

“Nope.” Hilo shook his head. “You two have to be more careful. If people at the station start finding out you’re sleeping with him, things aren’t gonna go over well.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “There’s a reason he doesn’t park on this block. We’re smarter than that. He is smarter than that.” It wasn’t long before the ‘he’ in question finally walked into the kitchen, freshly showered and dressed in a suit and tie.

Lieutenant Andrew Knott flashed a smile. “Morning, Granger.”

“Morning, Loo. Brought you coffee,” Hilo said, nodding toward the cardboard holder.

“You’re a lifesaver, Granger.” Andrew grabbed the cup and pressed a kiss to Tahki’s temple. “Change before you come into the station. I’ve got a meeting today, and neither of us needs to get our asses fired.”

“I’m not planning on wearing your shirt outside of the house, but thanks for the heads-up,” Tahki said. He only smiled his response. “Don’t have too much fun at the meeting.”

He chuckled. “I’ll do my best. You, too.” He saluted Hilo. “See you at the station, Detective.”

“Sure thing, Loo.” Hilo returned the two-finger salute before their lieutenant walked out of the room. Over the course of the last six months, Hilo had done his best to keep his mouth shut on Tahki’s relationship with Andrew. They had been dating for closer to a year, but she had only managed to hide it from him for the first half. Though Andrew was a damn intelligent man—intelligent enough to have made lieutenant when he was only twenty-nine—Hilo considered it beyond dangerous for a detective to date their superior. Tahki, however, didn’t see it the same way, and Hilo didn’t dare bring it up to their lieutenant.

A few months away from turning fifty-one, Hilo was already at risk of being forced out to a desk job or early retirement. Pushing Andrew by suggesting his relationship was dangerous seemed like nothing more than a great way to move his retirement date much closer than expected.

Hilo took a sip of his coffee and leaned down, crossing his arms over the counter as he focused his eyes on his partner once more. Five years Tahki’s senior, the woman had felt like a little sister to him for a damn long time. That morning, the part of his brain that masqueraded as anything but an only child said he needed to find out what had her so troubled.

Clearing his throat, he nodded toward Tahki’s laptop. “What were you looking at on there?”

“Grandson’s in the hospital again. I think I’ll need to leave work early, make sure I can get in there and see him before visiting hours are over,” Tahki said.

“I’m sorry to hear that, sweetheart. Are you gonna need a ride?”

“Maybe. I’ll let you know?”

“Works for me.” He watched the woman for a moment, unable to ignore the obvious worry on her face. It was a stark contrast to her usual soft expression, and talking about her grandson hadn’t lessened the worry whatsoever, which was worrisome, to say the least. “Is everything okay, Tahki? Besides the little one?”

“It’s the anniversary of that damn bank robbery slash mass murder we worked in the nineties. That mass shooting?” Tahki asked. Hilo let out a sigh, closing his eyes. “I know. I don’t wanna think about it, either. But it’s been twenty damn years as of today, so it’s on every news station, every online news source. I even saw a video or two about it posted on YouTube today. Makes me sick to my damn stomach, knowing we never caught that sick bastard.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Thirty-seven people gunned down and not a lick of justice. I don’t like it, either, Tahki.”

She nodded. “Those articles spend most of their time insulting our intelligence. Did you know that? They act like the only reason we couldn’t catch him is that we’re stupid. Like that’s the logical reason why,” she said. “It’s not my fault we aren’t that over-credited detective in California. We can’t all get bonus points for shit we don’t deserve the way she does.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Hilo said softly. He reached over and squeezed her hand. “Other cops in the department are looking into that case all the time. And now that it’s the anniversary, they’ll do what they can to up the ante on progress. They’ll do their best to find something—anything—because it’s in the news right now. It’s all right.”

Tahki sighed. “Yeah, we can hope, anyway. Thank you.”

He nodded. “What can I say? These five years I’ve got on you are filled with wisdom.”

She snorted, reaching over the island to shove his shoulder. “Don’t be a dumbass.”

Hilo chuckled. “Whatever. You’d miss it if I wasn’t one.” He looked down at his watch. “Ready to head on out?”

“Yeah. I’ll be good in five.” A pause. “Would… you mind bringing Emma with, dropping her off at school? She can take the bus if you don’t want to make the extra stop.”

“I don’t mind. Just let her know we’re leaving in five. I’ll be here.”

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