Chapter Text
A phone ringing at three o'clock in the morning is never good news, both Steve and Danno know this. A phone ringing at three in the morning when you have a fourteen-year-old daughter that is spending the week at a motocross camp is infinitely bad news. So when Danno’s phone starts to ring, he’s up in an instant and grabbing for the ringing device on the bedside table. Steve wakes up beside him almost at the same moment and, without looking at the number, Danno swipes his finger to answer.
“Williams.”
“Danny?”
Danno’s frozen in shock. He never thought he’d hear that voice again in his life. But it sounds exactly the same as it’s always sounded, maybe a little older but his Ma’s voice will always be recognizable.
“Danny are you there?”
“Yeah, sorry. Just … yanno … a little bit of a shock to hear from ya.”
“Danny I’m calling to let you know you have to come home.”
“Ma, what happened?” Danno was going through his head trying to think of anything that may have happened. He kept tabs on his family and there hadn’t been anything recently that would cause alarm.
“It’s … oh god Danny, it’s awful.” His mother broke down in tears so loud he had to move the phone away from his head. He turned to find Steve gone from the bed and heard him walking downstairs, presumably towards the kitchen to make coffee.
“Ma, calm down. Whatever it is, you gotta tell me. What’s goin' on?” Danno started to follow Steve downstairs, automatically knowing sleep was over for the night.
“Danny … it’s Diane. Danny someone took her and those useless fuckin' cops aren’t doing anything to find her. Danny, please. I know we haven’t talked but this is your sister.”
Danny immediately sat down on the steps to catch his breath. Diane was his youngest sister and the last time he’d seen her, she’d barely been a teenager. She was still wearing braces for fuck’s sake.
“What about her husband? Joe?”
Here his mother laughed that sarcastic, brittle laugh that he remembered from his childhood. The one that was reserved for the lowest people in her opinion.
“That mook is as useless as tits on a bull. He keeps sayin' they are workin' the case but Danny, I don’t trust him. I haven’t trusted him for a couple a years now. Look, you’re my son and I’ll always love you but you made your choices and with your father being on the job, certain decisions had to be made. But I’ve never stopped loving you, Danny Williams. Lately, Joe’s been acting funny like you used to before the cops showed up at our house that night to arrest you. Like he’s hiding somethin' that he doesn’t want anyone to know about. I took the kids here to our place and told him it was so he could concentrate and rest but honestly? I took the kids here because I don’t trust him, Danny.”
“So you want your criminal son to come home and do what the cops won’t.”
“Daniel Francesco Williams, don’t you dare take that tone with me, young man. I want my son, regardless of whether he is a criminal or a saint, to come home and help find his sister and make sure she is safe. The fact that you know people the police can’t talk to has absolutely nothing to do with this.”
He winced and automatically went to duck a wooden spoon that wasn’t even there. Of course, the universe being a bitch, Steve was there with a cup of coffee to not only see the flinch but to hear his full name. To his credit, he didn’t laugh on the outside but Danno could see the light in his eyes that said he’d hear about this later.
“I’m sorry Ma, OK? But this is the first time I’ve heard from anyone in twenty years. You’ll forgive me for bein' a little suspicious. I am, after all, your son.” He softened the accusation with the same phrase he used to use as a boy whenever he’d do something impulsive and hot-headed.
“I know, Danny. And I’m sorry, I am. I’ve missed so much of your life and my granddaughter’s life. I wanted to reach out to you when your wife died but by then, it had been so long already, I didn’t know how to pick up the phone.”
“Look Ma. It’s almost four in the morning here. Let me make some phone calls, get some people doing some legwork for me and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Will you bring your family with you? We can make room here at the house for you and your husband.”
Danno Williams was shocked into absolute silence and he stared at the phone like it had just grown tentacles. His mother’s full-bellied laugh echoed from the speaker. “You ain’t the only one who knows how to keep tabs, Daniel. You bring your Steven with you and, if you want, we’d love to meet Grace as well but I understand if that’s not somethin’ you’re comfortable with yet.”
Danno still couldn’t speak. He was making mouth motions but no sound would come out. Steve deftly took the phone from his hand.
“Mrs. Williams, I’d like to personally thank you. This is Steve and you are the only person I have ever met that could keep him quiet for this long without his being sound asleep. Of course, I’ll be there with Danno and we’ll discuss Grace’s schedule and her opinion.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Steve, you can call me Ma since we’re related. Just please, bring my son home soon. Diane’s been missing over a week now and we’re a mess here.”
“We’ll be on the first possible flight.”
“Thank you, Steve.”
“You’re welcome Mrs. Wil … Ma.”
Steve sat beside Danno and rubbed his shoulders and back. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t know where to start. That’s the first time I’ve heard my Ma’s voice in almost twenty years, she knows about Rach and Grace and even you but still never called or sent an email or nothin’. My baby sister is missing, her cop husband is acting shady and NOW my family wants me to drop everything and fly to Newark to help them?” Danno couldn’t help the bitterness in his tone. It was like the first time he’d gone to the house after he got out of prison for beating that cop’s brother up. He’d stood on the stoop, knocking for a good five minutes before finally, his Ma had opened the door. He’d smiled up at her and opened his arms for a hug and she’d looked at him like he was some leper that was stinking up her house.
“You ain’t welcome here no more, Daniel. You want to go to prison and ruin your own future that’s fine but I won’t let you near your brother and sisters and I sure as shit won’t let you ruin your father’s reputation.” With that, she’d shut the door. He found out later, she’d had all his belongings delivered to the garage the day he’d left for Northern State. Red had kept them safe and they’d arranged for a place for Danno to stay so he had a place when he got out. It had been the middle of the summer but it was the coldest day in history for Danno.
“It’s up to you Danno. We don’t have to go, Grace never has to know about the phone call and we can ignore it. I’ll follow your lead on this one. I got no family of my own but my family dynamic was a little different from yours. I grew up in the club, both me and Mary. Doris was a club wife, like Malia and I never knew anything other than ‘Auana. club before anything else but in my case, the club was Family, and Family was the club. But I can tell you this … even though I hadn’t seen her in years when Mary died it about killed me too. And I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it.”
“You never did tell me what happened to your sister.”
A cold look passed over Steve’s face before he shook his head and stood up, holding out his hand. “C’mon. I need more coffee for this conversation.”
Danno followed into the kitchen and sat down at the bar. After the shootout at Steve’s house several years ago, they’d remodeled and sold the house (getting rid of “old ghosts” Steve had called it) and then they’d sold Danno’s place as well, moving closer to Grace’s school for a fresh start. Their Realtor had shown them a property that was perfect with an older style Hawaiian home set on three-quarters of an acre and then had told them about the adjacent property that had never been developed for an additional third of an acre. The house had needed work (which the club was happy to help with) and they’d moved in almost a year to the day after the incident at Steve’s place. Now Danno had a new smell to complain about; their property was full to bursting with banana trees.
“When the Yakuza made their move and my mother died, Dad wanted both Mary and I off the island. I was old enough to go on my own, so I signed up with the Navy and you know that story. And you know Dad moved Mary in the dark. Well, it wasn’t just the flight that was dark. Mary put up a fight … she and Dad were always butting heads and he couldn’t afford the heat that would come with her screaming all the way to the airport. So he tranq’d her. Well, technically he just slipped a little knockout juice into her Pepsi and she was out like a light.”
Danno sucked in his breath. He was pretty ruthless when it came to certain situations but he couldn’t imagine ever being in a position where he’d do that to Grace. But he wanted to hear the rest of the story so he kept his mouth shut. Steve’s eyes were far away like he was remembering something painful and full of regrets. Danno reached out and put his hand over Steve’s while he continued.
“When Mary woke up, she was in Lawson Missouri, which is exactly 50 miles left of the ass-end of nowhere. Dad had sent her to go stay with an old riding buddy of his and his wife. Mary was underwhelmed, apparently, and flipped out on Dad. I remember the phone call and how much she was screaming that she hated him and would rather die than stay there. And, true to her word, she didn’t stay long … a month, maybe? Then the cops brought her back a week later and she’d just bolt again. They went back and forth for about a year before finally Dad’s buddy apparently had enough and told her if she took off again, he wouldn’t let her back into the house. Next day, she was gone.
“Of course, I didn’t find out about any of this until after she died or I’d have figured out a way to get her. I don’t know how but I’d have figured something out. So by ‘93 or ‘94, Mary was lost. No one really knew where she was or what she was doing and I didn’t really put much stock in not hearing from her. We weren’t close, really but still … she was my kid sister, you know?” The hard laugh that followed made Danno wince. Reminded him of his mother’s brittle laugh a little too much.
“I found out later she got involved with a group out of Kansas City. Petty crime, drugs, whoring … pretty much every shitty thing you can think to happen to a seventeen-year-old girl. She was with them from about ninety-three until ninety-seven. I was running dark ops and she was finally getting clean, none of which I knew a fuckin' thing about. She was free and clear, started dating a pretty decent guy and they were building a life and Mary turned up pregnant in April of 01. Her guy told me she was fucking ecstatic and they were looking at houses, real happy together. He was a good guy. Anyway, Mary miscarried in June and she went off the deep end. Went into a deep depression, started using again. In August, she was high on so much shit she wasn’t ever coming down and she stole a cop car. Thought she’d go for a joyride all around the city, banging into other cars, running people off the road. By the time she finally stopped, she was near Crown Plaza which is pretty much downtown Kansas City and when she got out of the car, about a dozen cop cars had been chasing her for a while. When she got out of the car, she was holding a gun and she fired a shot near the cops.
“My kid sister died of massive blood loss from eighteen bullets piercing various parts of her body. Dad got the call and he called me. Since I was on the mainland at the time, I had to go identify her body. Danno, I didn’t even recognize my own sister and it had nothing to do with the bullets. She was just like every other junkie you see, missing half her teeth, sunken eyes, and more track marks than freckles. She made her choices, she knew what she was doing and I know that. But there’s not a day goes by I don’t wonder if I’d have reached out if things would have been different.”
Danno squeezed Steve’s hand and reached for his phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“Mamo. We need to go get Grace and have a family discussion about who is going to Jersey.”