McGarrett's Daughter

Chapter 4

Steve drove a silver truck. It painfully reminded Amelia of her father's truck. He had just bought it a few months ago.

Amelia shook off the memory as she climbed into the passenger seat. She felt the car shift as Steve set her bags in the bed of the truck. He finished and got in the truck.

As they pulled out of the airport, the silence was almost unbearable. Amelia racked her brain for anything to say, but she couldn't think of anything good.

Again, Steve was the one to break the silence. "Well, welcome to Oahu. Despite the circumstances, I am happy to meet you. And I should warn you that I have a friend living with me. He's a coworker who just got back from overseas."

She furrowed her eyebrows. "Was he in the military?"

Steve glanced her way. She couldn't be sure, but he almost seemed to be approving of her reply.

"No, not the military. He was a SEAL."

She nodded. "You were too, right?"

He smiled slightly. "I was on active duty for about 10 years before I transferred to the reserves. Now I lead the Five-0 task force."

"I looked you up, read about your task force."

He looked away for a second. "Well, I guess I should tell you I spoke to a couple of your teachers."

Amelia hesitated. "Which ones? Because that might've affected the feedback you got."

"Most of the ones I talked to spoke pretty highly of you. Particularly Ms. Carter."

"Ms. Carter is a really sweet lady. I might miss her more than I'll miss a lot of my friends."

That slight smile returned to his face. "That's similar to what she said about you."

"Did you talk to Ms. Roberts? Because she didn't like me. She shouldn't have been allowed to teach math with the amount that she messed up in her problems." Amelia bit her tongue as soon as she stopped talking. She probably shouldn't be insulting her teachers.

Steve, however, just laughed. "In her words, you are too smart for your own good."

"Well, that's not true. She just isn't very good at math. I don't think she appreciated it when I called her out on it."

Amelia drawn a sharp breath as the ocean came into view. It was gorgeous. She'd been to plenty of beaches, but it never failed to shock her how pretty each one was.

"Do you like the water?"

She nodded. "I'm not a very good swimmer, but areas like this are so pretty."

"Wait till you see my backyard. The view is incredible."

Amelia kept looking out. "We were taking a trip to Hawaii. We were supposed to come here for a week, stay at the Hilton. My bags were already packed."

Steve glanced over at her but didn't say anything.

She kept talking. "I'd been looking forward to that trip for months. And now I'm here, in Hawaii, and I would do anything to be back at home."

"I'm sorry, Amelia. Really, I am."

The silence dragged on for another minute before Amelia spoke again. "I was supposed to be at home that day. My mom and dad had taken the day off from work and I was going to skip school. At the last minute I realized I had left some stuff at school that I needed so I decided to go in anyways."

Steve visibly tensed up. "You were supposed to be at home," he repeated, clearly strained.

"Yeah."