Desert skies revealed a myriad of lights pricking the darkness. A soft wind tugged at desert grasses, creating the only disturbance in an otherwise silent atmosphere until dancing lights, followed by the hum of an engine, sliced through the serenity. If the SUV parked on the side of the road had not been black, the speeding car, which tore down the road, may have noticed it. The driver may have noticed that instead of being pulled over, it was angled in such a way to suggest it had come to a sudden stop. Instead the passing car whipped up an enormous wind and quickly disappeared.
All that remained was the desert and the SUV. Moonlight danced off the shiny bonnet; the only sign of life emanating from the vehicle. The driver's side door was slightly ajar. It must have been that way for a while because the interior light failed to illuminate the emptiness inside.
oooOooo
"You sure?"
"Yes."
"But…"
"Dad, listen…"
"No, Charlie, it was here before…"
"Lost something Alan?" Amita's soft female voice sounded the end of the Eppes' bickering. She had softly landed downstairs, still dressed in one of Charlie's old shirts.
"My book on robotics. I was sure it was downstairs last night." The sigh that erupted from Alan's lips told Amita he had clearly spent a frutstrtating amount of time looking for said book.
"Oh." Amita's reaction was all she could muster as she looked at the dining table, piled high with Charlie's paperwork. "Well I can help you look."
"That'd be great, thanks. It's moments like these I forget how practical a woman can be around the house." One eye glared at Charlie while Alan continued to search under the mounds of paperwork.
"I'm sorry. It is my house though."
"And don't I know it."
"What is all this?" Amita asked Charlie who was clumsily moving his papers around, almost knocking over his coffee in the process. Alan's fatherly instinct managed to save that disaster with a quick grab.
"Thanks. Um. Oh. Marking." Charlie sheepishly avoided eye contact with his father to continue looking.
"Marking? Charlie. This looks like months worth of marking. Oh, hey, is this it?" Amita lifted a red book from underneath a pile of papers and showed Alan.
"Yes. Oh thanks Amita." Alan smiled then paused and turned to look at Charlie. "Like I said, I thought I left it here last night."
"Should be more careful hey pops." Charlie pushed it one step too far. Alan felt a fatherly lecture swelling within him. "Bit behind in marking are we? Sure you shouldn't be cutting back on some of your extra-curricular studies?"
"Look, dad, this is a one-off. It's just. That last case of Don's was pretty full-on. But y'know, it's been a while and nothing. So I'm just trying to get ahead. That's all."
Alan picked up an assignment and read out the date. "16 November 2006!"
Charlie hid his shock and grabbed the assignment from his dad's hands. He looked at the student's name and shook his head. "Cindy Marr dropped out in February. I'm just marking it in case she reconsiders next year."
"That's still 2 months from her handing it in till she dropped out." Amita had only just re-entered the dining area after grabbing herself a bowl of cereal. She spooned a huge milky portion into her mouth to hide her mischievous grin.
"Good point Amita." Alan stared astutely back at his youngest son, he was enjoying having an ally to tease Charlie in the house with once more. Margaret had been all too adept at it and he missed it.
"Amita. What? Won't you be late for class dad? I thought you were in a rush?" Charlie exclaimed as he tried to reclaim some semblance of control over the situation and the paperwork. One pile chose that moment to slide off the table as though mocking his efforts.
"Actually I don't have class today Charlie. It's Sunday. They have made some wonderful advances in science of late. It's called a calendar, and it lets you know precisely what day it is on any given day. Would come in handy for marking students assignments too."
Charlie chose to ignore the obvious dig when he remembered something. "Sunday. Weren't you s'posed to be playing golf with Don today?"
"Ah, yeah. He cancelled. Said something came up." Alan only half answered Charlie as he flipped through his robotics book searching for something in particular.
"Something came up? Like what? A case?"
Alan had found the page he was looking for and stopped to remove his glasses and look up at Charlie. "I don't know. He didn't say."
"Maybe he needs my help. Do you think he needs help? Maybe I should call him."
By now Alan had begun leaving the dining area with his head fully entrenched in his textbook. "Your brother isn't exactly afraid of calling you for help these days. Pity your students don't have the same pull with you. Might not be facing a Sunday of work if they did."
With that Alan was gone. Amita was slouched back in the dining chair looking at the amount of work Charlie had splayed in front of him. "Doesn't look like I'll be getting much of a Sunday either, unless I help you with some of these. Charlie?"
Charlie was staring back at where his father had just recently left. He'd heard Amita but wasn't concentrating. "Sorry."
"You ok?"
"Sure. I don't know. Strange that's all."
"What's strange?"
"Nothing, just. Don. I haven't heard from him in over a week. When he doesn't ask me to help on cases I have no idea what's going on in his life."
"Don's hardly someone who relinquishes information easily, to anyone. Ask Liz."
"I know. I know. I don't know."
"You don't know what?"
"That last case. What with Liz and all. I think he took it pretty hard. It was pretty full-on. I just worry about him that's all."
"Charlie, that's understandable. And incredibly cute." Amita smiled at Charlie when he looked to her with his puppy dog eyes. "I know how much you worry about Don, with his job and all. It's one of the things I love about you, your compassion."
"Oh really?"
"One of. Mainly it's the brain. I'm hoping one day to sell it on e-bay for a fortune and retire to the Bahamas with a mechanic."
"A mechanic?"
"Yeah someone who can fix things with their hands. Think I'd like that."
oooOooo
Alan munched on his piece of toast and quietly mulled over another page in his textbook. Charlie bounded down the stairs and interrupted the quiet solitude this morning ritual was bringing Alan.
"Still reading that book. Must be good. Mind you I have some great books on calculus that would knock that one out of the park."
"Really. And do those books tell you how to build a robot dog?"
"Theoretically they open your mind to everything. Everything is numbers."
"Well, practically, I just want to know how to attach robot leg a to robot body b. I don't need to know why it works on a cosmological scale. Amita didn't stay?"
"No, she had early classes. Which reminds me, don't you.."
"Yes, I start at 9. It's Monday. Just in case you need to know."
"Thanks I am well aware of what day it is, today."
"Excellent. You want to car pool in?"
"Actually no. I can't. Well. I mean. I was going to drop by the FBI and just see Don. I don't have a class till 11."
Alan removed his glasses and stared at Charlie who had poured himself a coffee during their brief chat. "You're worried about him?"
"No."
Alan stared back at him. "Well ok yes, but, it's more for my piece of mind. Megan told Larry that Liz was filling in for Colby this week."
Alan considered this, it seemed to be the first he'd heard of it. "Do you think that's wise? He probably wouldn't like his little brother sniffing around the first time she's back in the office working with him would he?"
Charlie gave Alan his defeated younger brother look and stared into the black coffee in his hands.
"Make sure you tell me everything y'hear?" Alan placed his glasses back on his head and resumed reading. Charlie suppressed a grin. Good old dad. I know exactly where I got my inquisitiveness from.
oooOooo
Megan checked her watch and looked across the cubicles to where Liz and David were sitting. They were sharing a polite joke. David knew how tense it was going to be when Don arrived and was more than likely capitalizing on the fact he hadn't shown yet.
Megan's phone rang and she answered it quickly. Her shoulders sagged when it turned out to be more work, not Don.
Immediately after hanging up she tried Don's cell again. Voicemail. She sighed, picked her legs out from under her on her chair and walked over to David and Liz. "Some guy went beserk in an abbatoir this morning."
"And we're being handed it?" David grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair and began to rise.
"Beserk guy was FBI."
"What?" Liz was already standing.
"Yeah. This one's going to be messy." Megan began to walk across to the elevator.
"You think? An abbatoir, man." David screwed his face up in disgust.
"Hang on, where's Don?" Megan and David stared at each other in reaction to Liz's question. They'd talked about how they would handle any awkward conversations but they really hadn't planned on Don not showing up.
"Don't know. I've tried him 5 times this morning. His cell's off." Megan explained.
"I thought he would have learnt from the last time." Liz sighed as she stormed past the other two agents heading for the elevator. She almost barrelled down Charlie as she did so.
Charlie gently grabbed her shoulders and said, "woah."
"Oh hey Charlie, sorry. We've got a case." Liz reached for the elevator button as Charlie looked across to David and Megan.
"Where's Don?"
"You tell us?" At that moment the elevator opened and Liz stepped in, holding the doors open for the other two.
"Oh hey Charlie, you haven't heard from your brother have you?" Megan said as she entered the elevator.
"Not all week. Actually I was coming here to see him," curiosity was overtaking Charlie fast, "do you need my help?"
"Not at the moment. We'll let you know once we've sussed it out. And hey, Charlie, if you hear from your brother. Tell him to switch his cell on."
The doors closed on Megan's last word and muffled it. Charlie was left standing in the FBI building alone. People buzzed around him and he heard comments from some of them about an agent losing it. Charlie wondered who they were talking about and a dread filled him. He stood motionless long enough to work out that if there was something wrong with Don, then there's no way Megan would have walked out without telling him. She'd have taken him aside, sure, but she'd never ignore him. Unless, she didn't know either.
Paranoia ticked away in Charlie's brain alongside a million other thoughts when his cell rang. Clumsily fumbling for his bag he managed to grab the phone just before it switched to voicemail and hopefully answered thinking it would be Don. "Hey."
"Charlie?"
"Oh hey Amita."
"Gee don't sound so happy."
"Sorry, I'm at the FBI and the elusive Don Eppes is performing a matinee performance. He's not here."
"It's still early though isn't it?"
"Yeah, but he doesn't normally switch his cell off."
"Well, I mean, he has been known to."
"Yeah, I know. Sorry you rang for a reason?"
"Oh, yeah, I'm with Larry and he wants to know if you've seen that article on CERN he collaborated on last year. He thinks he may have left it in your office."
Charlie sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Yeah I have. He gave it to Millie last week. When she asked for it."
"What? Oh great, thanks Charlie, well that explains it. He hasn't misplaced it, Larry is finally entering the final stages of dementia."
Charlie could hear an 'oy, I heard that' in the background which made him smile. "Glad I could help."
"Thanks Charlie. I'll try and find where Larry left his short-term memory. See you tonight?"
"yeah, sure."
There was a pause before Amita added, "I'm sure Don isn't too far away."
"I know. Thanks."
Charlie hung up his cell and realised once more he was standing in the corridor of the FBI, prone. He made up his mind and walked across to Don's cubicle, dumped his bag, sat in his chair, and waited. Charlie was going to make sure he knew his brother was alright. The elusive Eppes may not tell Charlie if something was bothering him but he certainly couldn't avoid visibility. He would just wait until Don Eppes, in flesh and blood, arrived.
ooOoo
A highway patrolman was taking note of the number plate and calling it in. While he waited for a response he walked back around to the driver's door and became distracted by something about 10 feet away. He walked across to it and bent down. Rubbing a finger in the dust, he looked at something he was familiar with, blood. The patrolman looked back towards the vehicle as his radio crackled a response. The woman on the other end relayed the owner's details, repeating the final ones, "Special Agent Don Eppes."