Chapter One
Agent Don Epps was having a bad day. He had worked the whole night at a stake out trying to catch a drug lord. The case had ended in nothing since their undercover agent couldn't get enough evidence against him. To Don, it had been a waste of valuable time. Time he could have spent doing something else.
He sighed. It was work like that that kept him away from his family. He knew that his father was alone at Charlie's house. His brother was God know where consulting for God knows who. Off course, Don doubted that he was thinking about him. They had had a fight a day before Charlie had packed his things and told them he was leaving.
FLASHBACK
Don was having a bad day well more like a bad week really. After Charlie had told him about Jessica Cartman and all that she went though he had become obsessed with finding the little girl and he had placed himself in unnecessary risk which had made Don really angry. They had argued over that and the rift had yet to be mended and now he had a serial rapist on his hands. He certainly didn't need that right now… or ever.
He had reached a dead end and had decided to go and ask for help from Charlie. Since everything that had happened he was reluctant to ask for it but he was running out of ideas.
He drove all the way to his childhood home to find his father cooking Dinner.
"Donnie, I am glad you came. I haven't seen you in a while. Will you be staying for dinner?"- Alan Eppes always loved to have both his sons for dinner.
"Sure dad. How have things been going?"- He asked
"Everything is fine, how about you. The news say you haven't caught that rapist." –
"Yes, we have hit a dead end. I wanted to see if Charlie might want to lend us a hand"- he said
"Lend you a hand on what?"- said Charlie as he entered the kitchen.
"On a case, serial rapist and we have hit a dead end."- He said expecting Charlie to come up with some miraculous solution to his problem he certainly didn't expect
"I am sorry Don but I am busy right now."- Charlie sounded apologetic but don didn't seem to catch that. Anger had already possessed him.
"Busy? Charlie, lives are at stake here and you tell me you are busy."- He said feeling all the accumulated frustration he felt seep into his words.
"Don my work…"- Charlie started.
"… Is not as important as this."- Don finished for him and to Charlie those words felt like a bullet to his heart.
"Excuse me! My work isn't important? Than why do you insist I help you since I am oh so useless?"- He said angrily. Don would never understand how important his work really was.
"No Charlie this is a matter of life and death. Can't you understand that? This is reality, not some equation you have to solve. It is reality."-
"I know that. I don't live on a fairy tale; I know what real life is."-
"No you don't because as soon as you don't understand something, you retrieve. Like with mom!"- he said and in some part of his brain he knew he would regret it later but right then, he was to riled up to back down.
"Mom was…"- Charlie's voice was a mere whisper.
"You abandoned her Charlie, just like you did Dad and like you abandoned me."- He said and Charlie felt his heart stop. Did they really think that?
"Don you don't understand…"- he tried to explain himself.
"You are right I don't understand because I would have never been able to lock myself away while my mother died."- Right then he knew that he had ruined his ever so fragile relationship with his brother.
Charlie felt tears on his eyes and he turned to look at his father who had remained silent during the whole discussion. He felt another stab of pain when his father avoided his eyes and he barely restrained himself from crying right there and then. He knew he needed to get away from them and he turned and exited the kitchen not caring about anything but leaving.
"Where are you going?"- came his brother's voice. Don had followed him from the kitchen.
"Out. I have work. I am going on a consulting job away from here."- He said grabbing a couple of things from his room and shoving them on a case.
"What?"- asked Don
Charlie ignored him while he finished his pack and closed his room. He swept past him and onto the front yard where his car was. He stopped as he left his things inside and turned to his father and brother who were looking at him as if he had lost his head.
"I never abandoned mom. I just dealt with it differently. I would sneak up to see him as soon as you fell asleep and I would talk to her until dawn. I am not you Don, I am not strong as you are and I will never be as strong as you dad. I love you both but I think I better leave before we start saying things we will regret. I loved mom and I know that there is a world out there I can't control."- he said tears were now streaming down his face and before anyone could say anything, he had hoped on his car and drove off. Not to be seen in three weeks.
END FLASHBACK
He was about to pick up his things and head to give his old man a visit when Megan walked into his office with a file on hand.
"Don, we have a murder. Famous physisist was murdered on his way home. "– she said showing him several pictures of a man who was stabbed to dead. It wouldn't have been strange if it wasn't for the fact that the stabs formed a weird pattern along his chest.
"Let's go."- He said grabbing his jacket from where it lay on the chair. "Call Colby and David". - He ordered.
"They are on their way. They will meet us there."-
They drove all the way to the man's house. It seemed that he had just gotten out of the car when someone had ambushed him and stabbed him several times on the chest. According to official reports, he had died after the third stab had severed a major artery and the carvings on his chest had been done post mortem.
Don examined the body. To him, it looked as if there was an E on the man's chest but then it wasn't quite an E. he knew he had seen it somewhere else and his mind took him to high school math were they had explained what sigma was. It was then he realized that the carving was in fact a Greek letter ∑.
"Don!" – came Megan's voice from inside the man's house. He walked over to her and he motioned to a man standing besides her.
"Don, this is Detective Langdon, he found something about our victim and there was a note."-
"A note?"- He asked intrigued.
Forensics has it right now, they are trying to find prints but the message was clear. It said "NSA, Better take care of your own. Who knows what might be lurking in the shadows." And it was signed by "∑TX."
"We are assuming that it is Greek but we have never heard of a group or anything with that name. It was clear this wasn't LAPD's restrictions so we hand it to our immediate head in this case you but if this is a matter of national security, I am sure it wont be long before someone calls you."- said the detective handing Don a piece of paper with the message copied on it.
"Thank you. I am sure you are right. But if you saw this was National security why not call them directly instead of waiting for us to hand it to them?"- He asked.
"Well, we were going to do that but one of my agents said you might help us with something, follow me."- He said and turning to climb the stairs of the victims house.
"We have talk to neighbors and friends of the victim, he had no known enemies and according to them he had not been home for a month. Apparently he does some free lance work consulting for private institutions but off course no one knew who or where this private institution was. My men have gone trough some of the things he had in here. Many of them are physics related and we have little knowledge as to what they represent and we also found his bank record."- He said while they turned inside a room and found a mess of papers.
"Did you find this room like this?"- asked Megan.
"Unfortunately yes. We have had a bit of trouble trying to organize what all these papers are. It is our belief the man who murdered Dr. Radcliff, the victim, was looking for some damn important papers."-
"Did you check for robbery? Perhaps someone wanted the mans money."- said Don.
"We did but then again who would want to steal from a high school professor. He worked for a nearby local High school though he was a genius on his field and had been offered tenure positions in universities of high prestige he had always declined. Unless you knew were to look, you would only find a man that earned 25 dollars per hour. We checked and after some probing here and there we found that in reality, he had an annual income of 25 million dollars a year. For the last five years. What exactly did this man do under those free lance jobs of his that earned him that?" -
Don and Megan were blown away from the amount of money that man possessed. A teacher could never make that without winning the lottery or robbing a multimillionaire Bank.
"It is my belief that this man was working for someone very important and very rich and he must have made someone really angry by it. Nothing was taken but we did find this."- he motioned toward a door.
Megan and Don entered the room cautiously. It was a bedroom. It was bare of anything except that every inch of wall was covered in pictures. In the middle of it all, the words, "Agent Eppes, Guess who is next" were written with what, Don was sure, was the victim's blood. Megan took a step forward to examine the pictures while Don took it all.
"See why we called you. One of my guys said that you were agent Eppes. We are trying to find every one of those pictures and at first we thought it was impossible to find that much people but after looking at each of them we realized that the pictures were many of eight different individuals. The victim and seven others. We have three identified and we are working on the other four."- The detective said. Megan turned and gazed at Don. He had tensed up the second he had read his name on the wall. Someone was trying to get the attention not only form the NSA but from the FBI to.
"Have you been able to contact the three you found?"- asked Don as he was handed three files. The first one was a Beautiful Blonde woman. She was a very well known computer programmer. The next one, a man in his early Forties was a marine biologist who had a honorary doctorate for all his studies on tectonic plates. The third one a man in his late thirties, a Dr. on sociology.
"You see the pattern here don't you detective?"- He asked.
"You mean the fact that they all are very well known and the fact that they have a successful career on their areas. Yes agent even we caught that."- He said sarcastically and Don was about to answer when he heard Megan gasp.
"Megan?"- He walked to were she stood, a picture previously taped to the wall, in her hand.
"Megan?"- He tried again. She was startled from her shock by him and she turned to him with a heavy heart.
"Don, I think you should see this." – She said slowly and Don grabbed the picture she handed him and found himself staring into brown, almost black eyes.
Eyes so familiar…
The eyes of his baby brother…