Note: Thanks to WriterJC for her beta read and asking me some good questions to make this a better story. This story is set somewhere in season two for Numb3rs and maybe between seasons two and three for Early Edition.
Pale sunlight streamed through the tall windows, illuminating a lump huddled underneath the covers of a queen-sized bed. As the radio on the bedside table switched on, a cat's meow echoed throughout the apartment.
"And it's a beautiful day in the Windy City, with temperatures going up to 55 degrees by lunchtime. Traffic is slow on the Dan Ryan…" the announcer's bright voice chirped before a hand emerged from under the covers to slap the snooze button.
Gary Hobson groaned as he swung his bare feet out from under the covers and slapped them down on the cold hardwood floor. Standing up in his white t-shirt and blue plaid boxers, he stumbled, yawning, to the door and pulled it open.
He bent down, blinking his eyes blearily, and grabbed the newspaper. Two things shook him awake. One was the familiar brush of fur against his leg as the orange tabby scurried past him into the apartment.
The second was the paper itself. That it was tomorrow's paper was no real surprise—he'd been getting the next day's paper in advance for well over a year now. No, the real eye opener was that, wrapped around his tabloid-sized Chicago Sun-Times, was the broadsheet front page of tomorrow's Los Angeles Times.
Now fully awake, he looked over at the cat. "And I suppose I get to guess about the special of the day here?"
The cat meowed in a lower tone in response.
"Yeah, that's what I thought." He set the paper down on the table. "This wouldn't be a hint that I'm getting a vacation, would it?"
The cat jumped onto the table, brushing the newspaper sheet so that the headline just below the fold was now visible.
Looking closer at the headline, Gary read, "FBI agent freezes to death in warehouse. A routine operation turned tragic yesterday morning for local FBI agents. Just after 8 a.m. agents raided a food storage warehouse near the Port of Los Angeles as part of a bust on a heroin-smuggling operation. Smugglers were able to incapacitate lead agent Don Eppes and lock him in one of the warehouse's freezers. The other agents regained the advantage and arrested the entire crew, but by the time they located Eppes in the freezer, it was too late."
"Investigators say it's clear that Eppes tried to force the main freezer door open with a crowbar but was unable to do so. It appears Eppes was unaware of the freezer's secondary door because warehouse employees violated the health code and stored an eight-foot tall stack of bags containing shrimp in front of it on the inside of the freezer. In a preliminary statement, the coroner's office said that if Eppes had been able to get out of the freezer just 30 minutes earlier, they would have been able to save him."
Gary looked down at the cat. "How am I supposed to save this guy? I can't get to Los Angeles in less than four hours."
The cat growled.
"I get it. I get it," said Gary, putting his hands up in defeat. "Always five impossible things before breakfast with you."
When Don Eppes' cell phone rang at 6 a.m., he was just pulling into the FBI parking garage. It was earlier than he'd like to be getting into the office, but Charlie's math indicated the gang would be moving its product today, and they'd only just got a fix on the warehouse last night.
"Eppes," he barked into the receiver.
"FBI switchboard. We have an anonymous tipster who has requested to speak to you about a food storage warehouse?"
"On what? Nobody outside the FBI knows about today's raid. Patch it through to me and see if you can trace it."
"Will do."
Seconds later, a nervous-sounding man's voice came on the line. "Is this Agent Eppes?"
"That's me. The operator said you have a tip for us?" Don asked.
"Well, yes- and no. Well, not a tip exactly as much as some advice, you see."
"Advice about a food storage warehouse?" Don crinkled his eyebrows skeptically.
"Well, you need to know that in the walk-in freezer, there's a second door, but it's hidden behind the shrimp. Your-your life depends on it."
"My life depends on shrimp? Is this a crank call?"
"No, no. Just remember. Behind the shrimp." The line clicked, and the nervous man was gone.
Don immediately dialed back the switchboard. "This is Eppes—were you able to trace the call?"
"I'm sorry, Agent Eppes, we were only able to narrow it down. The call came from a landline in Chicago, but it's a payphone."
"Chicago?" he said incredulously, as he climbed out of his SUV and headed for the building's entrance.
A few minutes later, he was in the conference room with his team, sketching out the plan for their assault on the warehouse. Colby and David were looking at some of their files to determine whether SWAT needed to be involved, while he was determining the best entry points to the warehouse with Megan.
"I got this weird call that came in from the tips hotline as I was getting in today," he said to Megan, as he circled another possible entry point on the blueprint.
"Oh yeah? Weird how?" She straightened up and put her hands on her hips.
Don reached up with his right hand and scratched the back of his head. "He mentioned a food storage warehouse and wanted to tell me about a door behind the shrimp."
"What?" Megan said, her eyebrows raised.
"Exactly. It was weird," Don said. "He didn't say this warehouse in particular—just that my life depended on remembering the shrimp."
"The shrimp? Well, he could be someone who just desperately wants to be involved in a case." Catching Don's look of disbelief, she continued, "Or he could just be a little nuts."
"Is 'a little nuts' one of those diagnoses they teach you in those Quantico profiler classes?" Don said with a grin.
"Uh-huh. Right up there with 'has a few screws loose' and 'just needs more cookies in his life,'" said Megan, her eyes twinkling.
"Oh and get this. The operator traced the call to a Chicago payphone."
"That's a little…odd. Why didn't he just call his 'tip' in to the local office?"
Don shook his head. "I don't know, but we've got bigger things to worry about today."
He turned back to the blueprint and resumed sketching out their plan of attack.
Before he even opened his eyes, Don felt the bone-chilling cold. His eyelashes felt like they were frozen together.
'Since when does it snow in Los Angeles?' he thought disjointedly.
A violent shiver ran through his body, waking him up more. After several tries at blinking, he opened his eyes. Various boxes and crates were stacked around him, and he sat up to look closer at the labels.
'I'm taking a nap with a crate of chicken thighs?' The thought bounced around his head, his brain still a little fuzzy.
He stood up shakily, his feet sliding slightly on the frost-covered floor, and tried to assess the situation. Patting his hip, he found his gun missing, but everything else seemed to be there. He cleared his throat and attempted a radio call.
"Megan, you there?" Nothing. "Colby? David?" There was no response, not even a crackle of static. "3695 to control, please respond." Still nothing.
'The walls of the room must be too thick,' he thought. Pulling out his cell phone, he looked at the screen, but it was blank. That didn't seem right. Blank? Even with no signal, there should still be something. It was the cold. It had to be. Why was it so cold? Don took a deep breath and tried to remember what had happened. They'd entered the warehouse, each taking a corner to clear. He'd poked his head into a breakroom area and seen no one, and as he'd turned back around… There'd been a fist. He hadn't even seen a face.
Gingerly, he touched his right cheekbone. 'Oh yeah, that's going to leave a mark. Dad would tell me to put some ice on it right away.' Shivering again, he snickered in spite of himself. Ice, well, he had his choice in here. They must have dragged him into one of the industrial freezers. He could see the door and ambled over to it. The wall was shiny steel, with a groove running around the outline of the door. That was it. No inner handle, no visible hinges to pry off. Glancing down, Don saw a crowbar lying next to another pallet… of rib-eyes? He almost snickered again at the irony of being trapped with his favorite meal.
Picking up the cold metal bar, he was glad for his tactical gloves. Even if they didn't provide much warmth, it was at least something. He angled the tip of the bar into the groove and pushed with all his strength. 'If Charlie was here, he'd tell me the right angle to push and how much force I'd need.' However much it was, it seemed like more than he had in him. Again and again he pushed until he had to sit for a moment to catch his breath. Looking around, he surveyed the freezer again. Chicken, steak, shrimp. He could have one heck of a party in here if there was only a grill.
'Hang on. Shrimp?' That guy, the nut from this morning. He'd said something about his life depending on shrimp. What was it? Don ran his hand through his hair, trying to remember. The guy had actually talked about a walk-in freezer. It was like he had known. But how could he? 'Wait. A second door. That's what he said. A second door behind the shrimp.'
Don jumped up with a new surge of energy. The bags of frozen shrimp stood in the corner in a stack eight feet high. 'Well, if nothing else, it'll warm me up,' he thought as he grabbed hold of the first one.
Fifteen minutes later, he'd made enough progress to see that there was indeed a door behind the shrimp, but it was going to take a lot more effort to get the area clear enough to open it. His throat ached from breathing in the cold air so heavily, and his fingers felt clumsy, frozen beneath his gloves. Still shivering, he hefted bag after bag away from the wall. He wasn't going to want ice cream for a year after this. Forget that ski trip he'd dreamed of—on his next day off, he was going to lie in the sun on the beach. 'Day off, right. That'll happen,' he thought, hefting another bag.
Now the door handle was uncovered, but as Don turned the handle, it was clear that the door opened inward. Just a three-foot stack of bags left. He could do this. His arms were sore, and he was long past feeling the cold in his hands. He was sweating from the effort, but each drip made him feel colder. He felt just about ready to collapse as he pushed the final few bags aside. Pulling the door handle toward him, he felt it click open, and warm air rushed in. Stumbling, he made his way out of the freezer and into the relative heat of the warehouse. The freezer door swung shut behind him. Sinking to the floor, he tried the radio again, but it was still out. 'Probably too cold still. They really should make these things to hold up under extreme conditions,' he thought.
Don knew he should find cover and make contact with his team, but the adrenaline that had kept him going in the freezer has faded, leaving the exhaustion and cold behind. He only closed his eyes for a moment—or at least it felt like a moment—when a hand grabbed his shoulder.
"Don! Don, are you with me?"
Blinking back his fuzzy thought, he opened his eyes to see Megan's face in front of his.
"Hey," he said with a slightly drunken kind of smile. "Didja get them?"
"Yeah, we got them. Are you OK?" She pressed a hand against his uninjured cheek. "Wow. You're like ice. What happened?"
"It was the shrimp," Don mumbled. "He was right about the shrimp."
He could feel the world tilting sideways and going dark and he continued, "The shrimp."
Megan sighed, lost in thought, as the ambulance doors slammed shut. Memories of the morning's gunshots echoed in her head.
The smugglers had been better prepared than they'd expected, and the situation had quickly become a cat and mouse shootout at one end of the warehouse. She'd been able to coordinate David to draw fire one way and Colby to get the drop on the shooters, but Don… She could hear herself making the radio calls: "Don, give me your location." "Don, what's your status? Are you injured?" There had been nothing, no response. Just silence. Her chest tightened at the memory.
Once they'd restrained the smugglers and made the call for back-up to help bring them in, Megan had begun searching Don's quadrant of the warehouse. The place was a maze of pallets and storage containers. It would take hours to search even this one section thoroughly.
She'd started methodically, going up and down rows of containers, but as she cleared each one, a feeling of panic started to well up inside her. Taking a deep breath, she'd summoned every bit of FBI professionalism she had and continued. It had been at least 30 minutes when she'd heard a thud, like something had fallen. Abandoning her search grid, she hurried toward the sound.
And that's how she'd found him, slumped against the door of an industrial freezer, cold as ice. He'd only woken up enough to say a few nonsensical things before passing out again. She looked down at him now in the ambulance, bundled up and breathing deeply. He looked almost peaceful, only shivering occasionally.
She leaned back against the wall of the ambulance, not letting go of his hand. 'Any one you walk away from,' she told herself. 'It's OK now.'
When he opened his eyes again, he was moving—well, everything was. Don stared at the ceiling for a moment, half awake, then snapped back into awareness once he realized he was in an ambulance. Someone had wrapped him in a blanket and stuck the back of his left hand with an IV. His eyes tracked the space around him rapidly, landing on two people—a paramedic to his left, and Megan on his right, holding his hand.
"What happened?" he said, groaning and looking at Megan.
"Why don't you tell me?" Megan said with a smile. "When I found you, you just kept talking about shrimp."
"Huh?" he said. "I was clearing my section of the warehouse when someone knocked me out. I woke up in the freezer. No idea how long I was there, but I couldn't get the main door open from the inside."
"You were cold when I found you," Megan said, "but you must have found your way out, because I didn't find you inside a freezer."
Don's eyes widened with realization, and he tried to sit up, but the straps keeping him secured on the gurney prevented that. Leaning back down, he turned his head toward Megan. "That guy, the crank from this morning. He was right about the shrimp!"
"The shrimp? What did he say exactly?"
"He said there was a door behind the shrimp, that I had to know, because it would save my life."
"I'm still not following you," Megan said, shaking her head.
Don took a deep breath. "That freezer was full of all kinds of frozen meats—chicken, steak, you name it. But there was only one place where there was a pile of bags containing frozen shrimp. It was a really tall stack, but I didn't have any other options, so I started moving them, and there was a secondary door behind them. I never would have seen it." He shook his head. "What I can't figure out is how the guy knew—how he knew we'd be at the warehouse today, how he knew I'd get locked in that freezer and how he knew just what was stacked in front of the second door."
Megan bit her bottom lip as she thought. "Yeah, that's one too many coincidences. Can we track him?"
The ambulance was slowing down as they pulled into the hospital parking lot.
Don shook his head. "All they could tell me was that the call came from a payphone in Chicago. Unless he calls again, we'll probably never know."
"Well at least he did. You can live with the nickname 'Popsicle' instead of actually being one," she said with a grin.
He glared back at her. "You wouldn't."
"Maybe not, but I think Colby and David might."
Note: Right now, this is a one-shot. If there's interest, I might expand this story for further adventures. Let me know in the reviews if that's something you'd like to see.