A/N-Thanks so much to the two people who reviewed! Hopefully more people would review soon….please…? Also, I was asked to make the chapters longer, so this one is a bit longer…not much though, sorry. Anyway, here's chapter two.

Disclaimer-Not Mine

Don began to drive from Calsci to the office when he received a call on his cell phone.

"Eppes," he answered in his usual, curt way.

"Don, LAPD just found another body," David's voice came in clearly through Don's phone.

"Okay David, give me the location and I'll be right there," Don continued speaking in his brisk, efficient manor.

David dictated the location to Don over the phone and Don hung up. He signed inwardly and shifted his hands on the steering wheel. Is this always how it's going to be? Don thought to himself. Brisk, efficient, stoic Donald Eppes. Maybe this explained why he still had yet to have a successful relationship. This was why a relationship would never work for him. As a high-ranking Federal agent, he could not afford to display emotions, and he definitely did not have time for the whole relationship thing. Of course that did not mean that he didn't want to…

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Charlie straightened his tie again and collected his notes in his office. Suddenly the prickly feeling on the back of his neck returned. He glanced apprehensively around his large, cluttered office. He had the strange feeling that someone was watching him. Of course, he could not see the pair of binoculars glinting in the sunlight at him from outside the window.

Charlie picked up his notes and left the office. The previously staring person outside the window moved to the lecture hall where Charlie was now heading.

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Don parked his car at the crime scene and almost immediately saw David talking to a member of the LAPD in front of a small, white-wood house. Don could not prevent a fleeting smile from crossing his face, as he realized that the only discernable characteristic of the typical-suburban house was the yellow crime scene tape and the surrounding LAPD officers.

When David saw Don he excused himself from the officer, and proceeded over to where Don stood by his car.

"John Peterson, age 25, was killed this morning. His neighbor came over to his house earlier today and found him dead in the kitchen. He was killed the same way as the other victims," David said, still using his polite, unexpressive I'm-a-cold-hearted-FBI-agent voice.

"What, with the burns and the cuts?" Don confirmed.

"Yeah, like that. Come and have a look for yourself."

Don followed the younger agent into the kitchen and saw the man who must be John Peterson on the floor. His eyes were staring and vacant, and he had been stripped to a pair of plaid boxers. As many horrendously mutilated bodies Don had seen in the past, the bodies from this case seemed to draw him more than the others. These bodies were different, they were not merely lifeless but seemed to have a macabre feel about them, the mouths twisted into humorless grins. A sudden thought occurred to Don, was he wrong enlisting Charlie to work his formulas and algorithms for this morbid case? Was he in fact, endangering his brother, who so eagerly spent his time and effort on so many of Don's cases.

He looked back at the corpse, and suddenly noticed with growing horror and fear that it was Charlie's head on the mangled body. The colors and shapes of the body began to twist and blur. Don felt as if an anvil had replaced his insides. He mentally shook himself, and reminded himself to remember that this was not Charlie, whose throat had been sliced to the spine and whose back had been burned so severely. It was not Charlie who was laying, with his bones broken and shaped into contorted figures, on the ground. This was John Peterson, male, age 25. Another unfortunate victim of a difficult case.

"Don?" Don jerked up as he felt a hand on his forearm. He looked up to see Megan's concerned face staring into his eyes. She had her profiler look on, and he looked away, not wanting to be analyzed by her at this moment. "Don, are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." She looked at him again and than left to go look around the house with the other agents. "Just fine," Don whispered after she left.