Charlie closed his eyes in relief. Don was coming for him, and Don had a gun and the training to use it. Colby's handgun hung heavily against Charlie's side, but Charlie was under no illusions as to his ability to wield it successfully. I'd be more likely to shoot off my own foot, he thought wryly, amazed that he could even think of anything other than panic under these circumstances. Target practice is one thing. Shooting at something with eyes sounds a little bit harder.

Now all he had to do was to stay put, and avoid the man who was trying to kill him. Not too much doubt that there was someone after him; having a trigger pulled in the general vicinity of one's belly tended to make that crystal clear. That Eminex person and his guard may have been killed, but either that was a separate coincidence or they had been mistaken for Colby and himself. Either way, Charlie was in trouble and he needed to hide until Don arrived to bail him out. Still keeping up the old ways, aren't we, brother mine? Me running away from bullies, you finding them and beating the crap out of them.

Something snapped; someone stepped on a twig, bit back what was clearly a curse. Another language, sounded kind of Middle Eastern, but clearly a curse. Charlie froze. The man was nearby, and he was looking in the shadows where Charlie was hiding. Charlie had chosen this road at random, something that looked dark and easy to lose himself in, and obviously the man had figured out the same thing.

Getting closer. Run, or keep hiding? Running meant the man could shoot at him again, and Charlie put the odds of the gun mis-firing again at something like five to four. And with the way Charlie's luck was running, more likely the man had gotten another gun, one that wasn't as likely to malfunction. But hiding had similar drawbacks; once found, the man could strangle Charlie with his bare hands, and do it much more quietly. Charlie wasn't exactly a ninety pound weakling, but the man after him was likely to have trained in some form of fighting. The outcome would be almost a certainty.

Except for one other thing: Colby's gun. Charlie pulled it out from the holster under his coat, his hands shaking. The man didn't know that Charlie had it, didn't know that Charlie was prepared to defend himself with more than his fists. That Charlie had more on the ball than a security-laced laptop. He wasn't an expert with guns, but Don had taught him the basics. And Charlie was about to put those basics into action. Damn, it felt different! It felt different thinking about killing a man, not just aiming at a paper target. How do you do this, brother mine?

The night had gotten more than dark; the stars provided a meager amount of light, just enough to barely see the shape creeping toward him, checking each bush for signs of a wayward mathematician. Charlie squinted, trying to make the blob come clear. Which hand held the assassin's gun? Did the right look slightly longer than the left? No, that couldn't be right. Charlie remembered the man holding the gun in his left. When the gun is two centimeters from your gut, it's a little hard to miss.

It could be street bum, looking for a half empty bottle. The way his nerves were, it could even be a dog, sniffing around the bushes.

The man looked up, and Charlie saw his eyes, cold and black as the surrounding night. It was those eyes that he had seen before, with a gun pointed straight at him. It was him. It was the killer. The killer grinned, and raised his weapon.

Colby's gun roared in Charlie's hand before he knew what he'd done, the sound echoing off of the buildings around them. The killer yelled something but Charlie was too scared to try to figure out what it was, or even what language it was in.

Charlie ran.

It was only later that he realized that he hadn't the first clue if he'd hit the man or not. The one thing he did figure out was that he'd dropped the gun along with Colby's holster.

He hoped that Colby didn't want either of them back.

It was the chief of police that met Don and David as soon as the pair arrived at the motel that the FAA had commandeered for their investigations. Despite the fact that it was closing in on ten at night, people were still milling around, many of them passengers, all eager to get the ordeal over and done with so that they could return home and shake with the delayed reaction for a while. Several of them had already popped prescription drugs for stress relief; others had had to make do with carefully marking the location of the local bar, intending to obliterate the scene in their minds with not so carefully measured quantities of alcohol as soon as the Powers That Be had finished with them for the night.

Police Chief Roy Jenkins didn't wait for David to turn the engine off on the SUV before approaching the vehicle. Clearly he'd been waiting for the pair of FBI agents, and he had something in his hands: a gun, with a shoulder holster. An unpleasant sensation grew in Don's middle. That could only mean something not good had happened.

Introductions went swiftly. "We found these over by the Feed store," Jenkins said, handing them over. "They mean anything to you?"

With the initials C.G. engraved onto the holster? That smooth, worn leather that Colby had worked with until he could pull out his gun faster you could say Boise, Idaho? Yeah, it meant something. Don sniffed at the handgun. A faint sulfur smell remained, indicating that it had been fired recently.

"They belong to my man," Don said flatly. No need to give this police chief the whole scenario. There was only one way that it could have gotten here, and that was if Colby had made Charlie take it, which meant that Colby was afraid that something like this might happen. And 'my man' could cover a whole range of possibilities, including 'it's my little math geek brother who's in this mess and who's going to get himself killed if we don't find him.' For all this police chief needed to know, it could be Colby himself running out there, trying to escape from an assassin. The police chief didn't need to know the details. All he needed to know was that the man out there who had dropped this gun was wanted alive by the FBI. Emphasis on 'alive'.

Except Colby wouldn't have dropped his gun and holster. Only geek types did that, as witness what Chief Jenkins had in his hands. And Colby would have sought out the proper authorities, taken precautions for getting help out here, gone into hiding with protection until the mess could get itself cleaned up. Don almost wished that it had been Charlie that had ended up getting air-lifted to Denver or Santa Fe or where ever the FBI agent had been taken for medical care. At least they'd known where the man was, that he was alive.

Don felt himself settle into his tracking mode, letting his feelings simmer into an icy mix of cunning and stealth. This was what he'd cut his proverbial FBI teeth on: Fugitive Tracking. Hunting down people who were trying to stay one step ahead of the law. He was after a math geek, and the fact that an assassin was also after the math geek made it all the easier. Two for the price of one. And the fact that it was his brother made it easier still: he knew how the man would think. How he would react.

All Don had to do was to follow the trail.

And pray to get there first.

With almost a sob, Charlie dropped into the ditch that was surrounded by bushes, praying that it would be enough to hide him from the killer. He had heard the man running behind him, had doubled and then tripled his speed in his terror to get away, blessing the countless miles that he'd put in hiking and exercising. He wasn't out of shape, he knew that, but there was a big difference between being in shape and being in shape to kill.

But it had taken a toll; Charlie was all in, ready to drop. And so he did, into this ditch, hoping that the cover would be enough to prevent the killer from seeing where he'd gone until Charlie had recovered his strength enough for another mad dash ahead of a bullet. Gonna try to outrun a bullet, Professor Eppes? Even you should know better.

Okay, physical feats of derring do were out of the question. Charlie knew that to be a fact. What assets did he have? He had his brains, and for the moment that was about it. Time to take stock of things. One: he was safe, for the moment. He couldn't hear the killer anywhere, which meant that he'd outrun him and that the man would have to slow his pace in order to track where his quarry had gone. How long would it take for the killer to find him? Charlie regretted the lack of concrete data that would allow him to apply the appropriate theorem and determine the approximate length of time that he could rest here in this spot. All the math in the world wouldn't help in the absence of data. Okay, make the best supposition: Charlie decided to give himself fifteen minutes. If the killer hadn't shown up by then, Charlie would move out, present a moving target.

What other assets did he have? He had the laptop. No, that should be classified as something to be protected, not something to use in self-defense. It contained high level information, still to be worked on despite what he had led Colby to think, and was under some heavy duty protection that only Charlie could decipher. But what one man could encode, another man could de-code, and Charlie was under no delusions that a code, no matter how complex, couldn't be broken. And since one way to break it was to break Charlie himself…Charlie shied away from that thought. Okay, best to keep the laptop as safe as Charlie himself.

What other assets? Aha! He had his cell, and—wonders of wonders—it still had a charge. Not much of one, granted, but enough to put through a call to Big Brother. Now if only there was a tower close enough for service…yes! One bar. Far from perfect, but good enough. Charlie flipped the top open, looking guiltily around thinking that the light from the screen might alert his pursuer.

No, nothing. Charlie still appeared to be safe. But, to be careful, he kept the screen as low as possible and close to his chest, hoping that the killer wouldn't see anything even if he was approaching Charlie's location.

Next: call Don. Sound tended to carry out here in the wilderness and might alert his pursuer, so text messaging would be the way Charlie would go. Slower than speech and more awkward but safer, and right now safety was pretty high up on the priority list.

The screen notified him that he had six messages: two from students that Charlie had already decided to give time extensions to because of his out of town excursion and resultant inability to provide the extra help that he'd promised them and the other four from Don. He could pretty much guess what those were: various versions of Charlie, where are you? Charlie sighed. He'd like to know his own location as well. Right now, and Charlie looked around himself again, automatically, Charlie would very much like to know himself where he was. At the moment, lost in the middle of the woods pretty much covered it. Not only that, Charlie realized, he hadn't a clue as to which way he'd fled after escaping from the killer.

Message: Don, help. That would be enough to get his brother's attention. Now, crouch down and wait for a response, closing the screen so that it wouldn't glow in the dark.

He was right. It took only seconds for an answer to come back: Where r u?

More tapping. Dont know. Outside of town.

Direction?

Again: dont know. Charlie wished for an apostrophe, decided that it really didn't matter.

Another return message: stay put. Charlie could even imagine the sigh that accompanied it from his brother. Gotta rescue your little geeky brother from the big bad bully again, Don?

Cripes, that killer's eyes even reminded him of that bully in the seventh grade, what was his name? Francis, something or other? The kid had hated his given name, insisted on being called Check, short for Matuchek which was his last name. Check had taken an instant dislike to Charlie, even more since he couldn't routinely get to him when Don was present. Don wasn't the biggest kid around but everyone knew not to mess with him. Don was the one who was breaking all kinds of records on the baseball diamond even at that age, and he had a reputation, one that Charlie envied. No one pushed Don around.

Which was another reason that Charlie had tried to hang around his older brother: simple self-preservation. His mom and dad hadn't said much when Charlie came home with a black eye and scrapes the time that Don had had to stay after school for some make-up test he'd missed, and neither had Don, but something had happened with both his parents and with Don and Check had left Charlie alone for almost two weeks, glowering at him from the corner of every class that they had together. And then Check had made up for it after that, making sure to hit Charlie every place that it wouldn't show. Even that hadn't been the worst part. The worst had been the looks from the other kids, the ones that said, that's what you get for trying to be in a class you're not old enough for. Go back to the little kids, dweeb. Don't stand out. Don't make us look bad, geek. You deserved what you got, geek. We're on Check's side. You don't belong here.

Charlie hadn't found too many places that he did belong, but CalSci was one of them and he truly wished that he was there at the present time. Then he'd be out of this mess, and wouldn't need to call for help from his big brother. He sighed again, and settled himself down to wait.

It wasn't a sigh from his big brother, it was a shout. "David! It's Charlie! Get on the phone to Megan, see if we can track the signal from his cell!"

"On it." David wasted no time. "Chief Jenkins, I need a landline."

"You got it, mister. Come this way."

Don finished tapping in the last message: stay put. He stared at the screen, wondering if Charlie would try to put in any additional information as to his whereabouts, decided that his brother didn't have additional information to give. Stay put, Chuck, so I can find you.

Police Chief Jenkins had put his entire department at Don's disposal, and Don used what he needed. Right now the best evidence was at the scene where Colby's holster and gun had been found, and Don had them put up all three spot lights that the department possessed—the fourth was unusable until the replacement light bulb came in—and was examining the site for clues.

There wasn't much to find. There were several bushes, one of which looked crunched under the weight of a man—this was where Charlie had tried to hide, Don deciphered. Yes, foot prints, the size of his brother's foot. A spent bullet casing here, three feet away. It too smelled faintly of sulfur, the same as Colby's gun. Don felt his blood run cold. Charlie had fired Colby's gun, right here, trying to defend himself.

"Another casing, over here," David called.

"Bag it," Don ordered, wishing for a Forensics Lab with L.A.'s capabilities. He turned to Chief Jenkins. "How much can you—"

"We send everything up to the County office," Jenkins interrupted, knowing exactly what Don was going to ask. "We're not big enough to need anything." Except when something like this drops out of the sky, was the unvoiced additional comment.

Don nodded. He was used to this. Not quite the same countryside, but the same types of things that he was used to. Little technology, lots of seat of the pants flying. Somehow, it made him feel more in control. "Keep to the chain of evidence protocols," he requested, "and send it to County for identification. Copy the info to my office in L.A. We may need it later, for the trial." Assuming there would be a trial. These are terrorists, accustomed to turning themselves into martyrs. Not at my brother's expense, guy!

He hunched down to look more closely at the sites, looking for more evidence, waiting for the technology to tell him where his brother was. His brother had evidently taken off in a hurry—wouldn't you, with bullets flying?—for the foot prints were widely spaced. Charlie had also been heavily laden, the laptop clearly weighing him down despite the minimal amount of additional poundage. The blanket that the FAA people had given him had floated over to the next bush. Don examined it, found a bullet hole through one corner. He felt sick; that could have been Charlie. But there was no blood, nothing to indicate that the bullet had gone through his brother on its way to puncturing the fabric of the blanket.

Don looked at the direction: east, toward the trees. Smart move, especially for a panic-stricken math geek. The trees would slow people down, would allow the man to dodge bullets, allow those bullets to lodge themselves in trees instead of an arm or a leg or a chest cavity. Of course, it was also straight away from town and help, but what was done was done. Charlie had done the best that he could.

There was a second set of prints, these with a shoe size larger than Charlie's, and Don surmised that they belonged to the killer. These prints weren't spaced quite so far apart; the pursuer was going at a slower pace, realizing that he couldn't keep up with Charlie. But he would have a good idea of which way to go, and was undoubtedly still on the hunt.

There wasn't any time to waste. Don made a decision. "David, stick around here for another few," he instructed. "Wait for Megan to call back with the cell tower info."

"You got it. You?"

"I'm heading off after Charlie." Don indicated the direction that both sets of foot prints showed.

"Alone?" David's tone of voice clearly demonstrated his concern.

"I need you here, for when Megan calls back with coordinates," Don told him. "We can't wait."

David pursed his lips, but accepted the necessity. He lowered his voice. "How about someone from the police department?"

Don scanned the possibilities. All but one that he could see was overweight and mildly out of shape. No need to keep to such niceties here in Small Town, USA. The crime rate was low and the major occupation of the police force was to hand out traffic violations. And, Don reminded himself, there was always the chance that one of them was also on a terrorist payroll. There wouldn't be an opportunity to run any of them through the various data bases for warning signals. No, better to handle this himself.

David came up with the same conclusion independently. "I'll head out to your location as soon as I hear back from Megan. Be careful, Don."

Stay put. Those were Don's instructions, and Charlie had every intention of carrying them out. He would stay right where he was, despite the howling of the coyotes nearby, despite the hooting of the owls hunting for mice, despite the bugs crawling over his arms, despite the snap of the twigs suggesting that the killer was—

Crap! The killer was getting closer! Eyes now well-adjusted to the dark, Charlie could see almost clearly the outline of the man, picking his way through the underbrush, nosing aside branches with an arm made longer by the handgun held firmly. And the man was headed right this way, right toward Charlie's hiding place.

Rapid fire assessment: the killer would be on him within the next one hundred twenty seconds. Don was at least six hundred seconds away and more likely farther than that. Six hundred minus one hundred twenty was four hundred eighty—oh, hell. Charlie broke, and ran.

"Shots fired!" Don snarled that into his cell at David on a dead run. "Shots fired! Get out here! Two miles due east of town!"

"On it. Bringing the SUV."

Don caught a quick roar of the SUV's engine turning over as David's own cell broke the connection and blessed the agent's foresight in getting a vehicle that wouldn't rip out the undercarriage on a dirt road. David would be here in moments, and Don would either hop on board or be so far into the underbrush that nothing short of a pack of hounds would be able to follow. Either way, back up was on its way.

Shots fired. Don had heard two, and they hadn't come from Charlie because his brother no longer had Colby's weapon. That meant that someone was shooting at his brother. Yeah, there was always the possibility that there was some hunter out there searching for deer, but this late at night the majority of sport hunters were at home guzzling beer. Don didn't need Charlie to calculate that the odds of the sounds of bullets flying was strongly in favor of someone trying to kill his brother. Don lengthened his stride. He'd always been a good sprinter, could be counted on for a stolen base or two, and he used that burst of speed to best advantage.

But he was running to nowhere. The gunfire stopped, and there was no longer any sound to guide him. "Charlie!" he yelled. "Charlie!"

No one answered. Two possibilities: one, Charlie was hiding, and the killer almost upon him so that Charlie couldn't make a sound. Second: Charlie might be—no, Don wouldn't give that thought even the courtesy of thinking it. It couldn't happen. It hadn't happened. Don wouldn't let it.

He had good night vision, and he used it. Tracking mode: he sniffed the air, catching the acrid sulfur scent of a recently fired weapon. If there was nothing better to guide him, he'd use that.

Don advanced.