Chapter Four - The Immensely Bad Idea Comes to Fruition
Keeping Don's words in mind, Nikki's first move was to involve Lieve. Now she thought about it, she had no real reason to suspect him - only his insistance that their suspect was emotionally unstable. Which wasn't too far a stretch from trying to keep your arresting officer hostage in her own holding room. Don was right. Her partner had nothing to do with this.
So she sat down in the chair beside his desk, feeling guiltier than hell, and told him the entire story of what had happened over the past three days. Naturally, he was pissed.
"You did what? Do you know how long that it took for me to actually get his search warrant? If you bog me down with circumstantial evidence, Eppes might never get the punishment he deserves!" He hissed, careful to keep his voice down. Agent Miller approached them, upon hearing Eppes' name. Nikki didn't trust him though - she had only worked with him on this case, and she hadn't even seen his face for the best part of the past three days.
"It's okay, Miller. We have things under control." Nikki made herself clear, and Miller scowled before retiring back to his desk, to finish up some surveillance paperwork on another case. Her partner was watching her curiously now, his anger sliding away from him upon realising that she was serious. Knowing her better than most other people, he knew that now was the time to change his tactic.
"What are you planning to do?" The tone of his voice was softer now, and quieter still. No longer did he sound angry - just curious. Nikki banished the voice that told her that he had something to do with this whole mess to the very back of her brain, and leaned further in, so they could speak in more strict privacy. "I know that there's doubt among a lot of the agents as to whether he did it or not, DNA evidence be damned."
"DNA evidence can be planted." Nikki rephrased, staring at Lieve closely. She was curious about the amount of expression on his usually expressionless face. Maybe the case got to him too and he was just better at hiding it. "And I think that it was. Charlie Eppes did an analysis and it's pretty specific that the killer wouldn't have touched the windowsill or the bedside table drawers. But as you said, it's circumstantial, and without another person to pin this down on, Eppes will go down."
"What are you suggesting though? That we implicate someone else? We've already looked for motives pertaining to the victim-"
"It doesn't have anything to do with the victim. It has to do with an agent he's investigating. He said that he has evidence." Nikki whispered back, even though a higher volume would not have attracted any more attention in the busy office. Lieve snorted.
"That's our department." He said, sounding distrustful. "Do we know where he's keeping the evidence?" Nikki shook her head, and his face returned to its usual unreadable state.
"I know that it's in a safety deposit box, but he won't tell me where." Lieve cursed to himself.
"It would take years to search all of the boxes in LA." Nikki nodded grimly.
"And that's just if he's stupid enough to hide it in LA. It might be en route to Cuba by now for all we know. We need him to talk to us, and he's not going to do that while he's still in the Penetentiary." Lieve's eyes narrowed further.
"This is the last time I'm going to ask this: What are you suggesting that we do?" Nikki grimaced. She was full of immensely bad ideas this week.
Lieve and Nikki sat down across from Don in the small stuffy metal cage and they all stared at each other for a while. Miller paced around the three agents, hands clasped behind his back. Unlike in their first interrogation of him, Don's eyes were not locked with Lieve's, but instead with Nikki's. While his expression was confident, she could tell that he was wary of what they were doing here, and why they had brought all three arresting officers. Either this meant that they were letting him go, or putting him down. He daren't speclate which.
Miller didn't know the plan, he was just here for plausible deniability. Miller was good for that - he never asked questions. Since his stint in the military, he followed orders from anyone higher in the food chain, and swallowed his own opinion.
"Agent Eppes, I have come to the attention of a hypothetical conversation you and my partner had the other day." Lieve began, and a slow smile came onto Don's face. This was the start of a deal, he could tell. When he spoke though, it was directed at Nikki. She was the deal broker, and she was the one in charge.
"Yeah? I have lots of hypothetical conversations. I was just talking to the guard about hypothetically, what kind of underwear you'd wear." He cocked his head to the side. "I saw you as a red lace kind of girl." Due to lots of hard work and training, not a muscle twitched on Nikki's face, but he saw the glint in her eyes which meant she was amused. She liked his games.
"Hypothetically, an agent would tell us the information we need if they were outside this place, in the fresh air." She offered, and he immediately sobered up, and leaned forwards.
"Keep talking hypothetically, baby, I like it." His undertones were serious, even though he kept the arrogant facade.
"Just out of curiousity, you know the schematics of this building, don't you?" He nodded - something that wouldn't be on the tape and he was pretty sure that the security camera in the corner had been shut down. "So you know that when you're guided back to your cell, you'll be able to see us leaving." Nodding again, his smile faltered in faint surprise. He knew that they were going to cut a deal. He didn't think that they were going to cut this one. Nikki gave him a small smile as she left. "Make sure to wave us goodbye." Don's smile was back and bigger than the Cheshire Cat's.
"I won't disappoint you Agent." They walked away, Nikki holding her file to her chest and her head held high. Lieve looking a lot less pleased, but thinking hard. Worried, even, about what they were about to do. Regathering their weapons at the front desk, Nikki walked back to the gate, looking hard through it and hoping to God that this was going to work.
Miller had been in the office for a couple of minutes, sorting out paperwork with the warden under Lieve's command, when sirens blew up all around them, just as Don was led out of the interrogation cell, which was the one closest to the door. Immediately, the front gates opened, and Nikki rushed forwards, along with ten other guards who were on the door.
There was a lot of yelling, where the warden ordered an evacuation of the prisoners, and tried to trip the override codes. But, thanks to Amita's computer skills, they weren't working. A guard thumped her on the back on the way past, and she realised that it was Lieve, so she watched him and his fellow 'guard' Colby stride boldly into the fray, heading straight towards towards Eppes. No one could see their faces properly through their helmets.
The two guards holding him were caught. They had sectors that they had to go and manually evacuate, but they couldn't just leave Don behind. Lieve and Colby grabbed Don roughly by the arms, and Colby shouted something about reinforcements. Within the fray; the alarm and the warden's shouts, the guards nodded and shoved a handcuffed Don towards them, and ran away to join their colleagues.
Nikki led the warden away from the office, saying that they needed to help - his men weren't enough. It took them two minutes to kit up and grab their firearms before they were out, as well as all but one guard, who stayed at the front desk. It was shift change - Nikki knew that. So everyone's placings were messed up, making it even harder for them to organise themselves. Thus buying them more time. The biocontamination alarms pounded relentlessly on their eardrums as they ran straight past Don, Colby and Lieve. The warden missed the thumbs up that Nikki shot them, telling them that the coast was clear.
After waiting about half a minute until the corridor was practically clear, they tightened their grip on Don and marched him straight past the front desk. Amita was keeping the guard so busy with her skills that he didn't even look up from the computer screen, trying to determine what area the computers had detected a biohazard in.
Once through the front doors, all three men broke into a run, and Colby and Don jumped into a waiting SUV. Lieve patted the back of the SUV, and Megan, the driver, nodded before driving away, under the speed limit as not to attract too much attention to herself. Lieve watched them go with a grim look on his face, hoping to God that they reached the motel without problem. This was his career on the line as well.
As soon as Megan dropped Don off, her and Colby drove away, to go to the office. David would insist that they'd been there for longer than they actually had, and the time difference would go unnoticed by the rest of the people on the floor. They would be so busy with the prison break that they wouldn't even look up if Don himself walked through the bullpen.
Inside the room, Charlie and Amita were waiting, navigating their untraceable way away from the jail's computer system. They both looked exhilerated, and Don felt so happy that he could see his brother like that again. Before greeting them, he pulled the curtains. Even under the cover of darkness, he could be identified. No doubt his face would be all over the news in the next few hours. But then, he would be able to make a case against the 18th Street Mexicali mole in the FBI.
"Don!" Charlie tripped over his chair in his enthusiasm to reach his brother, then caught him in a tight embrace, which Don returned without hesitation. He hadn't realised how much he'd missed his baby brother in the mere three days they had been apart. "You did it!" Don looked around, bemused.
"I did it? Everyone else did it, and I want to know exactly what it was!" Even though he was trying to be serious, he was just too damn happy to see Charlie again. He hadn't realised how much he needed his little brother around. "Now brief me." Amita skipped over and gave her boyfriend's brother a big hug.
"Well first we hacked into the penetentiary's system and set of the decontamination alert, which means that they need to get everyone out, fast." She boasted, looking extremely pleased with herself, and for good reason. "Then, the agents," She glanced sideways at Charlie for their names, since she had never actually met Nikki or Lieve in person.
"Agents Lieve and Betancourt." Charlie piped up, unecessarily.
"Yeah, them. They engineered the rest." The story ended faster than Don had expected, and he raised an eyebrow in question. Amita shrugged. "They don't really talk to us much. David and Megan just called, and told us that if we didn't want to visit you in jail for the rest of your life, we should do this. So we did, and here you are!" Don grinned at their beaming enthusiasm.
"I can't believe that you did that." It was Charlie's turn to raise his eyebrow.
"You can't believe that we did that? You're a fugitive. Remember those people that you used to hunt for weeks on end?" Don pretended to flick something at his brother, who ducked automatically, making Amita giggle.
"So where's Nikki?" Charlie looked blank for a moment, then seemed to remember.
"Oh, Agent Betancourt! She had to have plausible deniability or something, so she'll be here in about an hour, if not more. She said that she and Lieve have to see the whole thing though. She clearly doesn't trust you enough to go after the evidence yourself." Charlie said, and Don looked around himself, wandering over to the double bed in the middle of the cheap motel room.
"She's trusting me enough to stay here with you two." The mathematicians stared at him blankly. "Well you're not exactly trained agents. I could beat you both in a footrace, and don't even get me started on what I could do with hand to hand combat." Charlie stuck out his tongue, then sighed. The series of laptops operating automatically in the corner let out a series of beeps, and both of Don's resident geeks ran over to see what was happening.
"They have control of the system again, and they're trying to track us. Amita?" Before Charlie had even the time to ask the question, Amita answered it.
"Rerouting to Housten, Texas."
"Biting?"
"Yup... Sydney, Australia." Both of the geniuses grinned at their screens, and Don shook his head from where he was lying, hands behind his head and staring at the ceiling. It amused him; how much fun they were having. "London, England. Seattle. Washington D.C. Think they're catching on?" Amita practically squealed, pleased to have outwitted yet someone else.
"Yeah, I think that we're safe... yeah. They're stopping their track. We can disconnect safely - they're not going to be able to track us remotely." Don knew that his last part of explanation was for him alone, but he didn't care anymore. He was just glad to be out of that damn cell.
"Charlie?"
"Hmm?"
"C'mere." The younger man pulled himself off of his chair as his girlfriend began to pack away their computers, and walked over to sit by his brother's prone frame.
"What, Don?" Without taking his eyes from the offwhite paint of the ceiling, Don sought Charlie's hand where it lay by his side, and held it firmly.
"You did real good today, buddy. Thanks for not believing that I could... that I could do that." They both knew that he was referring to the murder and rape of Bethany Jenkins. Which opened another can of worms.
"Why didn't you tell me that you got married? What about dad - why didn't you tell him? Are we really that bad to talk to?" Charlie questioned, and by the tone of this voice, Don knew that his brow would be creased and his lip would be pouting. He felt hurt by Don's deceit, and there was no way that his older brother could blame him. After all, he put a lot of trust in Don, and although he never asked for it in return, it was fair to say that he expected it.
"I just... Buddy, you gotta understand that I was young. I was never like you. I was never the special one, I was just the one who got into fights and was good at sport." Don took a deep and calming breath. "What would you have thought if I told you that I got married to someone that I barely knew, just based on my instinct?" Charlie shrugged, answering straight away, as if it was obvious.
"I'd think that you were being irrational."
"Yeah, exactly. And what would mom have thought?"
"Mom would be angry because you didn't try to make it work."
"I tried-"
"You know mom. No one can ever try hard enough."
"That's my point! I did try, to be every part as good as you, the child prodigy, was, but I just didn't make the cut! It's that simple. I didn't want to have the brand of a failed marriage as well as the brand of a failed baseball career. So I thought that if I just kept it quiet, then no one would be able to hold it against me." Still, Don refused to look at his brother, even though his brother was staring at him with a shocked intensity.
"I would never hold it against you-"
"How do you know?" Finally, they made eye contact, and surprisingly, Charlie was the first to look away. "I can't change how things were, and mom was dying. I didn't want her to see me as a failure. She deserved to go believing that she brought me up well."
"She did bring you up well." Charlie said, quietly, and both men lapsed into silence, speech halted by their thoughts. "At least, I thought she did a pretty good job." Don gave his hand a little squeeze.
"Thanks Buddy. But I can't change how things were." With a sigh, he let go of Charlie and rubbed his face.
"From now on though, I don't want you to keep secrets from me. It's one thing not to tell Megan, David, Colby and Liz, but it's another thing completely not to tell your own brother. They are close enough to be family, but I am family." Charlie pouted. "I have priority." The childishness of his tone made Don chuckle.
"If it makes you feel any better, I didn't tell them, either!" Shaking his head, Charlie stood from the bed.
"Well I have to go. I have to be back in my office in about ten minutes when they finally find out that you're missing. If they have half a brain between them, they'll put the hacking and your mathematician brother together and get the right answer, so I have to have plausible deniability." Charlie grabbed his computer bag, and his briefcase, which Amita had silently packed for him while he and his brother were talking. "I hope that Lieve and Betancourt help you find what you're looking for."
"Me too." Don replied, with a hint of bitterness, but kept it in well enough for the oblivious mathematician not to notice. He was never too smart when it came to people anyway. "See you later, hopefully." Charlie smiled, and followed Amita out of the door, closing it behind him with a soft thump. Leaving Don and the ceiling to ponder life, the universe and everything in it.
Nikki and Lieve were bordering on breaking the speed limit as they drove towards the motel room they had set Charlie and Amita up with. Even though Nikki was pretty damn sure that Don hadn't done anything wrong, this was still a lot to entrust on a convict, innocent or not. Even the innocents run, and she knew that there was a possibility that Don would have too.
"This had better worked." Lieve growled at her, and she didn't need to be Megan the profiler to know that he was pissed at her. This had all been her idea, you see, though if when they arrived at the motel, Don was nowhere to be found, the FBI would pound down on both of their asses, so hard that they would be seeing their own... you get the idea.
"Yeah, it will have." Despite Nikki's lack of superstition, she still muttered 'Touch wood' under her breath, as they turned into the motel's parking lot. The light in room six, the one which they had rented earlier for cash, was off, and there was no visible movement inside. Quickly shutting off their lights and being careful not to be too noisy slipping out of their SUV, Nikki and Lieve drew their weapons as they crept towards the room.
The door was open, like they had expected, and Lieve covered Nikki as she darted inside and flicked the light switch. To their surprise, and relief, there was Don, lying casually on the motel bed. Looking nonplussed and slightly worried at the sight of their firearms.
"Betancourt." He acknowledged, rolling sideways off the bed and holding his hands in the air. "Feel free to search me, but I'm not packing anything that I shouldn't be." While this convinced Nikki to stow away her weapon, Lieve merely lowered his, unnerving Don.
"Take us to the safety deposit box." Nikki ordered, not allowing herself to become distracted by the lack of bars or restraint separating them. "There's not a lot of time before someone tracks us down." Well, they were safe for now, but she always like to get things done in plenty of time. Don grinned, arrogantly, ignoring Lieve completely and continuing to address Nikki like she was the one in charge.
"What, no foreplay?" Rolling her eyes, she moved forwards, crossing her arms across her chest.
"I need to be back in the office in..." She checked her watch, nervously. "...not that long, so we need the location now." Don shook his head.
"No way. I'm coming with you, hands free, no guns. I'll drive." He countered, hands on his hips and speaking like he owned them. Once more, he was the one making the calls. Nikki seemed to accept this, for it was her general plan to start with. Lieve, on the other hand, shook his head immediately.
"No way in hell." He elaborated. "We broke you out of prison. We deserve a little more trust than you're presently giving us." Don cocked his head to the side, and watched Lieve in a way which reminded him somewhat of a teacher frowning upon the bad-mouthing of a child. "I'll bring you to the place, if you give me directions, and I'll give you a change of clothes." Don glanced down at his bright orange attire and silently concluded that was a good idea. "But you're not getting a gun, a badge or anything else. I will bring a gun because you are an escaped convict, and quite frankly I don't trust you." Nodding, Don also concluded that he wouldn't either.
"Deal." He said, sharply, before Lieve could say anything more. Nikki smirked at his negotiation skills. By offering unmeetable conditions, he had made the other negotiator offer very reasonable demands, while he was still under the impression that they were being restrictive. Negotiation 101 - Don clearly wrote a chapter in that book as well.
"Fine." Lieve turned back to his partner, who was pulling some clothes out of a bag which Lieve had carried in the back of his SUV, and handing them to Don. Her fingers lingered a little longer than necessary as they brushed against his, and Don's cheshire cat impression merely intensified. "Nikki, if you go back to the FBI now, they can't link you with anything," She looked surprised that he was using himself as the scapegoat, after his doubt on their way over. "Take the SUV, I have another car parked in the lot which I thought we might need."
"Are you sure that you don't need help?" She asked, shocked by his sudden heroism. "I mean, I should take at least some of the blame." Lieve smiled wryly, turning his eyes back to Don, who was watching the agents curiously, not sure what to make of the sudden change in plan. "Plus, if he shoots me, you have to be the one to track him down and haul his ass to the death chamber." Don smiled. Ah, there were his reasons.
Shaking her head disapprovingly, Nikki let herself look at Don again, hoping that this was not the last time that she would be able to do so, and nodded. Her partner's logic made complete sense.
"You'll be able to reach me on my cell if anything happens." She assured them, though she felt herself talking to Don more than Lieve. She had a bad feeling about this. "Good luck." Also directed more at Don, though she didn't look at him and Lieve interpreted as she was really talking to all three of them.
"We'll be fine." He assured her, with a small smile. "Go." With a swift sigh and a flourish, Nikki turned and strode away, out of the dimly lit motel room and back to their vehicle. Lieve leaned over to close the door, and the clip of her footsteps were cut out, and only the faint sound of sirens punctuated the wooden frame. Sirens which were no doubt meant for him. "So Eppes. You gonna tell me where that deposit box is or not?"
Immediately, Don knew that the deal was off. The moment that Lieve had asked Nikki to leave, he knew that there was something decidedly wrong about the entire affair. But, very aware of the gun Lieve was holding against his thigh, he replied as casually as he could.
"Drive me in your makebelieve car, and I'll give you directions." Lieve gritted his teeth, realising that Don had seem straight through his terms, because he had fallen for the tough deal trick so readily. "I'm not going to give you the directions to go anywhere. There is no safety deposit box." Lieve narrowed his eyes, as Don sat back on the bed, regarding him with distaste and dislike.
"You're bluffing. I'm not stupid, Eppes." Don raised his eyebrow. "It's the coverup that gave you away." Lieve elaborated, cruelly, and tightened his hold on his gun. Don remained calm on the outside, though his heart was beating faster with every second. Another minute or two and he would have a coronary.
"Fooled me, Lieve. When Nikki won't get that call, she'll get suspicious. She doesn't trust you anymore, Lieve. She trusts me, and she's going to do anything to prove that I'm innocent."
"You're wrong." Lieve replied, just as calm on the outside. "Betancourt only did all of this so I could get you alone. So I could find the box before anyone else got it out of you." A slow smile spread on Don's face, though it had bitter tones rather than joyous ones.
"Like you said, fuckhead. It's the coverup that gave you away." It was clear to both men that Don was antagonising Lieve. Not calling the IA agent's bluff, like Lieve hadn't called his, was part of the game that they were playing. This one was not as light hearted and teasing as his and Nikki's games though. This was Russian roulette, and right now Don was the one with his finger on the trigger.
"Don't think that you can do this and get away with it." The calm was there, but both men could now see through it, through to the panic and unease that bubbled just beneath their smooth surfaces. "Nikki will hang you up to dry." Lieve shook his head, raising his gun so it was level to Don's head. At this distance, he couldn't possibly miss.
"With what evidence?" A muscle twitched in Don's jaw, making Lieve chuckle. "Cuff yourself." He threw the handcuffs from his belt across onto Don's lap. "Tighter." Don gritted his teeth as he tightened the cuffs, killing any chance of escape that way. He would have said to Nikki earlier that there was something wrong with Lieve, but he had just been too damn scared that he would shoot her and stage a rescue gone wrong, with him as the hero.
"You won't get away with this." Don muttered the well known line, but Lieve just rolled his eyes.
"Yes I will, I always will. And there's nothing that you can do to stop me." Despite Don's boiling hate, annoyance and frustration felt for this man, he had to acknowledge with a sinking feeling deep in his stomach, that Lieve was right. Even though it really pissed him off to admit it.
Nikki reached the car, and took a deep cleansing breath of air. The night was cold; more so than she would have thought considering the heat of the day before, and she pulled her jacket around herself, digging in her pockets for her keys. She had taken her time, walking to the car, even though it was imperative that she arrived back at the office soon. The absence of two arresting officers of the escaped convict is downright suspicious, so people would speculate less with only one.
Heaving a sigh, Nikki glanced around herself, just to check that there was no one nearby who could testify that they saw her. Not that it would matter, once Don gave them the evidence he had. Where the hell were her keys?
Thinking back, she retraced her steps. She put them in her pocket after her and Lieve left the car, they walked to the motel room, she took out the bag of clothes, and used her keys to rip the plastic of the bag. Nikki hit her head none too gently against the driver's side window of the SUV, realising that after she had opened the bag with her keys, she had set them down on the table by the motel phone.
Rolling her eyes at her own stupidity, she strolled back towards the motel room. All of this dirty agent business was really getting to her head. Even though she had only worked there for a few months, she was seriously thinking about changing her job desciption. She became a fed to put criminals behind bars. Someone else could do the depressing job of putting cops in there with them.
Knowing that the door would be open, she walked straight in, wondering why the light was once agian out. Had they left and she hadn't even noticed? No, they had to just be in there... sitting in the dark? Reaching over to flick on the light switch, two things happened at once. The room was illuminated, at the same time as the door was kicked shut behind her, the sudden influx of sound and light disorientating her. Then, a mere split second after her eyes had adjusted to the light, and focussed on the figure cuffed on the bed, everything went black again.
Review to find out what happens next - I've finished the story, but I'm only posting if I get reviews!! So give me feedback and you'll find out how Don and Nikki get out of this little pickle.
-Seven x x
