Don swung the door to his dad's house—'scuse me, Charlie's house—open with his foot, a large box in his arms. "Loosey, I'm home," he called out in an atrocious mimicry of Desi Arnaz. "Yo, Charlie! You home?"

Charlie sighed. He could guess what Don wanted: food and work, both coming from Charlie. Jessica Morton had been right: there was now a glorious rainbow bruise on his back the size of a watermelon. Well, maybe a small watermelon, but big nonetheless. And it hurt whenever he moved, which meant that he was moving very slowly and as little as possibly.

Charlie had successfully dodged his father. Alan Eppes had been on his way out for an evening with friends—"Poker, Charlie. A real man's game. One that I can beat you at. Unlike chess."—and had left some lasagna from the night before in the fridge. Charlie had planned to nuke it into being taste-worthy, spend a short time doing something mindless, and then taking his aching ribs to bed with a heavy dose of ibuprofen. And Don does this all the time? Charlie's estimation of his brother, already high, elevated itself yet another notch.

And now here was Don, more work in the box in his arms. Charlie forced a smile to his face, hoping that it didn't look too tepid. "Hey, Don."

"Getting better and better, buddy," Don announced. Clearly in a good mood, Charlie noted, trying to keep his own sour expression from his face so that Don wouldn't notice. And why shouldn't Don be in a good mood? Don's raids had gone well, as evidenced by the overflowing box in his arms. "You know those places that you pinpointed for us? That Sweet Things Candy shop and the JB Imports? Beautiful busts, buddy. Couldn't have gone better. They never knew we were coming, and their people just about rolled over and played dead for us. We waltzed in and got what we wanted. No shots fired, worst thing they were capable of doing was to say a couple of nasty words along with 'I want my lawyer, and my mommy', not necessarily in that order." He indicated the box. "This is just a small sampling of the files from JB Imports. Thought you'd want to take a preliminary look, maybe get a head start on stuff." He grinned again. "Can you believe it? Six boxes of files from each place, and that's before we download the computers. Which we, of course, confiscated first thing." His grin grew wider. "The area director is really pleased with this, buddy. He's authorized me to grab sixteen clerks from the pool tomorrow to help you input this stuff into your program. Sixteen clerks, Charlie! Do you know how many man hours that is?"

"One hundred and twenty eight, in an eight hour day," Charlie said, trying to cover up how tired he was. It didn't take even three brain cells to calculate that tidbit. "Less coffee breaks, which, assuming fifteen minutes twice daily per clerk, brings it down to one hundred twenty hours per day. The lunch hour is excluded."

"Whatever." Don looked for a place to put the box, elected not to dump it onto the kitchen table, and settled for one of the chairs. "Dad making dinner?"

"Dad's gone out for the evening. Poker," Charlie explained before Don could ask. "You want to cook, or shall I?"

Quickest way to get his brother out and away, because Charlie really didn't want to discuss Morton's raid with Special Agent Eppes. Ask Don to cook, and the man would run. The more Charlie thought about it, the less certain he was that he should have been in that situation in the first place, in a gun fight, and if Don ever found out about it…That little scene in Morton's office a couple of days ago would be nothing to the fireworks that would erupt over this, and Charlie really didn't want to be the cause of inter-office warfare between two agents. No, better that Don never found out. The bruise would go away before his brother ever saw it, and no one in the family would be any the wiser. And if his father happened to notice something while Charlie was on his way back from the bathroom in the main hall? Charlie could make up some experimental mishap at CalSci. Charlie had a reputation for being clumsy, undeserved though it was. Yeah, this was do-able. Charlie could keep it quiet.

"Cook?" Don stopped just short of wrinkling up his nose. "Pizza?"

"I had pizza last night," Charlie reminded him. "My client, for whom I frequently consult, bought it for me."

"Oh. Right. Chinese?"

Gotta get him outta here. Charlie shrugged artistically, refusing to wince. "Sounds good to me. You can help me input the data while we wait."

The smile froze on Don's face. "I can go get it. The Chinese food, I mean."

"Sounds good to me," Charlie repeated, striving to sound cheerful. "I'll get working on the data, then you can do some inputting while I eat."

The smile stayed frozen, then Don just as artistically looked at his watch. "Whoa! Look at the time! I promised, uh, Colby, that I'd meet him to go over some cases. Listen, how about a rain check on the Chinese?"

Charlie got in his own dig. "You got it, Don. Why don't you plan to get some this weekend? Right after you finish cleaning out the back shed."

Don fled.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The commissary coffee wasn't the greatest, but it was hot, and it was black, and it was filled with caffeine. Don sipped at it, savoring the taste of scalded tongue along with the bitter aroma. It was the first cup of the day, and Don felt that he deserved it. He deserved at least one cup and possibly two. And he grabbed a Danish—he deserved that, too.

There were a lot of things right with the world. The two raids on JB Imports and Sweet Things Candy yesterday had gone extremely well, and the results of the raids were already being entered into several different server computers by the sixteen clerks that the area director had assigned to Don's case. His brother/consultant had a class to teach this morning, Charlie had said in a quick phone call earlier, so he had already phoned in instructions to the FBI's IT department to get the clerks started. Charlie would come in later, once the data had been inputted and his class dismissed, to see how it was coming along. The instruction that Charlie had given hadn't been hard to implement; it was a basic commercial program that Charlie wanted the clerks to use. The IT guru's scoffed, and offered a high end version.

The clerks rebelled. They couldn't figure out how to use the high end version with all its bells and whistles. And if they couldn't figure it out instinctively, they said, then the uber-geek IT guru's would end up putting the data in themselves.

The regular commercial program got used.

There were more things right with the world, and a major one of those right things involved Jessica Jelly Morton. The expression on her face when she limped back to headquarters yesterday afternoon had been joyous to behold. And Don couldn't even take credit for this one. Somehow that Up the Creek place had gotten tipped off that she was coming, and all the evidence was either removed or destroyed before she'd ever stepped foot on the premises. Waste of time. Total waste of time and bullets. Nobody was seriously injured with the exception of a couple of cameramen headed for jail. Even Aarons, who'd taken one to the vest, was prancing around offering to show off his bruise. It was a nasty one, already all colors of the rainbow, and Aarons was proud of it.

Well, yeah, it also meant that Don himself didn't have a third of the data that he'd wanted to give to Charlie. Charlie had said that he needed stuff from all three places in order to pinpoint Blackburn. But that would come and the delay was worth it to see Morton humiliated. Don and team would dig into the stuff that they had, they'd put it through Charlie's wringer equations, and he'd come up with some sort of mumbo-jumbo that would either nail Blackburn's hide to the wall or figure out the last and final place to get what he needed for Don to then nail Blackburn's hide to the wall. Either way, it was close to the end of this case. Don was close, and Morton was not. End of story. Pleasure doing business.

Don had even given himself the joy of reading Morton's report of her fiasco. Terse, very terse. He'd smiled over her stationing a mere two agents at the back door, only to pull them back to let the gunmen escape in order to keep the whole FBI team from getting killed. The report even detailed Aarons getting shot, then treated and released at the scene. Then all six of the agents had trotted over to the Up the Creek business office to find the place closed indefinitely, no forwarding address and definitely no forwarding leads. Yes, Morton had put in all the pertinent details, leaving nothing out. Grin.

Yeah, life was good. It was so good that Don treated himself to another cup of coffee, savoring the moment if not the beverage, taking it with him on his way to check on the clerks. Gary Metzger passed him in the corridor, giving him a friendly and lackadaisical wave. "Hey, Don. Heard you had some successes yesterday."

"Yeah." Don fought down the gloat. It wasn't Metzger's fault that he'd been assigned to Morton's team. From what Megan had said earlier this morning, it didn't sound like Metzger was any too happy over it. Some of the clerical pool were taking bets as to when the transfer papers would get filed, with one or two of the clerks were swearing that not only had the papers already been filed but that Metzger had asked to be assigned to the Eppes squad. Don liked that. Good PR for him, and, frankly, Gary Metzger was a good man. "Yeah, it was sweet. They should all be like that."

"Yeah," Metzger responded gloomily. "Almost got my head shot off yesterday, and nothing from it. Darrell Aarons is still sore. By the way, how's Charlie? Didn't see him around this morning, and I thought he'd said that he'd be in here first thing."

"Charlie? He's fine. He had class. He'll be in later, he said."

"That's good. I was a little worried." Metzger's steps were taking him past and down the hall through the oncoming crunch of people also on the hunt for caffeine.

Don stopped and turned in the midst of the crowd. "You were worried about Charlie?" Something didn't sound right. Warning flags ran up the flagpole.

"Well, yeah. Gotta take care of our consultants." Metzger disappeared in the throng of passers by with a casual wave.

Don didn't move. The tide of people wafted around him, one or two giving him dirty looks for standing in the flow. Don ignored them. He had more important things on his mind, like running through last evening's conversation with his consultant and getting out of cooking dinner.

He picked up the internal phone on the side hall, calling up to Megan's desk. "Megan? Don. Listen, I've got something I want to discuss with Charlie. I'll take some of the inputted data along with me, see if he's finished teaching for the day. Yeah, I know it's early." That doesn't matter. I want answers, and I want them from my brother, and I want them now. "I'll be back in an hour."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Don walked into Charlie's office at nine forty-two on the nose. Charlie was sitting behind his desk, grading papers. A bottle of ibuprofen sat on one corner, along with a glass of water suitable for washing down pills. Charlie looked up as Don walked inside, immediately suppressing the worried double take. He put on a deliberately cheerful expression. "Hey, Don. You have more data for me?"

Don ignored the greeting. "Class finish early today, buddy?" Deceptively mild.

Unaccountably, Charlie flushed. "Uh…yeah. Easy test. The students got out early…"

Don wasn't buying it. He planted himself in front of Charlie's desk and stared down at his brother. "I want a straight answer, Charlie. Did you accompany Special Agent Morton on her raid on Up the Creek yesterday?" His voice remained steady and cold; a sure sign that he was keeping himself under tight control. This was Special Agent Eppes in an interrogation.

"Don, I—"

"Yes or no, Charlie."

Charlie cringed. "There wasn't any danger, Don—"

"You were shot."

"I was wearing a vest—"

"You were shot, Charlie!" It wasn't quite a shout.

Charlie's eyes were haunted. "Don, I don't want to cause any trouble—"

"Are you all right?"

"It's just a little bruise." Charlie downplayed the incident. "I thought it would be all right. I've gone to crime scenes with you before. I didn't realize—"

"This wasn't a crime scene, Charlie. This was a raid. You've never needed a vest when you were with me." Don felt an unnatural cold seep through him. Too angry, and too controlled. "Where were you hit?"

"On my back. It was just a ricochet, Jessica said. Really, Don, it's okay—"

"It is not okay, Charlie. It is very much not okay." The anger settled into a grim determination. Bending the rules happened, and Don himself had bent more than one until it squeaked. But this was different. This wasn't just bending the rules, this was breaking them and putting a valuable consultant in danger of his life by doing so. It wasn't just that it was his brother—though he knew that Morton would try to claim that—but any person who didn't have field training. Don would take Charlie to a crime scene to gather additional data to input into his work, but putting a non-combatant's life at risk was not something that he did deliberately. He did not, repeat: did not take Charlie on field maneuvers where he could get shot at.

But Charlie drew himself up, putting his hands together. Taking control. "You're right, Don, it's not okay. But this is equally my fault. I knew where she was going. I knew the risks. I accepted the vest from Special Agent Morton. You have never told me to put on a bullet proof vest, and I should have realized at that point that I was in over my head. Yes, we were lucky that nothing serious happened. It could have. We have all learned from this incident, me most of all. In the future, I'll do more questioning. I put everyone at risk by being there." He cocked his head, coming to a decision. "I think I need to sit the rest of this investigation out, Don. I don't like being the prize in a tug of war between you and another agent. This is going in a direction that it shouldn't."

Don disagreed. "No. You need to stay on this case, Charlie. This is bigger—should be bigger—than two field agents. Blackburn is a major force in crime that needs to be removed, and I hope that I'm a big enough person to admit that I can't do this without someone like you. But I do agree that this battle ends here." He too came to a decision. "Morton went too far. Until further notice, I don't want you working with her." He gentled his voice. "I'm saying this as a senior agent, buddy, not as your brother. My next stop will be Morton's office. This will be resolved within the hour, either with her here and now or I go to Area Director D'Angelo. Can you live with that?"

The relief on Charlie's face gave Don his answer, but Charlie spoke anyway. "I can live with that." One corner of his mouth quirked upward. "And I'm really glad that I can finish solving that problem that you've got sixteen clerks working on. I hate leaving a problem unsolved."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Ideally, it should look like an accident," the deep voice said. "Loss of control over the car, a plunge over a cliff, brakes failing. Perhaps a loose brick from a parapet on top of a building will fall with lethal consequences. Given the circumstances, though, it wouldn't surprise me if more obvious means were needed. I understand that we are dealing with a highly trained FBI agent. However, you need to hear that I am equally concerned, if not more so, with the financial analyst that they are using. The name that I have been given for the analyst deeply troubles me. It is that person that must be eliminated at all cost for this organization to continue. He will be the priority. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mr. Blackburn."

"Take precautions, but if a change of location to another country is required, it will be provided without delay."

"Yes, sir." There was relief. Blackburn was a hard but fair employer. "It'll be done, sir, within twenty four hours."

"Satisfactory. Report back when the task is completed."