Title: Julia

Chapter 7: There's Got to Be More to This Story

Don stepped out of the cab in front of the FBI building; his mind whirling. He stood absently on the sidewalk for a moment, Charlie's angry words playing through his head. What in the hell was going on? Charlie was obviously furious with him, but for what?

He would have thought that it was because he had tried to tell him what to do, but Charlie was upset before Don attempted to lecture him on his relationship. It was evident even in the emergency room, when Charlie was only half conscious and in pain, that he was angry. More than angry; he was furious. 'Hate 'im.' Charlie's slurred words ran in his head again, and the memory felt like physical punch to the gut.

He shook his head, trying to make sense out of their conversation in Charlie's hospital room. Charlie had said something about not being thirteen – what in the hell did that mean? It was almost as if he was talking about something else…Don groaned, and rubbed his temple. There was something, right there in front of him, and he couldn't see it. He stared at the street idly; then suddenly straightened. A cab had pulled up, and a familiar figure had climbed slowly out of it. Charlie. He had thought his brother would go home with Dad – what was he doing back here?

Don mentally snapped his fingers. His car. He had come back for his car. Charlie had not seen him in the mix of people on the sidewalk, and seemed to be intent on the road in front of him. He watched his brother cautiously cross the street, looking both ways twice this time, before he limped his way across, and then watched him head toward the café. Don would bet good money that he knew where his brother was going.

He glanced briefly around him. There was no time to get his SUV out of the parking garage. Another cab pulled in front of the building, disgorging a hefty man in a navy suit, and Don darted forward, hailing it. Inside, he flipped open his badge. "I want you to follow a blue car," he directed. "Just wait until I tell you."

The cab driver was a skinny man with Rastafarian dread locks. He beamed, showing off a gold tooth. "Cool mon," he replied. "Jus' like de movies."

Don waited until he saw Charlie's small blue car pull past, then gave the driver direction to move. He hoped his hunch was right. It was about time that he met this Julia.

It took about twenty minutes to get to a neat subdivision with small, tidy bungalows. Charlie pulled down a street named Wickford, and parked halfway down the block. Don had the cab driver hang way back and pull over at the end of the street, but he was close enough to see his brother approach a house and knock on the door. It was too far away to make out a house number, and Don frowned. Wickford. Something about the name sounded familiar, but Don couldn't place it. He had never been here, of that he was sure.

Charlie was still at the door; there was obviously no one home. He watched as his brother turned and then suddenly swung back and hit the door with his fist in frustration. Whoever this woman was, she had certainly gotten into Charlie's head – not to mention his heart, unfortunately. Don's gut clenched as his brother turned away from the door and then leaned over, his good hand on his knee. Was he going to pass out? He breathed a small sigh of relief as Charlie straightened again, and headed for his car, slowly, and got in.

He waited until the blue car pulled down to the end of the block and turned before he had the cab driver creep down the street, his eye on the house that Charlie had just left, picking up the house number. 942. At the end of the street, he told the driver to turn the opposite direction and head back to the office. The man looked a trifle disappointed; he had apparently been hoping for a little more excitement.

As the cab driver turned the corner, he punched in his father's cell phone number. "Dad? It's Don." He listened to a tinny tirade for a moment. "I know Charlie took off without you, I just followed him to his girlfriend's house. I think he might be on his way back home. If he's not there in a few minutes call me back."

Pause. "Yeah, I know, I'm trying to figure it out myself. Hey Dad, what is Julia's last name? Stilson? Is that with one L or two?" He listened for a moment. "Okay, never mind, it doesn't matter. No, just curious. I'll talk to you later. Call me if Charlie doesn't show, okay?" He snapped the phone shut, and leaned back in the seat. Time to do a little research on Julia Stilson.

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Charlie limped into the house. He hurt all over; his stomach felt like someone was repeatedly scoring it with knife, and his arm throbbed fiercely, but none of it compared to the agony in his heart. His own brother. The two of them had been meeting behind his back – probably laughing all the while. It was like senior year all over again, only magnified a million times. When Don had taken his prom date, it had been a single date with a girl that he had had a crush on – that was painful enough. This was unimaginably worse. This was the woman he loved, and Don knew it. And apparently, couldn't care less.

His father darted out of the kitchen as he dragged himself into the living room, and immediately began asking anxious questions. "Charlie, what on earth were you thinking; taking off like that? You shouldn't be out of the hospital, much less driving around by yourself."

Charlie took a deep breath. A lecture from his father was the last thing he needed, and he intended to escape up the stairs, but he was feeling suddenly dizzy, and made his way over to the sofa instead. He sank into it wearily and leaned back, closing his eyes.

Alan stood for a moment, puzzling over his son's behavior, and spoke a little more gently. "Charlie, why don't you tell me what's going on?"

Charlie responded without opening his eyes. "Nothing's going on."

"Why were you upset with Donnie?"

'Oh, maybe because he's a lying, cheating scumbag who stole my girlfriend,' thought Charlie, fighting a haze of pain and rage. He ignored the question, studying the back of his eyelids, as questions of his own chased around in his head like a spastic roulette wheel. So many questions – the roulette ball settled on the next one - the doctor's assertion that he had been given some kind drug. J-rock, he had said. Charlie had never heard of it, but he had heard of Rohipnol.

The man had to be mistaken, thought Charlie. Lab tests were only so accurate. Although it perfectly explained the memory loss, he thought, doubt twisting in his gut. But why would she have done that? It wasn't like she had to convince him to come to bed with her. And it apparently turned him into some kind of fiend who beat women. Why would she put up with that…unless she liked it? Charlie pushed the thought away. There had to be a mistake here somehow.

His mind wandered back to the sight of her with Don in the restaurant, as if he needed more mental flogging. Why didn't she tell him her old boyfriend was his brother? How long had they been going out? Why did they stop? When did they start again? The roulette wheel spun pointlessly. He needed to talk to her, but she wasn't home, and she wasn't answering her cell phone.

His father was still talking, and Charlie's face twisted in annoyance. He couldn't handle all of these questions, not now. He didn't know the answer to most of them anyway, and even if he did, it would be the last thing he would want to discuss with his father. He opened his eyes and rose, headed for the stairs. Alan's questioning was pushing him past the point of endurance, and he knew it was just a matter of time before Don showed up. Charlie was getting out of there before he did.

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Julia sat in the hospital parking lot, her mind spinning. She had just found to her surprise that Charlie was no longer there; that he had left against the doctor's advice. AMA, they had called it. She smirked a little; apparently he was tougher than he seemed. That was good – he would last that much longer when she finally got her hands on him. And it was good that he was out; she didn't have to wait to proceed with her plan.

She had spent a bit more time thinking about it, today. She had originally planned to carry it out in her spare room; it was already outfitted with all of her equipment, all of her toys. She had decided, however, that to attempt this in the suburbs was much too dangerous. She would have at least one body to dispose of when she was done, and the noise that they would generate might be heard, even though her spare room was soundproofed. Not to mention the fact that she was dealing with a federal agent, and where there was one, there would be more. No, she would need an alternate location, somewhere more isolated, and she knew just the spot.

She knew how she would get Don there – that would be pitifully easy once he knew that she had Charlie. The trickier part would be getting him there sans his team, and getting her hands on Charlie. She had a lot of work to do to set this up, and her impatience to begin was starting to overwhelm her. She punched in a number on her cell phone, and tapped the wheel fretfully with strong fingers as it rang.

"Markie," she cooed into the receiver at the voice. "Do you know who this is?"

"Hey girl, what's up?"

Markie, or as he spelled it, Marquis, a reference to the Marquis de Sade, was known to anyone that participated in the darker side of sex in the L.A. area. Or for that matter, in the entire state of California. No matter what the deviant was into – bondage, sadism, masochism, or other even darker things, Markie had what they needed for their twisted ventures. Drugs, paraphernalia, equipment. He was Julia's source, and a close personal friend.

"Markie, I need a favor. I need to borrow your van."

There was a short silence on the other end. "What's in it for me, babe?"

"Now, you know you owe me," she purred, "for the other night. I'm not going to do a job in it; I just need to move some equipment. I'll bring it back as soon as I'm done."

There was another pause, and then a wicked chuckle. "Well, I guess I do owe you. Damn girl, you were incredible."

"So were you," she said throatily. "Oh, and I need some more stuff – and maybe some new stuff. You can show me what you have when I come for the van." She was careful not to use the drug names on the phone. Markie was a little paranoid about that.

"Okay, baby, when you comin'?"

"How about right now?" She clicked the phone shut, not waiting for a response. It buzzed immediately, and she looked at the number of the incoming call. Charlie. She smiled, catlike. Her little mouse was looking for her. Well, she had work to do. She would just let him stew for a few hours.

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Don had made it back to the office, and as he entered the bullpen, he was immediately surrounded by his agents.

"How's Charlie?" asked Megan, eying the bandage on Don's forehead with a frown.

"What happened to you?" asked Colby at the same time.

Don frowned slightly, wondering how they had heard about Charlie, but David interjected before he could speak. "It's all over the office. Wilson saw it, came up and told us it was Charlie. We called the hospital, but they said he was discharged already."

"What happened?" asked Megan.

"Whoa, whoa, just slow down," said Don, a little testily. He looked around the bullpen, and then jerked his head toward the small conference room next to them. "Let's go in here."

They sat around a table and Don rubbed his forehead wearily, forgetting about his stitches, and winced when he made contact. "Charlie was supposed to meet me for lunch today at the café across the street to go over the robbery statistics we had him run. I was standing outside the café, and I saw him heading down the block, and he went to cross the street, without looking where he was going."

He paused, his eyes dark, and his throat tightening, as the scene replayed itself in his mind. "A car hit him head on. He went right up over the hood, and hit the windshield. Luckily, all he got was a broken arm, and some pretty nasty bruises on his left side." 'To go with the other nasty bruises on the rest of his body,' he thought to himself, dismally.

The agents stared at him. "So why isn't he still in the hospital?" asked Megan. "Shouldn't they keep him for observation after something like that?"

Don scowled. "They wanted to. He wouldn't stay. He wouldn't listen to Dad, and he sure as hell wasn't listening to me." He glanced at the open doorway to make sure no one was near, and lowered his voice. "There's something funny going on with him. I need you to check on something for me, and I need you to keep it quiet. I want to run a check on someone named Julia Stilson. Also, I need a check on an address – 942 Wickford. That's supposedly her residence. This does not leave this group, got it?"

They nodded. "What's this about?" asked Megan quietly, noting the concern in Don's face.

Don shook his head and looked down. "I can't tell you right now, but I think Charlie's in trouble. I'm not sure exactly what yet." They nodded and rose, headed for the bullpen, leaving him sitting alone in the conference room, lost in thought.

His cell phone vibrated, and he flipped it open and answered absently. "Eppes. Yeah Dad." He frowned. "He left again? Did you try calling him on his cell phone? Yeah, okay, I'll try too. Yeah, okay, bye." He sighed. Charlie had taken off again, without a word as to where he was going, and Alan was beside himself. He punched in his brother's cell phone number, but was not at all surprised when his call went to voice mail. If Charlie wasn't answering their father's calls, he sure wasn't going to answer his.

A few moments later, he emerged from the conference room and walked up behind Megan at her monitor. "Anything yet?"

"No Julia Stilson," replied Megan. "At least not in the DMV or tax listings. I'm still checking."

"Try it with two L's. When you start checking law enforcement records, try Stilson separately, and cross compare with Julia," suggested Don. "If it's an alias, they may show up in an alias listing as parts of other names."

"The house belongs to a George Arden," said David, looking up from his monitor. "She may be renting from him."

Don nodded. "Okay, check it out. See what name the lease was signed under, and whether he's had any problems with her."

He sat down at his computer, and rubbed his face. This apparently was going to take awhile. Sighing, he keyed in California State Police, and joined the search.

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Charlie had packed a small bag and left the house without a word to his father, trying to avoid a confrontation. He needed space, some time to think, a place where he wouldn't have to deal with questions.

He swung back by Julia's house, noting with frustration that she was still out. He had tried her cell phone and her work number several times with no success. He had called Millie and told her briefly about the accident, and requested some time off, which she immediately granted. He cut off her concerned questions with the excuse that he needed to rest. Now he was driving aimlessly, heading for the outskirts of town. He needed a place to crash, a private place where he could retreat and lick his wounds; somewhere that would take cash, no questions asked. He didn't need his brother tracking him down through a credit card. Not that he would, Charlie thought sourly, Don would probably be just as glad he was out of the way.

He found what he was looking for on the edge of Burbank, a rather seedy-looking two story motel, tucked in away from the street. He took a room on the first floor and dragged in the small bag that he had packed, moving painfully, suddenly exhausted. He switched his cell phone to vibrate, and within moments, he was sprawled on the bed, fast asleep.

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Megan stared at the Illinois State Police website in disbelief. She glanced over at Don's desk, and noted it was empty, then saw him standing in the conference room, his cell phone at his ear. She swiveled and addressed Colby and David, her eyes wide. "Guys, I got a hit. Come here and look at this."

They gathered behind her. "I found entry under Jan Stilson – drug possession, in Joliet, Illinois. The name is an alias; in this entry they note she's also known as Julia Stiles – aka Julia Stilson, but get this – get a load of her real name."

"Holy crap," said Colby his jaw dropping.

"Oh, man," breathed David, as Don walked up behind them.

"What have you got?" he asked.

Megan looked at him, her own expression incredulous. "Don, you're not going to believe this. Julia Stilson is Jessica Soames."

Somehow, Don found himself sitting in his chair, thanks to David's and Colby's strong arms. He stared at the screen in shock, his face pale. That twisted psychopath was Charlie's Julia? Fear suddenly settled in his gut, its grip cold. "Oh my God," he said, the shock still resonating in his voice. "I need to find Charlie."

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