Chapter Ten
Whispers and murmurs in the dark - nothing was visible except the crushing darkness around his and the pounding, throbbing feeling in his head, which increased as he tried to listen harder. As he tried to remember what had happened.
What had happened? Where were Amita and Larry? Were they alive? Was he alive?
Charlie groaned, curling into the fetal position. Yes he was definitely alive. He was in far too much pain to be dead.
"Charlie?" The voice was barely a whisper, but it echoed in the darkness. This murmur was much closer than the other fuzzy ones which he heard in the distance. It was close - perhaps even next to him. Charlie would have been alarmed, had he not recognized the voice was someone he knew very well.
"'Mita?" He mumbled, the aching of his bruised jaw slurring and blurring his words. "Where..." A coughing fit overcame him, and by the end of it, he was gagging, a metallic taste flooding his tongue unpleasantly. Amita understood the question nonetheless.
"I don't know where we are, I can't see anything. It's too dark." Lying on the cold, hard floor, Charlie was glad that he hadn't imagined the darkness.
"Well it must still be night then." He forced himself to think rationally, the cold and the dampness of the stone beneath them seeping through his clothes and causing him to shiver. The rapid, jerking movement merely made his bruises feel worse. Whoever had brought them here had clearly not been too careful. It felt as if a truck had rolled over his ribs, before reversing back onto his face. "We haven't been unconscious for days, or anything."
"Yeah, then we'd be in trouble." Charlie was unsure if he could detect sarcasm in her voice or not. "Why is this happening?" Climbing octaves, her voice betrayed her panic, which he could not see in the blackness between them. Charlie felt hands in the blackness, clamping clumsily onto his shoulders, and softening their grip when he gasped. "Oh my God... Charlie, are you hurt?"
"I don't know. I don't think anything's broken, but I don't... it's just too dark to tell." The cold and the numbness of his limbs confused his comprehension of where the pain was coming from. All he knew was that there was pain. Lots of pain.
He heard Amita shift in the dark.
"Stay still, until we work out what's happening." Footsteps echoed, all around them it seemed, and Charlie could hear Amita tensing. The heavy footsteps paused outside the door, and for a whole minute, no one moved. Charlie could have sworn that his heart stopped beating in the stretched seconds which passed. The footsteps echoed again then faded away. A door opened and closed. He blew a sigh of relief.
They were safe for now.
"Don, it's Colby. I think I've found something more, which is kind of disturbing." Don ceased momentarily in his pacing, and the lack of movement attracted Nikki's attention, and she raised her head from her hands to look at him curiously. Everyone else was preoccupied with their computers or their phones, so no one but Don noticed how badly she was shaking.
"Shoot, Colb." Don's voice was raspy from dehydration and sleep deprivation. The entire team had dark bags beneath their eyes, and Ian looked no better. "You're on speakerphone." Don placed his phone in the middle of Charlie's desk, speaking loudly, and David, Liz and Ian immediately halted their processes and gathered around.
"I conducted a preliminary search through Easton's system, after finding Duncan's file. There are traces of messages which Amita's programme also found on in his e-mail service. Don, they're from Charlie." Colby's words were met by no one, and Charlie's office sat in stunned silence, attempting to process. "Guys?" Don cleared his throat.
"Yeah. We're still here."
"I don't know what they're about yet, I haven't had the time to check them, but it looks like Charlie and Wright were in close contact. Top secret correspondence. I would have missed it, but Amita has another system that does something clever and I caught it." The team almost smiled at Colby's explanation. "If you look through Charlie's computer, you'll be able to see the e-mails, and if not, I'm sending them to David's laptop." Colby was heard, clicking away at the computer in the background of the call.
There was a beep and David confirmed from nearby, as Don turned to Charlie's desktop, while Nikki checked out his laptop. Ian was kept well away from the entire procedure, not trusted enough to look over anyone's shoulder.
"There's nothing here that is useful to us." Nikki grumbled finally, motioning towards the laptop and grimacing as the movement shot pain up and down her back. "Kelly, could you?" The young woman took the laptop directly from the older woman's lap, trying to keep the fact that Nikki was sore when she moved between them out of pity. Nonetheless, everyone noticed.
"If you can't do your job, Betancourt, go home. This isn't your fight." Don said, keeping his eyes all the while on the desktop. Knowing that this would develop into one argument or another, David stepped between them and gave Nikki a warning look not to reply. Don would have pressed the subject, once more using her as on outlet for his residual anger from the situation at hand, but then he leaned closer to his computer, frowning at whatever he had found.
"There's an account here, which matches the financial files which Easton was trying to hide. The ones which implied he was taking .75% for himself." Don announced, completely confused, and as Nikki glanced sideways at Ian to gauge his reaction, she realized that it was a complete shock to him as well.
"Charlie was in on this?" Ian asked, barely able to believe his ears. Don shook his head, completely unable to believe that his brother was a part of this scandal.
"It can't be. It must have been a case that he run."
"Why would he still have the accounts?" David asked, regretting instantly that he sounded like he was agreeing with Ian, which would inevitably piss off Don more. "I mean, Charlie may not be an agent, but he still knows that once you finish a case, everything you have on it goes into a file, and stays there for security purposes." David shook his head at the screen, leaning over Don's chair.
"So what, you're saying that someone is framing the guy who was kidnapped by the guy who was framing his colleague?" Kelly Cotton asked, sounding slightly doubtful. "And I thought that combinatorics were confusing."
"Is that what you think is going on? Is someone framing Charlie?" David asked, but Don only leaned further into the screen, squinting further. He held up a hand to silence his agent, and the entire room stood to attention, ready to listen for when he was ready to speak.
"The e-mails from AD Wright." He said, finally, mouth shaped in a small confused o. "Why would Charlie have them?" For once, none of his people had an answer, sarcastic or otherwise, so they merely stood behind him, racking their brains for a reason Charlie would have to be involved in everything.
"I don't know what to say about that..." Liz began, still pondering. "But I think I know how we can lock down Easton until we piece together the entire investigation, so he can't interfere."
"I'm all ears." Don said, dryly, but Liz wisely ignored his tone.
"Edgerton gave me a printout which has the same as the financial details which we found planted in Wright's system. If we can find the template on Easton's system, then that is enough cause as well as Edgerton's testimony that Charlie and Amita are being held on his word, to get the DA involved." Don nodded, pointing towards the doorway.
"You and David take all that we've compiled and talk to AD Wright. Edgerton, you go back to the FBI and talk with Colby. You look into possible contacts that he might have who could have taken Charlie." Don continued to look through the e-mails, as the agents in question left the room. "The content of these messages is encrypted." Looking over to the undergraduates pointedly, he stood as they nodded and took over the desk.
"Boss?" Nikki asked, eyes wide as she looked at him expectantly, as if asking 'and what about me?'. Don threw her a sideways look, weighing up everything as he pulled on his jacket.
"You stay here and call me if anything happens." He began to walk away, but she caught his arm, even though it caused her discomfort to move so quickly. It was now a dull ache, and it was making her feel sick.
"Wait, Don." Surprised at the unsarcastic use of his first name, Don didn't speak and merely listened, for once. "Where are you going?"
"To go speak to my dad." Don said, almost guiltily. "I left him at the FBI, and he's still waiting for a ransom call while I'm... I just think we need to talk about some stuff." Nikki cocked her head to the side, brow creased as she surveyed her partner.
"This doesn't mean that you broke your promise; you know that, right?" She said, so softly that he nearly missed it.
"What?"
"Your promise." She clarified, and he raised his eyebrows to show that he did not know what his promise was. "You said that you made a promise to protect Charlie, when he started to consult for you." Turning his head away slightly, her partner tried to pull his arm away, but she refused to let go. If he had really wanted to, he could have pulled away, but he was too comfortable with the contact between them to break it completely.
"And you think that I have protected him?" Don scoffed, clearly believing the exact opposite. "He's at an unknown location, God knows in what condition, and he wouldn't have been involved-"
"If by some sort of twisted logic, you're thinking that it's your fault that this is happening because you got him involved in the FBI, sorry to break it to you boss, but you're wrong." Nikki sassed, crossing her arms across her chest and raising her eyebrows, and she seemed a lot more like she usually did, if a little more tired. The normalcy of her demeanour relaxed him.
"If I hadn't let him consult for the FBI-" Don argued, showing her that he was thinking what she thought he had been thinking.
"A lot of people would have died as a result, and a lot of bad people would have walked free. He's been an asset and from what I've heard, you've both grown closer." Nikki interrupted, not wanting to hear about what he thought when she knew that it was wrong. "One choice could have averted this crisis, and another choice may have made it worse. There's no way to know that if he hadn't started working at the FBI, one of the guys which you wouldn't have caught with Charlie's help would have killed him on a random shooting spree."
Don frowned at her, and sighed, his body sagging slightly against hers, and was immediately glad that he had not pulled his arm away. The contact was no longer just comforting, it was supporting, and he closed his eyes, willing himself to believe her.
"That doesn't mean that I feel any worse for all of this. Charlie does the math, and sticks to the sidelines while I'm supposed to be the one who gets his ass in trouble and messes about in stuff that's out of his league."
"You mean Liz?" Nikki asked, unable to resist the blatant joke she could make out of his statement. Smiling slightly at the refreshing dose of reality that his partner had just offered, he did not reply further, so she continued. "But seriously, Don. I know that you were the one outside playing baseball while he was pondering Pythagoras as kids, but you are both fully grown men. I think you believe me when I say that Charlie's a smart guy, and he wouldn't have done... whatever it was he did, without a damn smart reason." Don sighed.
"Yeah, I know." He admitted, finally, still looking at the ground. "But he's still my little brother. See, while he was pondering Pythagoras, I was the one who kept half of the jocks in high school from kicking his ass. Protecting Charlie has been programmed into my mind from a very young age, ever since he was first bullied in kindergarten. It might be a slightly different situation, but I still have the same job. Protect my kid brother."
"I don't know about anyone else, Eppes, but I think that you do a good job of that usually." Don began to grin.
"Was that a compliment, Betancourt?" Nikki shook her head, mocking a horrified expression, and Don chuckled in his deep, steady tones. They reverberated through his arm and over to hers, making her shiver slightly. He noticed, and leaned further into her, burying his face in her neck and almost smiling as her exuberant hair tickled his cheek. Suddenly, inexplicably, from some sort of strange affect of the mixture of starvation, sleep deprivation and stress, she giggled.
She felt one eyebrow raise against her neck, and a smile forming.
"We need to work. I need to go talk to my father." He muttered, pulling away from her, as if suddenly realising that they were still in a public place. Forcing a less content look onto her face, Nikki nodded in agreement, and shifted uncomfortably as her shirt moved across her back. His hands, moving almost of their own accord, reached over and pulled her shirt up, slowly as to allow her to turn around and hold the fabric across her chest.
"How do I look?" Nikki asked, grimly, knowing that gunshot grazes were not the most attractive of wounds. And wounds in themselves are not very attractive things.
"Beautiful." Don commented, meaning the state of her wound, but immediately blushing at his own choice of words. Grinning, Nikki looked over her shoulder at him.
"Was that a compliment, Eppes?"
"Maybe." He joked back, and was about to turn away when suddenly she twisted into his arms again, hands falling to his chest. Humor faded, and they stared at each other for a minute, evaluating features and the perfection they saw in each other. Self control was no longer needed, because neither was at all aware that there was anyone else in the room at all, as they moved closer, each gazing helplessly at each other, desperately needing the contact, but at the same time searching for any indication that the other wanted to stop.
Their lips connected, and there was something so tender about their skin on skin contact which made Don tense up and Nikki relax. Two bodies pressed up together, seeking comfort and warmth and clamouring for something they'd been tempted by for the best part of a week. Pure, raw human contact.
"Eppes, I need you to call Granger, to tell him what's going on." An outside voice made them pull away, embarrassed at being caught in such a vulnerable position. Nikki couldn't even look when she realised that it was the man she had been kissing two weeks before, when they had gone to a cinema and made out in the backseats. She felt so much more distant to him now. So much closer to Don.
"Yeah, I'll call him now. You make your way over and I'll get him to meet you in the 16th floor archives." Don barked, though his voice was slightly shaky from the sudden adrenaline which was being pumped through his body. Nikki's body had that effect on his. Ian watched him coolly, not even looking at the woman he had once made out with in the back seats of the cinema two weeks before.
Ian nodded undeniably cold thanks, before shooting Nikki a glance and striding away, clearly determined to deal with present issues in the present, and other present but less urgent issues in the future when the aforementioned present issues have been dealt with.
Don followed him out of the room shortly afterwards, pulling out his phone as he went and shooting Nikki one last look.
"Don..." Raising his eyebrows, he stopped short of the door and once more the students gathered in the corner pretended not to notice. "Where do we stand?" The older agent sent a long, lingering look at his partner before shrugging, and answering, very honestly:
"You know more than I do."
...
Hope you liked that chapter... I realise that it's been a while since I've updated, and I'm sorry to anyone who bothers enough to read it regularly. Please review, to tell me what you think of everything in and out of this chapter.
-Seven x x