Don picked himself up from where he'd instinctively thrown himself across Charlie's unmoving form. A quick check for a pulse—yes, still there. Breathing, too; that was a bonus.

"Colby!" he yelled. "Colby! Caruthers!"

Don knew exactly what had happened. It had happened once before to him, back when he was chasing jumpers back in the Badlands of New Mexico. A meth still had blown, and had taken out the entire house.

The storage facility wasn't a house, but it was still filled with chemicals and someone had demonstrated that those particular chemicals had the capacity to go boom in a spectacular fashion.

"Stay here with Charlie," he told David. "Don't let anyone get to him."

"I won't."

Another roar of an engine, receding into the distance. Don realized that the attacking vehicle was escaping. Escaping, or just leaving? Did Don Eppes have a dead agent, and a dead DoD colonel? Was there—?

Staggering figure: "Colby!"

"Don!" Colby almost collapsed into his arms before straightening himself. "They came out of nowhere! Tossed a bomb inside—look!"

The waste storage facility was gone. All that was left was a hole in the ground with shrapnel as the remnants of the rusting drums. Smoke drifted upward.

"Caruthers?" Don had another team member to be worried about.

"Inside."

"Inside the building?" Don was horrified. She could never have survived…

"The SUV," Colby gasped. "She was getting the med kit. Shoved her inside." His knees tried to give out.

Don pushed the man against the side of the rental SUV, helping him to slide down to the ground. The SUV too had been slewed around in the blast, the tires blown out from the concussion. He couldn't see Caruthers inside the vehicle; the windows were covered with soot and mud. No sound, either; had the woman survived? Don dug his fingers under the back hatch and hauled.

The hatch at first refused to give, then slowly inched open. The last few inches flew up, and Don peered inside.

Caruthers was there, doubled over and retching, her gun by her side.

"You hurt?" Don demanded.

She shook her head, trying to regain control of herself. She waved him off. Hurt, yeah, but good enough to keep going.

They had to move. The other vehicle could come back at any time, looking to finish what they'd started, and Don now had three wounded to protect and only David still on his feet besides Don himself. Question number one: would this SUV still run?

Not well. Even if the engine turned over, there were four blown out tires.

Don didn't care. They could ride the rims, and still make progress. "Colby, did you get hold of Walker?"

"Cavalry's on the way, Don." Colby's eyes were closed, but the mouth—and the brain—seemed to function. "Charlie?"

"Still breathing," Don replied grimly. "Can you stand?"

"Watch me." Taking a deep breath, Colby reached upward for the handle to the door of the SUV, intending to haul himself upright.

The door handle broke loose in his hand and dumped him back onto the dirt. Colby stared at it from his place sitting on his backside on the hard-packed ground. "Well, crap."

Don couldn't help it; he started to laugh. It was a little too long and a little too hysterical, but it was a laugh and it restored him. "C'mon, Colby. Inside."

"Don!" came from several yards away.

"David!" Don gave up on Colby for the moment in favor of the pair who were approaching.

David had somehow gotten Charlie onto his feet, his good arm hanging over David's shoulder and barely able to put one foot in front of the other. That didn't matter to Don. What did matter was that there was life in his brother's eyes, and that he was alive.

Charlie's mouth worked, though nothing came out.

Don shoved his hands under Charlie's arms, supporting his weight. "It's okay, Charlie. I've got you."

Charlie sagged limply against him, unable to do anything more.

"Get the door open, David," Don directed. "Let's get him inside the SUV." Together they wrestled Charlie onto the back seat, wincing at every moan that came out of him. Colby was next: less noise but more flesh to strap in with seatbelts.

It took too long, and every minute that passed Don expected to hear the returning roar of another vehicle coming back to finish what they'd started, but David got the engine to running.

"Get in," David told him. "Let's see how far this thing will take us."

It was the worst ride Don had ever had. Without tires, the SUV rocked up and down so that Don was willing to toss his cookies just like Caruthers in back. It had to be hell on Charlie and Colby.

Don's cell vibrated—he'd forgotten that he'd left the sound off. "Eppes."

"Special Agent Eppes? LAPD Chopper One. That you down there, coming out onto the road? Blink your headlights twice."

"David?"

"Don't think the headlights work, Don."

"Got that, Chopper One?"

"Roger that. Wave your arm out the window."

"That I can do." Don obliged, pumping his arm up and down.

"We are above you, Special Agent Eppes. No place to land this bird around here, so we'll send down the elevator."

"Good enough for us, Chopper One." Don turned to David. "Stop the car, David. Walker came through."

"With pleasure." David didn't have to turn off the engine; it stalled.

"I got you, Chuck. We're going to get you to a hospital."

Sounds good to me, but moving is a little beyond my abilities right now. Remember that time when you were twelve and playing football with the neighborhood kids, and you got crunched and you were trying not to cry and I made fun of you? I am so sorry about that.

"David, give me a hand, here. Grab his belt to lift him. I don't dare try to move his arm."

Thanks. I don't dare try to move my arm, either. It hurts quite enough as it is. Ow!

"Sorry, buddy. Look, Charlie, we're going to lie you down in this basket and strap you in. Can you hear me, Charlie?"

"I think he's beyond hearing anything, Don. Let's hustle."

Don stared at the retreating helicopter until it vanished from view. Well, that's that. You've done what you can. There hadn't been any room for him in the chopper, and all the arguments in the world wouldn't have changed that. Don had had to be satisfied with the promise to get protection onto his brother as soon as the helicopter touched down on the heli-pad.

"He's going to be all right, Don." David moved in on him.

"Yeah." Don mouthed the correct response. He suddenly felt very tired, wrung out. He looked around, not taking in what he was seeing. Four agents here with only mud to show for their efforts. Colby was still blinking dazedly—got to get you checked for concussion, my friend—and Caruthers lying on the back seat looking like any movement at all would cause her to fall over. Even David looked less than pristine.

Walker drove up in his own vehicle, pulling off to the side of the road next to the totaled hulk that used to be an FBI rental car. He gave Don's ride a long look. "Nice going, Eppes. What is this, two SUVs in two days? You going for some kind of record, here?"

"Let me behind the wheel of yours, Walker, and we'll see."

"Not a chance, Eppes. Not a chance. I like my vehicle." Walker took a closer look at the figures crawling out of the ruined hulk, and gentled his voice. "Let's see about getting everyone back to civilization. Sinclair, you and me, let's wrestle your partner into the back seat. He's big enough that I don't want him falling on me. Eppes, you see about Col. Caruthers."

"I'm okay," Colby protested, and Don wished that the man sounded like he meant it. It would help if you could keep your eyes open, Colby.

Don stopped. There was something in his vicinity that he needed to notice, something pertinent to the investigation.

"Don? What is it?"

It clicked. Don veered from his path toward the back of the SUV and Col. Caruthers.

Three mailboxes, all tacked onto a stout wooden post. The actual drive to the homes was across the road, little more than a dirt path with two ruts to show the cars where to put their tires. Two of the mailboxes showed signs of recent use. They were free of cobwebs, and the hinges on the doors looked fresh and shiny with wear, the lacquer rubbed off the metal in spots.

Not so the third mailbox. The door was open, and more than one crawling thing had made its home inside. There was paint chipping off, and had been for some time, but that wasn't what had attracted Don's attention.

It was the name on the mailbox: Zelakis. The paint from the final 's' was half worn away by the elements.

David approached. "Don, what is it—oh."

"Yeah. Oh." Don turned to face his agent. "I think the connection between our case and Mayor Pantini just got a little bit closer. Why didn't we spot this earlier?"

"Good question," David started to say, then interrupted himself. "Probably for the same reason that SW Chemicals got away with their storage facility. This place is beyond town limits. Any search wouldn't have shown Zelakis to come from Chadford, because he lived just outside."

Good thing his father was out of town, Don reflected. There would have to be a carefully edited version of why his youngest son had his arm in a sling.

They were a mess, and that was after everyone had had a chance to clean up. He'd been right; Colby was diagnosed with a mild concussion from the blast, but the man had showered and shaved and demanded to come back. Technically the agent wasn't on duty—just visiting a certain math whiz in the hospital—but David hadn't had the heart to leave him behind. David himself had informed Don that the clothes that David had worn during their previous assignment were now part of his trash and that he had had to spend over an hour cleaning the mud out of his rifle.

"Dude," Colby had said, "you want to clean mine, too?"

Caruthers had been kept overnight, stuck with needles and fluids and generally treated like gold, but she was here now, in Charlie's room, along with the rest of them. Don had tried to get more information about her condition, and had been rebuffed.

They dragged more chairs into Charlie's hospital room, using the time for an impromptu council of war, keeping their voices down in deference to the man in the hospital bed.

"Eppes," Walker said, lowering his backside onto one of the chairs, "you look like crap."

"Gee, thanks, Walker. I'll be sure to mention that in my report."

"What puzzles me," the LAPD officer continued as if Don hadn't spoken, "is how this case ain't falling together."

"What do you mean?" David asked.

"I mean, look at it. We got a sniper's corpse, and we got a code getting smuggled out in pieces." Walker indicated the sleeping man. "And it's still gonna get smuggled out if we don't get our collective ass in gear. How does blowin' up a waste storage facility figure into that? According to SW Chemicals, they ain't even storing left-overs from that particular chemical up in Chadford."

They all fell silent, trying and failing to come up with an answer that sounded reasonable.

"Somehow," Caruthers said grimly, "I don't think that they drove two hours out of L.A. with a bomb just to take us out. There are easier ways."

Don nodded. "I talked to Forensics first thing this morning. They found traces of a homemade bomb, not something that you'd expect from a lab like SW Chemicals. Whoever tossed it, they made it from common things you'd find around any average home. It was just their luck that the drums inside were flammable. We were lucky," he added. "The fireball could have done a lot more damage." He shot a look straight at Caruthers. "There was a lot of soot on the SUV, outside of where you were."

She nodded soberly. "I felt the heat."

If Colby hadn't closed the car door on you, you'd have been toast.

Don moved on. "Homemade bomb suggests that they're getting rattled. They're not planning, like they used to. They'll make a mistake soon."

"But will it be soon enough?" David asked. He glanced at his watch. "The shipments go out this afternoon, at three. There's no way that we can search every one of the thousand invoices for the chunk of code. We don't even know what to look for."

"Yes, we do," offered a small and tired voice.

"Charlie!" Don jumped up out of his chair. "Buddy, are you okay?"

"Just fine," Charlie lied, trying to keep his eyes open. "I think…my arm hurts…"

David asked the question they were all waiting to hear. "Charlie, what were you doing at the storage facility?"

Charlie sighed. "Investigating."

"Investigating?" Don wanted to wring Charlie's neck. "Charlie, you were almost killed! What were you investigating?"

"My student," Charlie whispered. "She thought that the town's problems were caused by pollution from that storage facility. I was checking out her hypothesis."

"Which brings us right back 'round to my question," Walker put in from the back of the group. "What's the connection to Remini?"

For Don, it fell into place.

"There was no connection."

They stared at him. David cocked his head. "Come again? No connection?"

Don smiled, and it was not good to see. "But there is now."