A/N: Just for future reference, this is Chapter 6 of 16. So yeah, there's still a ways to go. Hope you don't mind. ;)

Disclaimer and acknowledgments are—hey, guess where—in the Prologue.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
6:45 A.M. (Eastern)
Doubletree Hotel, Washington, DC

Don awoke blearily, wondering why the bed was so much more comfortable than it had been the previous three nights. When he realized he wasn't in a fleabag near the Anacostia River where he'd been staying, but in Charlie's room, he sat bolt upright and looked at the clock. "Charlie?" he called out, but there was no response. He frantically climbed out of bed.

The last thing he remembered was coming out of the shower utterly exhausted. He'd made Charlie promise to wake him up at midnight, but the little twerp obviously hadn't done so. He had to get out of here, now. It was bad enough that the sun was up, but soon the streets would be full of people heading to work, and his odds of being recognized would go up exponentially, glasses or no glasses.

He snatched a washcloth from the bathroom and wiped off the table, the chairs, the doorknobs, anything he might have touched. He looked over the pillow and the bathtub, removing the few dark hairs that might have been either Charlie's or his. He gathered his few belongings and was heading for the door when he paused. Something didn't feel right. His cap was on his head, his non-prescription glasses were on his face, his coat was over his arm, and his wallet was tucked in his back pocket—weighing more than it had yesterday. He pulled it out and was stunned to see it crammed full of twenties. Oh Charlie, what have you done?

There was a folded piece of paper among the bills, and he pulled it out. Hi, it read, I know I won't see you when I get back this afternoon; you fell asleep so fast that I thought you really needed the rest. If you found this note, you found the other things I left you. I'll do the image search tonight and let the team know what I find. Good luck.

He crumpled up the note and grimaced. Across the room, the clock radio blared to life, and he hastened to shut it off. A little late for that, he thought. I know you meant well, Charlie, but you're an idiot.

He took the back stairs down to the first floor, making his way through the lobby as quickly and quietly as he could. When he got out onto the street, he paused for a moment to get his bearings. He'd been following Charlie so intently last night, not focusing on his surroundings as much as he should have, that he wasn't quite sure where he was. "Rhode Island Ave." read the street sign on the corner. Well, that wasn't one of the more well-known streets in DC, which was actually a good thing. He wanted to stay as far away from the heart of the District as possible. Figuring he was already north of the White House and its surroundings, he turned north up 17th St. to put himself farther away from that highest-of-security installations.

He strode briskly, head down, eyes constantly checking back and forth. Up there over a building's entryway was a video camera. Across the street down the block was a police car. Standing in the doorway he was passing was a man wearing a private security uniform. Behind him was a voice that called, "Hey, Don!"

His head started to turn automatically before he realized it wasn't Charlie's voice. He froze, stomach sinking and pulse pounding. Oh God, the oldest trick in the book and I fell for it. Call out the fugitive's real name, not his alias, and rely on his automatic response to verify he's the person you're after.

Don turned his head all the way around and instantly sized up the man behind him: five foot ten, thin build, tweed jacket, dirty blond hair—and a hand reaching into his inner coat pocket and pulling out something glinting of metal.

He whirled back around and started running for his life.

The street had a handful of pedestrians on it, and he had to figure his pursuer wouldn't fire as long as they were there. He strained his ears to hear behind him, but besides the startled gasps of the people he dodged and narrowly avoided running into, he heard nothing but pounding footsteps. No, "FBI, freeze!" or "Police! Stop!" If it were possible, his heart beat even faster. Who the hell is this?

He took a sharp turn to the right, entering a quieter residential street with narrower brownstones huddled together like people standing shoulder to shoulder. He ran past a woman walking her dog, and then realized there was no one else ahead of him in the block. He swerved towards the street just as a pfft noise sounded behind him, and the whine of a bullet zinged past his ear.

He redoubled his efforts, calling on all of his reserves to get farther ahead. Looking up the block, he saw a broad cross street and realized as he got closer that it was one of the large circles interspersed throughout the city, where a series of roads came in like spokes on a wheel with green space in the middle. The road around the circle was about four lanes wide, and based on the closeness of his pursuer, there was no way he was going to be able to wait for traffic to clear.

Judging the speed of the approaching traffic, he mentally crossed his fingers and dove right in, holding out a hand to at least acknowledge the presence of the onrushing cars, even if he couldn't physically stop them. He'd done this in downtown L.A. once or twice in pursuit of a suspect, but it had scared him to death then when he'd had a badge to back him up, and it scared him to death now. The only thing keeping him going was the thought of what waited behind him if he slowed down.

A cacophony of horns and squealing brakes assaulted his ears, but thankfully, he felt nothing more than a rush of air as he dodged through four lanes of moving traffic. He risked a glance over his shoulder to see the blond man staring at him across the stopped cars, unable to raise his weapon and apparently unwilling to follow his path. Then he started running to the right, around the circle, his intentions clear: to cut him off at the other side.

Don turned and started running across the circular park in the middle of the rotary and bracing himself to repeat the experience on the other side. It went just as smoothly; he even recognized the same FedEx truck screeching to a halt, its driver letting fly a few choice words through the open window. He cut farther north, putting his head down and running as fast as he could.

The houses became shabbier as he ran, interspersed with run-down but still-operating corner stores and check-cashing centers, eventually dotted with lots that were either vacant or covered with parked cars. He ran until his lungs were bursting, and after casting glances back over his shoulder and not seeing anyone for at least five minutes, he slowed to a fast walk, gasping for air. A few more minutes of checking behind him, and he was convinced that he was in the clear.

He took note of the street signs he was passing and matched them up with his mental map of Washington. The nice thing about a city with letters and numbers for its street names, unoriginal though it was, meant that finding yourself at O St. and 1st St. told you how far and what direction you had to go to get to C St. and 19th St. One of his first actions on deciding to come to Washington was to check out his possible escape routes: the Metro lines, city bus lines, regional trains, and regional buses. With that in mind, he knew where he had to go in order to get out of town fast.

That meant he had plenty of mental effort free to berate himself for being so stupid as to come here in the first place. He was damn lucky that Charlie hadn't had an FBI agent tailing him, and he had no idea who the man was who had been chasing him with apparently lethal intent. As wonderful as it had felt to see his brother again, to talk to him and feel like himself again for a few hours, not to mention making some progress towards finding Alex Brock, it simply wasn't worth it. Because now all he could do was hope that whoever was after him wouldn't choose to go after Charlie instead—since he had absolutely no way to warn him.

ooooooooooooooooo

8:37 A.M. (Eastern)
Washington, DC, FBI Field Office

Dina Javier was in a foul mood. It wasn't enough that she'd forgotten to turn her cell phone back on last night after one of the soon-to-be-former colleagues she'd gone out with had persuaded her to leave work behind for a few hours. No, if she hadn't been so stupid as to try and have a life of some sort and to spend some time with someone in the FBI who wasn't a charter member of the Free Don Eppes Club, she would have gotten Tom Metzke's message last night, and Eppes would be in custody right now.

Instead, she was sitting in a hard-backed chair across from his brother, having fished him out of the mathematical conference he was about to present in front of, waiting to hear him explain exactly what he had been thinking harboring a fugitive overnight.

Except, of course, he was denying he had done anything wrong.

"I took the money out because I thought I lost my credit card and I wanted to be sure I could pay my hotel bill."

Yeah, right. "From two different accounts, just under the maximum amount of each?"

He shrugged. "I've gotten in trouble with my bank before for trying to take out more than the maximum amount. I wanted to be sure I wasn't going to trigger their early warning system. See, their algorithm is designed to ensure that—"

"Who was in the elevator with you when you went up to your room last night?"

"I don't know." His brown eyes were confident as he spoke. In fact, she was surprised at his overall demeanor. Most people, the first time they were on the wrong side of the one-way glass of an interrogation room, were terrified, or at least fidgety. On the one hand, she had interviewed him a number of times before, enough for him to be familiar with what her former partner called her dartboard interrogation technique: sharp, pointed questions thrown without careful aim but with the likelihood that at least one of them would hit a bulls-eye. Having experienced it before, he might be better prepared to deal with it now.

On the other hand, maybe he didn't realize how much trouble he was in.

"When's the last time you heard from your brother?"

He blinked. "You mean talked to him?"

She pounced. "Has there been any kind of correspondence between the two of you?"

He was wearing an expression she was all too familiar with from years of conducting interrogations. He was considering how exactly to twist the words he was going to say so that technically they were true, even if they were obfuscating the truth. "We haven't corresponded since he escaped from custody."

She tried another tack, based on what the techs had told her before she entered the interrogation room. "Why did you have pictures of Alexander Brock on your laptop? Were you showing those to Don?"

He looked indignant. "What are you doing with my laptop?"

"It's evidence in an investigation, Dr. Eppes. An investigation of how you aided and abetted an escaped felon."

The lines around his mouth grew tight, and the family resemblance to her fugitive was clearer than ever. "I haven't done anything wrong."

Now there was an example of evading a question if she ever heard one. "So once our forensic team completes a sweep of your hotel room, they won't find evidence that anyone other than you was there last night."

If she hadn't been watching so closely, she would have missed the tiny flinch. But all he said was, "Hundreds of people have stayed in that hotel room. You can't confirm that a person was or was not there on any given night based on standard forensic evidence. The probability matrix corresponding to—"

"Do you know where he was going?" she cut in before he could veer too far off the track.

He started to say something, then stopped. Then he folded his hands in front of him and said a cold tone, "I have no idea where my brother is, where he has been for the past three-and-a-half months, or where he might be going. At no point during those three-and-a-half months have you or anyone from your team informed me or my father when you had news of Don's whereabouts, as we requested multiple times that you do. Unless you are going to charge me with a crime, I have nothing else to say to you."

Inwardly, she grimaced, although there was no way she was going to let her frustration show on her face. The forensic team wouldn't be done for hours yet, and two ATM withdrawals were slim evidence on which to hold someone. She knew that he was up to something, but at the moment, she had no way to prove it.

But she wasn't done with him yet. Charles Eppes was going to regret the day he hid his brother from her.

She rose from her chair and crossed the room. Opening the door, she beckoned to the junior agent standing outside. "Agent Evans, I want you to make sure this man's security clearance is revoked. I don't want him to be able to consult for the FBI or to see any of their case files. I don't want him to be able to walk into an FBI office without an escort. Is that understood?"

"You can't do that." Dr. Eppes shot to his feet, dark eyes blazing. "You haven't charged me with anything."

"Suspicion of aiding and abetting a convicted felon is grounds for revoking a security clearance," she snapped back. "See to it," she told Evans, and then stalked away.

God, her head was pounding. That was the last time she went out so late with friends, even on what was supposed to be her last day at this particular office. Eppes was in the same damn city as her, and she had no idea where. His brother probably had no idea, either, but it had been worth a shot. At least he wouldn't be hanging out at the L.A. office anymore, providing motivation for Reeves' team to eavesdrop on her own work.

She jabbed the elevator button. Downstairs, the tech geeks could rifle through hours of security camera footage in seconds. Washington, DC, had more cameras per square foot than anywhere else in the country thanks to its concentration of government facilities. One of those cameras was going to have footage of Don Eppes, and she was going to find it. And then she was going to find him.

oooooooooooooooooo

3:55 P.M. (Pacific)
Bixel Street, Los Angeles

"It's Metzke again."

"Do you have any new information?"

I guess that means you missed him this morning, Tom wanted to ask but didn't. "I've been in contact with the Washington office. They've identified Eppes on Metro surveillance cameras as traveling to the New Carrollton Orange Line station, then boarding a Greyhound bus."

"Destination?"

"Ocean City, Maryland."

A soft snort came through the line. "Maybe Bertha will take care of him."

Metzke frowned. Was that another assassin? "Who?"

"There's a hurricane on the way. Supposed to be the strongest one in years."

He sighed. "Well, Eppes is heading into it, and Agent Javier is right behind him."

"Hmm." There was a pause, and then he went on, "She wasn't part of the original arrangement, but the contract can be modified."

Metzke was puzzled for a second, and then his eyes widened. "God, no! An escaped fugitive is one thing, but an FBI agent—" He stopped as he realized what he was saying, or rather, how he was saying it. It was horrifying.

The assassin was speaking. "As you like. Again, I'll call when I'm done."

"Fine." He ended the call and sat there, lost in thought. Had he really just objected to having his supervisor killed not on ethical grounds, but on the grounds that it would be an strategic mistake?

He opened the phone to call the Director, but then closed it again. He wouldn't empathize. He'd tell him that they had to make some tough decisions to keep themselves in the clear, and that if worse came to worse, they might well have to "modify the original contract" in order to keep their backer happy.

Tom shook his head and started the car again. This whole mess was rapidly escalating out of control. Their only hope was that one of the two people on their way to Ocean City would find Eppes and end this thing.

ooooooooooooooo

A/N: Ooh, don't you just hate Javier right now? Don't you want to click on that review button down there and tell me how much?