Special thanks to ancientmaverick for beta reading! Thank you very much! All remaining mistakes are my own.

PROTECTIVE CUSTODY

Wed, Sept 23 - 14:40 - Construction Site, Los Angeles

David rubbed at his eyes, but the image remained. He glanced to his partner who wore an expression of the same confusion and insecurity. What were they supposed to do now?

"I'm John Smith. Mr. Bridges said you were looking for me." The man tried to appear relaxed, but his tense jaw and crossed arms belied his real level of stress.

The resemblance was extraordinary. But the look on his face and the body language didn't match. He appeared unsure and almost scared, nothing like Don, who always appeared strong and in command. He never showed fear, to the point where some people believed that he didn't fear anything.

David shot Colby a look.

"Okay, I am convinced: Charlie is right, and he has seen Don," Colby whispered. "In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm looking right at him."

Nothing in the man's behavior suggested that he recognized them. He didn't know them, and this was their painful clue that they hadn't found Don.

"That's impossible," David countered. "Charlie's Don isn't our man. Neither is this, or he would have recognized us."

David took a deep breath and put on his best 'I'm-in-control'-mask. It wouldn't help anybody if they appeared as confused and sad as they felt.

"Sorry, who are you?" he asked as if he hadn't heard him the first time. For a moment, David couldn't think about anything else.

The man sighed. "John Smith. You were looking for me."

Colby swallowed hard. "We walked across the whole site and couldn't find you. Why come out of hiding now?"

"My memory isn't what it used to be, but somehow I don't think that I am somebody who runs away from his problems."

"Then why did you run away from CalSci?" David took a stab in the dark. The comment about memory irritated him. The fingerprints had failed, but he was sure that this was the man Charlie had met.

Don, and David couldn't help himself but thinking about him as Don, narrowed his eyes. "I thought you were after some piece of evidence?" He dropped his crossed arms but added hostility to his voice.

David balled his fist. "You're well informed."

Shrugging, the look-alike answered, "I heard you. Mr. Bridges is a good man, I couldn't let him take the fall for something I did." Near the portable buildings, Mr. Bridges watched them while pretending to be busy with his paperwork.

"And what did you do, Mister Smith?"

David sighed in relief as Colby took over the conversation. He wanted, no needed, more time. He reminded himself again: the fingerprints don't match. This wasn't Don Eppes. Yet everything screamed at him that this was him. He now could understand Charlie better than he ever had wanted.

As an answer, they got again just a shrug. "Probably whatever you think I did." The smile didn't match the resigned voice, but body language matched both.

"So why did you run away after you helped Professor Eppes?" David just wanted to get through this.

"Eppes is the curly-haired guy?" John Smith asked. It confirmed their suspicion. He was the man Charlie had met.

"The police and I don't like each other. It's better to stay out of each other's hair. But I thought this was about a piece of evidence."

"It is. But let me ask, why break your own rule and seek us out?" They shouldn't forget the cruelty that Joe Flynn was capable of.

John Smith rocked a little on his feet, crossing his arms again as if he didn't know what else to do. "I know how this goes. You keep coming back and bothering everyone until everyone is out of a job. So, I figured that I should try to limit the damage to everybody else."

This answer fit better the behavior of a man running away from the police.

"Do you have an ID?" Colby asked, and David could hear in his voice that he just wanted to be far away from the criminal look-alike of Don. Life wasn't fair.

"Sure." He pulled out a driver's license and held it up.

"I'll check this out," Colby said and turned to go back to the car.

"I can also tell you what you're going to find." John Smith offered.

"Yeah? What?"

"A heck of a lot of nothing. I don't remember anything clear until six months ago. And despite a drug overdose, I'm not in any system."

David took a sharp intake of breath. Okay this was it: this was the moment he had seen coming: either he was about to walk into a miracle, or he just had lost his mind.

Hope reared its ugly head again. He really needed to do something about being played like a yo-yo. But six months and no memory were cruel hints. If Zoe Ramos was right and her John Smith had written the math, then David was looking at a man who not only looked like Don, but also wrote like him. Could it be?

Colby caught his eye, and he knew they were thinking the same thing.

"And nobody has run your prints, sir?"

John Smith startled at the use of the honorific. He blinked at Colby as if he couldn't understand that somebody would call him 'sir'. "Of course, several times. No match. I had to get a new name and ID from the courts."

"So you wanted Professor Eppes to identify your math dreams?"

The man narrowed his eyes. Tensions that had slowly disappeared from his frame returned with vengeance. "What?"

"Your friend, Zoe Ramos, told us about the dreams and the math." Colby took over the interview more and more as David tried to come up with a plan to keep the communication open with John Smith. He needed to stay with him.

Smith just pressed his lips together.

"For the record, she just wanted to help you. But through her, we knew where you worked."

The man swallowed visibly. His broad shoulders couldn't hide the tired and drawn features. "What do you want? I helped the man, and then I went away. Okay? This may not be perfect, but I have a job and -"

"Actually sir, we would just like to run your fingerprints again." David interrupted. "You have a strong resemblance to a man we are looking for and that is the reason why your actions in the CalSci parking lot gained this much attention."

"You have already run my prints. Why do you think this time it will reveal something else?"

"We have better computers." Colby said. It was a stupid argument and John Smith repaid it with a look that was just pure Don Eppes.

"Who handled the original investigation about you?"

Smith balled his fists and pressed his lips together. For a moment, David was sure he would refuse to answer. "Newtown PD, way north. Ask for Detectives Reed and Torres, " he added.

"Okay, we just want to make sure that their search didn't miss something." Colby spoke with his most calm voice.

He had also picked up the thin ice they were standing on.

"If you're not a man to run away from your problems, why did you run away at CalSci?" David had to ask. If he could understand the motivation better, he could maybe talk him down from the confrontational collision course they were running on. They were just two questions away from having to ask him to accompany them.

"Something my friend," he spat this word, "Zoe had said."

"Oh, what did she say?" David could hear the underlining anger. They had to be careful with his anger.

"That I cannot run away for the rest of my life. If nobody knows anything, then maybe there is nothing."

"Good advice."

"And yet you're here and want to drag me to the station."

David glanced at Colby. There was a story in this little sentence. They would definitely have that talk with the NPD.

"No, we -" David stopped himself as sirens entered the construction site. The dust cloud drew a clear path in the sky. He looked at Colby as the SUV came into view.

David suspected who was running their car like this through the dust even before she jumped out of the car. John Smith looked ready to bolt. Colby shifted to block any attempt, but David was more worried about a confrontation than an attempt to run.

"Agent Paul?" He intercepted her before she could reach Don. "What happened?"

"We're going to take your guy in." She indicated Don as 'your guy' with a jerk of her chin.

"We were just talking, and I was about to ask-" David stood directly in her way.

"Actually, I don't care. We need to take him in." She turned her focus to David and let the agents she had brought with her form a circle.

The confrontation David had worked hard to prevent was close to erupting. "He is the man from the CalSci parking lot. We both know that the fingerprints there didn't match."

"I know, but this doesn't matter anymore." Paul said and signaled to David to step aside.

He took a half-step, enough to fulfill her unspoken order but not enough to make the path clear.

"Before the FBI adopted science, and math," she sent David a sharp and angry glare, "we worked successfully with other things. For example, identifying marks."

Her glare wandered from David to Smith. "Show me your chest!" She ordered. Her hands made the upwards motion to indicated what she wanted.

"What?"

"It's simple, Mister. Show me that you don't have a scar running down your ribcage, and I am on my way and you can continue your nice talk with Agent Sinclair. But if you have a scar, you are going to accompany us now. No arguments."

"Why?"

"Just do it! We both know that I can compel this, or do you want me to arrest you first?"

David turned around. He saw on Smith's face what the result would be before the man started to drag up his shirt. David closed his eyes as the first marks came into view. He still could smell the blood in his nose as Colby had pressed down on the wound. That had been his first attempt at leadership, and he had almost lost his boss. He would never forget.

He looked to Colby. Despite the fact that Colby could only see the back of John Smith, no Don Eppes, he probably saw the truth reflected in David's face.

David looked to Agent Paul with a heavy heart. "What's going on?" She had known that it was Don Eppes, and not because she had hope or because she had sources she could not share.

As they left the office, she had been sure that Don Eppes was dead and John Smith was a way to nail Flynn. But now she stood there with widened eyes, pale skin, and nervous energy rolling off her in waves.

"What is going on?" David repeated the question, louder.

She stared a little moment longer at Don, or Smith, or whatever. Then she turned around and marched back to the car. "Let's go."

Now David's anger flared up. He didn't care about her less than stellar leadership, but he was a friend, a friend of Don. A friend who just found out that Don was alive and who wanted answers. "Agent Paul!" he called after her.

She stopped and turned around. "We need to get out of the open and out of the line of fire!" Urgency made her voice sound harder and stronger. "After we're safe, we can have the chat about wrong assumptions and mistakes."

Something had spooked her. David refused to let go of his anger, but he acknowledged the need to relocate the discussion.

"I'm not going anywhere."

David heard a snort behind him. He turned around and looked at Colby. Don wore an expression between resignation and angry refusal. Despite his words, he was already working at relaxing, starting with his crossed arms.

Agent Paul just raised an eyebrow at Don.

"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what I did. For months, I have been trying to find out something from my past, to make sense of the dreams and memories I have. And now I find out that whatever I did apparently goes up to the federal level. I need to know."

David could understand this.

"You are an important witness."

Now Don laughed out loud. "Then you're out of luck lady. Because I don't remember anything." He took a half step to the side as if he wanted to return to work. Agent Andrew blocked his path.

"I don't need your memory." Agent Paul said and started to turn again. "As long as I have you and your notebook, I have everything that I need."

David had time to take a short snap of breath before the anger broke loose. Without any forewarning Don lunged after Paul, aiming for the notebook now in her hands.

"That's mine!" he screamed with anger that bordered on desperation. His fingers enclosed the book and tore it out of her hands.

David froze, horrified, before he entered the resulting fight. Only one would be losing.

TBC