A/N: Hee, I guess Indiana's okay to make fun of. And a cookie to Izhilzha for noticing the ring! No cookies to anyone for noting the significance of where Don's working or the town where he's at. Guess I'm being too obscure. :(

This is the point where I remind you that I had this chapter written before the season opener. Just ask ritt and Susan W…

Disclaimer and acknowledgments have not left the prologue.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Thursday, June 5, 2008
6:45 P.M.
Bixel Street, Los Angeles

Tom Metzke put the car in park and turned it off. He reached for the phone on the seat next to him and then withdrew his hand. He'd been warring with himself for the last thirty-six hours, ever since arriving at work yesterday to find the horrifying news that his literal partner in crime had been murdered. Of course, there was a long list of people who wanted the head of one of the FBI's largest offices dead, but he had the sinking feeling that it had to do directly with the mess the two of them had gotten themselves into, and the disaster that Don Eppes had made of it.

It had started so simply: a case he and Lee Boudreaux worked together way back in Memphis, where the well-connected perpetrator had suggested they look the other way in exchange for a small token of appreciation. He'd been in his early years at the Bureau, still idealistic enough to be horrified at the idea of taking a bribe, but feeling underpaid and underappreciated enough to rationalize it to himself. There hadn't been anything more for years, until he transferred to L.A. and found himself over his head in debt and not up the career ladder as far as he would have liked. An informant made a suggestion about how to make a piece of evidence disappear, and after a consultation with his old colleague Boudreaux, he had reasoned it away. There were a few more incidents here and there, but it was the drug dealer from East L.A. who had pushed things over the edge. The case got too much publicity, and Boudreaux suggested that it was time to find a fall guy. Just in time, too, because the central office was about to send out an agent tasked with investigating that incident and a few related ones, most of which Metzke had his hands in. When his initial attempts at making Special Agent Liz Warner's acquaintance had been firmly rebuffed, they had turned to Plan B.

Or rather, Plan B had presented itself to them in the form of a man Boudreaux liked to refer to as their "backer," who had come to them with a fall guy in mind. He provided the funds and the motivation, they carried out the work within the FBI. Everything had gone just as planned, up until that damn bus crash and Eppes continually staying one step ahead of him and Javier. Now, everything was going to hell.

He reached for the phone again and opened it, still hesitating. The man Boudreaux had hired to kill Eppes wouldn't have turned on him, would he? He couldn't think of any reason for him to, and he had to know what was going on. Before he could change his mind again, he dialed the number and listened.

It rang endlessly; there was no voicemail that picked up. He hung up and tried again, in case he had misdialed, but the answer, or lack thereof, was the same. He flipped the phone shut and stared out the windshield at the empty street in front of him. Now what?

After a moment's indecision, he reached into his wallet for a second number he had written down. Boudreaux had told him this was to be used only in an emergency, but he didn't know what else would qualify as one. Getting straight in his mind what he was going to say, he dialed and held the phone to his ear.

"Hello?"

No identification of any sort. He'd never met the man, so he didn't know what his voice sounded like. He took a deep breath and said, "This is Tom Metzke."

"Ah." There was a thump in the background, and then the man said, "I was expecting to hear from you at some point."

"I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but—I didn't know who else to call."

"You do seem to be in a bit of a situation there, don't you?" The man's voice was almost friendly.

"I can't reach the man you had Boudreaux hire to find Eppes, and—"

"Whoa, wait a minute there. I didn't have anybody hire anyone. Be careful how you go throwing around accusations, son."

Metzke frowned, puzzled. Then understanding sank in. "I'm not calling from the Bureau," he said. "This is a private line."

"Cell phone lines are never secure," came the brusque response.

"Then can I meet you somewhere?"

"That's even less secure."

A hint of impatience crept into his voice. "I know how to shake a tail, if there is one." Which there wasn't, as his periodic scan of the rearview mirror told him.

"What about your supervisor?"

He sighed. "She's been taking personal time to consolidate her move here from Washington. She hasn't been around much."

"Are you sure?"

He said up straighter. "What does that mean?" he asked slowly.

Now it was the man on the other end of the phone who sounded impatient. "Why do you think you couldn't get in touch with your contact? Javier shot and killed him in Chicago, then claimed self-defense."

"What?" he exploded. "How come I haven't heard about that?"

There was a huff of breath at the other end. "Apparently Boudreaux managed one last cover-up. Maybe I underestimated him."

Tom froze. "You had him killed," he said in horrified understanding.

There was a low chuckle on the other end. "There you go again with those groundless accusations. Agent Metzke, you can't verify that. No one at the Bureau can verify that, not with their limited resources and competing priorities."

He swallowed, suddenly realizing that this phone call had been a worse idea than he could have imagined. Even the insurance he had stashed away in a downtown bank wouldn't be enough to save him from this man if he put his mind to it. "What about me?" he asked, trying to keep his voice strong.

"Yes, what about you?" The man sounded as though he had been presented with an interesting puzzle. "That's a very good question. Do you still want to meet?"

Hell no, Tom thought, but couldn't say it aloud. "Is there…anything I could assist you with?"

"At this point, saving yourself ought to be your only priority," came the smooth response. "But I can assist you with vacating your current position if you can do something in return."

That sounded all too familiar. He'd been doing "something in return" for years now, and look where it had gotten him. Not that he had a choice at this point. He swallowed back the fear that was threatening to choke him and said, "What would that be?"

"Cell phone lines are never secure," the man repeated. "Or free of interference. So I can't be held responsible if you misunderstand my meaning. But I'm sure you can figure out who else should be vacating her current position in order to make both of our lives easier."

He licked his lips nervously. "I—I understand, sir."

"Then don't contact me again unless you have news to report." The line abruptly went dead, and Tom stared at the phone as though it had bitten him.

Their backer was right. It was only a matter of time now before the FBI connected him to Boudreaux and this whole thing fell apart in his hands. But if he could stop the person who was leading the charge, he had one shot left to make it out of this in one piece and to keep Eppes as the culprit.

Damn it! He slammed the steering wheel, startling a homeless woman shuffling by with a shopping cart. He'd put so much effort into making sure Javier stayed on track. He'd altered paperwork, rewritten computer files, done everything short of planting physical evidence to make sure that Don Eppes was fingered as the guilty party. It had all worked like a charm.

And now, unless Dina Javier was out of the way, it was all going to fall apart.

He turned the car on and pulled away, looking at the FBI building in his rearview mirror and realizing he could never go back. He was going to have to get to her some other way. And then his backer would get him a ticket to Mexico or some other faraway destination, and he'd be safe. He kept telling himself that over and over as he pulled onto the freeway and out of downtown, trying to convince himself that killing a fellow agent was his only route to safety.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Friday, June 6, 2008
10:13 A.M.
Stafford, IN

Don trudged along the mown side of the road, keeping off the dusty gravel. He squinted into the sun and saw a driveway ahead on the right. A green-and-yellow mailbox shaped like a tractor was perched on a white post, and although there was no name on top of it, he was sure this was the right place.

A visit to the county clerk's office under the pretext of looking up legal information for a property he wanted to purchase had garnered him an address for a Miss Alexandra Young. The name could be a coincidence, but the property had been in her name for nearly sixty years, just about the age that that would fit Alex Brock's mother. A warm smile and a friendly chat with the young secretary had verified that Alexandra had returned to her hometown a couple of years ago after decades of living in the big city. With a shy smile, she had given him detailed directions to the address three miles out of town, surrounded by corn and soybean fields.

He crossed a railroad track and plodded on down the driveway. The morning sun was hot, the Midwestern humidity making the air almost tangible. He listened carefully as he made his way up the drive, but he heard nothing. There was no car in the driveway, no sign of life other than the laundry hanging in the side yard next to the old farmhouse with its peeling white paint and black shutters hanging askew. He paused to reach down and remove the gun from where it was tucked in his sock, holding the weapon behind him with one hand as he knocked at the front door.

There was no answer. Peering through the front window, he saw a small parlor with shabby furniture and two empty beer bottles on the coffee table. He rapped on the glass, but again got no answer. Holding the gun down by his side, he peered around the corner of the house.

There was a decrepit barn behind the house, and he thought he heard a noise coming from inside. He opened his mouth to call out, then changed his mind. In his current situation, better that he startle an older woman than be caught unawares by a hired killer. And not just any hired killer, but the man he'd been seeking for nearly a year—the man who had killed Liz. He flexed his fingers around the handle of the gun and crept forward, nerves tightening in anticipation.

The noise came again, a clanging sound that fit an old farm like this. He moved from tree to tree, keeping out of sight of the barn door. He wasn't worried about the house; if anyone was in there, they would have come to the front when he knocked. There was only one oak left, and then he had his back to the weathered boards of the open barn door. He took a deep breath and cautiously eased his head around the corner.

What he saw made his blood turn to ice and his pulse start pounding in his ears. Bent over a rusty riding mower, wielding nothing more threatening than a wrench, was the man who'd stolen his life away from him. It took only a second to compare his features to the image he had burned into his mind standing at his apartment window, watching helplessly as he drove away while Liz's life drained out of her. Here's your phantom, Javier, he couldn't help thinking.

He whirled around and brought up the gun in one smooth motion. "Alex Brock," he barked in his best FBI voice. "Put that down and get on your knees, hands on your head."

Brock looked up, his face reflecting shock for only a second before being replaced with something like a sneer. "Eppes," he said, slowly rising to his feet. "Thanks for making it easy for me to find you."

Don took two quick steps into the barn, moving to the side so he wouldn't be silhouetted against the entrance. The back doors were open as well, and a light breeze was blowing through the building, stirring up motes of dust that drifted through the beam of sunlight shining through the door he had just entered. "Drop the wrench and kneel," he snapped, clenching his jaw.

Brock lazily tossed the wrench off to the side, where it fell with a thunk on the packed dirt floor. "You gonna arrest me?" he asked. "You're not a FBI agent anymore, you know."

Don felt his finger tightening on the trigger, and he forced himself to relax a fraction. He needed this man alive and in custody more than he had ever needed anything in his life, and he couldn't afford to make a foolish mistake. That included letting the other man goad him. "Turn around and kneel down," he repeated.

The taller man stood there, apparently regarding him completely calmly, although Don could read the tense lines of his shoulders and legs. He reminded himself that this was a dangerous individual, one apparently so skilled at his illicit profession that someone had gone to the trouble of making it appear he had died in prison. On the other hand, there was no reason he couldn't come up with a goading comment or two of his own. "So, how much does it bug you to be stuck out here in a one-horse town, hiding behind your mother like this?"

His response was a sneer and a half-step forward. Don raised the gun higher in warning, taking another sideways step. He still hadn't gotten a good look at the killer's back, and he had no way of knowing if he had a weapon hidden somewhere on his person.

Brock was opening his mouth to reply when they both heard a sound. It was the crunching of tires on gravel; someone was coming up the driveway. From the wary look on the other man's face, Don guessed that it wasn't an expected visitor. He advanced on him and grabbed the front of his t-shirt, holding the Glock a scant six inches from his face. "Not a word," he warned.

Brock's narrow eyes were cold, but he stood perfectly still. Don stared at him, part of him wishing the killer would make some sort of move so that he could be justified in pulling the trigger. He reminded himself again that a dead Alex Brock wasn't what he needed, but the desire to end this all was stronger than he would have liked.

And then he heard a familiar voice from the other side of the house.

"Mrs. Young?" He heard a distant knock. "My name is Colby Granger; I'm with the FBI. I'd like to ask you a few questions."

Don's eyes locked on the killer's, and he couldn't help but notice the smirk on the other man's face. "What're you gonna do, Eppes?" he taunted softly. "Turn us both in and get yourself back on Death Row when the appeal fails?"

He jabbed the gun into the underside of Brock's jaw, shoving him backwards. "What's that supposed to mean?" he hissed.

No trace of fear showed in Brock's narrowed blue eyes despite his precarious position. "You think everything's gonna be all right just because it's your friends who take you in? He did it to you once, he can do it to you again."

"Who?" he snapped in a low voice. "Boudreaux? He's dead."

"I know." Brock's mouth twisted in a cruel smile.

Don froze. "You killed him," he whispered.

"Hey!"

The shout came from the direction of the house, and Don's head whipped around as his heart sank. Coming toward him at a dead run were the two people he once trusted to watch his back more than anyone else. Now, they were the two biggest threats he could imagine.

A blow suddenly struck his jaw, and he staggered back. Brock had taken advantage of his distraction to duck away from the gun and plow a fist into his face. Then he realized the other man was reaching around behind his back. It didn't take too much of a mental leap to figure out what he had there.

He leaped back and shouted, "Colby! Gun!" as he broke for the back doors of the barn. The last thing he saw over his shoulder was Brock crouching down behind the riding mower, aiming at the FBI agents heading towards the front entrance.

oooooooooooooooooo

Colby followed David towards the barn, both of them with guns drawn but not raised. There were clearly voices coming from inside, and one of them was more than a little familiar. He shifted slightly to the left, just enough to get a glimpse of the two men. What he saw chilled his blood. Don Eppes was standing there with a gun digging into the neck of another man whom he had only seen pictures of, a man who was supposed to be dead. He'd never doubted that his former boss had really seen Alex Brock, but seeing him alive was still a shock.

But then, given Don's current stance, that might not be Brock's status for much longer anyway.

"Hey!" he shouted, hoping to distract Don.

It worked, but not in the way Colby had hoped. To his horror, the killer slugged Don and started reaching behind him. He broke into a sprint, David doing the same a step ahead of him.

"Gun!" he heard Don shout before taking off at a dead run.

"I got him," David called, gesturing inside the barn and taking cover around the corner from the front door. "You're faster, you go."

Colby had always been proud of his speed. He'd never begrudged the fact that he was the one most likely to catch a fleeing suspect, never regretted that he was the one with the greater lung capacity and the runner's legs. He was used to being the speedy one of their partnership and had won more than a few ten dollar bills over the years from his abilities.

He'd never wished more fervently that he didn't have to give chase.

Don was about fifty yards ahead, entering the cornfield behind the barn. Colby marked the spot where he had entered, sure that all of the rows would look the same once he got closer. He plunged into the field at the same spot, holding one arm up in front of him to keep the surprisingly sharp leaves from cutting into his face. The earth gave slightly under his feet, but the footing was more secure than he had feared it would be. What surprised him was the height of the plants; most of them were almost as tall as he was, making it difficult to see the man he was chasing. Whatever happened to "knee-high by the Fourth of July"?

He heard a rustling sound ahead, but couldn't get a glimpse of his quarry. Concentrating on the sound, he heard it slightly to the left, and dodged into the next row over. Sure enough, he could make out Don's figure running about the same distance ahead, although the corn plants obscured his view.

"Hey, Don!" he shouted. "Come on, man!"

There was no reply except a quick glance over his shoulder. Colby dug in harder, pushing himself to run faster. He knew he was faster than David, had proven it on more than one occasion. He was still convinced that despite his grumbling, if he hadn't been the one running Che Lobo's money around downtown L.A. over a year ago, Jo Santiago wouldn't have been reunited with his dad. But he'd never gone one-on-one with his boss before, and he was afraid that despite his own quickness, Don had the edge.

If nothing else, he certainly had the motivation.

Up ahead, the corn was coming to an end, the intensely green leaves thinning out against the blindingly blue sky. He burst out of the row onto a dirt road, stumbling a little as he looked to see which way Don had gone. He had cut to the left, following the dirt track along the edge of the field. Either he had ditched his gun or tucked it away somewhere, because he wasn't holding it in either hand. Colby spun and took off again, breathing deep and trying to make this an endurance run rather than the sprint it had started out as.

Casting another glance over his shoulder, Don dove back into the corn plants, but from the motion of the leaves, Colby could tell that he wasn't going very far into the field. That gave him the opportunity to catch up, and he used it to his advantage. Then a breeze blew across the field, and all of the leaves started nodding and swaying, not just the ones where Don was passing by. He slowed his pace slightly, straining his eyes. There. He must have cut down a row again, because the plants were bending more markedly in a line extending away from the dirt track he was on. Once again, he noted the row with his eyes and then entered it.

He'd gained a little ground, but not nearly enough. "Don, stop!" he called ahead, his sentences shortened by his lack of spare oxygen as he raced along. "We got Brock." At least I hope we do. "You can come back in."

All he got was a frightened look and a change in Don's direction, cutting to the right between rows of dark green leaves. Colby tried to take the hypotenuse route, but found that running a diagonal was just too difficult in the tightly-packed rows of corn. He plowed ahead, both arms in front of him now, his breath coming shorter and shorter.

The long, low sound of a horn caught his attention. He looked up to see a train coming down the track that bordered the field they were running through. It was about half a mile away, a long line of black cars filled with coal, the engine emitting dirty grey puffs of smoke. As it approached the dirt road they had just been on, it sounded its horn again, a mournful sound that cut through the rustling leaves around him.

Colby ran down a slight incline, noticing that the corn was only waist-high here. Probably standing water here earlier in the season, he thought. He looked ahead to see that Don had increased his lead, running across the edge of the field next to the train track. The former agent looked back over his shoulder, not at Colby, but at the train. It was slowly gaining on them as it chugged along. Don angled his route slightly, and Colby's heart sank. He couldn't be considering…

If a train is approaching at fifty miles an hour, and a fugitive is running at six miles an hour on a parallel course, what's the angle he needs to intersect the track at to make sure he doesn't end up smeared over the rails? It was funny how often math problems sprang into his head after the last three years in L.A.

But there was no way was he telling Charlie about this one.

"Don, stop!" he shouted with all the breath he could muster, reaching deep down to run even faster and close the distance between them. "It's not worth it!"

If Don heard him, he gave no sign. Head down, arms pumping, he was angling towards the track, up the incline of the gravel ballast supporting the ties and rails at the top of the embankment. The train's horn sounded in sharp warning, the engineer apparently having noticed the man running towards its path. Colby dug in harder, feet sinking slightly into the soft black soil, aware that there was no way he could reach Don in time to grab him back or shove him out of the way.

Don scrambled up the last of the incline, the train now less than two hundred yards away. And then Colby watched helplessly as he leaped over the first rail and came down on his right leg, his ankle twisting beneath him and sending him sprawling to the ground. The train's horn gave another loud blast, followed by the shrieking of brakes that couldn't possibly stop the heavy string of vehicles in anything shorter than a full mile, much less the four hundred feet remaining.

"No!" Colby shouted, heart in his throat.

All he could see was a flash of movement where Don had fallen, and then the train thundered by with a squeal of brakes and a rush of wind.

He ran the last few yards feeling like he was going to throw up. When he got to the embankment, he dropped onto the white gravel, peering under the train as the wheels clacked past, praying as hard as he could that he wouldn't see anything.

What he saw was Don, sprawled on his stomach on the other side of the single track, looking back at him underneath the rolling train, his face creased with pain, but blessedly alive.

"You all right?" Colby shouted past the still-screeching brakes, his heart pounding as loudly in his ears as the thumping wheels of the slowing train.

The other man gave a brief nod, then reached for something at his ankle. Colby thought at first that he was checking to see how badly he was hurt. But the expression that crossed his face was alarm rather than pain. His head whipped up, and he scanned the tracks in between the two of them. His gaze caught on something, and then a grim look settled across his features.

Sitting between the two iron rails beneath the now-slowly-moving train was a standard FBI-issue Glock 23 pistol.

Colby looked up to see Don regarding him intently. A moment passed with nothing but the earsplitting sounds of the train and the breeze cooling his sweat-soaked back while they stared at each other. Then Don gathered his feet underneath him and shouted, barely audible over the squealing brakes, "Tell Javier: Brock killed Boudreaux."

Hating himself but knowing he had to do it, Colby reached back and drew his weapon. Then he slowly raised it to point beneath the train at his former boss. "You can tell her yourself," he called back.

The flash of betrayal across Don's face was something he would never forget. He slowly raised his hands with a calculating expression that Colby had felt on his own face when he was trying to work out how to get out of a tight situation. The train had nearly come to a stop, and the interval between the passing wheels grew longer. Colby rose to a crouch, never taking his eyes or his aim off the man across the tracks. A boxcar rolled past, the wheels momentarily blocking his view. Then another set of wheels passed.

And Don was gone.

"Damn it!" Colby looked frantically from side to side, but the slowly moving wheels blocked his view. He listened and heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel, then nothing. He dropped back down to the ground and saw Don racing away from the tracks, limping slightly on his right side as he disappeared into another cornfield. He thought about firing a warning shot, but there was no way for him to see what he was aiming at. It would still be several seconds before the train stopped completely, and even then, it wouldn't be a good idea to dodge underneath or between the stopped cars. He had no desire to end up as a pancake.

He whipped out his phone and pressed "1". David answered in two rings. "You got him?" Colby demanded.

"No," came the frustrated growl at the other end. "He had a damn motorcycle in the back of the barn. Nearly ran me over on his way out."

"Crap." Colby related his unsuccessful chase as well.

"Still, we've got one thing." He could picture the gleam in David's eye based on his tone of voice.

"Yeah, I guess we saw Brock," Colby said, sliding his gun back into its holster.

"Better than that. His fingerprints are all over the damn barn."

Colby felt a grin forming on his face. "We'll have to reopen the case, won't we?"

"That's right. Hey, you'd better go talk to the engineer, let him know that no one got hurt."

"I'll do that. See you in a few." He also wanted the engineer's contact information for the inevitable inquiry into how a fugitive had gotten away one more time. Colby turned and started jogging towards the front of the train, shaking his head. He couldn't have tried any harder, he knew it. He just hoped Javier and his superiors would believe that.

Over his shoulder, he threw a whispered, "Good luck, Don," as he ran.

ooooooooooooooo

A/N: So picture me watching the season opener and giggling like mad as Colby jumps in front of a train to get away from Don, who has a gun aimed at him but can't bring himself to shoot. (eyeroll) Seems like I wrote the characters a little more straight-arrow than I should have, though. Oh well, that's why it's an AU!