Chapter Three
A/N: I've had a bit of time today to do some writing, please don't hold me to three updates a day :p
Charlie felt himself go cold. "Already?" he whispered.
Don nodded. "Sorry, buddy."
"I should have… I should have worked harder on it. If I had told Paytes that I was busy and not spent so much time…"
"You couldn't have known, Charlie. Maybe if you can find the next hit."
Charlie nodded, running his hands through his curly hair. "I'll work on it, Don."
"I know you will. Listen, I have head out. Call me when you find something."
Charlie watched his brother leave the room. "When…" he muttered under his breath as he turned to gather his papers that he had jotted notes down on and pushed them all into a bag and a sweater over his T-shirt and ran out the door.
"Charles?"
Charlie didn't look up when he heard his friend's voice. He continued to hurriedly write the numbers down as they made sense, scribbling them across the chalkboard.
Larry sighed as he approached slowly, not wanting to startle the young professor if he had not heard him. "Charles? What on earth are you doing here so early?"
"You're here early too," the younger man responded.
"True… but I just got here and my first class is at eight. Yours is at noon."
"I needed to work."
Larry nodded. "One of Don's projects?"
"Yeah."
"And what is this project?" a new voice asked.
Charlie turned at the sound of this, not quite being able to place the voice with a face. "Richard Paytes."
Paytes smiled – more of a smirk, really – and glanced at Charlie's work. "That's something you have there, Dr. Eppes. What's it for?"
"Charles does convulsive work for the FBI using mathematics," Larry explained when Charlie did not. The young professor was once again engrossed in his equations.
"Really? And what good does it do the FBI?"
"Using probabilities to predict where a murderer would strike next, things like that," the Physics professor said nonchalantly. "Spends more time on that lately than here…"
"Does he now?" Paytes asked quietly. "If you'll excuse me, I should be getting ready for my classes."
Larry watched Richard Paytes leave. "I don't know what it is, but there's something about that man that gives me the creeps. What about you, Charles?"
"Hmm?" Charlie responded absently.
"Never mind. How's it coming?" the elder man asked as he approached the board to view the equations.
There was a long moment before the sound of chalk scratching against the board stopped and Charlie set it down in the tray. "I've got it," he breathed. He did not say anything as Larry leaned closer to inspect it, but moved toward the phone in the room. He frowned when he picked it up. "The line's dead."
"We've been having trouble with them since yesterday," Larry said as he moved from the board. "All the rain has been causing trouble."
The curly haired man's frown deepened. "I've got to go talk to Don. I should be back for my noon class."
-
"Charlie had it?" Terry asked as she pulled the umbrella down closer to her, rain dripping off of it.
"He came up with it right as you called."
"Poor guy."
"Yeah, but he's started on the follow up, so it won't take near as long. I should be getting a call from him soon."
"Weren't the phone lines down in his area of town?"
Don shook his head. "They got cleared up this morning. I checked it to make sure."
-
Amita poked her head into Charlie's office. "Charlie?" she called.
"He went to go find Don," Larry said from his place at Charlie's bookshelf, searching out something to bide his time until his eight o'clock class.
She frowned. "Why didn't he just call?"
"The phones are down."
"No they're not. At least they weren't half an hour ago."
Larry looked up from the book he'd been flipping through. "What?"
"I said-"
"I know, but they were out when Charles tried to phone his brother."
"That's odd."
"I hope he hasn't gotten himself in trouble…"
-
Charlie pulled his bike to the side of the street, leaving it there. He'd wasted enough time going by Don's office and finding out that his brother was at the crime scene. Of course he was, that's what he'd said earlier that morning, wasn't it? The young professor started out in a full out run when he saw Don.
"Hey Don!"
Don looked over and waved.
"Don, I found who the next victim will be! It's-" His statement was cut off by the sound of a gun firing and Charlie's eyes went wide and he stumbled forward and fell to the ground.
A/N: Yay! Third chapter in one day! That's a record for me: tries to ignore the fact that she's left a couple of stories completely unfinished :
Midnight Dove: Thanks muchly for the review :) Hope you enjoyed the chappy
Sabrina: I can be a fast updater, and I can be the slowest you've ever met. I can only write when on one of my "kicks" at the moment I'm on a Numb3rs kick, leaving my poor other two stories high and dry, but ah well, that's how I write… : feels ashamed : Hopefully I'll finish this one quickly so I won't get off the kick before it's finshed.
KatSuyA: Ack! Don't break the chair! That's not good. I sit on my bed to write so it just bounces with me :) Well, good luck with finding a new chair and thank you so much for your lovely review!