O2 4/18

Chapter Three:

Without fully realizing how it happened, his car ended up in front of his father's house instead of his own apartment. Don tried, but still couldn't think of it as Charlie's house no matter whose name was on the deed.

He walked in to find Charlie sitting on the living room rug and the coffee table littered with papers covered in calculations. A normal day in the Eppes household, thought Don.

"Hey," Don said in greeting and walked into the kitchen for a beer.

After a moment of scribbling, Charlie glanced up at his brother, looking self-satisfied. "Hey yourself! I just finished the improvements to the polynomial interpolation equations I developed for the video enhancement software. Amita and I should have the final version delivered in just a few days once we finish testing."

"That's great, Charlie." Don's voice was less than enthusiastic. Charlie looked a bit crestfallen at his brother's lackluster response so Don immediately added, "It is great, really! I just have other things on my mind today."

Charlie's expression turned to one of sympathy. "I'm sure the whole Department of Justice does, Don. It must be maddening for the FBI to not be able to locate their number two guy."

Don nodded, a discouraged look on his face.

"The people who took him were absolute pros with huge amounts of backup and a flawless plan. They managed to disappear in broad daylight in downtown L.A. and evade capture by hundreds of law enforcement agents."

"No ransom demands yet?" Charlie asked.

"Not that I've heard of. We're not sure what they want him for but you've got to figure that the guy knows the same stuff the Attorney General does just in case the AG is unable to fulfill his duties for any reason. So, if they're after information the DAG is an easier target than the AG is since he has a smaller security detail assigned to him. Nevertheless, he just doesn't have the authority that the AG does which mystifies us. If you want to make the guy do something you don't let people know you've got him, you know? You nab his wife and kids to blackmail him into doing what you want but you don't grab him in broad daylight on live TV."

"Maybe they're just terrorists trying to make a statement," Charlie wondered aloud.

"Trust me, that's up there on our top ten list. The rest of the FBI is hitting all of the terror cells we know of trying to shake out a lead."

"The rest of the FBI?" Charlie thought that sounded odd coming from Don who was usually in the thick of things, leading the charge with his team. "What are you doing then?"

"Babysitting a witness. The woman who got shot in the head at the scene is at Cedars Sinai and we've got agents with her 24 hours a day in case she wakes up and can give us a lead, any lead."

Charlie cocked his head to one side. Something still seemed off to him. "Don, normally this would be the equivalent of bench warming for you and I know how much you hate that. Why are you stuck sitting in a room and, more importantly, why aren't you angry about it?"

Don sighed. He wasn't sure how much to tell Charlie but thought perhaps he'd feel better about it if he got things out in the open. Besides, Charlie was likely to find out anyways.

"The witness's name is Olivia Brecht," Don said.

"Brecht as in Brecht Component Labs?" Charlie asked excitedly.

"Yeah," Don had gotten that much out of his brief call to the office.

"I know Brian Brecht of BCL. We ran into each other a few times when I was getting my doctorate. His research and development of DSPs revolutionized the consumer electronics industry. You know, the goal of DSPs is to perform as many arithmetic operations as possible in the smallest number of cycles and Brian's approach to the signal processing algorithms..."

Don cut him off with the wave of a hand. "Charlie, you mean you knew Brian Brecht. He died three years ago."

Charlie stopped mid-sentence and his expression shifted. He fell silent for a moment.

Don felt bad for being so abrupt with him. "Look Charlie, that was rude of me and I apologize. I shouldn't have just blurted it out like that."

"No, it's okay," Charlie said, still a bit saddened by the news. "If Brian and I had been friends, I'd have known already. We were just fellow math geeks who were interested in working on some of the same problems. He had a thing for P vs. NP too." Charlie stared down at his equations for another moment without really seeing them.

Don wasn't sure if this was the right time to hit him with the next piece of bad news.

"Charlie, his wife Olivia? You know her too."

Charlie looked up at him, confused. "I didn't even know he was married."

"Charlie, he married Olivia Gonzales. My Olivia..."

"O." Charlie unknowingly echoed Don.

"Yeah," Don nodded.