"Geometric Improbability"
Show: NUMB3RS
Genre: Action/Adventure/Suspense
Rated: K+ (some violence and language, but it'll be kept at a minimum)
Pairing: Don/Terry friendship
Summary: As Charlie works on his formula to find the perpetrators of a devastating robbery and murder spree, Terry disappears. When Don and the team are given an ultimatum, will they be able to find her in time and uncover the identities of the criminals before another attack?
Disclaimer: I swear I don't own NUMB3RS. I swear I don't make money by writing this.
Please don't beat down my door and arrest me, nice-awesome-CBS-executive-people.
Chapter One:
When Don Eppes entered the Los Angeles FBI office with the morning bagels and coffee, he was still undecided as to whether Charlie had ever left the night before. When he had headed home after a long day, Charlie was still poring over his scribblings and notes, barely acknowledging his goodnight. If Charlie had come home at all, he had left for the office again early that morning, since he was nowhere to be seen when Don woke up for work. Charlie was now stationed in front of a huge white board, marker in hand, furiously scribbling figures into the jumble of numbers and symbols already present.
"Charlie? Pull another all-nighter?" Don asked.
His brother turned from the whiteboard, looking more haggard than Don had seen him in a long time. Though his eyes were sparking with enthusiasm, the dark circles underneath betrayed his exhaustion.
Waving the comment off, he brushed stray hair from his forehead. "I had to. I think I'm close to getting this one."
Don perked up, dumped the bagel bag on a cluttered desk, and moved to the whiteboard with interest.
"Care to explain it?"
"Nope." Charlie shook his head, "Better wait for everyone else. There's no use starting twice. Hey, you brought coffee?"
"Yeah. Yours is second on the left." Don studied the board but knew it was hopeless; the numbers were little more than gibberish to him. He was about to press Charlie further, but his brother had started gulping his hot coffee with such determination that the words were abandoned before he even began.
Just then, Don's partner Terry Lake entered the meeting room, looking flushed and energetic. She grinned him a hello and immediately set to work on a bagel with such intensity that all Don could do was stare.
"You probably could eat it faster if you really tried," he said semi-seriously.
She swallowed some coffee. "Sorry. My car broke down last night, so I walked here this morning."
"You walked? You do know that LA has an excellent public transportation system, don't you?" he asked.
Terry shrugged. "It was only twenty blocks, Don."
He smiled at her incredulously. "Only twenty blocks? Just keep working at that bagel – you'll need it for the trip back tonight."
Smiling at him, she pulled the case file on the table toward her seat and skimmed the contents for the morning update.
Don was glad to see David Sinclair and Agent Brooks round the corner up the hall. Michael Brooks was new to the team, a brilliant psychiatrist and interrogator who had several years of experience and several commendations under his belt. Though Don always appreciated whatever help he could get on a case, he was sometimes hesitant about adding new members to a team. If styles and personalities didn't quite mesh, the whole affair could be a disaster.
Luckily, Brooks proved to be quite the character, taking an immediate liking to Don and Charlie, conversing smoothly with David, and, to Don's amusement and chagrin, succumbing to occasional flirting with Terry. Brooks was fairly young, no older than 33 or 34, very intelligent, and very good-looking. Though he was able to make perceptive observations and leaps of rationale, he was also a team-player and possessed an amazing sense of humor, knowing when and if jokes were appropriate. Don was pleased with his addition to the team and hoped it would stick beyond this assignment.
Now that the team was assembled, Charlie turned from the whiteboard, finally ready to present his new findings.
"I've finally figured out the pattern," he began in an excited voice, "Concentric circles! The intervals of time between the crimes aren't exact, but they're close. The differences in location are too. I mapped it out here."
He motioned toward the huge map of the Los Angeles area where the nine murder/robberies that had occurred were marked with pushpins. There were now large, dark circles connecting clusters of the pins, which now seemed to resemble crop circles.
"Now that I know the pattern, it looks like the group never strikes in the same area for long. If there's some pattern to where these occur" – he motioned toward the clustered circles – "we might be able to triangulate where the attackers are from, or at least, where to expect more attacks."
Don exhaled, already feeling better than he had in days. This case had been bothering him, even more than usual, and he was glad the team finally had a lead to go on. Over the past three months, there had been nine residential robberies, each accompanied by the brutal strangulation of the home's inhabitants. There seemed to be no clear link between victims, no discernible pattern in attack. The valuables that were taken in each case didn't even overlap; the criminals didn't seem to be searching for anything in particular – whatever was there, they took.
The group – Terry was positive it couldn't be the work of a single man – was also incredibly careful. No fingerprints, no evidence, no sloppy mistakes of any kind were made. By this point, leads were slim and tensions running high, so immense relief flooded Don when he heard Charlie's optimistic news. Glancing around the table, he caught the eyes of Terry and David, who both gave him jubilant smiles. Agent Brooks leaned back in his chair, looking reservedly pleased with Charlie's progress.
"So you've got them?" he asked slowly, "You really think we can nail these guys?"
Nodding, Charlie replied, "Yeah, I think we can. The formula needs to be smoothed over, but I think we can seriously work on finding them in the next few days."
He paused, and Don could tell he was about to launch into a full-length litany of mathematical theory, so he cut him off by rising swiftly and allowing the group to break off into their separate tasks. Charlie immediately turned back to the whiteboard, pausing to consult a scrap of paper on the desk and scribble a few Greek symbols into the jumbled mess. Terry and Brooks started in on a huge pile of case files from the National Bureau, trying to find any previous crimes that were committed in the same style as these. As Don and David headed down to the evidence lab, he couldn't help but feel optimistic about the day before him.