Show: NUMB3RS

Genre: Action/Adventure/Suspense

Rated: T (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.

Author's Note: Again, I worship reviewers – thank you all! Yeah, so I'm putting off writing my English essay on Streetcar Named Desire to churn this out…oh well! Happy reading.

Chapter Five:

The man standing in the doorway stepped into the tiny room, reaching up to pull a chain hanging from the ceiling, turning on a single, naked light bulb and illuminating the room, which was really nothing more than a large closet. Terry immediately recognized him as the man who attacked her on the street, and with the added light, she could finally get a better look at him.

From her vantage point on the floor, she was again struck by how massive he was. His folded arms bulged with muscle and each ended in a hand that looked strong enough to snap her neck. Looking into his face, she was shocked at what she saw. Instead of a brutish, thug-like visage, his blue eyes burned with intelligence, his mouth quirking into a delighted half-smile as he watched Terry study him intently.

"What are you doing down there?" he asked in a patronizing voice that Terry immediately despised.

"What are you doing up there?" she countered, feeling her anger flaring within her.

He chuckled and casually leaned against the doorframe. "You are an FBI agent, aren't you? Don't you know better than to go walking by yourself at night? Cities can be dangerous."

Refusing to be baited, Terry fixed him with a clinical and appraising stare. "Male, Caucasian, thirty to thirty-five years old, 6' 6" to 6' 8", larger physique…maybe 250 pounds…reasonably coherent…"

"Profiling me?" he asked with another grin.

"Of course," she replied, sizing him up again, "Oh yes, I forgot to mention your excruciating arrogance and a tendency toward egocentric behavior."

The smile on his face suddenly faded, and he stepped forward, backhanding her with an enormous fist. She fell to the ground again, landing on her cracked ribs, and she drew in an involuntary hiss of pain. Struggling back into a sitting position, she kept her face neutral, refusing to show him how much pain she was in.

The cheek where he'd hit her stung; reaching up her bound hands, she wiped at it, and her wrist came away bloody. The ring on his hand must have sliced her – she could feel the gash extending from the corner of her left eye toward her chin. She gave a silent prayer of thanks that the cut wasn't two millimeters more to the right and glared back at him defiantly.

"So where are your friends?" she asked, "There were at least two more of you last night."

His voice was now cold and hard, the edge of humor completely gone. "That's not your concern. Besides, I'm sure you know how these things work – I talk and you shut up."

As if on cue, Terry could hear the sounds of heavy footsteps ascending some unseen staircase, and two more men, both physically imposing but obviously deferential to her captor, appeared in the doorway.

He glanced at the pair. "Did you get a call from our friend?"

The man on the left nodded, long brown hair flapping against his forehead. "He said it's all going well on his end. The Feds are completely confused; they're in over their heads, and we've got them right where we want them."

The leader smiled, folding his arms comfortably against his chest. "Good. When are we expecting the next update?"

"He said he'd call tonight and tomorrow morning to keep us up to date on all the wonderfully excruciating details of the stupidity of casework." He nodded in the direction of Terry, "She finally woke up?"

The leader seemed content with the man's news and smiled down at Terry in a revoltingly slimy fashion. "Yup. She certainly likes to talk though, started going off on a spontaneous profile of me. Gotta love Uncle Sam for spending such a butt-load of money on training these guys—"

He was interrupted by the sudden ringing of a muffled cell phone. Terry's heart leapt into her throat as her stomach took a sudden plummet to the floor. She couldn't help flicking her terrified eyes toward her crumpled coat. Her captor followed her gaze and bent to pick up the coat, fishing through the pockets and folds until finding the ringing phone.

"You little bitch," he muttered softly, looking from the phone to Terry.

She met his gaze and said in a steady voice, "That's probably my friends looking for me. They know I'm missing, by now."

The third man, who had been silent up to that point, now starting speaking in a panicked, frantic manner. "She called the Feds, didn't she? The little bitch up and called her buddies at the FBI. We should just dump her somewhere and get out now—"

Terry struggled to keep a passive expression: at the moment she didn't know what would be worse – remaining where she was and staying alive or being taken elsewhere (possibly to be killed) but to be given the potential chance to escape.

The first man watched her silently, turning the phone over in his hands. "She didn't call them," he finally decided, "She was still pretty out of it when I got here. I think we'll be safe for now."

He reached up and shut off the light bulb again, slamming the door as he and the others left the closet. Plunged back into total darkness, Terry was left alone with her fears and prayers to wait for whatever came next.

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Downstairs the three men sat in a sparse living room, darkened by the tightly drawn drapes across the windows. Sitting in a molded armchair, the leader lightly tossed the phone from one palm to the other, barely listening to the other two argue. He looked up only when he heard Dan calling his name, "Bill? What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that this is just too good to pass up," he replied, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Think about it – this lets us get by all the bureaucratic crap we'd have to deal with if we called the office directly. We should go for it. What time is it?"

Dan glanced at his watch. "It's almost 11:00."

"We'll give them until one – let them sweat it out a little more. Negotiating might be a little easier if we get them desperate," Bill said.

"What do we do until then?"

Smiling, Bill settled back in his seat. "We wait."

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Don Eppes hurried through the corridors of the FBI office building having just returned from the sweep of Terry's apartment with David. Agents were still working, but they had searched nearly every square inch of the apartment including the trash, her old mail, and the car. They dusted for finger prints on every flat surface and turned up nothing, leaving Don frustrated and panicky; he knew better than anyone that time was not on their side. They needed to find something…and soon.

He was paged back to the office while he and David were looking through the bedroom for the fourth unsuccessful time that afternoon. He prayed that something had turned up, a witness maybe, or a fingerprint, anything that would point them in the right direction. Rounding the corner, David had to catch his arm to keep him from skidding into Charlie who was also moving at breakneck speed.

"Geez, Charlie! What's the matter?"

"I was just coming to meet you guys. Brooks wants us in the evidence lab; they did the analysis on the folders they found," he panted.

Don nodded, steering Charlie back the way he'd come, weaving in and out of other agents. Charlie took the moment to ask, "Did you find anything?"

"No…she's just…" Don swallowed, not even bothering to finish, relieved they had arrived at the lab.

Brooks looked up from a microscope and nodded a hello, grabbing a chart from the desk before moving over to David and the Eppes brothers.

"We finished the work on the folders," he began. "The blood type's AB-, which is Terry's. It's a good chance it's hers, but they're running some DNA fingerprints on it to make sure. The only fingerprints that turned up on the folders were hers. Whoever threw them away must have gloves – they knew what they were doing."

Don rubbed his temples; they still had nothing to go on. No DNA, no prints, no fibers…it was the perfect crime. He knew Terry was running out of time, and the fact that he couldn't do anything about it was killing him.

His cell phone rung, and he dutifully dug it out of his pocket as Charlie slumped into a chair, head buried in his hands. "Hello?"

"Hello. It's Agent Eppes, isn't it?" a deep, unrecognizable voice responded.

Don immediately went on the alert. "Yes, who's this? How did you get this number?"

The voice chuckled in a calm, patronizing way. "Well, who I am doesn't really pertain to this conversation. All you need to know is that I have something you want, and you have something I want, and luckily for you I'm ready to offer you a deal. And as far as the number goes…I borrowed it from a close friend of yours."

"Terry," Don whispered.

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Cranking this one out practically killed me, and I really don't know why (except for the fact that I should have been doing AP review stuff…must have been the guilt!). Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll review!