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: Sorry that this one was so long coming. I didn't forget about you, but time definitely wasn't on my side this week! (I'm trying out some Charlie angst here per request.)

Chapter Eight:

Don slammed the door of the black SUV shut, blinking against the bright sunshine of the early afternoon. He had been working for hours at the FBI office and hadn't realized it was past 2:00 by the time Terry's captors had called for a second time. It was difficult to tell how the last phone call had gone – the man he had spoken to was intelligent and completely without conscience. He knew that getting Terry back alive and safely was now dependent on Charlie's forged formula, and he decided to check up on his brother's progress.

Entering the kitchen he threw his keys on the counter and walked through to the dining room, where Charlie could often be seen buried in papers and textbooks. He was nowhere in sight. "Charlie? Charlie are you in here?" he called.

"Donny?" he heard a voice answer from upstairs. He heard his father coming down the stairs and went out to meet him in the foyer.

"Hey, Dad. Have you seen Charlie lately?"

"Yeah…I think he went out to the shed. He said he had a lot of work to do," Alan Eppes' brow furrowed in puzzlement, "Why? Is something the matter with him?"

Don sighed heavily, finding he didn't want to explain what had happened to his father, not wanting him to worry about a situation that he couldn't help with. "No, nothing's wrong with Charlie…I just asked him for some help with a case, and I wanted to know if he made any progress."

Alan still looked interested. "Is this the crime spree you were talking about the other night? Did Charlie manage to get a formula ready to catch the criminals?"

"Not exactly," he replied, hesitatingly. Looking into his father's face, he suddenly couldn't really understand why he didn't want to tell him what happened – he cared about Terry, too, and he had as much right to know as anyone.

Don sat on the bottom step, avoiding his father's eyes. "Terry was kidnapped sometime last night. The guys who have her called the office this morning. They want to trade Charlie's formula for her life."

"You didn't give it to them?" Alan asked, sitting beside Don.

"No, of course not! We're pretty sure the guys who have her are the ones that are involved with the crime spree. They won't hesitate to kill her if they don't get what they want."

Alan put a hand on Don's shoulder. "How are you taking it?"

"How do you think I'm taking it? This would never have happened if I hadn't been so stupid and let her go home alone." Seeing his father's confused face, he explained, "Terry's car broke down, and I let her walk home by herself; she was taken right off the street."

Feeling self-hatred boil up inside himself again, he put his head in his hands, angry and frustrated. He heard Alan's voice again, "Terry's strong and smart. She'll make it, but she'll need you doing the best you can from here, so you're doing her no favors when you're like this. I know she wouldn't want you to blame yourself."

Don felt that pity or comfort was the last thing he deserved at that point and stood purposefully. "You said that Charlie went out to the shed?"

"Yeah. What does he have to do with this?"

"We can't risk giving away Charlie's formula, so we're going to try to use a forged copy of his equations in exchange for Terry. The man who called wants it ready by tomorrow morning, so it's going to have to be a convincing lie," Don said.

Alan stared up at his son from the steps. "That's a lot of responsibility to put on his shoulders. How will he feel if it doesn't work, and Terry doesn't make it –"

"She will!" Don flared, "We'll get her back, and everything will be fine! Charlie wanted to do this, he wanted to help, and I wasn't about to turn down the only plan we had!"

"You know that Charlie could never say no to you, Donny," Alan shot back.

"I didn't ask for this to happen, Dad…and this may be the only chance we have to get her back." Alan watched him silently. "I'm going to talk to Charlie."

Without waiting for another accusatory remark from his father, Don slammed through the house to the kitchen door, crossing the sunny, greened lawn to the shed in the backyard. He creaked open the door and saw Charlie's usual blackboards pinned up around the walls. Bits of chalk littered the wooden floor, and wads of crumpled paper were strewn about the small desk and chair where Charlie was sitting hunched over a pad, carefully copying numbers from one of the enormous chalkboards. Don watched him for a moment, amazed at his complete absorption in his work, and finally closed the shed door. Charlie's head snapped up at the sudden noise.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," Don said.

"That's okay. I could use a break." Charlie leaned back in his chair, stretching wearily.

Don took the seat next to Charlie and glanced uncomprehendingly at the mathematics around the room. "How's it been going?"

"Well, I've gotten a lot of the copying done. I picked one of these unsolvable postulates that emphasizes the basis of prime numbers in relation to probability theory…" he trailed off, seeing Don's glazed expression. "But that's not really important. It should work well enough for our purposes. Did they call you back at the office after I left?"

"Yeah. I managed to buy us some time for you to work – we have until 10:00 tomorrow morning, and if he's happy with the formula, we can have Terry back. I have a tape of the conversation – do you want to listen to it?" he asked.

Charlie nodded, and Don took the small tape recorder from the pocket of his jacket, rewinding the tape and pushing the play button. Hearing the man's cold, arrogant voice again was enough to turn his stomach, but he forced himself to listen to the recording in silence. He heard the familiar ultimatum, "If there's one paper missing from your brother's work, her brains will be splattered all over the sidewalk," and closed his eyes in disgust. When the recording ended, Don looked up at Charlie and was horrified to see that his brother was staring down at the recorder, his eyes huge and round, and his face a ghostly pale sheen of white.

"Are you okay?" he asked, putting a concerned hand on his brother's elbow.

Charlie's stare flickered from the recorder to Don, his eyes filled with fear and anguish. "So they're serious? They're really going to kill Terry if they don't believe the formula?"

Don slowly nodded, and Charlie stood anxiously, collecting the papers around the table in nervous, twitchy movements looking uncharacteristically shaken. Don could hear snippets of the words he was muttering under his breath, "…all wrong…won't work…use another one, need another one…so stupid…"

"Charlie, what are you doing?" He continued to compulsively straighten his papers, mumbling to himself without regard for Don. "Charlie, stop it!" He moved to the blackboard, taking up an eraser and eliminating several figures from the mess of scribbled formulas.

"Charlie!" Don shouted, violently standing from the table. Charlie froze, eraser in hand, breathing in small hiccupped gasps. "What's wrong?"

He watched Charlie's hands move in vague circles, his eyes darting from the blackboard to the pile of papers on the desk to the tiny voice recorder. "It won't work, I know it won't work. This is all wrong," he said, gesturing to the papers, "I'm going to make a mistake, and he'll see it, and he'll kill her. And it'll be all my fault because I messed up. I need to fix it, I need to…I just need to start over."

Don's mind instantly flashed back to the conversation he had had with his father; the day wasn't even over, and Charlie was already stewing in self-recrimination. He moved quickly to his brother, putting a comforting arm around him. "Charlie, you're fine. The work you're doing is great – you can do this, but you need to stop doubting yourself first. This will work."

Charlie turned his fear-filled gaze to Don, shaking with emotion. "But what if it doesn't? What if I make a mistake and they kill her? It's my fault; it'll be all my fault!"

"You won't make a mistake," Don said with a confidence he didn't entirely feel, taking hold of his brother's shoulders and turning him gently. "We'll get her back…but I'm counting on you to help us. Terry needs you doing the best you can. Can you do that?"

Charlie slowly nodded, Don's plea for help giving him more courage than anything else could have. "We've got until 10:00 tomorrow, right?" He set his jaw and picked up one of the fallen pencils from the shed floor. "I've still got a lot of work to do."

Don gave his brother a grateful smile, squeezing his shoulder in thanks. He stuffed the tape recorder back in his pocket and headed for the shed door to allow his brother some privacy and peace to finish his work. Throwing a last backward glance over his shoulder, he saw Charlie already turned to the blackboard, dutifully replacing some of the numbers he had erased from the formula in his panic. He carefully closed the squeaking door and began his walk back to the house, preparing himself for the hours of logistics work for the morning's formula drop-off that he had ahead of him. In his opinion, tomorrow couldn't come any sooner.

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Any good? Please let me know what you think (I'd be eternally grateful!).