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: As always, thanks for your reviews! I've gotten many requests for a Don/Terry ending. Don't worry – it's already written. Just stay tuned!

Chapter Twelve:

Don forced himself to drag his eyes from the silent cell phone to Charlie's face, who was standing beside him, shaking and ghostly white. His large dark eyes seemed to have gotten even bigger, taking up most of his horrified face as he stared at Don. The room was completely silent as though no one dared to speak before Don, as though he had some sort of twisted precedence before the others in this situation.

It was all he could do to clear his throat and push the cell phone toward the nearby technician who was waiting to analyze it. "Get this down to the processing room. See if you can find out any new information about him." The technician nodded sympathetically in acknowledgement, taking the tape recorder and leaving the office of silent agents.

Though it was the last thing he felt like doing, he turned from the table to face his fellow agents who all wore miserable expressions of solemnity. "We've still got a day to find her. I want teams of agents searching the streets at least five blocks around the site where we found the files, and keep asking anyone who may have seen anything. David and I will meet with Assistant Director Tursack to update him on the situation. Let's get to work."

As the other agents cleared from the office, Don leaned against the table barely noticing Charlie sit back on the sofa, morosely shuffling through his work on the formula. When the room was finally empty, David quietly approached Don and glanced down at one of the taped copies of the conversation.

"She's still alive. At least we have that much," he said quietly. "If we just keep going through today –"

"David, it's not going to do any good!" Don exclaimed. "We have no idea where she is, no way to contact her, no clue as to who this guy is. We have no other plans! How are we supposed to find her in one day?"

"I don't know…but we can't give up now. We still have an entire day, and we can't waste it."

Don rubbed his eyes wearily. "What are we supposed to tell Tursack? We'll never be able to actually hand over the formula – it's too important to the case. But if we don't give it to him, he'll kill her. He's already hurt her." Don's felt his throat constrict with emotion. "For all we know, she could be bleeding to death in some godforsaken alley, and we can't do a thing about it!"

Leaning against the table alongside Don, David lowered his eyes with a sigh. "I'm frustrated too, but people have been in and gotten out of worse situations before. We just need to see this through to the end, no matter what the outcome."

Grateful for his friend's encouragement, Don nodded and locked eyes with Charlie who had looked up from the pile of papers on the desk. His brother's hands were clenching and unclenching some of the scrap paper, and he could see a twitching muscle and his jaw. Don knew exactly what was happening – Charlie was taking the failure of the plan to heart, as though it was somehow a personal reflection on his own abilities. He suddenly felt a discomforting flashback to yesterday's conversation with his father who had warned him about getting his brother involved with the case.

David suddenly put a hand on Don's shoulder. "Hey, what do you say that I go down and talk to Tursack by myself? I'll tell him what's happened, and you can hang out down here and help out with the analysis of the tape."

Usually Don would have bristled at the idea of handing over temporary control of the case, but he knew that the last thing he felt like doing was informing the Assistant Director of what had happened during the last conversation. "Sure," he replied, "I'll go down to the linguistics lab. Maybe they've been able to narrow down the possible identities of her kidnapper."

Offering him a last, comforting smile and shooting one in Charlie's direction as well, David headed out the door to speak with Tursack. Don collapsed into one of the chairs across from Charlie, pulling several of the papers from the enormous pile toward himself. Briefly glancing at some of the scribbled figures, he tossed the papers back onto the desk and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut.

Charlie's voice suddenly broke the silence, sounding shaky and uncertain, "I'm sorry. This was all my fault."

Barely looking up, Don shook his head. "No it wasn't. You did the best you could, and that's all we could ask for."

"How could he have figured out that it wasn't the real formula so fast? It should've worked – it should have! Everything was there…all the work, all the numbers! I just didn't do good enough!"

"Charlie, it wasn't your fault," Don reassured him, "He must be smarter than we initially thought. He knows what he's doing, and we underestimated him. We just need to keep working to get her back. You heard David, and we've still got a whole day to find her. We just need to keep trying."

Trying to give a confident smile, he managed to catch his brother's eye, convincing him that it really wasn't his fault. Charlie stared at him, desperately attempting to believe the reassurance that Don gave him. He knew that Don believed he'd done his best and that there wasn't anything else he could have done to make the plan more successful. He only wished that he could believe it for himself.

Don stood, straightening several piles of paper as he went. "I'm going to head down to analysis. Do you want to come and see what they found?"

Charlie shook his head, snapping out of his thoughtful reverie. "I'm just going to keep working here. You go ahead."

"Are you sure you're going to be okay?"

Charlie nodded, down casting his eyes toward his work again. Silently, Don looked at him, not knowing what to say to comfort his brother or himself for that matter. From this point it looked hopeless, but he refused to give up on Terry yet – he owed her too much to do that. He saw that Charlie wasn't going to respond to any conversation, so with a sigh, he turned in the direction of the analysis lab, hoping that the newest recording had turned up some information.

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His visit to the lab was less than helpful and hardly encouraging since they now had only twenty-two hours to go until the deadline. Though several technicians were reviewing the tape for the third time, they didn't expect to find anything that they had missed before. Don was half-heartedly sipping coffee and carefully listening to the tape again when David returned from his talk with Assistant Director Tursack.

Without a word of encouragement, Don hurried over and was immediately worried by the glum expression on the other agent's face. "You told him what happened?"

"Yeah, and he basically told us what we already know. Under no circumstances can we hand over the actual formula, but he doesn't want to stop looking for Terry. If we find anything, he says we have the full support of the office."

"So we're stuck. We're right back where we started," Don sighed.

David nodded quietly, noticing the obvious disappointment on his friend's face. Setting down his coffee cup, Don started for the door with a set expression. "I'm going to check in with Agent Brooks. He's coordinating the search of the streets near the location of her abduction, and he may have found something. Contact me if anything else turns up here."

Striding through the FBI office corridors, Don attempted to keep a lock on his turbulent thoughts that were turning more frantic and unbalanced by the minute. Seeing Brooks would do him some good, and being able to distance himself from the chaotic energy that permeated the analysis lab would help. He noticed the office was quieter in this section of the building, and he realized that not every agent in the place could have been switched to Terry's abduction. There were fewer agents around in this section, probably because it was lunch hour and those who weren't working on such an emergency case were able to take a normal break. At this point, Don would have given anything to have Terry back and be able to have the luxury of resuming a normal schedule without the constantly gnawing fear in the pit of his stomach that something was going to be forever missing from his life.

Brooks' office was just at the end of the corridor, and he saw with dismay that the interior was dark and appeared vacated. He supposed he could call his cell phone, but as he neared the office he saw that the door was ajar, and he could hear muffled conversation coming from inside. Don guessed that he was probably conferring with the agents that were searching the city blocks and decided it couldn't hurt to wait inside.

Having reached the door, he was about to step inside when he heard the tail end of one of Brooks' sentences that made him freeze mid-step, "I really don't think that they're going to give you that formula."

Curious, Don inched closer, peering into the crack of the ajar door. Brooks was pacing his darkened office behind the desk, a cell phone pressed to his ear and his back turned to Don. He continued to speak into the phone in urgent tones, deep in conversation with whomever was on the other end of the line, "No, they're meeting with Tursack now….Some of them are searching the streets – your guy got sloppy and threw the files in the trash….Yeah, well you need to be more careful in the future….It doesn't matter….No, Eppes trusts me, and I'm telling you that he doesn't have a plan yet….They're still talking about your last phone call….Yeah, you got their attention! How badly did you shoot her?...But she'll live?...That'll work. Now when do I get the money?...That's fine – but I'd better get all of it!...Just as long as we understand each other….All right, I'll give you a call later….I'll take care of it. Bye."

As Brooks flipped his cell phone closed, Don could barely see through the white spots of rage that bloomed before his eyes. A fellow agent, a member of his own team had done this. He clenched the door knob of the office, white-knuckled and breathing hard. Suddenly, Brooks turned from his desk, freezing as his eyes locked with those of Agent Don Eppes, who was staring at him with a ferocious and raging intensity.

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