Title: Snowing on the Beach
Author: Lady-Daine
Rating: PG/K+ (May go up later for language/violence)
Author's Note: Thanks a bunch to everyone who reviewed! It always feels wonderful to get commentary. And, as always, big kudos to LOTRseer3350 for Beta reading- she is a magician that makes mud puddles into readable…sort of…fiction
Again, if you read this, and you don't mind, I do shamelessly love to receive any and all comments, especially critique. No one is a perfect writer!
I'm sorry it took me so very long to update! Things are so very hectic….
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the T.V. show numb3rs, nor do I own any characters, concepts, or anything else relating to the show. I'm simply borrowing some of them because I was too lazy to make up my own. Don't sue me- I'm a Red Sox Fan and a liberal!
Snowing on the Beach
Chapter 8
Charlie rubbed his eyes wearily and blinked a few times before turning his attention back to the page. Seizing the opportune moment, he and Amita had wiled the evening away crunching numbers- literally- as they worked on one of Larry's latest propositions. Time had been stolen away from them, whisked into an oblivion of shadow and fatigue, and already the first rays of morning were creeping in through the kitchen windows.
"I'm going to collapse any moment." His protégée looked up wearily from her computer screen, squinting to make out her professor's face. Their conversation the night before had been…uncomfortable to say the least, in that it was extremely awkward. It had taken only a few moments for realization of her own boldness to creep up with her, and the young woman had drastically shifted the subject as soon as the opportunity arose. The result was a resigned belief that no matter how much she might have wanted to chase after her mentor, or vice versa, destiny did not approve. At least for the time being.
"I feel the same way." Charlie stood up, albeit a little unsteadily, and moved towards the window. He pushed it open, allowing a cool breeze to flow into the room and sweep past his face. Inhaling the sweet aroma of morning dew and earthy must, the young man closed his eyes and allowed himself to savor the moment. It was not often that he managed to work himself into such an exhausted stupor that he was distracted from his work, and allowed to notice small things like morning scents and cool breezes.
"You can have my bed." The mathematician turned back to his student, willing himself awake long enough to get her settled. The perpetual struggle between sleep and anxiety had played against them all night, keeping them awake and alert, even as their bodies demanded to be recharged.
"No, I'm more than fine with a blanket and a sofa," Amita said immediately, looking up and trying to force earnest emotion into her eyes. "Really, I wouldn't feel comfortable-"
"I insist!" Charlie remembered the last time he had appeared "un-gentlemanly" and the scathing lecture he had received from his father.
"And I insist on the opposite. Innocent or not, the thought of sleeping in my thesis advisor's bed would not appear that way, and my mind has ways of twisting comments." Amita forced a smile and stood up, carefully gripping the counter as though to keep her balance. Charlie threw up his hands in defeat.
"Alright, you win." He quickly launched himself into the living room and retrieved a woolen throw-blanket from a corner arm chair. It was a tangle of greens and blues- too dark to be pretty, but comforting in the coolness of its colors. The soft feel of the cloth in Charlie's hands made him long for his own bed, but he shrugged the feeling off and handed the blanket over the Amita before hunting out a pillow from a nearby closet.
"Are you sure you're going to be alright?" He asked, looking rather anxious as the young woman arranged the pillow on the longest couch and removed her shoes.
"I've been living in a dorm for the last few years. This is luxury." Amita threw him another reassuring smile, and sat down on the sofa. "Goodnight Charlie!" She said it with such resolve that the young man turned on his heel and marched up the stairs towards his own rest, trailing a sleepy "goodnight" behind him.
He was dancing again. It was horrible- he was sure that there was mathematical precision to the movements, but they were still awkward and clumsy. Lily moved lightly in his grip, one hand on his shoulder, the other in his hand. She was lax- holding on, but no more touching him then if they were worlds apart. He, on the other hand, held on for dear life, his eyes focused downward as to ward his feet away from prospectively trodding on hers.
"1-2-3, come on Epps, you're a mathematician and I'm counting, why are you off?" Julie's voice was ringing through his confusion and he found himself annoyed. He wasn't a dancer, and he didn't want to be here…
But then again, he didn't want to be anywhere at that particular moment.
Perhaps that was the point.
He kept trying, attempting to remember the ordering of the steps, up, forward, side, back, side, forward…
But then they were falling. The green lawn below them had become a black void of starlight and leering faces, faces that he couldn't see. And Lily wasn't there anymore. Instead, Charlie was dancing with Don, only Don was wearing the sunglasses of a CIA agent, and carrying Lily's rifle…
Charlie sat up urgently, gazing around his empty room and searching for his brother, or sunglasses, or-
"Hey buddy. It's about time." The young man turned towards the door to see Don leaning against the frame, looking wan, but otherwise the same as always- no CIA suits or accessories. The circles under his eyes showed strain and not enough sleep, but the older man's voice sounded fresh and well rested.
"I didn't get to bed until…late." The mathematician answered a little crossly as he forced himself to roll out of bed. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't as steady on his feet as he had hoped. The moment they touched the floor, they rejected his scant weight, and the young man found himself lying on the dark-blue carpet, staring up at his brother. Don's face twisted into a smug grin that made Charlie want to smack him.
"Late? What were you doing? Curled up comfortably with that grad student of-"
"I most certainly was not!" Charlie flew to his feat heatedly, praying that he wouldn't blush. Don nodded vaguely.
"Sure, alright."
"I wasn't!"
"Ok Charlie."
"I WAS NOT!" the young man gritted his teeth, trying to shake the weariness from his eyes as he moved to fulfill his violent motives and throw something at his brother. Don anticipated the move and moved quickly beyond the doorframe.
"I wasn't." Charlie cried again, despondently, feeling defeated.
"Then were you…what was it? A tango? With Lily?"
"Would you shut up? Those of us who do not have intense coffee addictions are not as chipper as one would hope." The professor rubbed his eyes and sat down on his bed, still unable to really function. He needed to start making sleep a priority, much as he hated the idea. "And it was salsa."
"Salsa, ok." Don leaned sideways and rested his head on the doorframe. "Are you going to go to work anytime soon?" he asked.
"What time is it?"
"9:30."
"9:30! I have a lecture in half an hour and I'm not prepared and-" The anxiety of being late for a sermon on vectors and sines offered the mathematician a temporary boost of adrenaline. He swiftly flung himself at Don, forcing the other man aside, and then moved down the hall towards the bathroom, nearly steam-rolling Agent Copland, who had been moving down the hall, also on a caffeine high.
"Sorry," Charlie dodged the younger man and slipped into the bathroom, grabbing a towel from the linen closest just inside the door as he strove to maneuver around the tiled chamber and turn on the shower at the same time. In a moment of clarity, he slammed the door shut, leaving a slightly dazed Alex Copland behind him.
Don shook his head and followed Charlie's dazed path to the bathroom door. Rapping on it with his knuckles, he called in to his brother.
"Charlie?"
"Mph?" The muffled response was followed by a couple of crashes and bangs.
"I'm going to let Lily work in my office today, alright? She's going to be safest there, I think, until we have a better handle on what's going on."
"Uh huh." It sounded like Charlie was trying to brush his teeth, wash his face, and comb his hair all at the same time.
"And I'm sending Copland to school with you. Just in case."
"WHAT?" the various crashes and the sound of running water ceased.
"I think it's best…I don't want to take any risks." Don braced himself. Momentarily, the bathroom door crashed open, sending steam and water droplets flying everywhere. At the center of it all was a very perturbed looking Charlie, a tee shirt on inside out, and a towel wrapped around his waist. In one hand, a comb hung limply, and his black curls were now a tangled mess that fell in his eyes.
"I don't need a…babysitter." The young man gritted his teeth, his expression hostile.
"It's not a babysitter; you're in the middle of a criminal investigation." Don rolled his eyes at his brother and took a step back to avoid getting soaked. "Besides, we always put an agent on you when you're working with us."
"But this isn't a consulting job. This is my work, and my world." Charlie emphasized his point by holding a hand up to his temple. "It's hard enough to keep my dignity on campus when I'm younger then some of my students. You want to make it worse by letting a…fed…. trail me?"
Don took a step back, more than a little surprised to hear the slang term for federal agents slip out of his brother's mouth. He knew it was commonality on college campuses, known for civil disobedience and anti-governmental sentiment, but Charlie had always been meticulously careful not to use the derisive term in front of his brother.
"Yes Charlie." The FBI agent let a little scorn sour his tone as he faced down his brother. "I'm going to let a fed follow you around on the off-chance that someone decides they want to take down a certain math professor. Remember the last time that I assigned an agent to you and you neglected to stay with him?"
At this, the younger man winced visibly, and his already pale skin took on a white sheen. Obviously the painful and very chaotic memory of being pushed to the ground and nearly being taken out by a rogue sniper was very well imbued in the mathematician's mind. Don almost felt bad for his brother, but he was still feeling the stinging after-effects of being called a fed by him.
Charlie ducked his head and side-stepped both agents, heading back to his room and leaving a vague grunt of assent in his wake. Even in his anger, his voice was slightly cowed.
213091283018230192830120938098
"Forty-two year old Jonathon Hart is a contractor on the construction project downtown, where our two suspects came from. He fits the description that was given. I think he's our guy." David leaned back in his chair as he thrust some files at Don, who was perched on a nearby desk. Out of the corner of their eyes, both men could see Lily, bent studiously over a pile of paper and text-books in one corner. She had been silent, sulking since that morning, but between Charlie's glowering looks and a few nasty glares from Alan, who had leveled him with a lecture about sending FBI agents to secure his house, Don had not the energy or the desire to inquire into her mood.
"Why are you so quick to pin it on him?" Terry asked from Don's other side. She also was throwing subversive looks at Lily, and her eyes showed concern.
"Take a look at this." David tapped a few keys on his computer, and a brightly hued website up, bearing the name "AACJ Corp."
"What the hell is that?" The dark brown letters, on a blue plane, were surrounded with what looked to be models of various atoms, complete with animated electrons. Something about it looked very sinister, though Don had no idea why. Never before had he felt threatened by atomic models.
"It's a club of sorts." David said dryly.
"What kind of club?" Don didn't like the tone that the other man was using. It was that sort of resigned, almost amused, very ironic tone that seemed to lead into a particularly frustrating quandary.
"A club-" David couldn't help letting a little bit of drama slip into his voice. "For exiled scientists."
"What?" The black man scrolled down the page and clicked on the entry button.
"It's a group of scientists, mathematicians, any kind of logistician, essentially, who are anti-ethics."
"Anti-ethics?" Terry raised her eyebrows.
"Well, from what I've found, that seems like the best explanation. You see, their rationale is that whatever people can do, they should do. They're pro-everything: stem-cell research, cloning, you name it."
"Well, that doesn't sound too evil. A little on the extreme side. But we're not talking about a mad scientist society or anything." Don leaned forward to read the opening text on the page. It read as rather benign, if a little arrogant.
"Yeah, but I did a little reading on these guys. They're pretty weird. They seem to believe that because they're smart, they should be allowed to play God. Some of the proposals on this site are a little extreme. And so are the members. They seem to draw some pretty sketchy people. Hackers, surgeons with weird operation ideas, weapon designers who once worked for the government, the lists goes on. But some of them could be pretty dangerous."
"So we have brotherhood of kooks out there who want to eliminate morals in the name of science?" Don was skeptical. If these people were really dangerous, he'd probably have dealt with them before, and if not, what would they have to do with a dead CIA agents? David turned towards his superior and nodded, a small smirk on his face.
"That's pretty articulate. So far they've kept a low profile- they haven't done anything that is obviously illegal, just put some weird ideas on the internet and collected a few members. But they're on the CIA watch list, obviously, because they have damage potential. I mean, to join, you have to take some rigorous IQ test and prove that you've qualified to be in the ranks. Then you gotta figure out what's with their name. And you have to cite your devotion to a purely scientific society. From what's on the site here, you have to denounce any other religious faith and stuff. Really extreme."
"I'll say." Don grabbed a chair from a nearby cubicle and wheeled it up next to David so that he could sit next to him.
"But why would these guys want to steal technology from someone else? If they're so smart, why don't they just invent it themselves?" David's brow furrowed as he attempted to work out the twisted logic that was unraveling before them.
"Intelligence doesn't come only in science." Terry replied quickly, also moving forward for a closer look at the screen. "Maybe they thought they'd get back at the CIA for being labeled a threat instead of being showered with laurels. Killing an undercover agent and using her research to hold a city hostage. That'd be one amazingly brilliant operation." The woman sounded almost hopeful as though she preferred this to Julie's government conspiracy theory. Don decided that he did also.
"Lemme get a look at this site. It sounds pretty bizarre. And what does this have to do with Mr. Hart?" David pushed himself back and allowed Don to take over the computer.
"See for yourself. He's the founder."
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Charlie frowned and wiped a few symbols off of his chalkboard before continuing the problem. It had not been a good day. First, he had had to deal with this…fed following him around constantly, then he had allowed himself to fall into the oldest teaching trap into the book in his first class- allowing his students to get him so off topic on some tangent beyond the realm of the class that it would be impossible for him to carry out with a quiz that he had threatened them with for the next day . Then, his second period class, which met first period the day before, was a silent mass of slightly frightened faces, which made lecturing a nightmare. They had been told that the events the day before had been a drill meant to test Charlie in his problem-solving skills, because of the dangers of consulting for the FBI, but not one of them bought it. And to make things worse, everyone around him seemed to be in a ridiculously chipper mood that was wearing on his tightly strung nerves.
The mathematician jumped as his cell phone rang, stealing him away from his morose self-pity. Copland, who had been lounging in the back of his classroom all morning, sat up immediately, his hand going to his waist, and then relaxing as he recognized the sound.
"Hello?" Charlie tried to school his voice into a pleasant tone before he snapped at the wrong person.
"Charlie, it's me."
"Hi Don. Are you checkingup on me to make sure I haven't been kidnapped yet?"
"The way you're acting today Charlie, I'd almost like to see someone pick you up, just to get you to shut up and stop acting like you're five and someone's making you go to bed early."
"I am not acting like I'm-"
"Are too."
"I am not!" From the back of the room, Alex Copland looked stunned at the idea of a math genius and his boss arguing like a pair of adolescents.
"Anyway, look Charlie, I have a few questions for you." The idea of being addressed with questions, perked the professor up immediately, and he instantly forgot that he had been quarreling with his brother moments before.
"Shoot."
"Okay, first off, have you ever heard of an organization called AACJ?"
"AACJ…it sounds familiar…umm…" Charlie squinted his eyes shut for a moment, wracking his mind for a reference, some clue that might allow his memory to collect together his loose strands of thought. "Well…I think that it's meant to stand for four numbers in a sequence. Actually, they are! They're the first four in the sum of multinomial coefficients, only matched up with their corresponding letters in the alphabet. It's a classic example of…" Don blinked as he strove to follow his brother's lightening fast thought process, mildly impressed that a secret coding of a logistician club had taken him about thirty seconds to figure out.
"Ok, Charlie, but what does it mean to you, besides numbers? It's a group of-"
"AACJ! Oh God, I remember now." Charlie tapped himself lightly on the head, willing everything he knew to flow into his head. "They're… kind of a weird group of scientists, a lot of them are college drop-outs and hackers, aren't they? Like, scientific cast-outs? I've heard of them." Now his voice was flavored with a little bitterness. "We lose people to them all the time- kids who go to far with stuff, or get fed up with our rules. Why?"
"We've got a link to Lily's case. The head of the group seems to fit the description and possible whereabouts of the guy who hired our two bozos to try and kidnap her." Charlie dropped his chalk in surprise.
"You think that the AACJ wants to steal anti-matter technology?"
"Maybe." Don's voice sounded a little weary on the phone.
"But that's pretty uncharacteristic; they'd probably want to figure out how to develop it themselves."
"And that's why they'd shoot the one who actually had the data, the mother. Kidnap the daughter, use her limited resources to develop the world's most technologically advanced weapon, and laugh in the face of the CIA for having slipped past their protections."
"Holy mother of-" Charlie suddenly reminded himself to breath. It was brilliant and absolutely sinister, all mixed into one.
"Charlie, you still with me?"
"Yeah, yeah…I'm here." His legs suddenly feeling weak, the young man sat down on the floor, right where he was.
"Look, we're at a disadvantage here because they've got intelligence, and men to lose. This is just a game for them, and we don't know what kind of tactics they'll try next. We were hoping that maybe you'd be able to do something with what we have so far. There's two comparable incidents, so maybe you could devise an equation to…" Don's voice didn't harbor much hope, but it sounded so desperate that Charlie couldn't inform the man that what he was asking was statistically impossible.
"I'll look at what we have, Don, but I don't have much hope that I'll be able to do much with it. I'm all done with classes and into my research block now, so I'll head on over." The mathematician did all he could to hide his own anxiety from his brother. Obviously, Don was under enough pressure without the added worry from his brother's fears.
"Thanks a lot, buddy. I really owe you."
"Don't worry about it." Charlie glanced up at Copland, who had been pretending quite convincingly that he was not listening to the conversation.
"Hey Charlie?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you know what AACJ stands for, besides the sum of multi-whatevers?"
"Uh…American Association for Creative Justice, I think."
"Why, it sounds so honorable and…kind." Don sounded disgusted.
"Yeah, well, you know, to these guys, science and discovery is everything. Even cold blooded murder." Charlie smiled without humor.
"Well, it's going to be an interesting ride. I'll see you in a bit." Charlie quickly snapped his phone shut, gesturing to Copland that they were leaving.
"Don needs me," he said simply, not wanting to elaborate. Alex shook his head as he followed the older man to the exit of the math wing.
"If your mouth were open a little wider, you might be able to swallow my office," the professor informed the agent, glancing back at him. Charlie realized that he found sadistic pleasure in antagonizing the agent, who took everything with relatively good humor. But then, Charlie supposed that he was used to the comments, being with the FBI.
"Sorry." The blonde wiped stands of golden hair out of his eyes, wincing at the harmless jab from the professor. "It's just weird… you know, the way you interact with Agent Epps and the way I'm used to seeing him." He shook his head, mystified.
"Yeah, well I once took a magic marker, and drew Euclid's proof of the Pythagorean Theorem on the famous Agent Epps's forehead." The horrified look on the young agent's face was priceless.
"What did he do to get back at you?" He asked as they made their way outside. Charlie turned back towards the younger man, not feeling particularly charitable towards his babysitter.
"He pinned a rookie federal agent on me, who happens to worship him." Alex tripped slightly at the comment, wondering why he was taking so much abuse from the math genius.
"I know, it sounds like terrible revenge." Charlie continued, waving a hand as he strode towards the parking lot, his bag bouncing behind him. "But then, the whole marker incident was the night before senior prom."