The Unquantifiable Variable
By Becky Sims
April, 2005
The Eppes family and the characters and situations from the TV show "NUMB3RS" are the property of the Scotts and the creation of Cheryl Heuton and Nick Falacci. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.
Chapter Six, part one
Charlie was once more sitting on the floor leaning against the checkout stand, his injured left leg stretched straight out in front of him, legal pad propped on his right knee. Solana leaned into his left shoulder, and Leeda sniffled softly in her lap. He'd continued doodling, working from memory on Don's internet vector problem. Even if he didn't survive the afternoon, maybe he could at least—
"Draw it again."
"The arc?" He was finding it more and more disconcerting not to be able to see the gunman's face.
"Yeah. Show me how it's different now."
Charlie tilted his head and cocked an eyebrow. "Would you take that mask off if I do? It's hard for me to tell if I'm explaining it right when I can't see your face."
"You don't want me to do that."
Charlie blinked. "I don't?"
He could see the gunman thinking it over, but in the end, the man shook his head.
"Nobody wants to see my face."
What caught Charlie's attention, though, was the way his eyes seemed to linger on Leeda just before he refused. He tried again. All of his instincts were telling him to make a connection with this man, and it was hard when he couldn't read his face. "I teach better when I can see my students."
"Teach?" the man asked. "I thought you were a college kid."
"Not since I was twenty," Charlie answered, and his eyes dropped to the equations on the papers on his knee. He had long accepted that he was different, but this kind of conversation always made him uncomfortable.
"You quit?"
In spite of the situation, he laughed at the thought that someone would take him for a college dropout. "No, I finished my Ph.D."
A small sound from his side drew him to Solana. His heart dropped. There it was, that look that said so clearly you're different and then changed to I don't know you – I can never know you. He sighed.
The gunman cocked his head. "Your brother didn't mind?"
Now Charlie really did smile. "Oh, Don minded, all right. He minded a lot. He was pretty good at hiding it, though. He'd do other things, stuff I could never do, like play baseball and get girls and hang out with the cool guys. He let me tag along sometimes. I wanted so much to be like him. There were times I would have given up every IQ point, just to be like him." He shook his head. "I don't think he ever knew, back then. Now . . . maybe he knows now. I hope he does." He looked down at the graph and fidgeted with his pencil, darkening one of the characters, the triangle that appeared at the bottom of each marked off section.
"I didn't believe him," muttered the gunman.
"Who?" Charlie asked.
"My brother." In one quick motion, he pulled off the mask.
Solana gasped and tucked Leeda against her breast, keeping her head turned away. Charlie felt his stomach lurch. The right side of the man's face was a mess. Angry red scars twisted the corner of his mouth up in a parody of a grin and dragged his eye down in a cast that made his face look like evil incarnate. Tissue was shiny where there was textured beard on the other side of his face, and skin was stretched into odd wrinkles where it should have been smooth.
"What . . . ." Charlie swallowed bile, "what happened?"
"IED," he said simply. "Iraq."
"Can't the doctors—?"
"Not soon enough." His whole attitude was matter-of-fact, as if he'd come to understand what his life would be like from now on, as if he believed it would never change. "VA's swamped, said the docs have done as much as they can for now." He glanced at the front doors. "My brother said it didn't matter, that it didn't change anything. That we were still brothers. It did change things, though."
Charlie wondered how he'd feel if Don had been injured so horribly. Could he take it as well as Ricky had? Could he look Don in the eye and tell him it didn't matter, it made no difference? He nodded slowly. If it meant his brother was alive, instead of gone like his mother—
Oh, God, he had to get out of this. He couldn't let his family lose someone else.
Leeda screamed. Her voice went right through Charlie, drilled straight to the ache in the back of his head. She was staring wide-eyed at the gunman, and it seemed she'd never stop. Solana tried to calm her, but Leeda saw nothing but the maimed face in front of her, and breath after breath just kept the screaming going.
The gunman raised his pistol and looked around frantically. "Stop it!" he yelled. "Shut up!"
"It won't work," Charlie yelled above the noise. "You have to let them go. The police are going to hear her and bust down the door any minute, and they're going to shoot first."
Solana sobbed while she tried to hush Leeda. "Please," she asked. "Please let me take her."
The red marks on the gunman's face stood out lividly.
Charlie rose carefully to one knee, aware that the robber was on a thin edge. "You don't need them," he said. "You have me – you don't need them."
"I can't – I have to – No! I need leverage!"
The phone started to ring, and in the cacophony, Charlie saw the gunman's hand start to shake.
Charlie used the checkout stand to pull himself up the rest of the way and then put himself in front of the girls. He had to keep the man's attention. "You have leverage in me. The FBI is out there and they know I'm in here. They know me – I work with them sometimes – I'm working on a case for them right now." He gestured at all the equations on the papers. "That's what all of this is. They're tracking down a mob killer, and they need me to help them. They'll do anything you want to get me back safe because I'm the only one who can analyze their data. Talk to them, and you'll see." It was a blatant lie – they would do a lot, but not anything – and he knew it even if the gunman didn't. Don couldn't risk letting this lunatic back out on the street. Maybe the man wanted the money to pay for plastic surgery, he didn't know, but he could read determination when he saw it. He made his voice calm, forceful. "You don't need them. Let them go. They're driving you toward chaos, toward the apex of the arc. You have me – it's enough."
The gunman shook his head and fingered his vest. "No – a little girl – they care about a little girl."
"They care about me more," he said.
The phone kept ringing.
"No – I don't believe you."
Charlie knew he had to play his last card. He took a step forward and waved at Solana behind his back. He kept himself in between, kept his eyes on the man. "You remember I said my brother is probably out there." The sudden change of subject caught the man's attention. Charlie could hear Leeda's cries coming from a little farther away. He kept staring at the man's eyes, forced himself to ignore the horrific injuries that surrounded them. "Well, he is." He took a deep breath. "And he's in charge."
"What?"
"He's a Special Agent with the FBI."
"I don't believe you."
"Pick up the phone and tell them you'll only talk to the Agent In Charge. When he gets on, ask him his name." He reached carefully into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He drew his university ID from it, the one with the silly grin and the curl that had fallen over one eye from laughing at something the picture technician had said. He held it out. It was recognizably his face, and in bold letters it labeled him Charles E. Eppes, Professor. "The Agent In Charge will tell you his name is Don Eppes. He's thirty-six years old, and he's my big brother. We just lost our mother a year ago – he won't let anything happen to me. It would kill our father." He waited. The man needed time to process it all, and it was hard for any of them to think with Leeda still shrieking. "You don't need them. I'm leverage enough."
The gunman shifted his pistol to point at Solana. "Pick up the phone," he ordered.
