Disclaimer and beta thanks in Chapter 1. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed: you're awesome. If you haven't reviewed yet, what are you waiting for? This is almost the last chapter:)

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Chapter 11
Friday, July 1
3:50 P.M.
Long Beach Chemical Supply Company

Don watched as Ramos dialed Charlie's number, then left a message when no one answered. Charlie must have turned his phone off while he was in his meeting at the college. He only hoped his brother would try to call the office first before responding to Ramos's request to meet him. If Charlie showed up at the Customs office unaware of what was going on… Don really didn't want to think about that.

Of course, his own predicament didn't bear much thinking about, either. With his hands cuffed behind him, two armed men in the room and one more outside supervising the loading of the freon, and no one who knew where he was, he wasn't sure how it could get much worse. He'd already been knocked around by the goon standing next to him, and he was sure there was more where that came from. Now that Ramos had identified Charlie, he was sure to have more questions about what the FBI knew about his operation. Don knew if he stayed completely silent, he wouldn't be of any more use to the smugglers. But if he told them too much too soon, he'd wind up just as dead. Deciding how much to tell them meant walking a pretty fine line.

His headache wasn't making it any easier to think. The thump to the back of his head must have been stronger than he'd initially thought, since his vision kept blurring periodically. The swelling around his right eye from a punch he'd received a few minutes ago didn't help, either.

"So, where is he?"

Don lifted his head to look at Jason Ramos. Here we go again, he thought as he braced himself. "I don't know."

Another blow to his midriff resulted in a cracking sound that made him wince. "Where is he?" came the question again.

Running over options in his head as he tried to catch his breath, he decided that maybe a wild goose chase was the best strategy. At least it would get one of the goons out of the way. "I don't know. But," he hurried on with a sidelong glance at the man next to him, "I know where he was half an hour ago."

Ramos planted his hands on the table and leaned forward. "Now we're getting somewhere. Go on."

Don slumped his shoulders and tried to look as defeated as he could, using his body language to convince the man of his sincerity while he tried to relieve the pressure on what he was sure was a cracked rib. "I dropped him off for a meeting with someone at Cal State Long Beach before coming here." Right city, wrong college. When they were making up cover stories while hunting fugitives, Cooper had always said that a lie that was half true was the most likely to be believed. He just hoped it worked here.

"Who?"

"I don't know." Sensing movement on his left, he cringed away and insisted, "I swear, I don't. Some professor in the math department, that's all I know."

There was a long pause. Then Ramos stood up. "Tom, go check it out. Take this with you," and he held out the scrap of paper with Charlie's number on it. "Keep trying to get a hold of him. Bring him back here when you find him."

The guy who'd been standing over him gave him one more cuff on the side of the head before heading towards the door. He paused and asked Ramos something that Don didn't quite hear. With a sideways glance at Don, the Customs agent stepped out into the hallway and shut the door. He could hear the low tone of their conversation, but not the individual words.

Ignoring the pain in his side, he immediately started looking around for some way out. The handcuff key was still in his pocket, and he twisted around until he could feel the cuffs slicing into his skin and the pain from his ribs was enough to make him want to scream. But it was no good. He would have to get his arms out from behind the chair. Unfortunately, the back of the chair was too large for him to lift his arms around it, and he dropped his head against the back in frustration.

When he'd first entered the room, he'd noticed that the upper foot or so of the walls was glass, but he had figured that since the whole building was controlled by Ramos's men, that was a useless piece of information. But a movement up to the right caught his eye. He turned his head, and what he saw made him shake his head to make sure his vision wasn't completely going. Sure enough, a familiar curly head was peeking above the wall, and Charlie was peering at him worriedly through the glass.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he wanted to shout, but he settled for mouthing the words instead. All this time he had been taking punches and blows to keep his brother safe, and the idiot was right in the next room. If Ramos found out…

The only response Charlie made was to hold up his wrist, tap the face of his watch, and hold up two fingers.

Don opened his mouth to start a reply, but snapped it shut as he heard the doorknob turn. He saw Charlie's head disappear from view as the door opened, and he turned towards the doorway as his interrogator entered the room again.

He started with a question to distract Ramos from where he'd been looking. "So, since I've given you some information, how about filling me in?"

The Customs agent chuckled. "This is the part where the villain tells the hero his plans right before the rescue, right?" He shook his head. "You haven't told me anything yet. What about the other location you mentioned on the phone, the one in L.A.? Do you have a team headed there?"

Don lifted his chin. "As we speak."

"Really. Because I just spoke to my men there, and there's no sign of the FBI. You don't suppose they got lost, do you?"

Crap. "I was supposed to meet them there. I thought they were going to go ahead without me, but I guess – "

The sound of Ramos's hand slamming down on the table was like a gunshot. "You are lying to me, Agent Eppes. Which makes me wonder if you're lying about other things, too. "

"I don't know what you're talking about." He kept his expression impassive.

"Where is your brother?"

"I told you, he's at Cal State – "

The other man drew his gun and leveled it between Don's eyes. "Where is he?"

Don swallowed. He couldn't very well say the truth, but he could say the truth as he knew it when the question was first asked. "All right, it wasn't Cal State I brought him to, it was City College just down the street."

Ramos nodded with a satisfied expression. Then he called over his shoulder, "You got that?"

Tom's face appeared in the doorway as he said, "Got it. I'll be right back."

Don said hurriedly, "Wait! Look, I can tell you whatever you want to know. You don't need to bring him into this."

"Right, like you've told me anything useful so far." Ramos shook his head. "Something tells me a mathematician will be a lot more pliable than an FBI agent."

He let the fear that he had been restraining so far creep onto his face. If they thought he really was afraid of them staking out the college, Charlie would be safe next door until the cavalry had arrived. Which should be any minute now, assuming that's what the gesturing at his watch had indicated. And it wasn't too hard to conjure up terror at the thought of Charlie falling into the hands of these men.

"What do you want to know?" he asked quietly, dropping his gaze to the table in front of him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ramos lowering his gun. "Tell me how you knew to come here."

"We figured out there must have been a stockpile. The only question was where." Don kept talking, spinning out the few details he knew of how Charlie had figured out the location of the missing freon. All the while, he was straining his ears for any unusual sounds from outside, anything that would indicate his team had arrived. Surely it had been two minutes by now.

"When is your team really supposed to be at the other site?"

Don hesitated. If he told Ramos, and he contacted someone else to start moving that stockpile, it would be much harder to catch all of the smugglers. But the other man was saying, "You told me on the phone to wait till evening. Is that still the plan?"

Before he could say anything, there were shouts from outside. Thank God. Ramos took a step back, looking down the hallway towards the loading dock. Don could faintly hear, "FBI! Put your hands up!" coming from that direction.

The Customs officer whirled towards Don with a furious expression as he swiftly raised his gun. "You said you didn't tell anyone else. How did they know?"

"I don't know." Of course, he could guess, but he couldn't wait to hear from Charlie how he had managed to call the FBI and get into the building without being noticed. Right after he chewed him out for being here in the first place.

Staring down the barrel of the gun aimed at him, he reminded himself that he wasn't exactly out of the woods yet. "Give it up, Ramos. It's too late. You knew it had to happen at some point. Just put the gun down."

The other man's lips curled into a sneer. "If it's too late for me, it's too late for you." And he cocked the gun.

"No!" came Charlie's muffled cry through the glass partition.

The unexpected sound distracted Ramos as he pulled the trigger, and Don threw himself backwards, tucking his head forward so the back of it didn't connect with the floor as he went crashing down. He landed heavily on his cuffed hands, letting out a sharp cry as he felt something snap in his wrist. The thud of the bullet into the wall behind where he'd been sitting told him how close that had been. He only hoped that Ramos had run out of time to take another shot, because he was unlikely to be able to escape the next one so easily.

"FBI! Do not move!" Terry's commanding voice echoed in the narrow hallway, and Don allowed himself to close his eyes in relief from his crumpled position on the floor. At last, it was over. Now all he had to worry about was the pain in his wrist, which was competing with the pain in his side, while his head injury was reasserting itself via a nearly blinding headache. He rested his head against the cold tile floor for just a moment, just to gather his strength, he told himself.

A few seconds later, Terry was kneeling next to him, holstering her weapon. "Don, are you okay?" Her gentle hands were running over his arms, and he winced as she came into contact with his wrist.

"I think so." He shook his head, but this time the blurring at the corners of his vision didn't go away. "Where's Charlie?"

"Charlie? He called me from the college, and I told him to wait there." She was digging into her pocket, and produced a handcuff key.

"No, no." He shook his head, drawing in a sharp breath at the dizziness it brought. "He's here. He's right next door."

He heard the click of the handcuffs being released, and then Terry was helping him untangle himself from the wreck of the office chair and come to a sitting position. "I'm sure he wouldn't – "

"Don!" He looked up in time to see Ramos being dragged away, and then his brother appeared in the doorway, worry and fear written all over his face. "Don, are you okay?"

"Charlie, what the hell are you doing here?" Terry snapped in a tone that took Don aback.

Charlie stopped short. Then his expression turned apologetic, and he came forward, saying, "I couldn't just wait outside, so I thought I'd look around and see if I could learn anything that might be useful when you got here. But then they locked the door behind me, and I couldn't get out."

Don blinked. "Wait, so when he called you just now, you were right next door?" When Charlie nodded sheepishly, he felt a flash of anger. "My God, Charlie, what were you thinking? These guys were looking for you, and if they found you they were going to kill you. Do you understand that? And here you were sneaking around practically asking to get caught. Damn it, if you weren't…" Then the rush of adrenaline that had been sustaining him for the last fifteen minutes suddenly left, and he sagged back against the leg of the table, fighting the blackness that was seeping in at the edge of his vision.

"I'm sorry," he heard Charlie reply in a small voice. But he was too tired to be angry anymore, and he closed his eyes.

Terry said sharply, "Don?" He felt her hand squeeze his good wrist, and he tried to squeeze back as best he could. "Charlie, there's a medic outside," she said calmly. "Bring him in here, please. Now." He faintly heard footsteps quickly retreating, and then Terry was lightly slapping his face. "Come on, Don, stay with me."

He shook his head slowly. "Safe now," he murmured. Charlie was safe now, and he could rest.

Terry's voice grew more insistent. "You're not safe yet, Don. You need to stay awake so the paramedics can take a look at you." He felt her gentle fingers probing the back of his head, and he winced at the same time she drew in a sharp breath as her fingers encountered the sticky bump. "Don, when did this happen?"

His eyelids were growing heavier, and he muttered something about wanting to sleep. Terry's voice grew fainter as it grew more urgent, but finally he succumbed to the blackness.