Six Steps to Purgatory

Rating: PG-13 (For naughty language) And we're really pushing towards the R rating. Be on the lookout for a change in rating soon.

Authors Notes: Just a little plot bunny who decided to gnaw at my ankle until I gave in.

Authors Warning: Just some dirty language that'll filter in and out, and a bit of violence towards our chaste little Charlie. This could also stand a beta read over.

Disclaimer: If you tie someone up and hide them in your basement, eventually they'll turn over all of their human rights to you. I'm working on the brothers, but for now all character's belong to CBS and the creators.

Chapter Two: Step Two: Hostility

Don wasn't a blushing virgin to police shootouts. He had been in more than his father ever needed to know, and certainly enough to make him an expert in what was an acceptable risk. So now he sat with his back to a steel panel, where he happened to have fallen a few minutes ago. Every attempt he had made to climb to his feet, even in a crouching position had resulted in increased danger to his health. The lousy bastards shooting at him and his team had certainly stockpiled enough ammo to hold them off for a while, which from experience told Don they were up to something.

Next to him David pulled an arm over his face as bullet fire erupted just over his head.

"We're way in over our heads!" David peeked around his defending arm. "We have to think of some thing fast."

Ducking closer to the ground Don retrieved a radio that had been hitched on his belt. "Gordon!" Don called over the police frequency. "What's the ETA on backup?"

Static met his request.

"David, see a way out of here?"

They couldn't stay for long, they were just too exposed. From his own point of view any move he made might make the both he and David large targets to both the criminals and friendly fire. He hadn't meant to get backed into such a location, and it was something even a rookie knew better than to do. He had a really bad feeling and attributed it as a distraction that had allowed him to be backed into a corner, taking David with him. His first year out on the field had taught him not to let distractions effect his performance, but this was different. This was the feeling he got when something very, very bad was happening.

The radio crackled to life. "Eppes?"

"Eppes here!"

"ETA two minutes! Hold on two minutes!"

Don turned to smile in relief to David when the ground shook. His ears rang with pain, his body trembled and a wave of heat washed over him. He opened his eyes that had closed in reflex to see a huge cloud of black smoke erupt from the factory across from him--the one that the criminals had been taking cover in.

David was sprawled out next to him, looking dazed. They had been close, Don realized. Close enough to feel the heat from the blast, and a quick look down at his clothing told him they had been sprayed with pieces of debris.

"David!" Don coughed, reaching for him. "You alright?" Don stumbled to his feet, using the wall to brace himself.

"What happened?" David asked, accepting a hand up.

Around them fellow FBI officers, the Police and SWAT were rising to their full height. Confusion seemed to be an epidemic.

Cautiously, Jose Gordon, a Captain of the police force Don's FBI team worked with frequently jogged over to him. He held his gun in a slack hand, eyes searching the area for escaping suspects. However, reason told him there weren't going to be any.

"They blew themselves up?" David asked from Don's side, nursing the side of his head.

"Our sharp shooters are reporting the explosion came from within the factory," Gordon told them. "From a higher look they're estimating no chance of survival."

Don was well aware you didn't need to be high to realize that. The factory was on fire and it was deathly still inside. No cries for help, no where to run and certainly no place to hide. The force of the blast that had knocked into him was one of deathly proportion. "Suicide, for sure," Don said.

"Willing to take their crimes to their graves," Gordon said with a frown. "Uncommon for their profiles."

Don rubbed his chin. "I'd say so. One or two prior arrests, and a couple years in jail was all they had. Certainly not enough to be desperate enough to blow themselves up according to the threat assessment."

"I believe," Gordon said gravely, "That we may have underestimated the situation."

David nodded in agreement.

Don turned his eyes back to the burning factory and the failed raid. Half a dozen men were probably dead and thousands of dollars of stolen merchandise was destroyed. All in all their operation was a complete failure. Maybe, Don wondered, if he had allowed Charlie a little more time to narrow the right factory down they could have caught the criminals.

"Call in a cleanup crew," Don ordered. He turned to David. "I'm going to head back to the office and explain this. Can you get a ride back with Gordon or another agent?"

David agreed, knowing how little Don was looking forward to having a chat with his superiors. David was more than grateful at that moment that Don was the senior agent.

Don walked swiftly from the burning factory and stepped out onto the nearby street with a breath of air. His hands were shaking like they did after a rush of adrenaline and he tucked them quickly into balls. He turned his head to the left and then the right, and finally frowned. He glanced at the street sign, wondering if he had the wrong street, no matter how familiar it looked.

Where was his car? Where was Charlie? Where were the damn police officers that were supposed to be looking out on the street?

"Agent Eppes!"

Don spun at his name. A young, probably the youngest agent on the team, was running towards him with a frantic look. What was his name? O'Connell? O'Neill? O'Brien? It was O something.

"Agent?" Don addressed him formally.

"Sir, you have to see this."

Then they were rushing along the perimeter of the factory district, towards an alley! One quick estimate told Don that it lead right into the center of the factories. Why weren't there any guards placed at the entrance? How could the floor plans to the district been overlooked so easily?

Oh, Don realized, they hadn't. The bodies of two senior police officers lay in slumped positions, bullets emptied into their heads, execution style.

"Stokes and Forest," A nearby fed told him. "Both on the force thirty years and they wouldn't have gone down without a fight, nor would they have been caught off guard."

"They were overpowered," Don assumed.

Terror suddenly rushed through Don and he was running from the scene, back to the street. He froze in front of the 'Tow Away Zone' sign he damn well knew he had parked in front of, then knelt down next to tire marks.

"Sir?"

Don look up at the kid who's name he still couldn't remember, grateful he had followed.

"My car was parked here," Don said. "My brother was in it."

The kid looked at him uncertainly. "Sir?"

"My much younger brother can't drive," Don ground out. "He's deathly afraid of driving a car, let alone an SUV."

"Maybe another agent of officer drove him?"

"The ones that came running to back us up in the shoot out, or the ones that are laying dead in the alley?"

The kid still wasn't getting it when Don stood and pulled out his cell phone. He punched in a few, familiar numbers and raised the device to his ear, listening to it ring. "Kid," Don addressed him. "We've got a kidnapping." Don barked the information of his SUV into the phone as the other agent took off to inform the police department already at the scene.

"Oh, Charlie," Don whispered, looking on down the street. He felt wetness prick the edges of his eyes at the thought of is baby brother in any sort of danger. And just a second later he forwent the concern of anger. He'd find those idiots who dared take his younger brother anywhere, and heaven help them if they hurt him. He'd find them and he'd make them pay, painfully.

Meanwhile, nearly clear across Los Angelus Charlie rode in Don's SUV with the escaped criminals, never more nervous or scared in his life. Nearly twenty minutes had passed since the car jacking and they were far from LA's most populated areas.

Charlie held his hands in his laps, willing them to stop shaking. He willed his whole body to stop shaking. He could hear the conversation quite clearly that was currently happening in the front part of the SUV and didn't like where it was going one bit. The two men in the front who appeared to be in charge were discussing what to do with him.

"I say we dump his body."

Charlie's ears picked up the driver's words and clenched his eyes closed. He could hear the man to his right chuckling.

"Look," Charlie tried, "I'm not a cop or an FBI agent. I'm nothing special and if you let me go now in this remote area you could be long gone before anyone finds me. I wouldn't tell anyone who you were and you could get out of the city without any trouble."

"You gonna cause us trouble?" The man in the front passenger seat was poking around the glove compartment.

A sharp poke from Charlie's side had him wincing as he recognized the front of a gun being pressed into his side. "Jerry, we could always just get rid of the problem right now." Charlie could safely assume the man on his right was the most aggressive of the group.

"Knock it off!" The man from Charlie's left commanded, speaking for the first time. "Put your goddamn gun away and stop scaring the kid."

The driver swerved into an alley and Charlie bounced against the gun again.

"You shut your mouth, Clarence," The owner of the gun poking into him taunted. "Or I'll shove it in your mouth and blow your brains out."

"Shut up, the both of you!" Jerry, the driver barked, slamming on the breaks. "Now get him out."

The aggressive man was less than gentle as he jerked Charlie out of the SUV. Charlie blinked as his eyes adjusted from the tinted SUV environment to the full rays of the sun. As he was dragged forward he realized they were moving down the dirty alley towards a parked car and another man standing guard in front of it.

"Trouble?" The man of clear Asian decent asked, waving a gun dramatically. His eyes set on Charlie and he frowned, leveling his gun on the Math Professor. "Why the baggage?"

"Fucking Feds," Jerry explained shortly. "Get him in," He said to the man at Charlie's side.

Charlie scooted into the Cadillac's backseat, followed by the aggressive man and Clarence. Both the driver and the man that had sat in the passenger seat of the SUV remained outside to talk with the Asian man.

Charlie wondered just how he'd get himself out of the trouble he had certainly gotten himself into. He had no doubt Don would be on his trail, but for the time being he was on his own. He wasn't incapable of taking care of himself and he sure was resourceful when he needed to be. He wasn't going to be victim.

"Jesus!"

Out of the corner of his eye Charlie saw Clarence duck down and suddenly he was wrenched down painfully by the other man. His arm burned in pain as the familiar sound of gunfire erupted behind them. And the sound of a few bullets hitting the metal of the car registered in Charlie's ears, causing him the hunch down further.

Charlie blinked his eyes open and sat up a bit as the front door to the car popped open, the same men from the SUV sliding in. The man in the passenger seat was bleeding from the arm.

"Lee?" Clarence asked. "Take a hit?"

Charlie turned sharply behind him and spotted the body of an Asian man crumpled and bleeding.

"Flesh wound, barely grazed me," The man in the passenger seat said. He was tying a sort of tourniquet around his arm when Charlie turned back around.

"Where are you taking me?" Charlie managed to ask as Jerry turned the car on and took off down the alley. Because Charlie had since worked out that no matter what he said, they weren't going to voluntarily let him go while he was still breathing. He knew their names, what they looked like and had been fifteen feet away from a murder he was sure Jerry and Lee had committed. They weren't fools and he wasn't getting away unless he managed to pull something amazing out of thin air. Currently his best bet was playing the waiting game. He had to keep calm, not make his kidnappers mad and give Don enough time to find him.

"Hank," Jerry said, nursing a hand to the side of his head. "Shut the kid up." So finally the aggressive man had a name, and a fitting one at that.

The hammer of a gun near his head cocked loudly and Charlie swallowed, deciding he could most certainly keep his mouth shut for duration of his stay.