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 Three:

Step Three: Despair

A final perimeter sweep had come up clean. Nothing, absolutely nothing pointed to the identities of Charlie's kidnappers, or their motives. Precious hours ticked by, hours that Don knew were just too important to ignore. He had worked more than his share of missing persons cases to know the first hours meant the most. If he and his team didn't find some clue, anything really, there was a large possibility Charlie could--well, Don couldn't think past that point.

Don raised a hand to the large cork-board filled with the current case facts. He remembered when it hadn't had Charlie's picture tacked up. In fact Charlie had been standing next to him when the team had started it. Charlie had been optimistic, and just so confident. Now Charlie was missing, due impart to a miscalculation with high implications. Don had no doubt when that set in his younger brother would beat himself up over it. Charlie was brilliant, and unlike most of the population, didn't often make mistakes. But on this particular case, Charlie had, and Don was just all too aware of the mental repercussions his brother would put himself through. Charlie liked to believe he was incapable of making mistakes.

He didn't like feeling helpless, but at the current moment there simply wasn't anything to do. Each and every agent under his command was busy following leads, tying up the phones lines with Charlie's Amber Alert responses. David himself had been glued to the phone for the past hour, checking in with the city's central traffic camera center. David had assured them they'd find the car. And Terry, bless her heart, was locked in a far room with another agent and a local mathematician trying to calculate the probability of the criminal's intended escape route. She had flown right in from Nevada at the news of Charlie's disappearance and she was doing what he couldn't. Don couldn't be in the room with a different man doing Charlie's job.

Don couldn't ever really recall feeling the way he currently was. Even when a case hit a snag, Don usual had something to go back over. Facts to recheck, people to question again, and at the very least, the scientists from the labs to pester for evidence results. But on this case there was nothing to recheck and certainly no one to speak with. The men who had taken Charlie had been swift, calculated, practiced and good. They hadn't left anything traceable.

"Don!" David offered him a large smile, probably their first good sign of the day. He waved at Don with a sense of urgency.

David rose from his seat, phone still attached to his ear and picked up a red Sharpie. He walked quickly over to the large map across the room. He marked the steel factories on the map and then very carefully began to draw a line connecting one street to another. The red line took a trip down Lancaster, up Michigan and turned East on Browne. It ended sadly in the grungy, low income section of the Fitzgerald area. David thanked the person on the phone and ended the call.

"It wasn't easy, but traffic cameras around Walters Avenue managed to just catch the end of the license plate a couple hours ago. From there it was tracked," David said, pointing along the line. "This way, up into the Fitzgerald complex."

"Yeah, yeah," Don commented. "I know the area. Big meet up place for gang bangers and drug dealers. Little to no camera surveillance in a big area."

Don wasted no time flipping his phone open, calling several teams to the location. They'd search the whole night if they had to.

"Run this to Terry and the consultant," Don ordered. "This should give them a better idea of where to look for the car."

Finally, Don sighed in relief, a lead. It wasn't a spectacular one, and it gave them a huge area to search, but it was better than nothing.

He gathered his keys up and clipped his cell phone to his belt. "Hey, Maria," He called to the agent working nearest him. "I'm going out on the field, call my cell for anything. Tell Terry and David the next time you see them." She nodded seriously to him, before flipping back through a police statement, highlighter in hand.

Don passed through the security checkpoint with a quick nod to Terrance David, the chief of the building's security. The sympathetic look had Don walking faster from the station towards the building's garage. Jesus Christ, was there anyone who didn't know Don had allowed his little brother to be kidnapped under the noses of dozens of Federal Agents?

He had to get home. He had to go to his father and tell him he had lost Charlie. He had to tell his father before the news stations got wind of the whole mess.

And while Don headed towards the house Charlie had bought from their father, Charlie himself was headed from the city. They were leaving LA, Charlie realized desperately. They were heading south, which spelled utter trouble. Not even Don, Charlie realized, would be able to help him if they crossed into Mexican territory. Mexico was easy to lose yourself in.

Charlie lolled his head backwards onto the swayed material behind his head. "Harrison Street Exit," Charlie mumbled to himself, shuffling the important landmark into his mind, willing himself to remember that and a dozen others like it. If he managed to get a hold of a phone or some way to contact Don, he'd have to attain a way to let his brother know where to find him.

And yet as they passed another important landmark, Charlie found his head pounding with a migraine and his eyelids becoming heavy. His nerves were frayed, Charlie understood. His body was near shock from the day's events and this was its way of avoiding a total a complete breakdown. As much as he desperately realized he needed to remember where they were going, if he were to have an attack of any kind, anxiety or whatnot, he was sure the men who had kidnapped him would not be so understanding. Their first instinct happened to be violence and Charlie wanted to desperately avoid at all costs.

Despite his mind's pleas, his body chose that moment to shut down.

The next conscious thought came with an abrupt feeling of warmth. He was leaning on something malleable and soothingly warm. Without opening his eyes he could just imagine how upset Don was going to be he had fallen asleep on the older man. Charlie found his brother's shoulder an easy target when he was sleepy, which annoyed Don to no end. Charlie did it in part because he was comforted by the soft, accessible thuds of his brother's steady and strong heart, and partly because he knew there were few things in his life he could to that utter drove his brother insane.

Then suddenly he was jostled away. His eyes flew open and he realized he was not at home, napping on the comfortable sofa with his brother.

His thoughts came to him as strong hands gripped the front of his shirt and jerked him forward. He stumbled from the car but caught himself from taking a tumble onto the hard cement of the garage they were currently enclosed in.

"Take him inside," Jerry barked.

Charlie felt his arms ripped painfully behind his back as Hank hauled him up the garage stairs into the house, the other men following behind.

Hank led him through the house at a quick pace, giving him only a moment to glace at the layout. Then he was pressed through a doorway and flung down on bed while Clarence filtered into the room and Hank slammed the door.

"Give me the rope," Hank ordered to his associate, eyeing the material on a nearby desk.

Charlie rubbed his wrists, his skin a bright red from the fierce grip it had endured. There was no doubt by the end of the night the red would be a dark blue and black. He sat forward on the squeaky bed just as Hank advanced on him.

"Now be still," Hank warned him, "Or I get to hurt you." He pounced forward to flip Charlie onto his stomach and tied his hands effectively behind his back.

As Hank backed off him, reaching for some type of masking tape Charlie gave a quick and punctuated kick to his assailant's chest. "Let me go!" Charlie wiggled from the bed and managed to take a few freeing steps before he was caught but Hank's large and brutal hands.

While he had been much closer to freedom then ever before just a few moments ago, now he was back on the squeaky bed, a knife pressed into the hallow of his throat.

"I wouldn't do that again, kid," Clarence warned him with a look of authenticity.

"No, no," Hank corrected, pressing his knife into Charlie's throat. "Do it again. I'd love to skin you alive, you little shit. Kick me again and see what happens."

In that moment Charlie realized he'd have to pick his battles very carefully.

"My brother," Charlie told him carefully, "Is going to kick your ass." He wanted the threat of Don Eppes to hang in the air, because Charlie knew all too well what his brother was capable of. Don would find him and he wouldn't sit idly while Hank and Clarence and the rest of their little group were led away in handcuffs. There was a good chance they wouldn't walk at all.

"And what's your brother gonna do?" Hank asked, retracting the knife.

"Don't act so intellectually challenged," Charlie bit back. "Oh, wait, that isn't an act, right?"

Clarence laughed and Hank's eyes narrowed in anger. "You listen to me," He said, leaning forward to replace the knife at Charlie's throat with his elbow, effectively cutting off his air supply. "I dunno why Jerry is keeping you alive. If it was up to me I'd have killed you and dumped your body by now. You can consider yourself lucky, but if you run that mouth anymore I might slip up with me knife. See, I have a tendency to lose control from time to time and if I were to maybe put the knife in your belly, then oops."

Charlie's vision faded as the words became harder and harder to understand. He couldn't breathe, couldn't choke, couldn't do anything his body so desperately wanted. His feet kicked instinctively and his eyes rolled upwards.

"Knock it off!" Clarence gave a good shove to Hank, dislodging him off Charlie. "You'll kill him."

"That was the point," Hank said, swinging around. "And don't you ever put your hands on me again, or I'll fucking slit your throat."

Charlie curled in on himself, sucking in air frantically as the two men argued behind him.

"Get out of here Hank. I'll watch the kid. You go sharpen your knives, or whatever you do."

With a harsh grunt Hank pulled himself from the room, slamming the door behind him, leaving the other two men along.

Charlie kept still, still breathing heavily. "Thank you," he said to Clarence, having no doubt Hank might have seriously wounded him if he had been allowed to continue.

"Hey," Clarence shrugged, "I ain't got nothing against you."

"Then let me go. If you help me get out of here you'll stand the best chance of receiving a lighter sentence from the judge. If you help me I'll help you. I promise you I'll tell the judge what you did for me." He shifted forward into a sitting position, his arms already aching behind his back. "Your name is Clarence, right? Get me out of here Clarence."

Clarence leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. "Look, I'd love to bust you out of here. Hell, I wanted to shove you right out of the car before we took it, but I ain't in charge here. What Jerry says goes, and he wants you around for something, probably insurance. We stole a Fed's car, and you know that, which means they're gonna want it back, and probably you too. You're our way out in case they find us, and that means you can't go anywhere."

"Please," Charlie said, "Just give me a fair chance to get out of here."

"I want to, really," Clarence told him, "But you're a witness and I've got too much ridding on this heist to let you get away. I feel bad, really, but I've got a family and they need the money."

"And this is how you want your family to remember you? You want them to watch the news and see you led away in handcuffs?"

Clarence tipped his chair back and settled his feet onto the desk top. "We won't get caught," he cautioned, "And if we did, we certainly wouldn't go out in handcuffs. Now I suggest you get some rest, because if I know Jerry, he'll be wanting to have a little talk with you later, and you're gonna need your strength for that."

Additional Author's Notes: This story was on a one way trip to the discarded bin for a long time. I got halfway through this chapter and it just wouldn't write itself anymore. I tried a lot of different things, and finally persistence just paid off. The story is still in danger of dying, but I haven't given up hope on it yet.