Chapter 2

The waitress walked over to David and asked if she could get him a drink. He declined and watched her walk away. Glancing at his watch, for the fourth time, made him wonder where the others were. He'd give them another ten minutes then he'd go looking for them. As he waited he noticed two police cars with lights and sirens blaring drive by. Munching on the fried noodles on the table, he waited. The ten minutes went by and David called the waitress over to apologize saying he had to leave. He threw a couple of dollars on the table for the girl's troubles and headed for the bank.

The bank was around the corner from the restaurant and as David turned the corner he saw where the police cars had gone. As he got closer to the bank he showed his ID to one of the officers.

"We don't need any help from a febbie right now," said the officer.

"Just take me to whoever is in charge," David said, ignoring the insulting remark.

The officer pointed out a SWAT captain a few cars over. David thanked he officer and walked over towards the captain.

"Captain, I'm Special Agent David Sinclair. I think two of my partners and an FBI consultant are in the bank."

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Captain Harris. What makes you think your partners are in there?"

"We were meeting for lunch down the block, but they stopped at the bank first. That was almost an hour ago."

"Damn! If they're in there this complicates matters."

"You think the robbers will use them as collateral, figuring we won't bust in with our own in there."

"It's what I'd do," Captain Harris said. "What're the names of the agents inside?"

"Special Agent Don Eppes and Terry Lake. Don's brother Charlie was also with them."

"Charlie an agent too?"

"No, he's a consultant."

"Thanks for the information. We've been trying to contact the robbers, but so far they aren't answering the phones."

"I'll leave you to your job," David said. "I need to call my supervisor to let him know what's going on."

David stepped to the side and flipped open his phone. He wasn't looking forward to explaining this to Merrick.

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Don leaned his head back against the desk and sighed. The bank robbers had put the other hostages across the room, up against the teller's desk. The hostages ranged in age from approximately 25 - 60. Don was glad there had been no young children in the bank. Terry was sitting next to him watching the bank robbers.

"Profile them for me," Don said.

"Well, for lack of names the leader: he's self-assured and confident that he can pull this off. Blondie, the one who took our ID's, he seems to be arrogant, and has a hair trigger. He's just looking for an excuse to use his gun. The other two I'm not sure of, since we haven't dealt with them yet."

"Well they don't seem to be after the money in the vault," Don observed. "The red head went directly to the computer and has been typing away ever since."

"I noticed that," Terry nodded. "Like Charlie pointed out to us, there's more in a bank then just money. How is he, anyway?"

Don glanced down at Charlie and shook his head. The bleeding had stopped but Charlie was still unconscious. His brother's weight was starting to put his leg to sleep and Don knew he'd have to shift Charlie soon.

"The bleeding's stopped," Don said as he shifted his leg to get more comfortable.

"That's good," Terry said glancing down at Charlie. "I never expected him to do something like that. He's as protective of you as you are of him."

"Yeah, well, it's a brother thing I guess. You can't tell me you don't feel that way about your siblings."

"Oh I do, but Charlie just doesn't seem to be one to confront people."

"Charlie's not as helpless as everyone thinks. He knows how to hold his own in a fight. It just happens he was always the smallest in high school and I generally did the rescuing."

"Charlie knows how to fight?"

"Yeah, dad taught him. He knew Charlie would be picked on at school so he gave him the basics on how to defend himself."

"Who did he practice on?"

"Me, except I would just put my hand on his head and hold him away from me while he would try to hit me." Don smiled as he remembered Charlie's indignant pleas that he was cheating.

"You would," Terry scolded.

"Anyway, I do remember this one time these two guys were beating me up. They were bigger then me and one was pinning my arms while the other beat the crap out of me. Next thing I know the one holding me screams and releases my arms. I jumped on the one that had been hitting me and beat the crap out of him. He ran off and I turned to see what had scared the other one. There was Charlie clinging to the back of this guy as he tried to swat Charlie off."

"If I remember right, he broke my arm."

"Charlie!" Don exclaimed and looked down at his brother.

"Not so loud," Charlie complained as he raised his hand to touch the cut.

"I wouldn't," Don said, grabbing his hand. "We just got the bleeding to stop."

"So this guy broke your arm," Terry prompted.

"Yeah," Don continued. "The goon was finally able to grab Charlie and threw him off. Charlie ended up breaking the radius in his left arm. We told our mom he'd fallen out of a tree."

"I don't think she believed us," Charlie said trying to sit up.

"Whoa, where do you think you're going?" Don asked as he grabbed his brother's shoulders.

"I just want to sit up," Charlie said as he levered himself up and instantly regretted it. "On second thought…"

"I didn't think so," Don said lowering Charlie's head back to his lap.

"You know David's probably pissed at us right now," Terry commented.

"Yeah, he's probably wondering where we are." Don said.

"On average people will wait approximately thirty minutes for someone before they leave," Charlie commented.

"You would know that," Don teased.

"Do you think they're trying to get us out?" Charlie asked.

Don looked down at his brother and saw he was scared. He reached down and pushed his younger brother's unruly curls off his forehead. "Yeah, they're out there. We heard siren's stopping out front while you were taking a nap."

"Now we just have to sit and wait while they negotiate," Terry said.

"Right, which means were going to be here awhile," Don added.

While they were talking the leader was standing behind the redhead at the computer. Terry could see he wasn't happy with what the redhead was doing.

"You said you could do this!" the leader snapped.

"I can, it's just going to take me longer then I thought," the redhead said.

"That's not good enough," the leader said.

The redhead was taken completely by surprise as the leader brought up his gun and shot him in the head. The hostages started screaming and Don knew things had gotten a lot worse.