Almost everyone around the table was edgy, nervous, waiting for the call to come in. It seemed to be the only routine that the criminals had established, this taunting phone call that occurred every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Most considerate, Colby had termed it sarcastically, giving them the weekend off to reflect on inadequate crime-solving options. Ruined the weekend most thoroughly, thinking about the should'a, would'a, could'a.

Almost everyone was edgy. Everyone, that is, except for a certain mathematician who was jotting down notes on several pieces of paper, squeezing in minutiae between the lines. Charlie appeared completely relaxed, intent on what he was writing. The pencil went from the chewing position to a scribbling process and back to chewing.

"What are you doing?" Don tried to keep the nerves out of his voice. He almost succeeded.

Charlie kept writing. Hyper-focused.

"Charlie!"

Charlie jumped. Came out of his fugue. "What?"

"What are you doing?"

"This?" Charlie didn't appear to realize that he was supposed to be agonizing with the rest of them, waiting for the next call to come in that would send them scurrying like chickens in a coop with a fox that had just jumped in. "Lecture notes. I promised Marty Detmer that I'd cover tomorrow's lecture for him, and Thursday's; got a conference that he's presenting at. He says that this bunch is a bit more Gen X than usual, needs to be spoon fed. I'm putting in stuff to make sure I go slower than usual."

"At a time like this?" Don started to ask, and then withdrew the question. Megan's eyes beamed approval, and Don almost glared back at her but held back. It wasn't Charlie's fault that he didn't have the same level of anxiety as the rest of them. He was only the consultant. He wouldn't take the heat for another failure. And, for the professor of mathematics, preparing a lecture would be a good use of spare minutes until the big event of the computerized taunting phone call. Don envied Charlie his ability to compartmentalize, and use the time to his advantage. And then envied Megan her ability to accept people for what they were. Charlie should have had a sister like her, one that understood him. Like Mom. Not an older brother who felt left out of the family because he wasn't 'gifted'.

Colby, however, smoldered. But he stayed quiet. Don almost called him on it, almost; recognized that Colby was as on edge as he himself. And that Don himself would only be harassing the junior man only to relieve his own over-worked nerves. Better to just get this phone call over with. Maybe this would be the time that they caught this gang with a superiority complex. Maybe this time they'd get those few extra moments that would spell success instead of too little, too late.

The phone rang. Despite expecting it, everyone—except Charlie—jumped. David switched on the recorder and the tracing equipment, held up his finger for them to wait until it was going, then pointed. Go.

Megan picked up the phone. "Reeves."

"I will not speak to you." The computer-generated voice wasted no time on pleasantries. "Get the man in charge."

Don shook his head. Keep going. Push him.

"You'll talk to me, or you won't talk to anyone," Megan said calmly. Infuriatingly. "Who are you? What is it this time?"

Colby started ticking off the seconds. A few more, and the locators would kick in, if only Megan could keep the connection going long enough.

"Get the man in charge."

Again Don shook his head. Did the computer voice sound rattled?

"You'll talk to me. Your little riddles are really too childish," Megan sneered, keeping her eyes on Don for guidance. He nodded: you're doing fine. "It only took seventeen minutes to crack the last one. If you're going to do this, at least put some effort into it."

Click.

Shock. The team stared at the phone. The suspect had hung up on them.

David scrambled over the recorder. Colby, on another line, frowned. "Damn. Not enough. Not long enough to get a fix." He looked up at the others. "What do we do now? We don't even have any of his stupid clues to go on."

Don too was not happy over the outcome, but wasting time over what didn't happen wasn't what he was good at. "We do what we always do: we follow up after it happens. Most criminals aren't considerate enough to give us this kind of information on their activities in the first place. We'll go at this as if we never got any of these calls."

David nodded, determined not to let the situation get him down. "We find clues. We talk to suspects. Then we make arrests."

"We can do this," Megan agreed.

Or we can continue to let him make fools of us, went unsaid.

The clue came over the fax machine, instead. One of the clerical types, seeing Don's name on it and knowing that the agent was working the case, brought it upstairs to where Don sat glumly reviewing the lack of facts to work with. He'd been looking at the same information of nothing for the last half hour, and it looked just as incomprehensible as it did when he started. The girl knocked timidly on the door, and Don leaned back to wave her in.

"Mr. Eppes, this came through the fax—"

Don snatched it from the girl's hand, recognizing the significance immediately. "When did this come in?"

"Just now," she stammered. "It just finished coming out of the fax—"

"David!" he yelled. "Trace this fax number!" What a time for Charlie to be sent back to his own job! There it was, another set of letters with numbers this time, looking for all the world like a three year old had upset a toy chest full of blocks onto the paper.

The team moved like clockwork. David traced the number that the fax came in on: dead end. It was an office supply store that faxed pages through every day, a buck a page. Over-priced, but the mastermind behind this stupid farce wasn't being picky. Colby monitored the LAPD calls, waiting for something, anything, to come in: something including three men in black ski masks. If history was anything to go by, the crime would be going down right now while the FBI scrambled to decipher the latest code.

Don himself punched in the fast dial on his cell: Charlie. And got the voice mail. And got the voice mail again. "C'mon, c'mon," he muttered. "Pick up. Pick up." And tried the front desk of the math department at CalSci, only to get another answering machine inviting him to select from the various professors by either pressing the correct extension or '8' for dial by name. He hung up, tried again, and finally got a gum-chewing human voice.

"Would you like to leave a message? I can put you into Dr. Eppes' voice mail."

"No, I do not want to go into voice mail," Don yelled before she could too hastily switch him there. "I want you to go find him! This is an emergency!"

"Dr. Merion, head of the Math Department, has issued a statement that disagreements over grades are not to be considered emergencies no matter how close to finals' week. I can put you into Dr. Eppes' voice mail—"

"I am not a student! I have to speak to him now! This is a federal emergency—"

"One moment, please."

"Don't put me on hold—!"

Click. Don found himself talking to dead air. "So help me, if I get one more voice mail I will go over and arrest someone for obstruction of justice—"

"Dr. Eppes speaking."

Not voice mail! "Charlie! Where were you?" Forgetting that he'd sent his brother back to CalSci. And forgetting that that was where he'd called. "Never mind. Another code came in. How soon can you get back here?"

"The busses—"

"Never mind; I'll send someone for you. Damn, another half hour—"

"Don, why don't you fax it to me?" Charlie said reasonably. "I'm standing right here in the main office of the department, and I think this is one of the machine's good days. It might even get through in a moment or two."

Don growled. Didn't Charlie understand how serious this was? "Give me the damn number." Moments later the page that he'd received was on its way.

And moments later the answer came back, a new record: fourteen minutes, thirty two seconds. "It's the aquarium downtown, Don. Real simple code, this time, almost as if he wanted me to solve it quickly—"

"Thanks, Charlie. I'll be in touch. Bye."

"In, out, gone." The aquarium manager was upset, and rightfully so. What wasn't right was her desire to take it out on the people who had come to help. "Where were you people? I pushed the silent alarm."

"That alarm goes to LAPD, not the FBI," Don responded. "They came as quickly as they could. We arrived on their tails, without receiving any alarm," and neglecting to mention the coded message sent by the suspects. "You say those men were here less than five minutes?"

"They knew exactly what to take, and where to look for it," the manager said, holding back her tears. "I don't know how I'm going to explain this to the board. We needed that money to pay for the new exhibit."

"You say they knew what they were doing?" Don pressed, wishing that Megan was there. She handleddistraught women so much better than he did, but she was already occupied with a bevy of them. The ticket takers were all women except for one whose gender Don was having a little difficulty identifying, and, bottom line, Don would rather that Megan stay right where she was, taking statements from the half dozen crying people who had been up close and personal with the black-masked robbers. Yes, let Megan handle that little chore. Give me a shots fired any day.

"Yes. They came in through that door," and she pointed to the employee entrance, "waved guns around, and pulled all the money out of the cash registers and then forced me to open the safe. It was a lot of money; we hadn't had a chance to deposit thereceipts from the week end."

"Do you think that they knew that?" Don pressed gently.

It was a new thought. The manager's eyes were first puzzled, then grew hard. "You know, I think they did. I don't know how they learned about it, but I'm almost certain that they must have. They knew where everything was. There was no hesitation, no looking around. And they didn't seem to care that I'd pushed the silent alarm."

"I suspect they didn't," Don said wryly. "They knew they'd be gone before anyone could get here." Timing, that was it. This bunch were experts with fast timing. Wonder if Charlie could somehow factor that into one of those equations of his? Nah. This one was going to require some good, old-fashioned hard detective work. Charlie was good at deciphering those ridiculous clues that the mastermind kept sending but those, Don was coming to the conclusion, were designed to keep him and his team off balance. They were time-wasters, things to make Don jump this way when he ought to be jumping that. Sitting around a table, talking to someone who was getting their jollies from making him and his team look like bumbling idiots.

That needed to stop.

"I'll have the Crime Lab people look things over," Don promised the manager, going through the motions, doubting that anything would turn up. These criminals had been very clever, and there was no reason to think that they'd stop thinking over a tank full of exotic fish. The only wonder about it was that no one, so far, had gotten killed during any of the crimes. Don hoped that these criminals had something approximating a conscience. It was a possibility. Guns had been waved, even shots fired on one occasion, but no one killed.

Megan came up to him, an intersecting path with David and Colby. "I'm getting the same gibberish from these witnesses that we've gotten from every other crime scene," she admitted. "Don, I'm frustrated. Don't these people ever make a mistake?"

"They will." Don really hoped that they would. "They have to. Nobody's perfect."

"These guys are trying for the record," Colby groused. "We literally have no leads to go on, nothing to follow up."

David shook his head. "There has to be something. Something that we've overlooked. Someone we can talk to." He shrugged. "I'll hit my street sources again, see if anyone's heard anything. Maybe there's a new guy in town that they can put me onto."

"Do it," Don ordered, as frustrated as the rest. "You gonna talk to Fast Manny? Or you want me to?"

David considered. "You do it, boss. You scared the crap out him last time. Maybe he'll roll better for you."

"You got it." Don sighed, and looked around at the crime scene. He'd done that a lot today, he realized: sighing. There just wasn't a lot to be seen. "Let's pack in it, folks. Megan, I'll get the car. David, take Colby along with you when you squeeze your sources and I'll see you back at the office when you're through. I'll hit your leftovers after that. Hank," he called to the head of the Crime Lab, "give me a report as soon as you have it, right?"

"You got it."

"Give me two seconds, Don," Megan requested, looking at the notes she'd scribbled. "I'll meet you out front."

That was a clear advantage to this job, Don reflected, sliding the key into the ignition of the black Suburban: parking. The parking lot to the aquarium covered at least an acre, which meant a potential ten minutes of walking just to get to the ticket office out front for any sight-seer not taking public transportation. Don, however, did not fit into that category and therefore was able to park the big vehicle just about anywhere he damn well pleased with an officious FBI sign in the front window to ward off any tickets. And, in this case, that meant that he was able to park only a few hundred yards from the entrance, which gave him the perfect vantage point to see everything that happened with a clear and unobstructed view. What it didn't give him was the opportunity to stop it.

Megan emerged from the main entrance, glancing back over her shoulder to say something to someone inside. Probably a 'thanks very much, if you think of anything call me' sort of comment. Then she turned back to the outside view, scanned the area to look for the Suburban and Don himself, and walked toward him. All that Don would remember later in excruciating detail. He would also remember the roar of an engine behind him, one that he ignored at the moment as someone having trouble getting their car started, would remember seeing a silver sedan leap forward and jump the curb, would remember that silver sedan aiming directly for Megan Reeves walking across the front plaza. He would remember the profiler leaping out of the way, watching her get clipped by the edge of the sedan, feeling the plunge in his gut as she slammed into the brick side of the aquarium and flopped gracelessly to the concrete walk.

"Megan!" he screamed. License plate, he thought, wrenching open the Suburban's door, dashing out. But the silver sedan was already streaking off into the distance, and Megan was lying on the ground. And there was too much blood.