"Let them do their job. Let them do their job," Don chanted under his breath. He watched, eyes hooded, as the Bomb Squad went about their business. Every bus had been hastily emptied and re-routed into home base, where robots and bomb-sniffing dogs had sprung into action. No luck so far, but Don knew that he was right. Somewhere, on one of these busses, sat a package with more kick to it that any passenger had a right to expect. So there he sat at a card table hastily pressed into service as a command desk, doing the heavy supervising of the Bomb Squad from a distance. No matter that the 'supervising' consisted of a politely worded 'please keep out of our way, sir'. He, like every other non Bomb Squad member, wore their heavy flak jackets, just in case, and watched as the men in suits reminiscent of the 'Pillsbury Doughboy Goes To Outer Space' carefully checked out every bark of each and every dog. There were more than a few canines going home to a filet mignon for dinner tonight, he knew.

The call from the computer voice would be forwarded to his cell phone, so that he could be present at this operation. And there was a satchel at his side, courtesy of what he privately liked to call the 'props department.' Ten million? He snorted quietly to himself. The mastermind had fallen down on that issue. There was no way that even the FBI could come up with that amount on two hours notice. Another oddity that didn't fit the profile of the mastermind who planned: he didn't realize that. Some things were brilliantly executed, others fell down in the mud. Odd.

But that didn't mean that Don wouldn't play along. He was getting damn tired of having his chain yanked, and if toting a fake suitcase full of chopped up newspapers would help catch this gang, then he was all for it. Though he'd really rather go to the meet with the knowledge that they'd found the damn bomb.

"How many is that?" he asked, trying for casual.

But David recognized it for what it was: an excuse to seem useful. He felt it himself, watching the Bomb Squad people like a hawk, looking for that sudden sharp jerk of the shoulders that indicated that someone had found something. "I lost count after sixty-seven busses cleared. How many left?"

"Somewhere between five and ten per cent," Don replied. "The manager wasn't sure how many were in the shop for repairs." He sat up straight. "And those won't matter."

"Don?"

"They're not moving! They're still!" Don jumped up, grabbed the Bomb Squad captain. "Don't worry about the busses down for repairs. The bomb won't be there."

"What do you mean?"

"The suspect told us to look for it where it's 'never still.' Non-operational busses are still."

The captain nodded grimly. "Makes sense. I wish you'd had your revelation an hour ago. That's when we checked 'em, waiting for the in-service ones to come in."

"Oh." Don felt less elated. "Sorry."

"Don't be. Keep thinking. Maybe we can end this without loss of life."

Don returned to his make-shift desk, sitting down beside David. Colby joined them, pulling up a folding chair and then declining to sit. He propped a foot onto the seat and leaned and watched. "Six more minutes. If this guy is on time."

"Can't see him being any other way. You drop Charlie off?"

"Yeah. Safe and sound, at CalSci. Tried to show me the stuff he was working on to predict where this guy would strike next. Seemed to think that the variables were getting closer." Colby sighed. "I was good at Calculus, even thought about majoring in math at college, but I gotta tell you, Don, your brother leaves me in the dust."

"Don't let it bother you. He leaves all of us in the dust."

"But does it make him any happier than the rest of us?" David asked, knowing the answer. "He's just a guy, like each of us. He puts his pants on one leg at a time."

"You sure?" Don asked dryly.

Colby stared at him. "He doesn't? How does he get dressed?"

"Yeah, he does. I just wanted to see the look on your face." Don checked his own watch. "And in three more minutes—"

His cell buzzed at him.

"Early," Don commented, flipping it open. "Eppes."

"Warehouse, Fourth and Cienega. Twenty minutes," the computer voice said. "Come alone and unarmed. Or I'll blow up the bomb." And hung up.

"Tracing," David said, his fingers dancing on the equipment in front of him. "Doesn't look good, Don. I lucked into a partial, but I'm looking at a routing station. Not even close to enough time on this call. This guy knows his stuff."

"Keep at it," Don told him. "Nobody's perfect. He's going to make a mistake sometime. You be the one to catch him. Keep on top of this operation here with the busses." He gestured to Colby, slipping a pair of shades over his eyes. "You're with me. I'll drop you off a block away. Handle the LAPD, keep them under control. I don't want this turning into a shooting match with any hotshot SWATs. Let's go."

Despite a suit, a flak jacket, and a shoulder holster tailored to fit unnoticeably under his arm, Don felt naked. Even the small electronic piece snugged into his ear, whispering details about deployment outside, didn't help. He set the small suitcase down at his feet, the better to have his hands free.

The warehouse was empty except for an overwhelming quantity of dust. There was a metal staircase overlaid with rust that led up to a supervisor's office that used to have glass but now only had a little metal fencing to close it in. Windows sat high up along two walls, both looking out over the street and into another warehouse, the view dimmed by soot on the panes. At four in the afternoon it was sunny outside, but the amount of light entering the building was substantially reduced by the windows' lack of transparency. Don pulled off his shades and stuck them in his coat pocket as a tool that interfered with sight in this dim environs. A rat skittered away as Don walked to the center of the floor. An oversized crate labeled as having been received from Unpronounceable, Jakarta, sat in one corner waiting to be claimed. The crate had been waiting a long time, and would wait a while longer. There were a number of Oriental letters on it, and Don ignored them. They weren't pertinent.

What was pertinent was the emptiness around him. He could see anyone coming, and they could see him. They could see that he was alone—or so they should think. This group had been waving guns around since Day One, although no shots had been fired.

Things were escalating. They'd taken out Megan; she could have very easily been killed. And this bomb signaled that killings were no longer off limits. He had to finish this, and quickly, before anyone else got hurt.

"I'm here," he called out, quelling the urge to pull out his gun. "Show yourself."

Nothing.

Don lifted his arms, the better to keep his itchy hand away from his gun. "I'm unarmed. I've brought the money."

"Keep your hands in the air." From behind him. Don froze.

"Don't move."

"I'm not."

"You'd better be alone."

"You see anyone else here besides you and me?"

Don felt rather than heard the quiet footsteps sidle up behind him, flinched when a hand reached under his jacket and slipped out his revolver.

"You were told to be unarmed."

"Where's the bomb?"

A snicker. "Another few minutes, and it'll be pretty obvious. Kick the case behind you, toward me."

The earpiece began whispering at him again. "Don. We found it. We found the bomb, and it's a big one. We're pulling it out of the bus right now."

Good! Don kept his hands up in the air, where the man behind him could see, and shoved the case backward with one foot. "You want to count it?"

An evil chuckle. "Oh, we'll count it, all right. And you'll know pretty quick if the count is what we expect it to be." Don heard metallic sounds behind his back, identified them as the man in black pulling the clip out of Don's own revolver, dropping the pieces onto the floor. "You can stay right here. Don't move for ten minutes, or that bomb will go off before either of us wants it to."

"You got it." Drop almost completed. All Don needed was to get out of this spot alive, and it would be over: bomb defused, no money handed over—just a few stacks of cut newspaper—and no one killed. Including a certain Special Agent Eppes that Don happened to be fond of. And as a bonus, Colby and his band of LAPD locals might even be able to keep this dude from slipping through their fingers. "Staying right here. Not a problem."

"Damn right it won't be."

Not expecting that. Don found himself on his hands and knees on the cold concrete warehouse floor, wobbling with stars going nova in front of his eyes. A moment later the pain caught up with him: the same nova erupted inside his skull. The man in black had cold-cocked him from behind. As blackness closed in, Don hoped that it wasn't with his own weapon. That would be embarrassing.

"Don! Don! You all right?"

What he wanted to say was: why, yes, Colby, I'm perfectly fine. I just decided to take a short nap, here on the dusty warehouse floor while I was waiting for the rest of you to come in and join my impromptu party.

What came out was a groan. Strong hands helped him to sit up, more fireworks going off in his head. "You get 'im?" he finally managed to croak.

"Slipped by us. Call the paramedics!" Colby yelled.

"I'm fine," Don growled. He struggled to stand, feeling at a distinct disadvantage down on the floor. Colby steadied him as he staggered to his feet. "Did you get him?"

"He slipped past," Colby repeated. "You sure you're okay? You're bleeding."

"I'm fine!" Don snarled. "What about the bomb?"

"They're defusing it right now—"

"Tell them to back off. Right now!" Don's head was still spinning. Dammit, don't fall down! Colby won't listen to you if you fall on your face! "Those crooks are going to take one look at what's inside that suitcase and they'll detonate the bomb on the spot! Call it in! Now, Colby!"

"I think you'd better open this, Don."

David's voice was tinged with equal parts sympathy and fear. No, make that two parts fear: fear of what his team leader with a splitting head-ache would say when he came in, and fear of what his team leader would say if David didn't intrude to give him the letter. Actually, three parts fear: the letter looked ominous. There was no particular reason that it looked ominous—it was a plain white envelope, with 'Special Agent Don Eppes' scrawled across the front in a childish hand—but David Sinclair had learned long ago not to discount his gut instincts. And right now that gut was screaming that this letter had something to do with the current case.

Don only held out his hand. One hand; the other was still holding an ice pack to the back of his head. "Been irradiated for anthrax?"

"Already done." David didn't move.

Not their finest case. Megan still hospitalized, although the docs expected to send her home today. Don winced at the thought; she looked worse than he felt. All he had was a rap on the noggin. The profiler was still toting around a sling, and the black eye she sported went perfectly with all the rest of the bruises. And less than an hour ago the bomb that they had been searching for had been detonated remotely, just as Don had feared. The only saving grace was that it had been found, and, at Don's just-in-time warning, put into a detonation chamber. No one had been killed, or even injured. A bunch of unhappy bus drivers, to be sure, at the interruption in their daily routine, and obviously a pack of unhappy criminals who set off the explosion after finding that the suitcase with ten million dollars only held a couple of twenties rubber-banded around some old newspaper, but all in all a better day than anyone had a right to expect.

Except himself. Just a little head-ache, he insisted to himself, holding the ice pack closer, hoping to press away the pain. The aspirin that he took over an hour ago should kick in any time. Right.

He didn't really think that this bunch had access to enough lab supplies to create their own version of anthrax, but then, he hadn't really thought that this bunch would get this far. They were making him look bad. And, right now, they were making him feel bad as well.

He liked David. Really liked his style. At the moment, the other agent was opening the letter addressed to Special Agent Don Eppes, making Don feel like it was David's job to do this for Don, not just because Don had gotten his head busted open and needed one hand for the ice pack.

But Don didn't like what David pulled out of the envelope. It was a single piece of white paper, folded into three's so that it would fit inside. David opened it up.

It was a picture of Megan.

It was a black and white picture of Megan lying crumpled on the ground at the aquarium, blood leaking out darkly onto the cement, Don's own Suburban in the corner of the picture. There were several people in the background, people that Don didn't remember seeing because at the time he'd been a little busy dashing forward to see if the profiler still lived. Only the 'ium' of Aquarium could be seen from the sign hanging down just low enough to be included in the picture.

And there was a caption, written in a childish scrawl:

I guess I don't have to speak to her anymore. And neither do you.

Don found his voice. "When did this come in?"

"About fifteen minutes ago. An eight year old kid brought it to the front desk, said a 'nice lady' gave him five bucks to hand deliver the envelope to us. We've got people talking to the kid, trying to get him to draw us a picture. It's not much to go on. We're not getting much beyond white Caucasian, adult but not elderly. Oh, and brunette hair. Don't hold out much hope, Don. He's only eight. It was his luck to be hanging around where our suspect could make use of him."

"Old enough to take five bucks," Don grunted. "Where's Megan? We still got somebody with her?"

"Yeah. She's still at the hospital, getting ready to be released."

"Keep someone with her at all times," Don ordered, wishing that his head would stop pounding. He indicated the photo. "These are not stable people. They wanted her out of the way. Let's make sure that they don't try again." He paused. A thought tried to crawl into his head, found itself blocked by a barrier composed of unrelieved pain, and battered its way inside anyway. "Why did they want her out of the way?"

"Don?"

"I mean, look at it, David. We were all there. They could have picked off any one of us; you, me, Colby. Why Megan? This is a group that does their homework. They plan. They had to have planned to take her out there at the Aquarium. The place I can understand: very public and very obvious. But why Megan?"

"What is she?" David mused. "She profiles. She may have had the best chance at stopping them. Going back to what you said earlier, about being pro-active. All the rest of us just respond to what comes in. They send us clues, we solve the riddle, and we jump as soon as we find out how high. All retro-active. But Megan was looking at who these guys are, what kind of people. She was looking ahead."

"And that made her dangerous to them." Don decided not to nod his head. It might fall off. "Make sure you get that protection for her, David. And let's take this to her," he added, indicating the white paper with the profiler's photo on it. "Megan also does a bit of handwriting analysis with her profiling. Let's see what she makes of this." Don considered for a moment, wondering when the damn aspirin would finally kick in. He sighed, and reached into his pocket to pull out the car keys. He tossed them over. "You drive." Maybe a short nap would do him good.