Swimming upstream. That was what it felt like: salmon swimming upstream to spawn, fighting against the tide. Students with the occasional older professor cascaded down the staircase, following directives battered into bodies through decades of attendance at elementary and high schools: when the fire alarm sounds, go immediately to the nearest stairs and exit the building promptly.
Not that anyone was happy over it. "My books!" one student mumbled, crashing into Don. "Damn stupid time to hold a fire drill," another snarled. "I was in the middle of—" Whatever he was in the middle of, Don didn't care. He pushed and shoved his way up the stairs, battling the crush of bodies that seemed determined to keep him from reaching the third floor.
Second floor. Third—there it was. A big number three pasted on the fire door just below a tiny window.
"Wrong way, guy!" someone growled into his ear. "Don't you know better?"
"FBI!" Don growled back, shoving again, grabbing onto the rail to help haul himself toward the door to the third floor. "Out of my way!"
"FBI? This is for real?" someone asked.
There was a panicked pause, then the rush began. No longer was it a mundane let's follow the rules exodus. With acts of terrorism in the not so distant past, several bright and not so bright brains went into action. Feet moved a good deal quicker. "It's a real fire!" someone screamed.
Don didn't mind. The fewer people to deal with, the better. There could be a second bomb. There could be a third bomb.
Dammit, he hadn't missed anything! He'd gone over Charlie's office before letting his brother in. There was no bomb there! What had happened? Don didn't think that there were any chemistry labs in this building, nothing that could go boom, but he could be wrong. He'd never actually walked these halls, looking into each and every room. There were classrooms and offices. And broom closets. There could be a lab somewhere behind one of the doors. This could have been an honest accident. Someone poured in this when they should have poured in that.
Right. And the mastermind had sent over that picture of Charlie because he thought Don needed another photo on his desk.
He squeezed onto the third floor. For a moment he couldn't remember which way to turn. Smoke hung heavy in the air, papers burning in one office. That way. Charlie's office was in that direction. Toward the most debris. Toward the sound of fire snapping.
"Help me!" a girl pleaded, hanging onto the wall, staggering.
"Stairs!" Don barked. He couldn't tell if she was injured or merely soot-stained and terrified. It didn't matter; she needed to be out of here fast. He grabbed her arm. She yelped, but Don shoved her toward the stairwell and safety. She got caught in the exodus and vanished down the stairs along with others.
He stopped another more ambulatory student who was dragging a limp body with him. The limp body looked to be older, possibly in his sixties. This student's getting an 'A' for sure, even if he's not in this guy's class. "Where's Professor Eppes' office?" he yelled through the confusion. He couldn't believe that he couldn't remember. But every time he'd come here, he'd been with Charlie. Charlie had led the way. Don had followed. Hadn't paid attention.
"Two more doors down. On the left!" was the yelled response.
"Any more left alive?" Don felt obliged to ask, his heart in his mouth. "Did you see Professor Eppes?"
"Don't know. He in his office? Didn't see anyone else." The kid pulled his victim into the stairwell himself, disappearing into the flood of screaming students.
Help will get here in minutes, Don chanted to himself. Gotta find Charlie. The smoke was getting thicker the closer he came to the center of the explosion. Dammit, he hadn't missed anything! He'd looked everywhere in the office for a bomb! He had! How had the damn thing gotten in during the five minutes he been walking out? Had Charlie been so zoned out on his equations that he'd missed someone tossing in an entire bomb? Not even his geeky little brother could be that focused, could he?
The smoke got heavier, made seeing more difficult. Don was reduced to feeling along the walls for door jams, peering with his nose a scant inch away from the legends that told who worked where. There was one:Geoffrey Langerton. Another mathematician. Don recalled meeting the man when Charlie had invited him over for dinner one night. It had ranked up there as one of the most boring evenings of Don's life. Langerton and Charlie had discussed math all night long.
The door had been blown off of its hinges, and Don could hear the crackling of papers burning inside Langerton's office. Here and there the smoke eddied around, more light trying to enter through the destroyed window panes. Don risked a look inside; it looked as though Prof. Langerton hadn't been in his office. Good; one less life on Don's conscience.
Don kept crawling along the wall. He pulled his turtleneck up over his nose and mouth, trying to keep from inhaling the smoke. Step by step, closer he came to Charlie's office. "Charlie!" he yelled, praying for an answer.
There: another door jam. Another door hanging drunkenly from its hinges. Don grabbed it, tried to pull it open, and the door came crashing down almost on top of him. Don cursed, jumped out of the way. "Charlie? Where are you, buddy?"
It was a mess. The smoke from the hallway was being drawn through the room and out through the blown out windows. Charlie's desk had been upended and the mountains of papers were on the floor. Don stared; there weren't enough papers. Not as many as he'd remembered. There had been three foot stacks of papers to be looked at when he was here just minutes ago. Then, as Don watched, the hot draft grabbed another page and wafted it out through the broken panes. Why couldn't I have been that lucky when I was in school? ran crazily through his brain.
The white boards that held the equation to the case had collapsed, and the wall behind had collapsed on top of them leaving a communicating path to Langerton's office next door at where the juncture of ceiling and wall was supposed to be. Smoke drifted in, sinking down amongst the hot eddies of air currents. There was no sign of Charlie—wait! What was that? Don pulled frantically at the fallen cinder blocks, heaving block after block out of the way, trying to get to the unresponsive body below. It was just a hand, a hand grasping a red marker—all of this he would remember in his nightmares—but it was his brother.
"Anybody hear me?" came from the hallway.
"In here!" Don yelled. "I need help!"
Don was never so glad to see the emergency personnel as he was now. There were two of them, both with yellow coats and canisters of oxygen on their back going unused but the hard hats they wore showed evidence of being rained upon by cinder block dust and other not so innocuous particles. Even as they picked their way into the shambles of Charlie's office, another chunk of cinder block struck one on the shoulder.
"Ouch," he said. "Guy, you need to get out of here pronto. It's not safe."
"FBI," Don identified himself. "I need help here. I have to get him out of here."
"We'd better do it fast," the other said, casting a worried eye upward. "This building isn't very stable right now. The ceiling could collapse at any moment. Can you get out by yourself? We'll take care of your guy. He a witness? A suspect?"
"He's not a suspect, he's my brother, and he's a consultant for the FBI!" Don felt his voice rising, and realized his control was slipping. "I'm not leaving without him."
"Let us do our job—" one started, but the other stopped him.
"Don't bother arguing. These federal types are trained not to listen." He turned back to Don. "You can stay, but stay out of our way and if I say move, you move. Got it?"
"Got it." Don shut up. He gotten his reprieve. "Charlie, help's here. We're going to get you out of this. You hear me, buddy?"
No answer. Don refused to let the terror he felt get hold of him again. Charlie would be all right!
Rescuer Number One heaved another cinder block away. "You said he works for the FBI? What a student doing working for the Feds? Undercover?"
"He's not a student, he's a professor. Of math." Don lifted away the white board, revealing dark curls matted with blood oozing sluggishly from underneath. Charlie's face looked astonishingly young, strangely lax with his mind not working.
Don hated it. This wasn't his brother. Even when sleeping, Charlie's brain was on hyper drive. Don couldn't help but reach for the wrist of the hand clutching the red marker, feeling for a pulse.
"Right. Graduate student? I hear they teach classes, too."
"A full professor," Don repeated, grinding his teeth. He compensated by grabbing another cinder block and hurling it away. "Is he going to be okay?" Please, let him be okay!
"Gonna do our best. You really FBI?"
"Want to see my badge?" Just hurry it up!
"You think this had some connection?" Number Two broke in with a serious note. "My people are going to want to know."
"My office will coordinate with yours," Don told him. "I'll give the name of our Bomb Squad captain. This is an ongoing investigation, so don't throw anything away in this room. Don't overlook anything."
"You think he's going to be able to tell us anything when he wakes up?" Number Two indicated Charlie, lying still on the floor.
Don took heart that the rescuer thought that Charlie would live through this. "I hope so, but I wouldn't count on it. I was worried that something like this would happen. I searched his office not five minutes before the explosion. I didn't find anything, and I looked. I didn't think there was a bomb in here."
"Well, duh." Number One jerked his thumb at the collapsed wall, and hoisted away another cinder block. "Primary site was over there. Next office over."
Don froze. "What do you mean?"
"Look at the wall. Blown from the other side. Gotta get our arson guys in, but I'm figuring that your perp planted the bomb in that office next door. Your guy here just got in the way. You sure they were after your man here? Not after the other guy?"
"Yeah." Short. "I'm sure." And they wanted me to get the message, too. If the bomb was planted next door, they could have blown it when both of us were in Charlie's office.
Charlie coughed, and Don's heart caught in his throat.
"Charlie?"
Charlie worked his mouth, but nothing came out. He licked his lips and tried again. "Don?"
"Don't try to move, buddy. We gonna get you out of here."
"Wha—?"
"Our guy put you next on the hit parade." Don kept it vague, aware of ears of the rescuers still clearing the debris away to get at the victim. "David got a fax, with your picture on it. He called me, just before the bomb went off."
It was a little too vague for Charlie at the moment. He closed his eyes wearily, then opened them. "My numbers—" He cried out in sudden pain.
"It's okay," Number Two tried to tell him. "Worst is over. Your leg is a little banged up. Just putting a splint on. Gonna hurt for a minute."
A little banged up? Don felt suddenly nauseous at the quantity of blood leaking onto the linoleum. He swayed, and clutched at the corner of the white board to steady himself. Red marker dye came off on his hand. What the hell was wrong with him? He'd never been affected this way at a crime scene before.
Charlie's blood.
"Steady," Number Two murmured, gripping Don's arm. "Don't you go out on us. He's gonna be okay. Jimmy, you get through to base?"
Number One held up his hand. "Base, this is Rescue Fifty-One. We have a male, Caucasian, approximately twenty years of age—"
"Twenty-nine."
"—thirty years of age, caught in a building collapse. We're still pulling him out. Obvious gross injuries include trauma and probable compound fracture of left leg, possible head trauma. Victim is awake but disoriented. Vitals are as follows:"
Don tuned him out. He didn't want to hear what was wrong, he wanted to hear that they were getting Charlie out of here now.
Another rattle, and more chunks of the ceiling rained down on them. Don leaned over his brother, protecting him from further injury. Something solid struck him on the back and bounced off. There would be a bruise later; Don didn't care.
"Not too much longer now." Number Two kept trying to be cheerful. Don wanted to hit him. "We almost have you free. I'm starting an IV; gonna feel a little stick when it goes in."
Charlie winced. "Ow. Not a little stick," he muttered. "Don, the equation—"
"Damn the equation." Don kept his temper, kept himself under control. "Charlie—"
"Don, I almost have it. I figured it out right after you walked out of the office. Don't let them erase those boards—ow!"
"Sorry," Number One called out. "That's the last of it. Let's board and collar him up and boogie out of here."
"We're getting you out," Don said, hurriedly leaning over to shelter Charlie from another cascade of cinder block dust.
"The equation!" Charlie insisted. "Don—" he coughed, couldn't stop coughing. Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"Water," Don demanded. "Give him something."
"Not yet," Number Two Rescuer told him quietly. "Let's let the docs at the hospital take a look first. Here, give us a hand getting him onto the back board and the stretcher."
The cinder blocks moaned, signaling another imminent collapse of the remainder of the wall beside them. "Gotta move," Number One, Jimmy, said unnecessarily. "You, get at the top of the board. We're gonna slide it under him, roll him like a log on top of it."
"Don," Charlie gasped, "the equation! You've got to take it—" more coughing. More blood. An unrequested groan as they maneuvered him onto the stretcher.
"I'll get it," Don promised. "I'll come back for it."
"Here." Number Two handed over an oxygen mask. "Put this on him."
Don could do that. But Charlie, unaccountably, fought him. "The equation, Don!"
"Charlie, don't argue with me! Breathe in, slow down your breathing. Try to stay quiet. Let these men do their job."
"Can't," Charlie gasped. "Can't…breathe…"
The rescuers exchanged a look. One held a stethoscope to Charlie's chest. "Let's move."
"What?"
Number Two only said, "keep that mask on him. It'll help." He hoisted his end of the stretcher, muscles easily hefting half of the weight.
David found him in the waiting room, head bowed, still dusty and blood-covered. He handed Don a hot cup of high octane coffee. Somehow it managed to smell incredibly enticing and turn his stomach at the same time. He swallowed hard. "Thanks."
"How is he?"
No need to ask who 'he' was. Don closed his eyes and leaned his head back. The wall behind him was rock solid and uncomfortable. "They haven't told me anything. He's still in surgery."
"Bad?"
"I've seen worse." Not on my brother. Mostly on corpses. "You bring the fax?"
"Yeah." David handed it over, careful that there was no one close to the agents. But the waiting room was empty except for a little old lady in the corner, trying to find the correct insurance document for the clerk and having a hard time with it. Don pitied her. Those insurance documents were harder to figure out than the codes the suspect kept sending them. David kept his voice down. "Colby and I worked on it, handed it to the pseudo-geniuses in Tech. Took a while. None of us are up to Charlie-speed."
"Right." Don looked at the scrambled letters, taking them in and not taking them in. Any other agent under his command, he'd demand that they go home and sleep, not look at evidence. A part of him recognized that and tried to tell him to take himself off duty. This isn't helping, Special Agent Eppes.
The picture was just as David had described it earlier: Don and Charlie walking out of FBI headquarters, Don slightly in the lead, heading toward the parking lot. The sun was shining, and the picture crisp and clear and black and white. There were at least a dozen pedestrians on the broad pavement area beside him. But someone in a neat and tidy hand had drawn a sniper's target around Charlie's head. The meaning was very clear, even without deciphering the code below: Charlie was next. And he had been.
The letters were the same as they'd been on every other clue, all capitals and nonsensical. Don struggled to make sense of them.
RZC IBF NWLMTWI ,VWYYW VWENBLF ZM OEBM M'IBF T KT
"Did you run this through—"
David nodded. "It took them a while. But then they went back to some of Charlie's earlier algorithms, and Angela Brighton caught it. Not just a simple substitution, but backwards. A really old trick, but it stumped them for a while. They hadn't been expecting it."
"What does the damn thing say?"
David frowned, and looked away. Then he quoted, "'If I can't talk to Charles Eppes, neither can you.'"
Don's fingers whitened on the paper.
"Go ahead. It's a copy. You can tear it up."
But Don got hold of himself. "It's time to put an end to this, David. It was time a long time ago. Before he took a crack at Megan. Before I let him get to Charlie."
"Not your fault, Don. You did everything right—"
"If I'd done everything right, Charlie wouldn't be in this place!" It came out as a near shout. The little old lady and the clerk looked over at them in dismay. Don shoved his anger down, battling for control. He settled for a harsh whisper. "Dammit, David, Charlie's a damn consultant! He's not supposed to be in the line of fire!" He took a deep breath. "This has got to stop." He deliberately took a few moments to think, to demand of himself that he plan. He forced himself to bottle up the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. There wasn't any time for that. "First, we shore up our defenses. Arrange for a twenty-four hour guard on Charlie. Nobody sees him unless we clear it, and that includes hospital staff. You still have Sherry from Enforcement with Megan?"
"No, her shift on regular hours came up—"
"Pull her." Sherry from Enforcement was no joke, and Don wasn't in the mood for joking. "Make Megan a priority. Our boy took her down for two reasons: one, she stood between him and Charlie and two, he thought that a profiler had the best chance of stopping him. That means he may go after her again. Move Megan to a safe house if anything looks suspicious. Megan still may be our best bet at stopping him."
"Consider it done."
"Next: no one, and I mean no one, goes out alone. Not you, not me, not Colby, not anyone connected with this case. Just because these guys went twice for bombs doesn't mean that they won't switch to a sniper's rifle and scope. And nobody goes out without armor."
"But if this guy won't do anything until Friday—"
"We're not going to count on—" Don was interrupted by a man in green scrubs who emerged from behind the closed double doors. Don tried to ignore the leftover blood that stained one corner of his shirt. He had an uncomfortable feeling that he knew who that blood had come from. "Doctor?"
"You're Mr. Eppes' brother?" Don nodded. "He's a strong man, and lucky," the doctor informed him. "His lung is re-inflating nicely, and the leg looks like it should heal. We were able to realign it without any difficulty. He's a lucky man," the doctor repeated. "I understand that the building collapse at CalSci was a bad one. We had a lot of treat and street's come through. Your brother was the worst off."
"His lung?"
The doctor recognized, as had David, that Don was at the end of his rope. "Sit down, Mr. Eppes. Yes, his lung collapsed, but we were able to get to him in time and the leg fracture was fairly straightforward. He's going to be all right."
Good thing he sat down. Don knew that his knees would be wobbling by now. David knew it, too, for the agent surreptitiously took hold of Don's arm in support and Don blessed his lucky stars that he had this man to work with. "Can I see him?"
"Give us another hour," the doctor requested. "He's still coming out of the anesthesia, and we'll need to get him settled. You can see him then." The doctor frowned, remembering. "In fact, I'd recommend seeing him, Mr. Eppes. As we were putting him under, he kept insisting that he needed to talk to you. It's agitating him. Something about a case? Do you work together, own a business together?"
"More than that," Don replied grimly. "I'm with the FBI, and my brother consults for us. I've already spoken with your hospital administration; there'll be heavy security around his room."
The doctor's face cleared. "Oh. That's what I saw, then, those men in uniform. I just thought we had another jailhouse special. Another stabbing from the local prison."
"Men in uniform?" Don looked at David. "Did you already set up a guard detail?"
"Not me, Don. Firemen?" David asked.
"No, not firemen. I know most of them," the doctor said. "I've treated many of them as well. No, these were people in police uniforms. They tried to go into Recovery, but were turned away. It's a sterile area."
Don went cold. "David, I need those guards here ASAP. See if LAPD can help out. Move on Megan, too."
"On it." David hauled out his cell phone, turning away to talk.
"Doc, I'm going to need you to look at some mug books." Don turned back to the doctor.
"Is this really necessary—"
"I'm afraid it is, doctor," Don pushed. "This is a group of criminals whose activities are escalating. My brother was just the latest in their run of crimes. The next job they pull may be lethal. Those people you saw were likely not policemen."
"They're gone now. It will have to wait until I finish my rounds." The doctor pointedly looked at his watch, pushing back.
"We can do that," Don assured him. "Agent Sinclair here will escort you to FBI headquarters. David?"
"I'll be ready when you are, doctor," David told him. "In the meantime, can you give us a description?"
The doctor shook his head. "I'll have the recovery room nurse talk to you. She's the one who turned them away." He shuddered. "If it weren't for her, we could have had another shooting in our Recovery Room."
"Another one?" Don arched his eyebrows. "Does it happen often?"
"Fortunately, no. High stress place, and sometimes tempers get out of control. Usually it happens in the ER."
But the description by the recovery room nurse did nothing to reassure either agent. The descriptions matched the vague outlines of what the witnesses had told them, but with one exception: this time the three men seemed to be taunting the FBI. One of them left a comment: "Tell Special Agent Eppes that we were here, and that we were turned away." Which did nothing to assuage Don's concern.
It did, however, goose hospital administration to make exceptions in their heretofore iron-clad rules: they permitted Don himself into the recovery room, with his gun carefully hidden underneath a sterile gown and shoes stuffed into charming little blue booties to keep the dirt out, where he got the distinct displeasure of watching his brother have the typical reaction to waking up from anesthesia by grabbing swiftly for a basin. "Very normal," the nurses told him. "Nothing to get concerned about." Hah. Nothing to get concerned about unless you were the one doing the heaving. Don felt nauseous himself. One nurse kindly brought him a stool to sit on, with instructions to stay in that one spot and watch for intruders. And don't move from that spot, because he would get in the way. Seeing all the machinery around that was whirring and beeping and screaming for attention made him promise to do so. The whole set up looked scarier than any shoot out he'd ever been in.
Then Charlie was trying to get his attention. His throat wouldn't work properly—"he had a tube in there just a little while ago, Mr. Eppes. He won't be able to do much more than whisper for a few hours"—but his brother clutched at his hand. "Don."
"I'm here, buddy. You're going to be fine." Don needed to hear that more.
"Equation."
"We're getting it," Don promised, trying to settle Charlie.
"Equation!" The shout didn't emerge from that sore throat but the intent did.
"Charlie!" Don grabbed his kid brother's shoulder, trying to get his point across. "We're getting it. It's part of a crime scene. We can't get in there right away, but I've assigned David to go find it. Be patient. He'll come back with it. We'll get it, buddy."
Charlie stared at him, eyes glazed and trying to stay awake. It didn't work; the narcotics were too powerful. It was just about the only thing that could shut Charlie down. The eyelids faded, and closed. Don sighed in relief.