--
Charlie's office was dark and still marked with crime scene tape. Don flipped the light switch and stared into the room. The gumballs, thankfully had been cleared along with broken glass, but the room was far from clean. Megan stayed just outside the doorway, while Don ducked under the tape and stopped in front of Charlie's desk.
He was looking for something, but what is was he had no idea. After staring at Charlie's desk for what felt like several minutes, he sighed, defeated.
This was stupid. He was at CalSci because of a dream. Yes, it was incredibly eerie that every dream he'd had seemed to come true. Well, every dream except one: his first.
That was the one he didn't remember. He'd woken up with Charlie's name on his lips and his heart beating a mile a minute. Had that been a prediction? Was it big brother intuition? Don and Charlie had been close when they were very little, then the years and high school had driven them apart. He'd never experienced such a connection with his brother.
Of course, having a connection meant absolutely nothing if he didn't find Charlie soon.
He turned and accidentally bumped a few scattered pages teetering on the edge of Charlie's desk. They tumbled to the ground and that's when Don heard it.
A small clang, like the sound of metal hitting the ground.
Metal, or a set of keys. Sure enough, Don bent down when he shifted the fallen papers, he found it. A lone key. Nothing identified it, but Don knew right away it didn't lock Charlie's door. Nor did it lock anything else in the room.
/"Ready to head home?"
Charlie looked up from his blackboard. "Sure," he answered, laying the chalk down. "I just have to stop downstairs for a moment. I need to grab a volume from the Dungeon."
"The Dungeon?" Don asked.
"It's what we call this small storage area down in the basement," Charlie explained. As he spoke, he started shifting the papers and texts occupying the top of his desk. "The key is somewhere..." he muttered. "Ah, here."
He pulled out a single, slightly tarnished key. "Most of the basement is empty due to the flood damage last May. But the Dungeon survived because it's so hidden I guess the water even missed it. You could probably kill someone down there and no one would ever know," he joked.
"I think someone would eventually notice."
Charlie shook his head. "I think I'm the only one that uses that room. It's full of texts that Amita says were 'put there to die.' But she doesn't realize that if she actually looked she could find some very useful research tools down there. Personally I think she just hates the red light."
"Red light?" Don asked.
Charlie grinned. "For some reason, the light bulb down there is red. And a bit dim, but it works, so I'm not complaining."
"You could get it changed. Maybe then Amita would go down there."
"Nah," Charlie answered. "Then it wouldn't be the Dungeon anymore."/
Don scooped the key up and turned back took Megan.
"I know exactly where Charlie is. Call in for more backup." He ducked back under the police tape and headed down the hallway. Megan was at his heels.
"Backup?" she repeated. "Where are you going?"
"Downstairs," Don answered and paused at the door leading into the stairwell. He laid his fingers across his gun for security. He had his hand over the door knob when he saw a piece of white sticking out from underneath the door and he bent down to pick it up.
He paled at the words and passed it off to Megan.
"Two plus two equals four," Megan read. "Or does it? You found the answer, but does it matter if you find it in time?"
"Charlie's in the basement. And we don't have much time. Laine's gotta be here. Back-up," he repeated.
Megan nodded. "Fine. But you can't go alone. That's stupid. Laine overpowered two large men. Wait for back-up."
"I can't." Don opened the door, one hand still on his gun. "Call an ambulance, too. We'll need it."
If Megan answered, he didn't hear it. Something inside him snapped and he was taking the stairs two at a time. He had no rationality for his feelings, it was pure brotherly intuition and he knew if he paused even just another moment, Charlie could be dead.
No, Charlie would be dead.
The basement was dark, the fluorescent light flickered in the cold hallway. Even in the dim lighting, the water damage was apparent and the whole place smelled of mold.
He slowed his pace down slightly, his FBI training kicking in. He'd have hell to pay for entering a potentially dangerous area without back up. Behind him he heard footsteps on the staircase and knew it had to be Megan. He could only hope that she'd made the phone calls.
He stopped in front of the door, gazing down at the thin line of red peering out the door's edges. It seemed too easy. There were no surprises, no Laine to be found. Of course, if Charlie was dead on the other side of the door, Laine didn't need to be around. He would have succeeded and Don would find him and kill him with his bare hands.
"Charlie!" he called, and he heard his breath when he didn't hear anyone inside answer.
He tried again. Nothing. Gun pointed he reached into his pocket with one hand and withdrew the old key, fitting it carefully into the lock. The lock clicked and he started to open the door. He'd only pushed it an inch when he finally got an answer.
"No, stop!"
Don froze. It was weak, but there was no denying it. Charlie.
"Charlie?" he asked.
"You can't open the door." The voice was low and pained.
"Why?"
"You can't."
In the background he heard a door open and he turned around, both hands on his gun. He relaxed when he saw Megan.
"Charlie, you're going to have to be more specific. Laine, is he in there with you?"
There was a brief pause and for some reason Don could picture Charlie shaking his head just before the simple "no" followed.
"Then what?"
"You open the door and...it's connected to the knob."
"What's connected..." The words died in Don's throat when he took a closer look at the barely opened door. Fishing wire.
"Back up?" he asked Megan.
"Coming," she answered.
"They need to get here now. And I think we need the bomb squad."
--
He'd almost killed his little brother. And that's what Laine wanted all along. As promised, Don had agents at his disposal within twenty minutes. They tried to get Charlie to describe what Laine had rigged, but Charlie had stopped answering almost five minutes ago.
Don felt like punching his hand through a wall.
"I don't care how, just get him the hell out of there," he demanded and on two separate occasions when David and Megan had asked him to step away.
In the end, it was Colby that offered the suggestion that got them anywhere. He suggested cutting a panel from the wood, so that they could at least peer in. Ten minutes passed before Don could even get a glimpse of Charlie. Ten excruciatingly long and painful minutes during which both CalSci maintenance and a jigsaw were tracked down.
It was ingenious and would have killed Charlie in the same fashion that Carlson and Philips were killed. The fishing wire was rigged to an elaborate maze of hooks positioned in the ceiling and would have surely strangled Charlie when the door was opened. It was connected so intricately that even if Don had severed the line connected directly to the door it would not have released Charlie. The time he would have spent untangling the line would have cost Charlie his life.
Not that Charlie wasn't near death already. He'd been tortured, cut several places by what Don guessed was a very sharp knife. None of the wounds were life threatening on their own, but several were still bleeding, and if they remained that way, Charlie might have bled to death over the next few days if he hadn't been discovered.
An insurance policy of sorts, Don thought with disgust. The minute his guys had Charlie down Don was at his side, only moving when the paramedics needed to get in. When they got Charlie loaded up and ready to go, Don had to step away.
A hand touched his and he turned.
Brown eyes met his.
"Thanks," Charlie whispered and before Don could respond, Charlie's eyes closed again and he was out the door.
--
How Don made it to the emergency room he didn't really know, but here he was, sitting in an uncomfortable chair while he waited for any news about Charlie.
His father was sitting next to him, or at least he was the last time Don had actually lifted his head to look. Currently, he had his head in his hands, the exhaustion he'd been fighting for the past few days finally seeping all the way to his bones.
"You should have told me," he heard his father mutter.
He slowly lifted his head. "So you could panic? It wouldn't have helped, Dad."
"I don't panic," Alan replied. "I just don't like either of my sons hiding anything from me."
The guilt crept in and Don willed it away. He had enough guilt piling up from Charlie's kidnapping and until he knew Charlie would definitely be okay he knew it had no chance of letting up. Even then he knew that it wouldn't just disappear.
"I wasn't intentionally hiding anything from you," he insisted, but even he didn't believe his words.
"I called you four times," Alan noted. "You didn't pick up and when you called back you lied to me. I'm a father. I worry."
"I didn't lie, I just omitted," Don defended, but the words sounded weak. "And I just didn't pick up. That doesn't mean something's wrong."
"No," Alan said. "But this time, something was."
Don swallowed. His father was right and he hated when his father was right.
"You know, I keep thinking that one of those days I'm going to get a phone call. A phone call that tells me you're seriously hurt or even worse, dead. Your line of work doesn't give me the greatest sense of security, but it's what you do and you're good at. But I don't expect it when it comes to Charlie."
"I took him off the case. And I keep telling you Charlie's a grown man that could tell me no," Don replied, wondering who he was trying to convince.
"He'd never tell you no and you know it."
Don ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, well, that's Charlie's issue, not mine. I need his input. He's spent so much time telling me that math is relevant to crime-solving that I default to it. Plus, I'm not the first government agent he's helped, Dad. Charlie has clearance that goes higher than mine does and I still don't know what he's done for the NSA."
"He's never gotten kidnapped working with NSA," Alan commented.
"No," Don agreed. He shifted his eyes towards the busy ER. "And he's never gotten kidnapped working on a case for me, either. Like I said, I pulled him off the case and he even agreed to it. He'll be fine. The paramedics said his vitals weren't so bad considering."
"Considering," Alan repeated and Don turned back towards him. He could see his father turning the word over in his brain. Don half expected him to continue, but Alan didn't, letting silence fall between the two of them.
It almost did Don in. Two minutes paused. Two long minutes where Don watched the second hand on the wall clock mounted across from them move.
"I shouldn't push him," he finally admitted, his tone soft.
His father stared at him and shook his head. "Maybe not. But even if you didn't, Charlie would still be volunteering his expertise. You can't stop him."
Don considered his words. Charlie was stubborn. The same could be said about himself, his father, and his mother had a stubborn streak a mile wide. It was a family trait that couldn't be helped nor ignored.
He opened his mouth to respond when a doctor appeared.
"Mr. Eppes?"
Both he and his father were on their feet and Don felt anxiety swell though his veins, temporarily overshadowing the exhaustion.
The doctor smiled. "He'll be fine. Looks a lot worse than it actually is, though he will be in some discomfort for a while. We're giving him fluids to counteract the blood loss, and he'll need quite a few stitches, but all in all, he's extremely lucky. You can see him if you'd like."
That was all Don needed to hear to start walking. The doctor led them into a small trauma room, where another doctor was already at work on a deep laceration across Charlie's forearm.
"We've given him some fairly hefty pain medication, so he might be a bit groggy," the doctor warned.
Don wasn't worried about groggy. Charlie was a complete mess. There was no other way for Don to describe him. In the harsh, bright light of the ER, he looked a million times worse then he had under the glow of the dim red bulb in the Dungeon. There seemed to be cuts up and down his arms and when Don got a bit closer he could see the bruising lurking from underneath the hospital gown he was in. A light blanket was wrapped loosely around his torso, but his lower legs were uncovered and when Don turned to look at them, he saw only more cuts and bruises. An IV ran down to Charlie's left hand, carefully positioned in a spot free from injury. Don wondered how they'd even been able to find one.
Charlie's eyes were closed, but when Don stepped next to the bed, they opened and Charlie smiled.
"Don. Dad," he said and lifted his IV'ed hand to wave slightly.
Groggy was an understatement. Charlie's eyes were wide and glassy. He was feeling no pain, Don was sure.
"How you doing, Charlie?" Alan asked.
"I'm okay," Charlie answered. "Doesn't hurt, which is good because," he turned his eyes towards the doctor doing the repair job on his arm, "I hate needles." The sentence was whispered as if it was the biggest secret in the world.
"I know," Alan said with a smile. "You always did. Your mother hated taking you to the doctor when you were little. You were convinced that every time you went, the doctor was going to give you a shot. You and Don, actually."
Alan's tone was light, but Don saw the serious gleam in his eye. They could talk about this later; Charlie didn't need to hear it now.
"I did not," Don defended.
"Did, too," Charlie answered and yawned. "Sorry. 'ired."
"I'll bet." Don reached out and touched Charlie's shoulder. "I'm glad you are going to be okay."
"I'm fine," Charlie murmured, his eyes closing again.
"Is he really all right?" Alan asked the doctor, echoing Don's sentiments.
The doctor didn't look up from suturing. "Really," he assured them both. "We're waiting on some x-rays, but it's mostly heavy bruising and mild lacerations. A few, like this one, needed sutures, and his blood pressure was lower than we'd liked when he came in, but the fluids are correcting that nicely. We'll give him a few doses of an antibiotic to ward off infection, but he could be out of here as early as tomorrow if he continues to improve."
Continues to improve. Sure, Charlie would continue to improve physically, but Don had no clue what would happen emotionally. His own nerves were shot and he hadn't been the one kidnapped. When Charlie sobered up, would things be different. When Don got the whole story and heard exactly how Laine had managed to nab Charlie in the first place, he was positive it would set forth an explosion of feelings.
It didn't help that Laine was still out there. Megan, David, Colby, plus a dozen other agents were on Laine's trail, so it wasn't over.
But, despite that, Don took another long look at Charlie and relaxed. He felt a bit of the tension in his body escape and exhaustion reared its ugly head once more.
"Don?"
He blinked. His father's voice sounded far away and he felt hands guide him to a chair. He saw worried eyes and the brush of another white coat.
Then there was nothing.