Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. I'm merely borrowing them for my own amusement, and maybe some other people's as well. I'll put them back on CBS's toy shelf once I am done.

Author's note: This chapter is currently unbetaed. Once my beta returns the corrected chapter to me, I shall update it.

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As Don sat in the interrogation room, he went back to staring at the table. The tears were damned up behind his eyes, waiting to break and fall freely down his face. They weren't tears of sadness; no, they were tears of fear, tears of frustration, and tears of disappointment. Fear of what would happen if he or Charlie were actually accused of kidnapping, frustration of the entire situation, and disappointment in himself for getting the two of them in this situation in the first place.

Megan was still next to him. He wasn't quite sure if she was there for moral support, or if she had more questions for him. She would have asked them already if she had any other questions. Frankly, if it was for moral support, it was making him quite uncomfortable. But what right do I have to say, 'Hey, Megan, thanks for the support, but could you leave?' Had he been in any other situation, he would have found that concept funny.

As the two of them sat there in uncomfortable silence, waiting for the either to speak, the door opened. The two heads jolted up to see David walk through the door.

"Megan, there's been a development. We're heading off. Don, you and Charlie need to stay here. You can head off to the conference room, if you would like."

Don nodded as Megan said, "Alright. Thanks, David." She stood up and was to the door before she realized Don wasn't following. " Don? Are you coming?"

Again, Don nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak yet. Standing up, he headed over to the door that Megan was holding open for him. While she and David turned to leave the building, he walked off to the conference room. There he found Charlie pacing, as he thought he would be.

The door opened, bringing Charlie back into the real world. Obviously startled, Charlie asked, "Is it time for my interrogation?" He said it quite calmly, almost like he was bored, as if they were discussing sports without the mathematical aspects of them.

Don again answered his question without talking, and instead shook his head. For the first time in the past five minutes, he spoke. "There was apparently a development in the case. I'm done, but the other agents are all out. We have to stay here."

"Okay," Charlie replied nonchalantly, and sat down at the table. Don soon followed suit.

After about a minute of silence, Don asked, "Charlie?"

"Hm?"

"How come you are so calm about all of this? Yesterday, when I went down to the garage, you responded the first time I called your name. You weren't working on P versus NP, either. Aren't you even a little worried?"

"First of all, Don, I am worried. Don't get me wrong about that. But what good is worrying going to do? It would simply be more logical to do something about it, rather than working on something like P versus NP. Second, the FBI charges the wrong person for a crime less than one percent of the time. Even then, in only a couple of those cases, the court found the person or persons guilty when they were truly innocent. You should know that, Don. Third, I only work on P versus NP when I get worried or overwhelmed with something that I have no control over, and that I cannot do anything to help the situation. As for why I responded to you on your first try in contacting me, I was waiting for you to come out to the garage, so I wanted to make sure that I was paying attention. Sure, I was working slower that way, but it still worked out."

"Right." Don contemplated his reasoning, and found he really didn't understand why his brother was acting the way he was, nor was he probably ever going to figure it out.

The two of them sat there in the silence before Charlie spoke up again.

"Don?"

"Yeah, Buddy?"

"Why are you so worried?"

"Well, you just said yourself that you are worried-"

"No, I mean-Why are you so worried about me?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. You came down to the garage yesterday to check on me. You were worried that I was trying to solve the case on my own, even though I'm not supposed to. You wondered if I was even worried about the entire situation, like I didn't know the complexity of what was going on. So I am wondering why you think that."

Don sighed. He's right. I am worrying about him. "Look, Buddy. I'm worried about you for several reasons. One, you being a suspect can hurt your job. And the longer you are considered a suspect, especially on a charge of kidnapping your own student, the longer it will take for the damage of this situation to blow over for you."

"Well, it will hurt your job as well, won't it?"

"Not as much. That's the good thing about being an FBI agent in this situation. Once I'm found innocent, the incident will blow over, I'll be back to work, and nobody will judge me for it anymore. You are one of the best professors at Cal Sci, and you have a high reputation there. The smallest problem can bring it down."

Don paused, wondering if he should give the second reason to Charlie. He knew he would be upset about the reason, but that didn't make it any less of a reason for his reasoning.

"And?"

"And…because I'm your older brother. I've always had to protect you from these kinds of things." There. It got out into the open. Now it didn't matter what Charlie thought about him.

"Don, you know I can take care of myself. You know, being thirty does help teach me about taking care of myself," Charlie defended himself. Looking in his eyes, Don could see betrayal. He knew that throughout the last few months, the two of them had grown closer together, and maybe Charlie had felt that he was an equal to Don, not just seen as his younger brother.

"I know you can. But let me ask you: if our roles were reversed, and you were the older brother instead of me, wouldn't you be a little worried about me?"

"I guess. I wouldn't make it so obvious, though."

"Are you saying I was so obvious? Or have you just gotten used to looking for the signs that I show when I am looking out for you?"

Charlie sighed. Don knew that Charlie would forgive him eventually, but the fact that he was playing 'older brother' certainly frustrated him.

"Buddy, it's not like I purposely decide to protect you. All throughout our high school years, I had to protect you from the older boys. You might have been academically smart, but you didn't know much about protecting yourself back then. I guess it has just become habit for me to protect you," Don said.

Charlie seemed to take it all in, but there was no doubt in Don's mind that all his explaining didn't make him feel much better about being protected as a thirty-year-old. It might have made him feel better in high school to know that his brother was looking out for him, but now it's childish and unnecessary. But Don knew that he wouldn't be able to break his habit anytime soon.

"Don?"

"Yeah?"

"What is going to happen to us? Out of curiosity, I mean."

Don looked at his brother. He could tell Charlie was trying as hard as he could to hide his anxiety, but he was failing at it.

"What do you mean? Nothing bad is going to happen to us."

"Don, the people that did this obviously set us up. It wasn't just a coincidence that Stephanie was kidnapped minutes after we saw her. Nothing that happens is a coincidence. There is a reason for everything." Don snorted at Charlie comment, since he had heard it so often in the past. Charlie seemed to ignore him, and continued. "Even if we are found innocent, somebody is probably watching us. The two of us might be in danger, Don."

"Charlie, whoever is doing this might be doing a good job, but I trust my fellow agents. I know that they are going to find the people that really kidnapped Stephanie, and they will probably be the same people that kidnapped all those other students. Once they do, our jobs will return to normal, our lives will return to normal, and we will be safe." Don didn't fully believe this, and just hoped that Charlie wouldn't catch that from his voice.

If he did notice the fear in his voice, Charlie didn't mention it. The two of them fell back into the silence, mulling things over. Don put his arm on the table, head in his hands, trying to find something in the evidence he knew of to prove their innocence. The witness reports pointed to them, or at least somewhat described them. Their alibis didn't help, since they were each other…unless Larry could help? Maybe he saw them walking out of the building, away from the crime scene. He'd make sure to tell Megan to question Larry…but that wasn't a sure alibi either.

A few minutes later, Don felt a light but persistent tap on his shoulder. Looking up, he realized Charlie was trying to get his attention. "Yesterday, we were talking about the case when Stephanie came in. I interrupted what you were saying. Do you want to finish your thought?"

"It doesn't really help right now, but okay. The weird thing about the case was that we had predicted when the next attack would happen, and we had figured out the profile of the kidnapper, but we didn't actually have any suspects. After the fact, of course, we found that our predictions were wrong, and we have suspects now. And the profile fits both of us."

Charlie nodded a bit sadly. Things were not looking up for the two of them.

Suddenly, David burst into the room. "Don. Would you mind explaining this to me?" He thrust an evidence bag into Don's hands. Inside was one of his business cards. On the back, in what looked almost exactly like his handwriting, were the words, "Just a little out of the norm for you."