Chapter 5

He almost didn't understand what was happening, at first.

When the shooting had stopped, but he still heard the echos of it, he thought he heard Don's ring tone, from a distance, and it was getting closer. Elvis must not have broken the phone when he smashed it into Charlie's cheekbone.

The ring was very close, now.

"Damn thing's ringing," Elvis growled somewhere behind him.

"Yeah." He heard Sandy answer. "Probably should've turned them all off. We'll have the Bells of St. Mary's going here soon."

Elvis missed a beat. Then, "Right. Whatever. I'll just shoot this."

"Wait." Sandy's voice took on a note of interest and Charlie found the cell phone shoved in front of him. "Who is it? Do you recognize that number?"

"N- No," Charlie lied.

"Let's see who it is."

"Are you crazy?", Elvis asked.

Sandy's voice became less congenial. "Don't call me that, El. Don't you ever fuckin' call me that." The voice smoothed out again, was friendly in Charlie's ear as the phone was lowered over his shoulder. "Go ahead. Luck of the draw. One last call. Hope it's not a wrong number."

Charlie held the phone tightly, hoping it would help his hand to stop shaking. "Y- Yes?"

"Charlie! Thank God. I'm in the parking lot, we heard the gunfire. Is everybody okay?"

"I…I absolutely understand that. Fine."

Don was confused. Charlie had called him earlier, and told him what was happening, why wasn't he being as up-front now? He lowered his voice a little. "You don't want this guy to know who you're talking to?"

"I don't think so, thank you. Perhaps I'll take two."

Don grinned. Good ol' Charlie. "Okay, great. There are two of them. What else can you tell me? How many hostages?"

"I'm sorry, I really don't need that many. I don't even know where I would store six of them."

"Good, Charlie, you're doing great. What else can you give me?"

"I appreciate your calling, but that doesn't look too good right now. Go ahead and do what I told you earlier."

Don tensed. Was Charlie was reminding him to give his message to Dad?

"Well, you know what Colby always says at the end of a long day," his brother continued.

Don grew frantic. That reference was just too obscure. "What, Charlie, what?"

Charlie tried to chuckle, but it wasn't very convincing. "Right. 'Nothing more to see here'; 'class dismissed'; 'beam me up'; 'Elvis has left the building'…"

Charlie's voice suddenly cut off in a grunt, and Don heard an unfamiliar voice, something "told you", another grunt from Charlie, he thought, and then the line was dead. It had been all he could do not to call out Charlie's name, and now it was all he could do not to call back.

He looked at his team members, huddled around him, along with Captain Davis, and repeated what Charlie had said.

"That was real clever, the part about the numbers," offered Davis. "I don't get all that other stuff."

"Me neither," seconded Colby. "I never say any of those things."

"Exactly."

Everyone looked at David. "He knows we're all going to know that, so it has to be another clue of some kind."

"But it's just a string of clichés," noted Megan, "and they all mean the same thing. He can't really mean that it's over…unless…" her voice lowered and she looked away from Don, to Captain Davis. "Unless he believes it is, that there's no way out for the hostages. Maybe he's telling us just how unstable the guy in charge is."

Davis nodded his head. "Could be. Makes sense. He's your guy, you know better than me what he would try to tell you. It's just…"

Don reached out, just barely stopped himself from grabbing Davis' arm and drew his hand back. "What? You heard something?"

Davis shrugged. "It just struck me, how in that string of clichés, he only used one name."

Colby suddenly laughed. "And what a name! 'Elvis'!" He stood up, breaking cover and startling everybody. He leaned down again and grabbed David's arm. "Come on, we're going back to the office. We're going to run every Elvis who's ever been popped for robbery in California."

David looked at Don, who waved him off. "Go. It might be something."

As the two Agents ran for the perimeter again, they passed another LAPD officer on the way into the huddle.

The woman squatted and looked at Captain Davis. "Lieutenant Richards, Hostage Negotiation. Understand we've got a situation, here."

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The first kick was to the back, Elvis screaming, "I told you not to let him answer! He gave 'em my name!"

Charlie, pushed forward by the kick, rolled over awkwardly just in time to catch the next one in the ribs, and tried to squeeze into a ball to protect himself. He knew he needed to save himself from head injury if he could, so he wrapped his arms around his head, even though it left his ribs unprotected. Elvis landed another solid kick before Sandy intervened. His tone was decidedly less friendly.

"El. Leave him for now." He kicked the teenage boy in the back. "Put all the money in one of these bags. Everybody's wallet, too. Do it without standing up, hand it backwards over your head to Elvis." The boy just sat for a second, almost too scared to breathe. When he felt his girlfriend move beside him as if she were going to do it for him, he swallowed and did as Sandy had ordered. He had to crawl a few feet to Charlie, still curled in a ball, and reach into his pocket for his wallet. When he was done, Elvis roughly jerked the bag out of his shaking hand, and they heard retreating steps. Sandy spoke again from the entrance to the walk-in. "We'll be leaving you for a while, but remember, we're right outside. It's a glass door. I see movement, I see this door open, I won't stop Elvis again."

The steps retreated further, there was the additional sound of someone sweeping all the cell phones off the shelf near the door where Sandy had placed them earlier, and then the ominous slide as the door shut.

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Sandy and Elvis slid to the floor directly outside the cooler. Here, they could use the light from the cooler to see, and they were clear of the windowed store front.

Sandy reached into the bag Elvis was still holding and began to take out wallets. "Count the money. I'll see if anybody held out on us."

Elvis dumped the money and cell phones. "You shoulda let me kill him. We don't need all six of 'em."

Sandy threw the second wallet into the growing pile of pictures and credit cards. "I'm still thinking about it. Might teach the others a lesson. But I like your idea about the bags, the hostages surrounding us, and we can't do much with that short kid. We really only have five."

Elvis grunted, counted under his breath. After another minute or so, Sandy stiffened beside him.

"Well. Holy shit. This could change everything."

Elvis stopped counting and glanced at Sandy, followed his eyes to the snapshot he was holding. The curly-haired one, holding a bat, so it must have come from his wallet…smiling beside another man, who was wearing a baseball mitt on one hand and roughing the gallon-of-milk dude's hair with the other. They were both wearing "FBI" t-shirts.

Elvis took a breath. "Probably just novelty shirts?"

Sandy turned over the photo. "July, 2005. Playing with Don's office in charity game against LAPD." It was scrawled, but squinting, Elvis could make it out. He took another breath and looked back at Sandy, who was smiling.

Sandy turned the photo back over and looked at it again. "Yeah. This could change everything."