Charlie opened the door to Don's stall at the FBI office.

"Hey Charlie," said Don.

Charlie said "hey" and nodded to the agent who was sitting at one of the two chairs in the office, drinking a coffee.

"Listen, Don, this is urgent. I've been searching on the internet for tax fraud statistics all morning. I checked missing persons registers for the past three years against the data the Terri got me about parents claiming benefits in the LA area. Don, preliminary results show that Dad was right. I think we've found the reason these kids are being kidnapped."

Don stared at Charlie for a moment then said, "that's great buddy, listen to me, can you go grab a coffee or something? I have something to deal with. I'll be with you in a moment."

Charlie nodded and left, slightly confused. He went down to reception deciding to see if Terri or David had signed in, but they were still out, so he made his way back up to Don's office. As he got there the female he had taken to be an agent was leaving the office. She was crying.

"What's going on?" Asked Charlie after she had gone.

Don breathed heavily. "I'm sorry, I should have stopped you. I didn't think – Charlie, that was the mother of one of the victims. Her son was Dody Bierets"

Charlie stared at him. "What?"

"Exactly. Listen, it's not your fault. Don't worry about it."

"Don, I feel so – I didn't know –"

"Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. She'll be OK. She had something to tell me, something she'd forgotten about the last time she'd seen her son, but it didn't really matter anyway."

Charlie was barely listening. "Can I come back later? I – maybe I should come back later."

"Yeah. Sure. Where are you going?"

But Charlie was already heading into the lift to take him down to ground level. He caught up with the woman in the car park. She was fumbling with her handbag to reach her keys.

"Hey," said Charlie.

She looked around smiled a watery smile.

"Hey."

"I'm, I'm Charlie Eppes," he said, extending a hand, "I'm a consultant on your son's case."

"Marina Bierets."

"Listen, I'm really sorry about what happened just now. I should have asked who you were before I started off. I assumed you were another agent. I mean," he continued when she didn't say anything, "there are so many of them, it's hard to remember all their faces . . ." He trailed off into silence and stared at her car.

She gave a small nervous laugh and another watery smile. "That's OK. It – you didn't say anything wrong. I just would have preferred to have not been there while you were discussing it. Your brother – that was your brother?" Charlie nodded. "He explained to me the FBI's latest theory. It's very hard to take in. They were trafficking my own son, passing him off as theirs."

Charlie nodded. "I understand. I find it terrible to believe myself." She still looked very miserable and he could not shake the feeling that it was entirely his fault. She must be feeling rather like a patient who has walked in on a conference of doctors discussing her case. Nothing was essentially wrong with that, but it must give a nasty jolt in the stomach to hear her little boy talked about in such an impersonal manner without any attempt at the delicacy she must have grown used to people using when they talked about her dead son. He should have been more professional than to discuss the case so tactlessly in front of an unknown stranger. He was struck with an idea and said suddenly, "listen, would you like something to drink?"

She smiled at him and brushed some more of her tears away. "Thank you. That would be nice."

Charlie led the way to a coffee bar near the FBI headquarters that he knew wouldn't be too busy this time of day.

Twenty minutes later she was still slightly red around the eyes but she was able to keep up a conversation without making frequent use of the tissue she had clutched in her hand. "It's been so hard since Dody disappeared. I – my husband was a solider. He was in Iraq." Charlie nodded sympathetically. "He went missing about three years ago. Ever since then Dody's been the only thing in my life. I was always determined never to be an overprotective parent. Now I wish I had." She shook her head. "I always made him be in by 7, and he had his mobile so I could call him if he was late. I took every precaution I could . . ."

"Ms Bierets"

"Marina."

"Marina, there was nothing you could have done to stop Dody disappearing. Don't torment yourself with guilt you shouldn't be feeling. Statistically speaking, Dody had far more chance getting run over than kidnapped. If you taught him to look right, left and right again and held his hand when he crossed the road you did the most you or any parent could have done."

"You're a mathematician aren't you?"

Charlie blushed, "sorry. I tend to use maths in any argument. But this time I'm right. I'm surprised Don didn't tell you the same thing."

"He did."

"Then believe him," said Charlie earnestly. "You must be going through a kind of hell other people can only dream about. There's no point making things worse for yourself."

Marina Bierets smiled at him, a genuine smile that was born of the relief she suddenly felt in her heart. She had told very few people what had tortured her most about the death of her son, but Charlie's words made her realise that she could never have stopped it and they lifted a great weight off her shoulders."

"Thank you for the coffee," she said, suddenly getting up. "I think it's about time I got on with my life."

Charlie got up to, they shook hands and – somehow it felt right – Charlie held her in a brief hug for a few seconds, then he stood watching her make her way back to her car in the FBI car park He wasn't sure what change had come over her during their interview but he knew one thing, he was more convinced than ever now of the devastation these people had caused on many unsuspecting families. Marina Bierets wasn't the only one. Five children had disappeared and which meant five families were going through what Marina was going through. Charlie was determined to help Don catch them before it became and more.

Later, while Don was driving him over to CalSci, Charlie related some of these feelings to his older brother. "This is real people we're talking about. Real victims. They aren't just numbers in an embezzlement. Their lives will never be the same again, Don . . ."

"I know Buddy," said Don. Hearing Charlie say all this wasn't exactly helping him, but he reminded himself how hard this must be for Charlie to deal with this.

". . . It's just not fair," concluded Charlie miserably.

They pulled up at a traffic light and Don looked over at him. Gone was the energy of a few hours ago when he had been enigmatically describing his results to Don and the team, now he was slumped in his seat staring disconsolately out of the window. Don had been on enough dead-end cases to know that it was natural for the people working on it to run hot and cold, alternately filled with hope and despair, but he could also sense that this wasn't exactly like that. Charlie's current mood was not due to a concern of not being able to solve the case, more that he realised that even if they solved the case and brought the killers to justice, nothing could ever bring the children back from the dead.

At that moment Don's mobile rang. "Eppes." He said.

"Right – Got it – I'm on my way," was all that was said on Don's half of the conversation but as he pocketed his phone and pulled away from the lights he explained briefly that Madison had just walked into the FBI office demanding to speak to him Don about Rory Tubman. "Terri says Madison reckons he has some new information on Tubman and 'wants to co-operate' but she says she has no clue what he's playing at."

Charlie looked up at him, "are you sure it's not a set-up?"

"No Charlie; I'm sure it is a set-up, but I want to see what they're setting up and why. I'll have to just drop you off at CalSci, sorry I can't come in. Listen, I'll come by your place tonight OK?"

"That's fine."

As Don let his little brother out in the CalSci grounds he did not even glance in the rear-view mirror to see whether he made it in or not: his mind was on other things, like what the hell Tubman was playing at. That mind, however, could not have been further from suspecting the sort of set-up that took himself away from Charlie at this particular moment in time. Little did he realise that he had just missed what was possibly his last chance to see Charlie ever again.

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A/N: For those of you who have been sitting their just waiting for something bad to happen to Charlie, I think the following chapters should apease you. Bear in mind though, while there will be a certain amount of angst, I am not a sadist, so if you are looking for endles pages of gratuitous Charlie-torture, you'd better go read some other fic.