A/N- Thank you all for the reviews. I do believe that this is the most reviews I have ever gotten on a story and it really makes it worth it.
There were a couple of questions regarding the killer and the Latin so I have tried to address these questions within this chapter.
The reference to Our Lady of Mercy High School is from my own past. That is where I went to school and my mother did make me take Latin but only for one year rather than four.
I work in the healthcare field and trust me with the use of proper body mechanics you would be utterly amazed at how large of a person who is essentially dead weight you can move. I know I do it every day.
Please enjoy this chapter and if you have other questions please do not hesitate to ask. If it fits with the story and I can make something clearer I will do my best to incorporate explanations into the dialogue.
Yours sincerely
Alice

Chapter Sixteen

Alan wanted to respect Megan's opinion and give his youngest a few minutes to gather himself together after reliving his experience with her, but it was proving to be quite the request. He found himself pacing back and forth in front of the couch in the lounge looking at his watch every few minutes.

"Dad, chill. You are not supposed to be the one who paces."

"I just don't like the idea of him sitting in there alone right now."

Don got up and placed his hand on his father's shoulder offering support. "Come on Dad, you know Charlie. He usually goes off on his own when something is bothering him. That's what makes him comfortable. Look, Megan only finished with him five minutes ago, lets give it another five minutes and we can go check on him together."

Don was thinking that if Charlie had lost control of his emotions he wouldn't want to have either of them see him cry. He had assumed that that was the reason Megan had said to give him a few minutes. Don very rarely cried himself and would never do so in front of his family. Even when his mother died, he kept a tight control over his emotions and only in the peace of solitude did he give into his expression of sorrow.

He was well aware that this might not be emotionally healthy, but none of the Eppes men were ones to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Charlie had actually put it quite well only two months ago when he said 'We're not really a group hug kind of family' Then after their father had left he proceeded to chase Don around the front yard trying to hug him.

Don smiled at the memory. That was who they were. They could share fun and laughs, but tears were a different matter. 'Maybe that should change. We are a family; we should be able to share all of our emotions with each other.'

Don was pulled out of his thoughts by the arrival of Megan and Charlie's attending doctor. "Mr. Eppes, I am signing your son's release from the hospital, but you need to be aware that he will still be experiencing some effects from the barbiturate. He will sleep a lot today and maybe even tomorrow. This trauma has thrown him into a difficult place emotionally. I am prescribing a mild antidepressant for him. He shouldn't start taking this until tomorrow. I want to make sure that the drugs are completely gone from his system before introducing new ones."

Megan looked at Alan and said, "Don't be surprised if he gets angry easily. Depression can manifest itself as rage, and in Charlie's case it could, and has actually." Megan looked pointedly at Don and he nodded slightly indicating that she should continue as per their conversation when she first arrived at the hospital.

"Even though Charlie has been pulled off this case there will still be an agent watching the house. I'm not sure it would be wise to tell Charlie about that however. He witnessed the death of an agent assigned to watch over him and he may not take well to having someone else put in that position again. A big part of him is blaming himself for not being able to help Agent O'Donnell."

Once Alan had the release papers and the prescription for Charlie he went down to the room. When he entered Alan was surprised to see his son out of bed and fully dressed. Charlie looked at his father and the others as they came into the room. He saw the doctor come in behind Megan and Don and looked directly at him.

"I have done everything that you asked, so I'm leaving now. I don't want any more exams or discussions."

"That's fine Mr. Eppes. I have given check out instructions to your family as well as a prescription to be filled. If you experience any pain or burning in the sutures in your chest you will need to contact your primary care physician immediately. The staples that were removed were rusty. The wound was thoroughly cleaned but you are still at risk for infection. You will need to set up an appointment with you PCP in a couple of days so that he can examine the bandages on your neck. We were able to avoid traditional sutures but the stitching strips on the laceration will need to be changed. Don't get them wet; that could cause an infection to start."

On the way down to the parking garage Charlie turned to Don. "I will need to see the file on Jon. There is another algorithm that I can try. Perhaps with the new data I will be able find the link between these codes."

Charlie's voice was hard and cold. His eyes were devoid of emotion and Don felt a stab of fear for his brother. Charlie wasn't the same person anymore and Don was very worried if he ever would be again. He glanced quickly at Megan who shook her head slightly.

"Look, Charlie you are not going to be doing anything except going home and getting some rest, and some food. This is non-negotiable so don't even try and argue with me. Right now we have enough new information to go on that we may not even need to understand what those numbers mean."

Charlie turned and looked at Don. He got the impression that his brother was studying him. Charlie's gaze shot over to Megan for a moment then he turned away from both of them without comment.

The ride home was spent in silence with Charlie staring out the window of his father's car. At first Don thought that he was lost in thought but when he looked back at Charlie's face there was nothing behind his eyes. They looked dead like they had back in the hospital. Don could never remember seeing his younger brother with a blank stare. There was always something going on behind those eyes to evidence his never ceasing mind. Even in his sleep Don had never known Charlie to be still, but now his dark spheres revealed nothing. It was almost like his mind had shut down completely.

Don suggested that Charlie rest on the couch while he fixed him some lunch but Charlie just headed for the stairs as though he hadn't heard his brother talking.

"Hey, Charlie! Where are you going?"

"I'm not hungry, I want to lie down and take a nap."

Alan came out of the kitchen at these words. "That won't do young man. You haven't had anything to eat since before all of this happened. One of the conditions of your release from the hospital was that you would eat so go and have a seat on the couch my good son, while I fix both of you some lunch."

Charlie didn't have the energy to argue with his father so he obediently turned and headed for the couch. He and Don sat in silence for a time while they listened to their father bustling around the kitchen. Don was becoming more nervous about his brother's despondency and was trying to figure out what to say to him when Charlie spoke up suddenly.

"You can't take me off this case Don. I know that you and Megan think that I can't handle it but you're wrong."

Don sighed deeply; he didn't want to talk about this right now. He wanted Charlie to have at least one meal and one good nights sleep before he told him, but Charlie missed nothing. Don realized that Charlie had put it together in the elevator down to the garage at the hospital.

"Charlie, it's not because it's you. I would have done the exact same thing if it had been another agent or another consultant. You are a victim of this person now and your objectivity has been compromised. I don't really have a choice, that is FBI policy and you know it. This comes from the director. You are no longer a consultant for this case, period."

Charlie felt a raw anger rising in his gut but he also felt the now familiar tingling wash of chills that he experienced as the anxiety began to exert itself over him. He took a few slow breaths and concentrated on allowing himself to just feel the panic, but that made the anger more palpable as well. He turned his face toward Don and watched with an odd sort of detachment as his brother imperceptibly flinched at the look in his eyes.

"You still need me on this case Don…
I need to do this, for Jon…
…for me."

Don came over and sat down right next to Charlie. "I can't let you back on this case Charlie. It isn't just because you are a victim of this killer, which is bad enough, but also because she left a warning."

Charlie's hand automatically reached up to his chest where the bandage rested under one of his father's tee shirts. "What did it say?"

"It was written in Latin, but it said, 'Go Back To Your Class Room Professor'. Charlie if you continue to work on this, the killer will come after you again."

The tiniest hint of a smile turned the corners of Charlie's mouth for a moment. To Don's utter horror the dead look had left his brother's normally expressive eyes and he could see the thoughts turning over, he could see Charlie formulating a plan. For the first time in his life Don could almost read his younger brother's mind and he felt a deeper fear than he had felt when Charlie was first kidnapped.

"Oh no, Charlie. There is no way that I am going to allow this. Just forget it."

The rage that had been churning quietly inside suddenly exploded. "Why the hell not? If Merrick can try to use you as bait for this Bitch, then why not use me. You said it yourself. If I keep working then she will come after me. What the fu…"

"Charlie!" Alan's voice was sharp and full of alarm.

Charlie turned his face toward his father and Alan involuntarily stepped back. His son's face was contorted in an unrecognizable mask of hate.

"Didn't you know, Dad? Don was going to use himself as bait for this killer! Now it turns out that she wasn't after him at all. She wanted me! What is the difference between Don being used as bait and me being used the same way?"

Alan set the plates that he had in his hands down on the table. He looked at Don with genuine fear in his eyes. "I didn't know about this plan and had I known I would have tried to stop it. But Charlie, there is a difference between you and your brother. He is a trained FBI agent. You are a mathematics professor. He uses a gun in his every day line of work, you use chalk and books. I will not listen to any more of this sort of talk. This case is closed as far as you are concerned Charlie."

Charlie stood there looking at his father breathing heavily and feeling utterly drained. The anger that had blossomed so quickly began to ebb away as a crushing fatigue took its place. He wobbled slightly and Don was at his side in an instant holding him for support.

"Charlie, you need to eat something before you collapse." Don guided him over to the table and sat him down.

The mood swings were far more extreme than they had expected and Charlie couldn't take the anti depressant until the barbiturate was completely out of his system. Alan was now very concerned about how he was going to manage his volatile son until he could take the medication that he needed to start his recovery from this experience.

"You ok, Buddy?"

Charlie just nodded his head. "I promise I won't throw a fit and break up the house. I'm too tired to fight with you about this right now, Don."

Don started to back away from him because he wanted to talk with his father in the kitchen but stopped when Charlie spoke again.

"Don, this isn't over. It won't be over until she is dead."

Charlie's voice was cold and hard the same way it had been in the hospital. Don needed to speak to his father alone but he didn't want to leave his brother. Alan was beyond being shocked by Charlie's uncharacteristic behavior. All he felt was a deep fear for his son's mental health.

"Donnie, I need your help in the kitchen."

Don reluctantly left his brother sitting at the table and followed his father into the kitchen. Alan had finished making sandwiches for everyone and he walked over to the sink and turned the water on to drown out their conversation.

"Donnie, I understand that you need to go into the office but I am not sure that I can handle him alone. I don't know what to do."

Don was torn about this issue. He was thinking the same thing but they had leads that they needed to follow up on. They had to catch this woman before she could do any more harm.

"Look Dad, lets just get through lunch and see if Charlie can get some sleep. If I have to stay, then I'll stay. The whole team is working on this so if I have to coordinate things from here then that's what I'll do. I just don't want the investigation to come into this house again."

"I couldn't agree with you more on that. Look, son I don't blame you for what happened to your brother, I really don't."

"Why do I hear a 'but' coming?"

"But I want you to stop asking for his help on these kinds of cases. He is not equipped to process the kind of horrors that you deal with every day. Look at him, Donnie. This experience has irrevocably changed him. It's a change that doesn't belong there, a change that should never have happened."

Don felt the weight of the guilt he had been feeling increase ten fold but also a small flicker of annoyance. "Dad, what has happened in this case is not the kind of thing that I see every day. This is a nightmare from anyone's perspective including seasoned agents. Even Colby who has seen active combat is having difficulty with the sheer brutality of these crimes. But you're right. This is something that Charlie should never have been exposed to. Bringing him in on this case is a mistake and Charlie paid the price for that mistake. I will have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life…" Don's voice became tight and he almost whispered "…and so will Charlie."

The fact that Don's own words echoed what the killer said to him on the phone cut deeply. He reached over and turned off the water and picked up the cutting board with the sandwiches on them to take them out to the plates that had been left on the table after Charlie's outburst.

When they came out to the dining room table Charlie wasn't there. Don set the board down and looked around. He felt a small twinge of fear and walked quickly into the living room and found Charlie was fast asleep on the couch. He and his father ate their sandwiches and wrapped up Charlie's to put on the coffee table for him when he woke up.

Don decided to go in for a while to see how the investigation was going, but told his father to call him immediately if he needed anything. If Charlie completely lost it, there was the agent outside who was watching the house. He could come in and contain the situation until Don got there, but that would be a last resort, and only if Charlie became violent.

When Don pulled up into the garage at the FBI offices he was met with a sobering sight. Megan and Colby were standing next to a replica of the makeshift operating tables that the killer used. It was comprised of two saw horses and two planks formed into a T. Don got out of his vehicle and locked the doors. As he approached he looked quizzically at the two agents.

"What's all this about?"

"Well, Granger couldn't believe that this woman had been able to accomplish all of this alone. From the surveillance tape we determined that I am about the same size at our killer so we got a van similar to the one the killer used and a large dolly like the one we saw on the tape. I had the van parked down on the next level so that I had to push the dolly up the incline of the garage which is not unlike the ramps of the loading dock. It took me about twenty minutes to get the supplies up to this level and put this table together using a hand held electric screwdriver. As far as how she is moving her victims we saw that on the video. With the use of a wheelchair and proper body mechanics she was able to get Agent O'Donnell, who is considerably larger than her, into the building and up onto the table."

Don was impressed by this little demonstration but he still didn't understand its purpose. "OK, so why do all of this?"

Colby spoke up. "I just had a lot of trouble believing that a woman would be able to do all of this without the help of an accomplice. I mean, Don some of these guys were pretty big. This demonstration was to prove that she wasn't working with someone else. Charlie was blind folded so there could have been someone else there that we didn't see on the camera. I just wanted to be sure that a woman Megan's size could actually pull this off."

"Yeah ok, fair enough. So we know that she is working alone. She is driving a large dark colored van with a hydraulic lift in the back. The vehicle's license plates were never visible on the tape were they?"

"I'm afraid not. The only time that the plates would have been visible would be when she pulled out toward the front of the building but there was mud or something covering the plate making it unreadable. We put out an APB on the size, color and make of the van, but there are hundreds of thousands of those kinds of vans in the LA area."

"Did you check rental places? Maybe she rented this thing and that way there would be a record of it."

Megan began to unscrew the table so that they could clear the garage floor. "Yeah we thought of that. David is checking for any woman between the ages of twenty and fifty who rented a van of that size and color all throughout southern California over the last six weeks. Once we have that we can cross reference that info with the files from Quantico."

"Hey Don, how's Charlie doing?"

"It's going to be a long road for him Colby. I can't stay too long actually. He is a bit of a handful for my father right now, but I needed to at least see where we were with all of this. Listen, give Megan a hand getting this taken care of then meet me upstairs. I want to see what we have in the way of suspects from the Quantico files."

When Don walked into the bull pen the flurry of activity waned slightly as his fellow agents realized that he had arrived. "So what have we got people?"

David looked up at the familiar voice and walked over holding a thick file. "More women than you would imagine rent vans. So far we don't have a match with any of the long term rentals and the files from Quantico. We have been able to eliminate over half of the suspects from the academy files because they are either dead or actively working out of state and have air tight alibis."

"OK that's a start. We have determined that this individual is working alone. She has a solid understanding of FBI procedures and serious grudge with this agency. Where's Megan's profile?"

"It's on her desk with the evidence from the publishing firm. How's Charlie holding up?"

"I honestly don't know, David. He isn't the same person he was before this case." Don lowered his voice. "I'm worried that he will never be Charlie again. I should have pulled him off the case the moment you told me about the anxiety attacks. This is all my fault, and I don't know how to fix it."

"Hey, Don Charlie is stronger than you think. He will pull through this. Right now the best thing we can do is find this woman before she can do any more harm."

Don nodded and headed over to Megan's desk. As he began to look through her files he came across the bloody note that had been stapled to his brother's chest. He picked it up and examined it closely as if it would shed some light on who wrote it. It was odd but somehow the hand writing looked vaguely familiar.

Megan and Colby had come back up from the garage and approached Don.

Colby pointed to the note sealed in the clear plastic evidence bag and said, "We didn't find any fingerprints on it. The killer was wearing gloves. The ink is standard indelible marker and the paper was torn from a pad that was in a stack of these things on the premises." Colby looked at the actual note and turned to Megan. "How do you know Latin?"

Megan smiled slightly. "Our Lady of Mercy High School; my mother made me take Latin, four years of it. The vernacular is incorrect because it is a word for word translation so I understood it."

Don looked puzzled. "What do you mean it is a word for word translation? Isn't that what it's supposed to be?"

Megan took the note and laid it on the desk. "OK 'Vado' translates to go, hasten or rush. 'Tergum' translates to back or rear but it can also mean skin or hide. "Ut' is for to, and 'vestri' should be 'vestrum' which translates to your. The plural would be vester vestra vestrum or your, vs yours. There isn't a word for classroom in classical Latin so the killer used the word 'ordo' for class and 'cella' for room. 'Ordo' refers to class as a social structure or order. 'Cella' is literally translated to room or storeroom and Magister is a direct translation for master, canon / master of a school or professor."

Colby looked duly impressed. "You learned all of that in high school?"

"Yes well, a catholic education will give you all sorts of knowledge that you never would have thought you could use in real life."

Don spent an hour listening to the tape of the interview with Charlie and reading Megan's notes. He kept a tight control over his emotions as he listened to his brother describe what he heard as Jon was murdered. He spent another half an hour reading Megan's report on this interview and had to go outside to catch some fresh air and calm the anger and sorrow he was feeling.

Once he came back upstairs he was filled with a new resolve and dived into the suspect files from Quantico with the rest of his team. As the next two hours past he had a nagging feeling that he was missing something. He kept glancing over at the note written in marker. Something about that handwriting was bothering him but he just couldn't place it. Suddenly his phone rang pulling him from his thoughts.

"Eppes."

"Donnie, are you going to be coming back soon?"

The sound of his father's voice wasn't panicked or even upset but Don shot out of his chair looking around for his jacket all the same. He was suddenly filled with that adrenalin panic feeling you get when you wake up and realize you are very late.

"What is it Dad, is Charlie all right?"

"He has locked himself in his room and he won't answer me. I went outside to get the mail and when I came back in he wasn't on the couch. I heard his bedroom door close and now he won't come out or talk to me. It's not an emergency but I'm still worried. I was hoping that you could get through to him."

"Ok Dad, just sit tight. I'm leaving now, and I should be there in about half an hour."

Don closed up his phone and grabbed his jacket which was draped across a chair near Megan's desk.

David came up to him having heard the phone call. "Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, Charlie's locked himself in his room and won't come out. I'm going to try and talk to him. You guys keep at it, and let me know if you come up with anything solid that we can work with."

Megan walked Don to the elevator so that she could speak to him alone. "Do you want me to come by and talk with him tonight?"

"I don't know, Megan. I'm not sure he's ready for that yet. I'll call you if I think it would help, but maybe he should have a couple of days on the anti depressant first."

"All right, but call me if you need to."

Don smiled at her and stepped into the waiting elevator car. He thought about what he heard on the taped interview with Megan as he made his way down to the garage. He couldn't fathom how his brother was ever going to get past what had been done to him. His words to his father when he first arrived at the hospital came back to him.

'He's alive, but I didn't save him, Dad.' He realized that they would most likely haunt him for the rest of his life.