Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Numb3rs or the characters therein. All characters are fictional and should not be associated with any other person- real or imagined.
Author's note: All writing in bold are the disorganized lyrics to Unchained Melody- don't own the copyright. The song was written by Alex North and Hy Zaret. I use the words from Elvis's greatest hits album. I'm still working on DD- will still be doing one chapter a week; but DD takes work, so I started this one to download.
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Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea
To the waiting arms of the sea
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"Over here!"
Don spoke into his wrist, conveying a more exact position to the rest of his team, and began to run down the embankment in front of him toward a stream speedily disappearing off into a bramble of trees to his right. A woman sat on her knees at the water's edge, cradling a small child in her arms- both deeply entrenched in the thick mud.
Once Don broke free from the thick tangle of forest he slowed down, not wanting to frighten them, surveying the area in the process, satisfied the three of them were alone. The woman did not respond to his presence, though she had to have heard his shout and the sound of breaking branches when he forced his way through the interlaced foliage and out into the small clearing where she knelt.
"Hey," Don said quietly, putting his hand on her shoulder. "Is she alright?"
Seven hours.
That's how long his team and an eclectic band of volunteers and law enforcement personnel had been searching for the child lying limply in the woman's embrace. Someone had phoned in a tip that they had seen a little girl being dragged into the Dandridge Woods by a man dressed from head to toe in black. Because of his attire, the tipster could not provide a more specific description of the man, but she could provide an explicit one of the little girl.
Amanda Jane Crowell.
They had actually started looking for Amanda three days before their current concentrated search. She was the suspected seventh victim in a string of child-kidnapping/murders that had been occurring, seemingly random, in as many weeks. Nothing seemed to tie the children together- their ages, appearance, height, weight, race, not even their sex, as two of them had been young boys. So dissimilar was each victim that the local police would not have thought to call in the Bureau had it not been for the brutality with which each child had been killed.
It had sickened the local authorities, making men of usual iron will and fortitude rush to the Bureau, practically begging the federal authorities for help. After four different police agencies had filed separate requests, Don's team had stepped in, easily seeing the one similarity between each murder- the means by which the children had died.
It had also sickened them.
The team had been on the case for less than a week when Catherine Crowell had reported her daughter missing to the local authorities and they had patched her plea for help through to the F.B.I. Don happened to be passing by when her picture was laid out on the counter of the Missing Children's section of the Bureau and he had known immediately she was the latest victim of the monster his team was investigating. Something- a gut feeling, some unconscious recognition of a similarity between her and the other victims, fate-whatever it was, Don had just known, and he, David, Megan, and Colby had started looking into her case.
Ms. Crowell had been calm when Megan interviewed her. She had stood by the front window to her small apartment, head angled so that her long black hair fell upon her face, hiding her eyes so Megan could not see what she was really thinking; her left ear tilted out towards the world, as if she were listening for someone- maybe the cry of her missing child. She quietly told Megan that wherever her child was being held, she was unable to speak. Megan had written that remark down with raised eyes, noting that all of the previous victims had been found with the remains of duct tape over their mouths, the Bureau lab reporting the tape had probably been placed there long before their deaths.
"If she could speak," Ms. Crowell had assured Megan, "I would have found her myself."
She had left the room for a brief moment and returned to hand a recent photo of Amanda to Megan, the mysterious woman keeping her eyes lowered as she continued to hide her emotions from the agent. The portrait was of a five year-old girl with hair matching her mother's, long and black, with a wide, inviting smile that punctuated a glowing, happy face.
Angelic, most people would have said.
"We'll do our best to find her," Megan had promised Catherine, receiving no acknowledgement of her words. The woman had already drifted back to the front window and resumed her previous position- as if listening, carefully listening.
Three days later came the call to the Bureau and then Don's team was out in Dandridge Woods along with a select group of agents, police officers, forestry personnel, and volunteers, searching through the overwhelming thickness of trees and various plant life at an exasperatingly slow speed, Don breaking the rules and taking off on his own as the sun was beginning to make its descent into night.
It was in a last burst of sunlight, thrusting through hazy clouds in a long shimmering sheet that illuminated the path before him, that Don had been able to make his way to his current position- a small sanctity from the dense forest, the embankment upon which Catherine Crowell knelt cradling her daughter, finally answering Don's question with a heavy sigh.
"No, she is not alright. She's dead."
Don was taken aback by the simplicity of her statement. He could not form any words that could make that reality any less painful for the woman in front of him. Glancing over her shoulder, he shuddered as he realized the child was in the same brutalized condition as had been all the other victims. Only a mother, he thought sadly, could hold her daughter so close when she was looking like that.
"Help is on the way," Don finally managed to say, chastising himself for his poor choice in words. Obviously, help was beyond the mangled body held so closely to the woman's breast.
Catherine Crowell gently laid her daughter on the ground, her hand crossing over the child's open eyes to lovingly close their lids. She lifted her face, her eyes following the motion of the drowsily gliding water before her till the stream faded from her view, its lonely journey to a distant shore emulating the spirit of her child. "She's dead," Catherine whispered, "and I no longer want to live myself."
Don looked around for his team, for any of the other searchers, but no one seemed to have found their location. He pulled out a GPS locator, punched a few buttons and pressed his lips to his wrist to talk to his team again, then pulled his hand from his face, shook his arm, visually checked the communicator, then tried to speak into it a second time but could not get it to work. Giving up, he lowered himself to sit cross-legged beside Catherine and laid a hand on her back, trying to figure out a way he could offer her comfort when there seemed none available with her daughter dead before her.
Don could feel the deep breathing of the woman vibrating through the palm of his hand. He leaned forward slightly in an attempt to see her face, but her head was bowed as if in prayer, strands of deep black cascading down about it and, as with Megan, preventing him from seeing the expression on her face. Don leaned forward further, keeping his eyes from the dead child as he could hardly bear to see her bruised body, when Catherine suddenly turned her head and stared at him, their eyes only a few inches apart.
The world faded from around Don as he sunk into the depths of her black eyes, the sunlight disappearing, leaving him wrapped within a warm blanket of darkness so thick and heavy upon him that he could not move. Catherine came closer and closer to him, until their lips touched and she spread open his mouth with a quick flick of her tongue, tilting her head to the side so she could position and seal her open mouth over his, their bodies and spirits melded together at that one contact point. Don's consciousness slipped away as he felt her heated breath thrust down his throat, burning a molten path from the center of his being out to the furthest reaches of his extremities, his last awareness the sensual softness of ethereal feathers, their tender strands stroking the expanse of his suddenly naked body- and echoes resounding about him from the slight fluttering of wings.