Los Angeles FBI Field Office
0915 Hours PST

Only one thing kept Don Eppes from throwing his phone across the room. We've got a lead. "Okay, guys, tell me you heard what I heard?"

Liz, David, and Colby exchanged looks. "Uh…I heard your dad say something about handcuffs?" Liz offered.

"My handcuffs," Don agreed. "Except I know he doesn't actually mean mine because Langager's guy had me tied up with them at the house. Amita had to get my spare key from the suburban."

"He meant ones like we use," David confirmed. "Don, did your dad just confirm that Langager's partner is FBI?"

Don nodded. "And I want him found."

"Alan also said something about room service," Colby realized. He snapped his fingers. "They've got him at a hotel."

"Great, but there's a problem. Los Angeles has something like a thousand hotels, and that's probably not counting the super shady ones that Langager might hang out at," Liz pointed out.

"Well, we're gonna cross check everything in Langager's files. I wanna know if anybody in our office was in to visit him, passed him on the street, or attended his trial. And then I wanna know if there's a hotel near anywhere Langager's ever been. I'm not waiting for him to call. Let's get ahead of this guy for once," Don instructed his team. He disappeared from the war room absently rubbing his shoulder, a move that did not go unnoticed by Colby and David.

The three agents dug in again, occasionally calling out a possible location for their map tacked to the board.

Colby held up his phone and snapped a picture of the map. As he looked up from the text he was sending, he caught David eyeballing him.

"Do I wanna know?" David asked him.

Colby shook his head. "The less you guys know, the less you gotta testify to later," he replied.


Eppes Residence
1000 Hours PST

Charlie Eppes had his music cranked to drown out the silence of the house. My Chemical Romance blared as his chalk moved on the board, his handwriting somehow staying neat and readable even at the frantic pace.

Amita tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned. Wordlessly, she handed him her phone. Charlie took it, glanced at the photo from Colby. "Good. That's good."

Amita shook her head as she texted Colby back, then, tugged Charlie's earbuds from his ears. "Your brother is going to kill you," she informed Charlie.

"He can't make me sit this one out. Not this one," Charlie said flatly. "I told him I didn't need to see the files, and I don't. All I need are dates, times, locations, addresses. Numbers. I need the numbers."

"Colby said the kidnapper made contact," Amita told him. "He told Don he'd have instructions for making an exchange the next time he called."

"If we can get Don there first, we won't have to worry about it." Charlie turned to the map laid out behind him, one nearly identical to the one back at the FBI Field Office. He marked a spot with a blue pen, and glanced at the map. "Colby said he thinks Langager is in a hotel somewhere?"

"He said your dad gave Don the hint."

Charlie looked up sharply. "Don heard from Dad? Is he okay?"

Amita bit her lip. "I…I mean, I guess so," she said. "Colby didn't…he didn't really say." She placed her hands on Charlie's shoulders. "I'm sorry, Charlie."

"He couldn't even do me the courtesy of calling to say he'd talked to Dad." Charlie shook his head. "Unbelievable." Angrily, he shrugged Amita's hands off his shoulders, and chucked the pen he was working with across the garage. It thudded into some shelves near the door to the house.

"Charlie…" Amita reached a hand out tentatively, but then pulled it back as Charlie went back to scribbling notes on the map.

She wondered if this was how Don and Charlie's relationship had been…well, before. She knew they'd been estranged, or at the very least, not very close. Alan had confided to her once that the two had grown leaps and bounds since Charlie started consulting on the regular for Don's Violent Crimes team.

How will this affect them both? Amita wondered, leaving Charlie to work. Especially if, God forbid, Alan's no longer around to run interference?


Los Angeles FBI Field Office
1045 Hours PST

"Okay, so show me what you got," Don instructed Matt and Nikki.

Matt Li, the IT specialist that worked the most frequently with Don's team, handed Don a driver's license. Daryl Langager's face was transposed from his mug shot, but Matt had done a convincing job of adding small touches, enough that Langager could easily accomplish with some plastic surgery and some makeup. "There's a GPS tracker built into the plastic," Matt explained. "If we can get a car to follow him after the drop, we can pick him back up again as long as he stays in range."

"We figured you didn't want him to get too far," Nikki explained.

Don shook his head. "I don't intend to."

Nikki swiped a smaller card from the desk and gave it to her boss. "New social security card."

"We altered the color just a little bit from the actual cards," Matt said. "I'm working up a passport, and that should cover the basics. All real enough to pass a cursory glance, but enough that we'll be able to nail him if he tries to use any of them for anything."

"Okay. Nice work," Don told them. He looked at Nikki. "Get that passport done ASAP, there's no telling when Langager's gonna call again." With that, he disappeared from Matt's office, and turned the corner near the elevators.

Then, knowing he was out of eyeshot of anyone on his team, Don slumped against the wall, sliding to the floor. His shoulder was killing him, but he refused to take anything or see anyone. He needed his head clear, and he needed to stay on the premises. But his shoulder didn't hurt near as bad as the thought that his little brother probably hated him, and his father was in the hands of a sick serial killer.

Or the thought that there was a very real possibility that he was running out of time.


Author's Note: Dang, I'm sorry. This one was kind of a downer. I promise the action picks back up (and so do everybody's emotions)!