Morning found Charlie Eppes in bed alone, curled up underneath the covers and hugging a spare pillow in place of his lover / colleague.
Dawn found Amita's car parked at her house, with the metal carefully hammered back into place as much as could be expected. From a distance, you wouldn't know that it had ever been struck. The doors were locked; Amita's morning cup of coffee that she'd left there had been removed, emptied and hid under the seat. The keys to the car had been carefully dropped into the mail slot through her door.
Anyone who wasn't looking for anything suspicious would be satisfied that Amita was merely sleeping inside.
At this point, Dr. Eppes wasn't looking for anything suspicious, and the window to retrieve Amita had passed.
As lunch approached, Charlie was being to wonder about Amita's whereabouts just as she was beginning to fully wake up.
She had never been fully unconscious. Her attacker was smart, especially in chemistry. They hadn't wanted to kill her, and Amita had ridden along, blindfolded, gagged, and dizzy.
The chloroform had worn off into a deep sleep. When she finally opened her eyes, she was still unable to speak, but was able to see that she was in the basement of what appeared to be some abandoned commercial building.
Detecting the tray of food they had left for her, she moved over to reach it and found that her right arm and both ankles were chained around the various pipes in the wall. Luckily, the tray was in reach and once she finished eating, she decided to try out the restraints. Despite appearing extremely old and rickety, they were strong and the metal was unforgiving.
Amita sat back against the cold wall and curled her legs up to her chest, folding her arms around them. Her mind, having completely regained all its cognitive faculties, could not comprehend what she'd seen the night before. It made no sense.
888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Charlie pulled into a parking spot near Amita's car. He got out of the car and walked past it to the door. He knocked hard on the wood, assuming she would either need the wake up call, or at least, couldn't say she didn't hear him.
A few minutes passed before he slammed his fist into the door again. In truth, he would never have been so harsh, had not a certain amount of fear been building up in him. He didn't know why he was afraid; Charlie believed that intuition only applied to his mathematics.
He left the door and ran to her car, peering into the passenger side door. The coffee cup was missing, Amita usually left it in the car all day and emptied it at night.
Charlie returned to the door and pounded on it again before sprinting back to the car. He dialed Amita's cell phone, once, twice, three times. There was no answer.
Finding the side door locked, he ran around to the driver's side. He pulled on the handle only once before noticing something that had been screaming at him since he'd showed up.
His fingers ran over the carefully repaired metal gash. He brought them up to his face, and breathed a sigh of relief that they hadn't come away with a reddish brown tinge to them.
However, an immense feeling of fear gripped his chest, and he nearly pulled his cell phone apart getting it open.
"Don? It's Charlie. Amita's missing and it looks like someone cut into her car."
"I'll have a team over there in ten minutes. Stay calm, Chuck, she's probably just inside."
888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Larry sat next to Charlie in the FBI conference room. Neither of the men spoke, they simply sat there with folded hands, staring at the photos on the computer monitor. Both of them could imagine Amita's picture in one of those four empty slots.
She would ironically become a statistic, meaning nothing to anyone except those who knew her best.
"Alright, as far as we know, this is still just a kidnapping. Until we get confirmation that this is the same guy, we can't assume that he took Amita."
"What about the axe mark?"
"Let's just stay positive." Don paced around the room.
Agent Anderson entered the room, "This isn't like this guy. He doesn't kidnap, he just kills."
Charlie put his head down on the table, and she paused, "Oh, I'm sorry." The response was genuinely sympathetic.
"We don't know that he's never kidnapped people. Maybe he has and the victims have been so scared, they've never come forward." Larry suggested.
"No, data has shown that most victims that are released or ransomed will talk."
"Agent Eppes?" A young FBI worker came into the conference room, "You have a phone call."
"Who is it?"
"I can't really say." The younger man looked a little more than shaken, "He just said that if he couldn't speak to you, he'd cut my head off."
"Put him on the speaker."
There was an electrical buzz and the line opened. Two technical expert agents began to trace the call immediately.
"I know you're there, Don." A heavily distorted voice came over the speaker.
Agent Anderson leaned over the table and mouthed the words, "That's him."
Don nodded, "To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"I just thought I'd call, we could chat."
"Sure."
Charlie and Larry huddled over the two agents, trying as quickly as they could to pinpoint the killer's location.
"It seems that, last night, somebody messed with my plans."
"Really now?"
"Quite, Agent Eppes, quite. But, I do think that I have something that you want back, very much."
All the agents looked at each other over the table. Then, a shriek of pain issued from the phone.
"Help!" It was a woman, and they imagined he must have twisted her arm pretty hard to get her to scream that way.
"Who's that?"
"C'mon Agent Eppes, I think you know."
There was a whimpering sound from the phone; it had the attention of everyone in the room now. The two agents handed Megan a note, the call was, apparently, coming from Nicholas Davidson's cell phone. Something was interfering with them tapping into the global positioning system to find its exact location however.
The agent explained, "We don't know how the signal could be so strong, but we can't detect it."
"Maybe they're just using the cell phone through another system." Charlie suggested.
"I thought you might be trying to trace the call. Sounds like things aren't going too well."
"You wanna give us a hint?"
"By the time you find this place, I'll already be gone. I can offer you some incentive though."
The woman on the phone cried out again, "Charlie!"
He bolted to the phone, "Amita?!"
"Charlie please!" After that, her voice became muffled.
"Amita!" He yelled back at the phone, but the killer's voice was all he heard.
"Dr. Eppes, I'm surprised. It's never good to let the bad guy know that he's got someone you care about."
Larry curled his hard around Megan's, squeezing it tightly.
"Now, since I missed my target, I'll keep this pretty little thing until I get what I want."
The phone clicked and went dead.
A flurry of activity followed. Don went off yelling for all available agents to move to investigate the two areas that the four minds had pinpointed as the most likely locations. The agents in the room began a heated debate over the killers' words.
"What did he mean, missed his target?"
"Whatever person he meant to kill was supposed to be wherever Amita was that night."
"He meant to kill Charlie." Larry blurted out.
Charlie turned to look at him, and everyone noticed how pale he was, "What?"
"Think about it Charlie. Amita left around the time you normally do, your car was parked right next to hers."
He felt sick and sat down on the table, his hands on his knees, "But the parking lot was well-lit, video taped. He should have been able to see that it wasn't me."
"I think this case just took on a new priority level."
Colby piped up, "Why does this guy want Charlie? I thought he just picked people randomly."
"Not necessarily." Agent Anderson walked over to the computer but neglected to touch it.
"What do you mean?" David had a hard look in his eyes.
"Nicholas wasn't the first family member of an FBI agent to be killed. All of the victims were close relatives of FBI agents."
Don looked down at the floor and waved her hand, "Why didn't you mention this before?"
"Because we needed your little brother to help solve the case. If I had told you that this guy kills the brothers and sisters of agents, then you would've hidden Charlie away somewhere."
"You're damn right I would've!" Don grabbed the woman by her collar and held her face up close to his, "My brother could have had his head taken off by a psychopath and you didn't tell me?"
"But he didn't! And if he keeps working, we'll catch this guy."
"No, all you did was get his girlfriend kidnapped and probably killed!"
Charlie suddenly looked up and with slow precise movements, he walked over to her, "If she dies, if he even hurts her, I'll kill you."
Don looked over at his brother in shock.
"He came for me, and he should've gotten me, not her."
"We can still save her if you can find out where he is!"
"And he could still kill her if he gets bored! He could go after dad or Larry, or one of the students next! He knows Amita's not his only leverage."
Don let go of Anderson, "Larry, we'll be finding a safe place for you tonight. I need two agents to go and get my father and bring him back here."
Colby and David complied. Megan looked at him, "What about the rest of our families?"
Anderson brushed off her coat, "Trust me, he wants Charlie. He wants to eliminate people who pose the greatest threat and destroy their FBI relatives in the process. Nicholas Davidson was working undercover as a drug dealer."
"And Charlie cracks people like this guy."
Larry patted Charlie on the back, "Let's go get something to drink."
Charlie nodded dumbly; he'd lost his grasp on spoken English. Megan gave Larry a kiss on the cheek before he led his friends away. Once in the kitchen, Charlie sat and ran his hands through his hair.
"Why did it have to be Amita? Not that it should be anyone, but her? Statistically, it makes no sense. No kidnaps up until now, Amita is the anomaly?"
"Charlie, you can't expect human behavior, especially those in this state of mind, to act rationally. This guy was outwitted, to his own surprise, by you. He did what most humans do, the next best thing or most logical thing."
"He knew to go for Amita?"
"I have a feeling he knew of her and knew you were connected to her."
"Why not just let her go and wait for me?"
"I'm guessing that," Larry paused long enough to hand Charlie a cup of coffee, "Amita saw him and he couldn't risk her alerting you, thereby putting the whole family under protection. Logically, he had to take her, otherwise he had no leverage and you would be out of his reach."
"You think Amita saw his face then?"
"Saw him? I wouldn't be surprised if she'd gave him a black eye."
The men shared a short-lived laugh.
"Look Charlie, I'm here for you. I know Amita means a lot to you."
"I love her. I was going to tell her that I wanted her to move in with me."
Larry laid his hand on Charlie's shoulder, trying as best he could to comfort his friend.
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
"You better run this by me again." Alan smiled at the agent bringing him his food, "Because I'm a little uncomfortable right now."
"Amita's been kidnapped and we have reason to believe that the killer who took her might come after you, Charlie or Larry. So you're all under federal protection until we catch this guy."
"Why does this guy want to attack our family?"
"He wants to kill Charlie because he's helping the FBI and he's the brother of a leading agent."
"Oh God." Alan looked at his younger son, and pointed with his fork, "You are not leaving this room."
"Dad, he won't let Amita go until he gets me."
"Charlie, I know you love this girl, but isn't there a way that this could be resolved without losing you too?"
"I wish there was, but I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get her back."