Chapter 3: An Explanation

"Did something happen?" His brother asked, worried. "Are you ok? Is Dad ok?"

Don opened his mouth but no word passed his lips.

"Don?"

And suddenly, everything he had shoved away or bottled up in the past few hours came back at Don and left him spitting mad, words stumbling out of him not fast enough. "What's up? What's up? I'm told you're shot, you've vanished, I can't reach you, have no idea where you are, if you are fine, if you've been kidnapped, official sides can't help because they have no idea what went down in the first place, everything's just a mess, I'm worried out of my mind about you and you have the nerve to call now and ask what's up!?!!"

Silence. Then his little brother muttered a weak "Don...".

Don gripped his phone harder and his eyes narrowed. "That all you've got to say?"

A sigh. "Look Don, I'm not sure who told you what, but it's just been a misunderstanding."

Don breathed fire. Charlie sounded okay enough so finally, he could let go of the near paralyzing worry he had felt for the past couple of hours and launch himself head first into the rage he had held back so far. "A misunderstanding? You're shot and you call it a misunderstanding?!"

Another sigh. "I guess Larry called you, huh? Should have known," Charlie muttered.

"Damn right he called!" Don snapped. "What I don't get is why you didn't call!"

"Because there was no need to, Don," Charlie simply answered.

"No need? No need?! You're being shot at, you're hurt, and there's no need to call me?" Don all but sputtered, the agent long forgotten and pushed back by the angry big brother who was in for blood. "I'm your brother! I have every right to be notified immediately! I swear to God, Charlie, sometimes I just don't get you! You're a genius, for Heaven's sake, but still you pull such stupid stunts, make such unbelievable dense call of judgments that even a five year old..."

"Don!" Charlie tried in vain to interrupt his brother's rant. "Don!"

"... but no, not you, with your three doctors and hell knows what else titles, no, you, you act like the most boneheaded fool that ever walked this Earth. What the hell were you thinking..."

"Donnie!"

Momentarily stunned by hearing the unfamiliar endearment out of his brother's mouth, Don shut up. Charlie hadn't called him Donnie since he had been seven years old, at least not when not in a mocking sense.

"Don, I'm fine, okay?" Charlie assured him calmly, now that he had Don's attention. "Nothing happened. I'm sorry Larry gave you a scare but I'm fine. So please calm down."

Calm down? He was supposed to calm down after the past couple of hours he had? Like hell he would!

"Larry must have understood something wrong there. Probably my fault, I should have talked with him sooner. I'm sorry you worried because of that. I'll explain it to you," Charlie continued to sooth him. He sighed. "Please, Don. I'm really sorry."

And all of a sudden, the fury was gone and Don just felt tired. Exhausted even. He closed his eyes and the agent used the brother's weakness to take over again. Opening his eyes, he straightened. "Where are you?"

There was a slight hesitation before Charlie answered. "Downtown. Why?"

"Give me the address and stay put. I'll be there in fifteen," Don instructed.

"That's really not nece..."

"Charlie," Don interrupted him very calmly. "I'm there in fifteen."

Silence - then a deep sigh. "I'll stay put."

"You do that," Don stated as calmly. "Address?"

"Corner West Temple Street and Northern Broadway."

Near City Hall. Don logged that information away.

"Fifteen minutes," Don reminded his brother. "Be there."

And he disconnected, only to stare at the phone in his hand though.

"Is he okay?"

Startled, Don pulled himself together and glanced at Megan. He shrugged. "Seemed so."

"Did he say what happened?" Megan asked.

Don averted his eyes to look out of the window. "He said something of a misunderstanding."

Megan raised an eyebrow. "That's one hell of a misunderstanding."

Don only shrugged. That was one way to word it. Another would be that this was one major bullshit. But hey, he'd listen to what explanations Charlie had to offer. Perhaps then he would remedy his opinion. He doubted it, but he'd give his little brother at least that chance.

One thing was for sure though: this wasn't over yet, not by far.

Fourteen minutes later, having dropped Megan off at the office, Don idled to the curb in front of his brother and waited for him to get in. He mustered the younger man critically but could indeed not see a single sign that his little brother had been involved in a traumatic experience only that afternoon.

Lining back into traffic, Don went straight to the point. "Talk."

Charlie glanced at him and sighed. "Can't that wait a little bit, Don?"

Gripping the wheel harder, Don looked away from the street long enough to glare at his brother. "Talk," he repeated in a hiss.

Charlie knew better than to ignore that order for a second time. "Okay, okay... Jeez. Look, it really was nothing, it was just an experiment."

"Experiment," Don repeated flatly, careful to keep the agent at the front and the furious brother at bay.

"Yeah, for the LAPD," Charlie said with a nod. "There were some serious complaints lately that their reaction times lacks efficiency. The chief approached me and together with a small team we worked out a group of tests to see how accurate these complaints are, where the most time got lost and how to improve the reaction time. Several teams were gathered and over the past three weeks, various incidents were staged and reported over a fake dispatch. A break-in, a robbery, an assault, public disorder, a fire... A shooting. Volunteering targets are as unaware of when the attempt will be made as are the responding officers. I volunteered and apparently, today was my turn."

Don shook his head. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

Charlie threw him an offended look. "Well, I simplified it a lot. Sure, the best thing would have been to have no teams on call at all and let it simply go over the real dispatch. But I hardly need to tell you the crime rate of this city, now, do I? Both the chief and the major were adamant that no real emergencies should be even in danger of being neglected in favor of an unknown staged emergency. So we had to work around that and issue some hard instructions. In this stage of the test phase it was anyway more important to gather all the data and their variables than to test. For instance, how long does a victim need to be able to call in help? How big are the effects of the shock? How long until dispatch can answer it - the test people at dispatch do the real duty, you know, with a special line unhooked to the whole system. They have the instruction to handle those as they would handle any other call coming in. And there are other factors to be considered as well, like the time of day the call comes in, what day it is, what's all going on in the city, how the weather is - these are all important factors that influence the respond time."

For a moment, Don took that in, slight doubt coming over him. He frowned. "Say I buy it, then why weren't there uniforms and squat cars swarming the campus like it should have been after someone shooting openly at a campus?"

"Because this is still only a test. The goal of these tests are not that we get people in a panic or pissed because we cause a havoc for nothing. Nor do we want to cause other witnesses to really call 911 or worse, call the press in on it. Just think what a mess we would have had at hand if suddenly, squat cars come to a screeching halt at CalSci and the SWAT team and uniforms swarm all over campus. The students, professors and parents would have been in uproar." Charlie shook his head. "No, we had to avoid such things. So it was decided that the teams would not drive squat cars or wear uniforms and that the various attempts were only to be executed when the 'target' was alone or empty with no witnesses around." He made a face. "That Larry saw all of today's test was an unfortunate accident. My 'assailant' hadn't seen that Larry was still in hearing distance when he took the shots, firing blanks of course, and I... well, I just forgot to fill Larry in. I assured him that I was fine, that everything was fine, but I fear I simply forgot to mention that it was all fake. Sorry about that."

Shaking his head, Don tried to make sense of what Charlie had said. Trouble with his ingenious brother was that Charlie had a talent to make the most harebrained things you could think of suddenly seem logic and you never knew quite for sure if he was talking about a real possibility there or if it was just a hoax. It made him a great teacher but it also gave him an excellent tool to make others believe just what he wanted. Don remembered well that when Charlie had been four, he had convinced Don for a while that Santa Claus was real, despite not having believed in him for already a couple of years. But Charlie had sounded so logic with his numbers and statistics that for a few days, Don really started to buy it. Of course, back then Charlie himself had believed that strongly as well. Other than when he had been twelve and he had talked Don into doing his chores at home for two entire months in exchange for a calculation on when their teachers would made a surprise exam and on what so Don hadn't to learn all the useless junk the teachers told them to learn. It took him two months and a F in a surprise math test that he finally got it that Charlie had tricked him.

Probably.

Even almost twenty years later Don wasn't quite certain if Charlie really had only told him he could predict the surprise exams so he wouldn't have to bring out the garbage and mown the lawn or if perhaps Charlie's theory just hadn't worked or an anomaly had occurred that Charlie hadn't been able to calculate.

All Don had was his instinct and while he could sometimes blindly trust that, there were other times, most often in relation with Charlie, where his instinct was wrong completely. Still, mostly it was right and he decided, this time, he would trust it once again.

So he shook the head. "I don't buy it, Charlie." He glanced over at him. "Even if they used unmarked cars, the police doesn't drive black SUVs," he pointed out, keeping an eye on his brother's reaction out of the corner or his eyes.

Charlie frowned. "Black SUVs?"

Don nodded. "We talked with Larry, got him to tell us everything he saw. He says the people you called in drove black SUVs and wore dark clothes. That doesn't exactly strike me like the police."

"We had a special enlarged timer system installed in each of the test team's cars that activates the second dispatch contacts them. The devices needed space. So we used SUVs," Charlie answered and slowly, irritation crept up in his voice. "And will you give it a rest already? I'm sorry you've had to worry there for a moment, but this borders to be just ridiculous now."

His hold on the wheel tightened so his knuckles stood out. But Don forced himself to stay calm and even give a shrug, changing tactic. "You're my brother," Don said quietly and glanced over at Charlie. "And I'm a FBI-agent. I get a call you're being shot at, I worry. And I need to investigate. It's how I work."

Charlie's brown eyes immediately softened and he sighed. "I know that, Don. And I'm happy you care so much. But still, Don, you need to ease it down a bit, okay? I'm fine, nothing happened. No one shot at me, not for real." He smiled. "Case solved."

Don gave a very slow nod and for a while, they said nothing and he let his brother believe that the topic was over.

It wasn't though.

They reached the boarder of Pasadena and finally, Don made his last strike. "So if no one shot at you - how come you've been grazed?"

Charlie's eyes widened a bit. "What?"

"Larry said you've been wounded. Only a graze, but still - you've been wounded," Don elaborated, almost casually. Almost.

"I..." Charlie swallowed. "It was part of the decoy. Plan was that while it wasn't a real hit, the victim should be at least a bit wounded. We want to see how fast the paramedics arrive as well. And also how fast the crime scene team is at processing the scene. So I settled for the graze, they pretended to look at it and the others made their pictures and collected the 'bullets'. It's a big and complex operation, the chief had shaken his head as well when we presented him with our plan, but you know me, I need as much data as I can get and they really want to see if they can improve their reaction time."

Don didn't offer a reply this time.

Exasperated and back to being slightly angry, Charlie shook his head and glared over at his brother. "You happy now or do you have more questions? You know, if you don't believe me, which you obviously don't, why don't you just go to Chief Suttner and let him confirm that the LAPD and I are working on this project? Or you can go directly to the major. He set all of this in motion you know? Want me to make you an appointment with him?"

"No, I don't think that's necessary," Don replied quietly and parked the car in his brother's driveway.

"How humble of you," muttered Charlie and jumped out.

Much slower, Don got out of the car and followed his brother. He wasn't finished with Charlie yet though. He really wanted to believe him. He really did. Not just because if all this was true, Charlie wasn't in any danger Don had to worry about - but mostly because he really didn't want to learn that his little brother, never having had a dishonest thread in him and a terrible liar, was suddenly able to lie to him like that. At all.

No, he really desperately wanted to be able to buy Charlie's explanation. But he just couldn't. Too much of it was a bit too far out there for Don's liking. And then there was Charlie himself - he had seemed fairly calm but once or twice, he had slipped up, hesitating a bit too long with his answer. One who didn't know Charlie so well probably wouldn't have noticed it or if he would have written it off to him being your typical absent minded professor. But Don did know him, for all of his life and there were probably only his father and Larry who rivaled him in his knowledge of one Charles Edward Eppes.

And as much as he didn't want to learn that his little brother may have outright lied to him - he needed to be sure. Because if this hadn't been a simple test gone a bit awry as his brother had claimed - then that meant the attempt had been real and that while Charlie had come out of it rather unscarred - he may still be in danger.

Don hadn't imagined the strange phone call he had gotten that afternoon - nor had he forgotten it.

So he did the only thing he could think of to see which was the truth, no matter how much he hated doing it.

"Charlie!" Don called out softly, preventing his brother from going inside.

As expected, Charlie stopped and turned around, eyeing him exasperated. "What now?"

Don caught up with him and he met the angry, but always trusting dark eyes of his brother. "I'm sorry," he apologized.

Confusion joined the emotions in Charlie's eyes. "For what?"

"For this," Don answered and with a heavy heart, reached out and squeezed Charlie's upper left arm.

His breath hitching and then being let out in a hiss, Charlie yanked his arm out of his brother's grasp and stepped back, turning accusatory eyes onto Don.

Don took in the sudden paleness of Charlie, the tiny drops of sweat forming on his forehead and the flash of pain in his eyes and felt his heart sink.

"A blank, huh?" he remarked bitterly. "Since when do blanks leave a graze wound, Charlie?"

His brother broke their eye contact and directed his gaze to his feet.

Don swallowed. "Why don't you tell me what really happened, now? Who shot at you? Who were those guys you left with?" Why didn't you call me? But that last question he left out. It wasn't important, at least not at the moment. Later - later he would see about that one as well.

Taking a deep breath, Charlie raised his head again, his face closed off. He met Don's eyes, calmly. "LAPD and I made a test today that slightly went awry because unfortunately, Larry witnessed it and in turn gave you a wrong impression as well. And this..." he tentatively touched his upped left arm. "This is a scratch I got from a nail in the garage that protruded out too much last night. While the paramedics were there already that afternoon, I let them take a look at it, especially as it would give me even more accurate data to work with. That's all I have to say."

Straightening, Charlie went past Don and up the porch. His hand hovering over the knob, he turned and met Don's eyes once again. "Seriously Don, give it a rest," he told him in a quiet voice before he turned again and went inside, leaving the door open.

Don stared after him, his fingers twitching.

Give it a rest?

He didn't think so. Not for a second did Don believe that all Charlie had on his left arm was a scratch from a nail. He had suffered through graze wounds often enough to know how they look and just how they hurt. A nail scratch would not have brought the pain into Charlie's eyes his squeeze had. A graze however...

His heart constricted painfully as he still stared at the open door, glooming. Even having just seen it with his own eyes, he still couldn't believe that his own brother, the honest, open little brother he was so proud of, had just flat out lied into Don's face like that, even keeping eye contact all the time. Charlie hated lying, one of the reasons why he was so bad at it. And yet, here he had been, and if Don hadn't gotten himself the proof that Charlie had been lying and had heard Larry's side of the events, Don would have believed his story on the spot.

What had happened that his brother was suddenly capable to lie like that? Even more importantly, when had Charlie become such a good liar? And just since when was Charlie so damn good at keeping something from his big brother or refusing him something flat out.

Don was no fool. His father preached him time and time again that Charlie couldn't say no to him, no matter what he asked him to do and Don knew that this was true. And if he really was reluctant, Don had just to move on to plea and he had Charlie. He had used this power in the past, sometimes for solely his pleasure, mostly though for the greater good. And to be fair, this went both ways. If Charlie really asked him something important, Don couldn't and wouldn't ever refuse him, at least not as long as his plea wouldn't somehow put Charlie in danger. But apart of that, Don would do just about anything, if his brother only asked him, just like he knew Charlie would do the same thing for him.

But now, this time, all of a sudden, Charlie had said no to Don. Had refused to give him a straight answer, tell him the truth. And not just in some unimportant matter - oh no, it was after someone had shot Charlie and his life may be in danger right now.

That was unacceptable.

Don needed to know what was going on in order to keep his brother safe. Couldn't Charlie see that? Didn't he know that Don could not loose his little brother, that he had to do whatever was in his power to keep him alive?

He didn't care if whatever Charlie had gotten himself into had something to do with national security. He didn't care if he had the clearance to be let in on what was going on or not. He didn't care if he had to put it on with the NSA, the CIA, the DOD, the Army or hell, even with the president himself - his little brother had been shot at, had been hurt, perhaps only lightly, but no playing it down changed the fact that someone had tried to either warn, scare or kill Charlie this afternoon by taking two shots at him and Don couldn't and wouldn't rest until he knew who was behind that attempt, why his little brother had been targeted and just which idiots had gotten his brother into that situation in the first place. And then he'd start to go after the bastards who had brought Charlie to be able to lie to his own brother like he just had.

Of course Don had not yet the slightest idea how he was going to get all these information. But he would find a way. He had some contacts he could use. And he was an excellent FBI-agent. So he had not the slightest doubt that he would get to the bottom of all this.

Give it a rest...

Letting out a low growl, Don stalked into the house and, with a last careful glance around, closed the door. Charlie could not really believe that Don could just give it a rest, even if he wanted to - which he didn't.

"Donnie?"

Taking a deep, calming breath, Don cleared his face from any reminders of his thoughts and turned to walk into the living room and grin at his father. "Yeah Dad."

His face lightening up, his father nodded. "So you did make it to dinner, after all."

With a shrug, Don went by the kitchen to grab himself a beer and moved over to the couch, sitting down with a sigh. "What can I say? Thinking about whatever you've got cooking on the stove reminded me just how hungry I am."

Chuckling, his father shook his head. "I always knew that the way to get you to do something goes through your stomach. Ever since you refused to stop crying as a baby unless we fed you at least something."

Making a face, Don rolled his eyes. "Dad..." he whined.

Grinning, his father got up and patted Don's shoulder. "Donnie, there's one thing you should remember: I'll never tire to embarrass my big grown badass FBI-agent of a son with stories from his younger years."

"I will hope not. Where else would I get my top class blackmail material against Don otherwise?"

Father and son looked up to see Charlie walking into the living room, a soda in his hands.

Laughing, Alan moved over to quickly muzzle his youngest' curls. "You better be careful, Charlie. Just remember, I haven't forgotten the embarrassing stories of a certain world's top mathematician either."

"Yeah Charlie," Don nodded with a gleeful grin. "And I wonder just what your students would think about their respected professor if they'd know about a certain racket?"

Charlie blanched and eyed his brother warily. "You wouldn't."

Don just grinned some more.

Quickly, Charlie held up his hands. "Okay, okay, I'm just saying... No need to go get out old stuff." His eyes lit up. "Especially as I don't think you'd want Colby, David and Megan to learn about a certain 'Saint'-phase, wouldn't you?"

Don's eyes narrowed. "You even think about whispering a word of that to them, I'll go tell Amita how you've been obsessed with Nora's old Barbie puppet and just what you used to do with it."

Charlie raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? You want me to tell those ladies in Merrick's office how you've tried to bleach your hair to look like Crockett and show them a picture of the result? I'm sure between them and me we could let it accidentally be mailed to the whole office."

"You do that, Chuck, and I..."

"Boys!" Alan interrupted his boys' pissing contest and gave them both a hard glare. If they wanted to act like they were thirteen, he would treat them like that. He was satisfied to see that both of his sons looked properly chastised.

"Sorry Dad," they both mumbled.

Of course, secretively, he loved when his grown up sons fell back into their old bickering ways - as long as it stayed lightly. He felt them being closer to him in those times. And it felt good to see that no matter how much they've grown up, he could still render them into sputtering boys. Especially his eldest.

With a rueful smile, he pushed the memories aside. "Well, I better go see what the food makes. Behave," he warned his boys with a last look, then left for the kitchen.

"Sure Dad," his sons called after him, then grinned at each other.

Soon though, the traces of their childhood vanished and left them both with the memory of their day - and that none of them were a boy anymore.

Their grin died and left them looking at each other, searching, uncertainly.

Finally, Charlie broke the spell by slowly coming over to plop down beside his brother, taking a sip from his soda.

"Give it a rest, Don, please," he repeated his earlier words, not looking at his brother.

Don turned his head to study his brother's profile. Eventually, he sat up. "You know I can't," he replied as quietly.

Sighing, Charlie closed his eyes and leaned his head back. "I know," he all but whispered. "It would be better though."

Don frowned. "I can't," he simply repeated.

Another deep sigh. "I know," repeated Charlie sadly.

Regarding his brother, Don suddenly doubted his resolve about getting to the bottom of this. If it really was so important to Charlie to do this on his own and keep his brother out of the loop...

"Boys!" Their father's voice boomed from the kitchen. "I'm not going to set the table as well. So if you actually don't want to eat from the table, you better see to it that you get yourselves some plates."

With a groan, Charlie's eyes opened and he stood up. "Coming, Dad!" he called out and leisurely raised his arms over his head to stretch. Immediately, a small gasp escaped his lips and his arms fell down again, his right hand going to his upper left arm.

With a scowl, Don got up and pushed Charlie back down onto the couch. "I'm setting the table," he told him gruffly and turned sharply to stalk over to the kitchen.

No. No, he couldn't let this go. His brother had already been hurt today. Who knew what would happen the next time the guy or guys behind all this came after Charlie again?

He couldn't loose Charlie.

Everything else was beyond the point.

You should keep an eye on him.

His hand involuntarily moved to his gun he hadn't put away yet, touching the familiar handle. His mysterious called needn't have to tell him that.

He didn't plan to let his little brother out of his sight anytime soon.

TBC!

(Author's Note: And yet another chapter! After all the urging you guys gave me I thought I'd be nice and post it a day sooner than I had actually planned to do it. I hope you enjoyed it as well! Thanks for all the wonderful reviews by the way. I sure loved them.)