Here's part 7! I realized as I was writing this chapter that it was the first time I have ever written Larry ever. He's a challenge!

Some spoilers for Angels and Devils here. Although, can they really be considered spoilers when the episode aired like three years ago (oh my God, it's been three years since season 5 ended. What.)

Enjoy, and as always, please review! I love feedback!

Chapter 7

4:21 a.m.

Fatigue was catching up to him. He'd been sitting down in the pitch black for so long he thought he might have fallen asleep at some point. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference between his eyes being open and them being closed.

He wouldn't mind getting a little sleep. Chances were, Don would wake up whenever Shore came down. And he couldn't do anything until then anyway, so he figured he might as well get whatever rest he could. Maybe then he wouldn't be completely depleted of energy and unable to put up a fight against Shore and maybe he'd be able to put his already risky plan of action to work.

And maybe sleeping would force Don's mind away from the thoughts he'd been trying so hard not to think. Thoughts about his family. Thoughts about Robin, in particular, and how deeply he'd failed her today.

She had to be so upset with him. He'd completely screwed up their wedding.

It was a struggle to keep turning so awkwardly to keep checking his watch, but it was such a habit for him that he kept doing it anyway. Right now, he figured he'd been missing for about twelve hours. He wondered how much everyone knew about what happened. Had anyone found his car yet? Surely, an alert had gone out and some local cop would have spotted it by now. And with that discovery, surely they'd have figured out he'd been kidnapped by someone.

Did Robin blame him for what happened? He so fervently hoped she wouldn't be angry with him. But why wouldn't she be?

This was hard. The hardness of the whole situation was only compounded by their simple, innocent worries of the day before. This time yesterday, he'd lain awake in his bed, unable to sleep. He'd been worrying about whether all their guests would even make it to the wedding with that crazy rainstorm they'd had. Little did he know that he'd be the only one not to show up. Little did any of them know that the torrential downpour would ultimately not be responsible for his wedding's demise.

Oh God. A small bubble of panic welled up in his chest. What if he never got the chance to explain to Robin how deeply sorry he was? What if he died here? They'd never get married, they'd never maybe have kids someday, and they'd never grow old together. She'd be alone.

No, she wouldn't; she'd probably find someone else at some point.

He missed her so much in that moment that he nearly cried out. What he wouldn't give to be where he was supposed to be right now—in the honeymoon suite they'd booked, snuggled in bed with her asleep after a long night of passionate love-making, his arms wrapped around her with her soft, long hair fanned out across the pillow. He could almost feel the softness of the sheets, of the pillows, of Robin. How comfortable it would be to be sleeping in all that softness. As it was, he was stuck in a really awkward sitting position with no softness around anywhere.

"Oh, Robin," he said out loud to the darkness. "I'm so sorry Robin. I'm so sorry this is happening." He could he a quiver in his voice.

Whoa. Hey. What the hell was he doing? This was not good. He hadn't even been down here in this basement for more than a few hours. He couldn't possibly let himself do this now. Come on, Don, you know better. Where had all the years as a clear-headed FBI agent gone? He gave himself a few mental slaps on the face, forcing himself back to reality.

Can't think about Robin, not now. Have to keep a clear head. If there was any hope of getting out of here, he absolutely had to stay focused. No more of this wallowing in self-pity, he berated himself. Time to man up and start acting more like an FBI agent with training and experience instead of a helpless victim.

He strained around to glance at his watch again. 4:30 a.m.

Maybe Shore was sleeping, Don thought. If so, he probably had a little while longer to wait. He settled in, going over his escape plan, attempting to refine some of the rougher details.

5:30 a.m.

His hands were shaking. Charlie supposed that's what too much coffee and too little sleep would do to a person. Especially when that man was being fuelled entirely by caffeine, fear, and worry. He supposed he was on an adrenaline high—the intensity of the action itself giving him the energy he needed to be a part of it.

But oh yeah, the coffee definitely made a difference. He paused briefly in his frivolous scribbling, turning around to give Larry a small, grateful smile as he set yet another cup of coffee down on the table. Larry also handed a cup to Amita, who quietly whispered her thanks before turning back to her laptop.

"Charles," Larry spoke softly and cautiously as Charlie lifted the coffee to his lips.

Charlie nearly choked as the hot coffee scalded his tongue. "Yes, Larry," he croaked. "What is it?"

"Our search here does not appear to be progressing efficiently," Larry pointed out. "It's so broad; it's as if we are searching for a particular celestial body in the night sky by simply scanning through every single point above without applying any prior knowledge to the search."

Charlie raised an eyebrow at his friend. "Larry, I don't have time for this. I have to keep going here, or I'm never going to find Don."

"Charles," Larry said firmly, placing his hands on Charlie's shoulders. "If we were to utilize certain techniques along with our own acquired knowledge, we'd be able to locate our star in the sky much more efficiently. But right now, we're simply looking in randomly upwards towards the heavens with no direction as to where to look."

"He's right, Charlie," Amita spoke up. "This analysis is looking for Don everywhere. There has to be some way we can use more general knowledge to focus our search on certain key areas."

"General knowledge?" Charlie was confused. "Like what? What are you talking about?"

He watched Amita and Larry exchange hesitant glances. Shaking his head, Charlie started to turn around. They were making sense, mostly, but it wasn't helpful. They didn't have any information or other knowledge. They were working with what they knew already. He was doing the best he could to narrow down the search areas.

And yet it still wasn't enough. He was still helpless to find his brother. Frustration welled up inside Charlie, clamoring to get out. He tossed the marker he was holding to the ground angrily.

"Charles," Larry soothed, "unfortunately this is a very sensitive subject matter for you. But what Amita and I are attempting to communicate here is that there are possibly some inferences that can be made here about Don's kidnapper and his motives and intentions that might prove useful to our analysis."

Inferences. Right. Charlie figured out what Larry was getting at.

"You mean like how we know that FBI agents are usually kidnapped for a very specific reason," Charlie said. "Like for revenge, or a need of information. And given Ralph Shore's past history with Don, the motive here is probably the former."

He shuddered.

"Yes, exactly," Larry nodded in encouragement. "Now, you are much more versed in such criminal patterns than I am. And I am aware of how difficult it would be to incorporate some of these patterns into your analysis, given that the situation so closely involves a loved one."

Larry paused, and Charlie nodded. Yes. The situation did so closely involve a loved one. His brother. If he messed up, his brother was dead, simple as that. If that happened, how could he go home and face his dad or Robin ever again? How could he face anyone? Okay, Larry was right. The only way around this was to focus. His best chance was to concentrate. He must force himself to do that.

"I've seen this happen to you over and over again."

He reached up, rubbing his face with his hands.

"The stress hits too close to home, and you don't see straight. You check out."

He could hear his brother's voice as clear as he had that day. He could feel Don's hand shaking his shoulder—could see Don's eyes boring intensely into his, silently imploring Charlie to screw his head back on and get focused.

"What do I do now?"

"Go to your gut."

Go to your gut. He could do that. He did it back then, with Amita. It had taken another try or two from Don and the rest of the FBI team, but he'd done it, hadn't he? He'd gone to his gut, and he'd figured out that Amita had sneakily given the FBI her IP address right under her kidnapper's nose.

Don had asked him to go to his gut. He'd asked Charlie then, but he might as well be asking Charlie now. Don needed Charlie to go to his gut.

Right now, Charlie's gut was churning, spinning in time with his brain as all the possibilities of what a kidnapper hell-bent on revenge could do to Don.

No. He refused to think of these possibilities in words. Words would not be helpful in this case. No, probably numbers would be more useful here.

He vaguely registered Larry and Amita watching him intently as he spun back around towards the board. He picked up the eraser off the tray and began wiping furiously up, down, everywhere. The board was a perfectly clear window. Suddenly Amita was there, holding out the marker he'd only just thrown across the room a minute ago. Slowly, he accepted the marker, faintly nodding his thanks.

"Atta boy, Charles," Larry muttered from somewhere behind him.

Charlie managed to get about three lines of equations scribbled out on to the board before he turned around.

"Do you think we should assume that Ralph Shore wants to stay completely hidden? Maybe he wants to be somewhere where he can easily dispose of a . . . um, body." He couldn't help but wince at the word body. Don's body. "But on the other hand, what if he plans to keep Don alive for awhile?" To do God knows what to him. "Maybe it's less important to be isolated then, as long as he can . . . uh . . . stash him away somewhere no one will see or hear him."

Another shudder and a shaky breath.

"I see no reason why we shouldn't assume both possibilities for the time being, Charles," Larry answered softly. "Let's see what that yields first, and then if the results are too broad, we can always focus in on one or the other. Maybe by then the FBI will have found sufficient evidence to sway our assumptions one way or the other."

"Go to your gut."

Larry was right, of course. Charlie nodded and looked towards Amita. "All right. Amita, we'll need a large print-out map of our search area."

Amita nodded and quickly returned to her laptop.

"Hey, brain trust," Nikki's voice suddenly drifted into the conference room. She appeared, holding a small file. "Liz and I just got back from talking to Shore's boss from the hospital. Dude wasn't happy about us waking him up so early in the morning, but he told us some things that may or may not be useful for you guys."

The three of them watched her expectantly, waiting for her to continue.

"Apparently our guy's a bit of an outdoorsman," Nikki explained. "He likes to go camping up in the mountains every time he gets a few days off. I guess he's gone up there with some of his coworkers before to camp and hike and go fishing, stuff like that. I don't know, maybe he took Don up in the mountains somewhere."

"Makes sense," Amita agreed. "He could have wanted to go somewhere where he's really comfortable, and to an area he's really familiar with."

Nikki nodded. "Exactly what I was thinking."

Charlie's mind was spinning; thousands of thoughts were mulling around in his brain. "Um, do you know exactly where Shore would go?"

Nikki shrugged. "His boss wasn't really sure. He did give us a list of other people Shore goes camping with. Liz and Colby are out talking to some of those people now. We'll let you know when we have more."

Charlie nodded slowly, watching Nikki leave. Another big lead. He hoped so fervently that they were right about this. In his analysis, he'd be placing a heavy emphasis on areas Ralph Shore frequented, but what if they were wrong? What if they weren't in the mountains?

"Go to your gut."

Don's voice raced through his head again. Here, his gut was telling him that Shore had taken Don somewhere in the mountains, to a place Shore was familiar with.

TBC