Manipulation Part 6

By Ecri

April 16

Alan checked and rechecked the sheet of paper where he'd scribbled down the times he could see his son. The last time he had come to visit Charlie, his son's lawyer was already visiting, and Alan, though he'd waited, had not been able to see him. It was his own fault for misunderstanding the times, but it made him more determined that he would see Charlie today. The thought of his son in this awful place made Alan's heart ache.

He checked his watch. It was nearly three o'clock now. Unless the lawyer was there again, and he'd checked with the lawyer's office just to make sure he'd be able to see Charlie. He checked in with the guard at the desk, the man nodded, and checked something on his computer.

Alan was watching the man closely, and, knew just by the way the man stared at the screen that something was wrong. "What is it?" He demanded.

"UhI'm sorry, sir. You should have been notified. Your son can't have visitors today."

"HeI've been waitingwhat do you mean?" The man didn't say anything, but quickly darkened his computer screen as though concerned that Alan would leap over the desk and demand to see it. "Where's my son?"

"He can't have visitor's right now, sir."

Alan calmly leaned over the desk and spoke very softly. "That's not what I asked. I want to know where he is. Has something happened to him?"

The guard smiled disingenuously and gestured for Alan to take a seat. He picked up the phone and began to speak in hushed tones to someone on the other end.

Alan refused to sit and merely glared at the man. When the guard finally hung up, he stood. "Sir, if you'll come with me, the warden would like to see you."

"The warden?" Alan didn't like the sound of that.

Hours later

Alan felt every minute of the long drive home. Emotionally, he felt as if he had run relived his wife's last months. Exhaustion didn't come close to describing it. He had wanted to call Don, but the Warden had been kind enough to let him be with Charlie in the infirmary and CharlieCharlie had gripped Alan's arm as though to let go would be to cause the world to end.

Someone, Alan wasn't clear who, had found Charlie in the corridors near the laundry. There was some question as to how he'd gotten there, since he'd been expected in the kitchen, but that was a question for another day as far as Alan was concerned. Charlie had been beaten. The warden insisted that Charlie had been lucky, but Alan didn't see it. The bruises and the bleeding were bad enough without wondering what the warden meant by "it could have been worse". Alan shuddered even to contemplate such a thing.

Charlie's bruising had been painful for Alan to look at, and imagining the pain his child might be in took his breath away. His chest was an alarming array of color–blue, black, green, and purple. Bright and tender, Charlie's flesh was a vivid visual reminder that every movement, every breath Alan's son took was painful. One of Charlie's ribs had cracked. It hadn't broken clean through, however, and the doctors seemed delighted at that. It was hard for Alan to be delighted about anything when Charlie would wince or groan at every probe or poke from a doctor or nurse.

He was grateful no other bones were broken, but it seemed like a small consolation at this point.

Now, rather than go home, he'd decided to see Don. He called first to see if his eldest son was home, but when there had been no answer, Alan decided to go to Don's apartment and wait for him. He would tell Don what had happened in person.

When he arrived at Don's apartment, he knew something was wrong. The lights were out, the apartment dark. Don was always up late. Here it was only 10:00 PM and he was asleep? Of course, he could be outbut he usually left a light on.

Alan knocked on the door. He waited a reasonable amount of time, and then he knocked again. He heard something inside, like a breaking glass, and became concerned.

"Don? Open the door! It's your father!" He pounded again, but there was still no answer.

"Don! Are you all right?" No reply. "Don, I have to talk to you about Charlie!"

The door opened almost instantly and Alan found himself staring at his son, but not recognizing him. Don was standing there before him wearing a pair of sweatpants and an old tee shirt, which even the words 'laundry day' would not excuse anyone from wearing. In his hand he clutched a nearly empty bottle of whiskey and a piece of what had once been a glass.

"Don?" Alan stared at his son in surprise.

"What about Charlie?" Don croaked.

"He was hurt today"

"I know."

"You do?"

"Yeah. How did you find out?"

"I was trying to visit him and the warden let me go to the infirmary to see him. It's not good, Don." Alan moved forward ushering Don into his own apartment and securing himself a place on the side of the door he preferred to be on. He wasn't going to risk Don throwing him out. "Donny, what's happened to you?"

"I found out about CharlieI guess I got a little drunk."

"How did you find out about Charlie?"

Don fumbled for words. "My fault. He thought I was followed. He saw Terry and thoughtit was to teach me a lessonI didn't know" He stopped himself abruptly.

Alan, knowing and understanding his son's sensitive work, still couldn't help but demand clarification. "What are you talking about? Was Charlie hurt because of the cases he's worked on for the FBI?"

Don snorted. "Nice of you not to say 'the cases he's worked on for me' but no, that's not entirely accurate."

"What, then, Don?"

Don shook his head. "No. I can'tI can't" He drew in a deep breath, but when he released it, it was shaky and hinted that tears would soon follow. "My fault"

Alan didn't know what was causing this, but he knew how to comfort his own son. He moved to the sofa and sat down, forcing Don to sit beside him. Then he eased the bottle and the piece of a glass from Don's hands and rested them on the coffee table. Don kept talking the entire time, but Alan didn't understand most of it. Something about being responsible for Charlie being hurt, but Alan knew that Don had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility where Charlie's safety was concerned.

He felt responsible for that, and the never-ending circle of responsibility was an irony that was not lost on him. He had cause, however. When Don had been at his most explosive, his most irrational, and his most resentful of his baby brother's intellect and accomplishments, Alan had shared with Don the fear that kept him awake nights.

It had been the night before Charlie's first day at Don's high school. Don was vociferous in his objections. Alan had sat down with Don and explained that Charlie wasn't always observant of what was going on around him, and that he was, as most young children were, a bit too trusting. He'd explained to Don that Charlie was an easy target for the criminal element. Don hadn't believed him at first. Reluctantly, Alan had shown Don the mail. After appearing in a segment on 60 Minutes on gifted children, which the Eppes had only agreed to do because the educational costs for a child like Charlie were financially crippling the family, the mail had begun to pour in.

They'd received requests that Charlie figure out the best way to win at craps or that Charlie find the most likely winning lottery number–and those had been the normal ones. Other letters had requested that Charlie decipher the exact landing area of the flying saucers that would return to Earth to pick up their imprisoned brethren from the Roswell crash or that Charlie apply his genius in helping to develop a bridge between dimensions, among other things. Alan hadn't even shown Don the truly terrifying ones. There had been requests to 'loan' Charlie out to projects over an extended period of time so that he could work uninterrupted on a project. Another asking that Charlie be returned to his 'true' family, visitors from the 21st Planet from which Charlie had been stolen at birth and taken to Earth where he had been switched for a human baby.

He had immediately regretted sharing all of that with Don. He had seen, since that night, how protective Don had grown. Not that he hadn't been protective before then, but it had definitely intensified. Alan had seen a resurgence of this protectiveness almost daily now that his boys were working together, and he knew Don well enough to know that he saw himself as a failure, now, because his brother was out of his reach.

He shushed Don's words until they stopped, and held him as he cried. He knew something was going on, and he knew he was going to be in the dark for a lot longer. His only hope was that, in the end, both his sons would be okay.

April 17

Morning was a hard thing to face when you'd had a fifth of scotch for dinner and fallen asleep in your father's arms. Don struggled to sit up, tossing off the blankey he didn't even remember owning in the process. He smelled something, and it smelled suspiciously like food. He stumbled toward the kitchen to find his father just removing what looked like more than a half dozen scrambled eggs from a frying pan.

"I had eggs?"

Alan smiled. "I went out." He placed the pan on the stove and gestured to the table. "Come, sit and eat."

"Thanks, but I'm not hungry."

Alan shook his head. "You don't have much food in the apartment, you don't have much garbage in the garbage can, so, either you've been eating out a lot, or you haven't been eating. Which is it?"

Don smiled at his father's logic. Don might be a gifted detective, and Charlie might be a mathematical genius, but it wasn't hard to guess how they came by their gifts. "You figured all that out, I don't think you need me to tell you which it is."

"You can't live on coffeeand scotch." Alan said as he took a seat at the table.

Don shook his head as he took the seat across from his father. "No, I suppose not." He was perfectly aware that his father was right, but when the call had come last night, when he heard Buchmann's voice telling him what had been done to Charlie

"I don't know what you were trying to pull, Agent Eppes, but the attempt will cost you."

Confusion won out over panic and Don could honestly tell Buchmann that he hadn't a clue what the man was talking about.

"Oh, I'm sure." Buchmann's sarcasm failed to hide his pleasure at having to prove his point once again. "Agent Lake was at the drop. You apparently need to be taught that your superiors cannot be told"

"They weren't! Terry was checking up on me!" Don cursed himself for the pleading tone, but his blood had run cold at the thought of what sort of lesson Buchmann might be contemplating.

"Don't interrupt me, Agent." He waited a beat, and Don didn't try to fill that brief silence. "I assumed you would deny everything, and I am not unreasonable. I will grant you the chance to prove yourself, but I had some friends of mine pay a visit to your brother."

"What? What did you do to him?"

"Check your mailbox, Agent Eppes." The click as the call was disconnected hadn't even faded before Don was racing to the mailboxes down in the lobby. Inserting a key with a shaking hand, he withdrew a single videotape. Attached was a note. Block letters spelled out the words: Don't bother dusting for prints.

Don had raced back to his apartment and watched the tape. It was a shaky, slightly obstructed view, as though the camera had been hidden somewhere unbeknownst to those being filmed. Don's heart flew to his throat as he recognized Charlie running through the frame, only to be brought up short by a guard. Charlie tried to get away. With an agility that Don wouldn't have believed he possessed, Charlie twisted, turned, sidestepped, and wriggled away from his assailant, but he couldn't get away. Horrified, Don saw his brother being beaten, heard his screams, but there was nothing he could do. He could not step in and prevent this as he had prevented other such things in Charlie's life.

He ejected the tape, thinking it might be hard evidence, though he wasn't sure yet what to do about that. He dove for the phone and called the jail. By the time he'd confirmed Charlie's injuries as well as the surprising fact that his father was there hovering over his brother in the infirmary, Don realized that the tape had let off a puff of smoke in some sort of controlled chemical reaction, leaving behind an unplayable plastic puddle.

That was when he'd reached for the whiskey.

So lost was he in his memory that he was startled when his father began to speak to him.

"Donny, whatever you're going through–" he held up his hands as Don opened his mouth to speak. "–I'm not asking–but whatever it is, you can't deal with it at all if you make yourself sick. Charlie is going to need you over the next month. You should go see him."

Don nodded. "I know. I should, but not today. There's too much going on at work." He didn't say that he couldn't face his brother now. Not now. He'd caused this latest injury, at the very least by not guessing that Buchmann would react that way to seeing Terry at their meeting.

"I'm hoping" He looked away and blew air out of his mouth debating with himself over what to tell his father. "I'm into aright now that I hope will clear Charlie."

Alan's eyes lit up. "That's wonderful!"

"Not a word, Dad. Don't tell a soul. It's a very tenuous situation."

Alan smiled. "Should I be worried?"

Don looked his father in the eye and gave him an answer to that question he'd never given him before. "Yeah, you should."

Charlie remembered his father having been there, but his absence as he awoke in the infirmary to pain and unfamiliar faces was as acute as if he hadn't seen him for weeks. He knew he was lucky. He'd been bloodied and bruised, but he was sure, aside from cracking his bruised rib, he'd avoided any broken bones. He imagined he looked worse than he felt, until he shifted and a pain bloomed hot and intense in his chest. A groan escaped him, and immediately a doctor was by his bed.

"You should try to keep still."

"I worked that out on my own."

The doctor smiled. "Your father was here."

"I remember."

"That's a good sign. I want you to stay here for a few days."

"Whatever you say, Doc." He trailed off as his thoughts were infiltrated by a sudden realization. Suddenly, the numbers he'd been pouring over for so long seemed to release their secret, or at least part of it. He recalled a complex sequence and applied the new thoughts. Sure enough, he was getting a message hidden inside the numbers. Relevant numbers in the case in a chronological order and made to 'jump through hoops' as Larry put it, actually spelled out a message. It was incomplete, though. It wasn't enough.

He turned his head and called to the doctor. "I need some paper and a pen."

The doctor gave him the items, but not without admonishment not to tax himself. Charlie never heard the words.

He scribbled down what he had in his head. Incomplete! It was incomplete! He sighed and ran a hand through his curls. He had to get it to Don.

Another doctor, unfamiliar to Charlie, was at his side then. "Mr. Eppes"

"Dr. Eppes. I'm a doctor. Of mathematics."

"Dr. Eppes, I need you to put these things down. You won't need them for now."

"What? What do you mean?" Charlie saw the doctor approaching him with a hypodermic. "Look, whatever that is, I don't want it. The pain's not bad, really." He pulled back trying to get away from the needle as he explained himself.

"It's not a painkiller."

"It's not?"

"No." The man smiled, but it seemed ominous now.

"Well, then I really don't want it."

"Dr. Eppes, I'm under orders. I can't have you awake and alert while you're transported."

"TransOW!" Charlie yelled as the doctor jabbed his arm much harder than was necessary. He felt a tingle at the injection site and sucked in a breath as it turned into a burning pain. "What" He never finished the thought.

The smell of stale coffee and staler donuts permeated the room, but Terry Lake refused to clean it up. If she began to pick up after her male counterparts, she'd be doing it for the rest of her life. She'd rather smell the prehistoric coffee and the moldy crullers.

She'd made an appointment with the AD, intending to tell him about Don's meeting, but she still wasn't sure if she should keep it. How could she turn him in? How could he look her in the eye and tell her to turn him in?

She stared at Don's empty chair for a moment, but forced her attention back to the case at hand. Since Charlie's arrest, she'd been working on a string of jewelry robberies and bank heists that appeared to have nothing in common. She had to remind herself time and again that Charlie wasn't available to consult, and she couldn't bring herself to use another Bureau consultant. It seemed disloyal somehow, at least for now, while there was a chance that Charlie could be cleared.

Don's absence was weighing on her. He'd taken to missing a lot of work lately, and she knew that he'd cleared from his apartment all of the agents who'd volunteered their time to look into Charlie's case. It didn't add up, and she almost smiled at the mathematical allusion.

She stood and moved to Don's desk under the guise of looking for a file, and took a moment to see if anything was out of place. At first, everything seemed the same as it always was, but something nagged at the back of her mind. Something was different.

Her eyes darted from one set of items to another as she tried to chart it all, to compare it to a mental image she had of the way Don's desk usually looked.

"Can I help you?"

Don't voice startled her enough to make her jump. She laughed it off. "Sorry, I was looking for the Miller file."

Don leaned over his desk and pulled the file in question from the top of the pile in his in box. "There you go."

"Thanks." She smiled as she moved back to her own desk hoping he hadn't guessedguessed what? She asked herself. That you stare at his desk when he's not there?

As she sat, her gaze fell on the corner of his desk and she knew what was missing: the picture of Don and Charlie. What that could mean she really didn't know. That it was missing intrigued her.

AD Kraft had expected Terry Lake to call for an appointment eventually. He was sure the woman wanted to talk about her partner. Don Eppes had apparently inspired a great deal of loyalty among the agents in the Bureau, and Terry's conviction that Don's brother was innocent would be par for the course.

As would her nervousness over the situation. When she entered his office, he'd gestured for her to sit and tried to take charge of the conversation.

"Agent, I know why you're here"

"With all due respect, sir, I don't think you do."

He smiled. "I know more than you think."

"Sir," she continued as if he hadn't spoken. "I am here to tell you that"

She faltered and Kraft sighed. She was a good agent. He would have to make this easier on her, regulations be damned. "Agent, I do know why you're here."

"How could you possibly know?"

"Because I told him."

Terry whirled around to see Don standing by the side door that led to the AD's private office.

Kraft sighed. This was going to be difficult.

Charlie awoke in a room he didn't immediately recognize. It could have been anywhere. Institutional cinder block walls, gray paint, a chair to which he was tiedhis brow furrowed as he considered that. They wouldn't do that in prison, would they? It seemed like something that they wouldn't be allowed to do. It seemed to him that he should be able to think more clearly. He recalled the infirmary. He had a vague recollection of his father having been there. Why would his father have been in the infirmary?

His head was pounding, making it hard to think.

A man entered the room. He was tall, thin, and wore a smile that looked as though it had never known joy. Just looking at the man sent a shiver down his spine.

As Charlie stared at the man, he realized his head was clearing. Whatever had been used on him, and he was certain he'd been drugged, the man must know precisely how quickly it dissipated. He blinked and cleared his throat and shook his head, hoping these things would help him focus that much quicker.

The man seemed amused, but Charlie ignored that.

"Buchmann, I presume."

The man's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Impressive, Dr. Eppes. I hadn't expected you to figure that much out so quickly. I hadn't had time to complete the message."

"How many people were you planning to kill just to send a message to the authorities?"

"Oh, the message wasn't for the authorities. It was for you."

Charlie blinked again and shook his head. "For me?"

"Yes, Charlie, may I call you Charlie."

"No."

Buchmann laughed. "Very well, Dr. Eppes."

Charlie tried but couldn't comprehend what he was being told. "Who are you and why am I here? What is it you want from me?"

"You know who I am."

"I know your name, which is most likely an alias. I still don't know who you are." Charlie didn't bother to hide his anger and irritation. His life had fallen out of his own control, if indeed it had ever been in his control. He was more than a little frightened at the thought of how easily this man had taken him from prison, and the fear made him angry, strange as that seemed to him.

The man smiled, but it was a smile devoid of joy. Instead, it seemed slick, creepy, and it sent another shiver down Charlie's spine.

"I want you to work for me."

Charlie snorted. "This is the oddest job interview I've ever been on."

"It's no interview. It's an offer. Not to be cliché, it's an offer you can't refuse. I need someone of your brilliance to assist me. You can write computer programs, you can find patterns in the seemingly random, you can help me plan the greatest crime sprees the world has ever known. You can remember long and complex strings of numbers, like accounts and authorization codes. You work for me and, when this goes to trial, I can guarantee that you will be acquitted."

"It seems to me that you must have a fairly phenomenal mathematician on your payroll in order for you to devise a scheme this complicated. That mathematical code was too complex for anyone not intimate with advanced mathematical theory. Why do you need me?"

Buchmann's eyes narrowed, and Charlie guessed that he didn't like his motives being questioned. "I need you because your insights are intuitive. You can do in a few minutes what it takes other mathematicians weeks if not months to do. I need you because you are the best."

Charlie shook his head. "I'm not that special."

"You are a stable, that is to say, not insane, prodigy with NSA clearance and close ties to the FBI. You can keep an eye on the investigations into the crimes you help me commit and you can keep me in the clear."

"What makes you think I'd help you?" Charlie didn't like that Buchmann was remaining so calm. It was like he had an answer for everything. It was eerie. He tried to present a calm demeanor. He didn't want his panic to show. He wasn't sure why, but he felt that it would give Buchmann a stronger hold over him if he seemed as panicked as he felt. He was well aware that he had anything but a poker face, but to hold this conversation without screaming or stuttering was, he thought, an astonishing accomplishment.

"You'll help me because if I can frame you so completely for crimes you did not commit, I can also ruin Don's careeror hurt himor kill himor kill your father

Buchmann paused between each example and Charlie felt the man's satisfaction at his reaction. His eyes, he knew, were wide, and he felt helplessa detail enhanced by his injuries as well as his being tied to the chair.

"or Amitaor Larry" Buchmann continued.

Charlie closed his eyes and swallowed, forcing away the image of Amita taking the victim's place in any one of a number of crime scene photos he'd seen since he'd begun working with his brother. That brief flash of his imagination had stolen the strength from his limbs and from his voice.

"You" his voice cracked and he had to clear his throat. "You couldn't really kill them because your hold over me would be gone"

Buchmann rose from his seat and approached Charlie getting closer and closer until Charlie was forced to tilt his head back as far as possible just to maintain eye contact. "There are so many people you care about, Charlie. If I were to kill, say"

Charlie swallowed and tried not to hyperventilate. He noticed Buchman's smile.

"Or perhapsDon and Amita" again he paused, and again, Charlie fought to keep the overwhelming visions and emotions that they carried with them from stealing his reason.

"I would still have your father and Larryand your studentsand Terry Lake. Besides which, I can do a lot of damage to Don or Amita or any one of the others without actually taking their lives." He shrugged. "And if you became so uncooperative that you forced me to kill them all, I would frame you for their murders and then I would simply move on to the next mathematician I could find. You see, Charlie, I have done this before, and I will do it againunless you cooperate."

"You mustbe bluffing" Charlie was grasping at straws and he knew it, but the power it took to do what this man claimed he could do was unimaginable. "If you could do all that, why do you need me?"

"How do you think I can do all that? I own a great many people."

Charlie shook his head in disbelief. "No. I can't let you use me. I don't believe you."

"Then how are you here?" He gestured to the room around them, which Charlie was fairly certain wasn't in the jail.

Charlie shook his head again.

"Ah, I'd hoped we could dispense with the need for me to prove myself to you. No matter. Geniuses are often the worst skeptics. These images," Buchmann said, gesturing to a wall, "were recorded earlier today." Charlie saw a series of television screens. Buchmann's gesture must have been a signal to someone because the screens lit up.

Charlie saw almost immediately that one showed his brother driving somewhere. A camera was obviously mounted on a car that was driving near to him. As Charlie watched, the car with the camera rear-ended Don's car, which went careening into the highway divider. Luckily, there was nothing to hit, and, though it took some fancy defensive driving on Don's part, he eventually brought the car to a halt. Charlie saw Don leap out of the car and look for whoever had hit himbut the camera car kept driving. He saw Don pull out his cell, and that was it.

Fear constricted Charlie's throat and he was unable to say a word. He stared in mute horror as his attention was diverted to the other screen. It showed his house. His father's car wasn't in the driveway, but someone was breaking in. The view shifted when the man, wearing black clothes and a ski mask, made it inside and began to overturn chairs and break lamps before rifling drawers for valuables.

To Charlie's horror, his father's car pulled into the driveway. He watched as his father entered with a sack of groceries, only to 'surprise' the burglar who had been waiting for him. The burglar hit his father over the head with a flashlight and ran.

Charlie still couldn't speak. He watched until, somehow, his father reached the phone and dialed 9-1-1. Then he looked up at Buchmann. He would have to do what the man said. There was no way out of this that he could see.

He forced his mouth to work, forced sounds past his dry throat and drier lips, though what came out was the barest of whispers. "Please don't hurt them."

"Do you work for me, Dr. Eppes?"

Charlie knew that the answer was written on his face, and, since he couldn't bring himself to say a word, he merely nodded.

Buchmann only smiled as someone entered with a syringe, and, though Charlie struggled as well as he was able, injected something into him. In moments, he again slipped away, though this time he welcomed the darkness.

Terry stared at Don, incredulous that he would turn himself in like this. "Don, what are you doing?"

"I had to, Terry." He looked forlorn to Terry. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders and she'd just made it worse by somehow getting him to confess to something that would ruin his career.

She'd never be able to live with this. She wanted to apologize to him for putting him in this sort of predicament, but what could she say in front of AD Kraft?

"It's okay."

Don said softly, and, as she looked at him, she saw that something was different. Gone was the overwhelming hopelessness she'd seen growing in him since Charlie had been denied bail. In its place was determination. There was fear in there of course, for Charlie's health, but it was tempered by Don's usual problem solving, can do attitude. She stared at him for a moment, unsure what exactly was going on.

Kraft spoke next. "Agent Lake, Agent Eppes had been involved in an undercover operation. He is playing the part of an agent on the take in order to catch the maniac who not only killed nine people, but also framed his brother for their murders."

It was a lot of information and it set the topsy-turvy world in which she'd been living recently to rights. "Why wasn't I in on it from the beginning?"

Kraft sat back in his seat. "Need to know. Only Agent Eppes and myself know about it." He shrugged. "Honestly, it was a risky thing for Don even coming to me. We're hoping to uncover some dirty agents on this one. He took a chance in trusting me."

Don shook his head. "No, sir. I didn't. I'm a pretty good judge of character."

"Then why not tell me?" Terry couldn't help but feel she was being ignored.

Don looked her in the eye. "Because I think my house is being watched, maybe even bugged. I needed anything you said to me to be what you really thought."

"That's why, when I told you I'd have to make a report, you told me to do it. You thought I'd incriminate myself with the Assistant Director and compromise my career."

He nodded. "I'm sorry."

"I'm just glad it turned out this way. When I thought you'd changed sides" She caught herself before she could say anything emotional. "So, we think this guy framed Charlie?"

"We know he did." Don filled her in on his conversations with Buchmann.

"Megalomaniac. Likes to be in control and likes to have others realize that he is in control of them. How much danger is Charlie in?" She saw Don's hesitation and something in the pit of her stomach turned to lead. "Don?"

"We can't pull him out, even though we now have a confession, because it would tip our hand. We can't even speak to him about it, because we know he has Charlie under surveillance." Don turned away from her then, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. Terry waited, outwardly calm, but inwardly something had just hit her hard.

"When I saw you at the diner, he saw me, didn't he? Is that why Charlie was hurt?"

Don's silence and the look in his eyes was all the answer she needed. Her mistake had caused it. Charlie had been hurt because of her. "Oh, Don"

"We're not going there, people. We still have an undercover operation in progress. Don was here to fill me in on the last contact." Kraft turned his attention on Don.

"Well, he's accepted everything I've given him so far, and he hasn't really seemed to have any rhyme or reason to it all. I was thinking it might be time for me to push a little. I thought I should demand that he find a way to release Charlie."

Kraft nodded. "It probably the perfect time. See what he says and what he promises. He should expect you to start making demands. If you're too patient it might tip him off."

"Do you think he'll do it?" Terry wanted to know.

Don shook his head. "Unlikely. Charlie's the hold he has on me. If he releases him too soon"

"He might think he can afford to release Charlie because he can hurt him anytime." She saw the look in Don's eye and hurried to explain. "I mean, if he's able to have Charlie hurt in prison, he probably feels he can hurt him at his pleasure. We could protect him more once he's outside, though." She turned to Kraft for confirmation.

Kraft nodded. "We could. Nothing overt, but we could create a lot of reasons for him to be within the company of a select group. They wouldn't even need to be told there's a threat. The two of you and Agent Sinclairno one would attack Charlie if there were at least a few agents around him. They can't all be on the take."

Don didn't seem to assured by any of this, so Terry changed the subject. "Does your father know about any of this?"

Don shook his head. "No. There's no way to tell him. I don't know what kind of surveillance Buchmann has set up, so I have to be careful what I say. I'll tell you what; he does suspect something. He won't say, but he's sort of let me know that he'll leave it in my hands and not ask too many questions."

Kraft's phone rang. He answered it gruffly and cast an odd look at Don. "He's here." He covered the phone with his hand and spoke to Don. "It's your father. He's at the hospital. It's not serious," he hastened to add as Don's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "There was a robbery and he surprised the burglar. The hospital won't release him without someone to drive him home. I'll tell them you're on your way."

Don nodded and raced out of the room. Terry's instinct was to follow, but she turned to Kraft to see if he still wanted to speak to her. Kraft just drew his hand from the phone. "Agent Eppes and his partner are on the way."

Terry was out of the office and close on Don's heels even before Kraft hung up.

To Be Continued.