Ever wonder why Ian and Charlie are alone together looking at maps in the beginning of Two Daughters?
Apparently, Professor Charles Eppes was not a morning person. Not that anyone would appreciate being woken up at six in the morning after working well into the night, especially by their cell phone ringing.
"I swear, Don," the mathematician slurred into the phone, still half asleep, "If you make me get up this early, I'll put you on the bed of nails."
"You know you can go to prison for threatening a federal agent, Professor."
Charlie was so tired that it took him a minute to place the voice. "Ian?!"
"I'm sorry to wake you, Professor, but I need your help." Ian was truly sorry; he empathized with the math consultant, having gotten less than four hours of sleep himself.
That apparently got Charlie's attention, as his next words were much more alert. "Did you get the spree killers?"
"Not exactly. For some damn reason, Buck showed up alone. We got him. But Crystal's still out there, and we have no idea where."
Ian raised his eyebrows at Charlie's response; he never would have expected to hear those particular expletives coming out of the mouth of the world renowned math genius. "Can you come over in half an hour?"
"Should I bring a notebook and a Number 2 pencil?" Ian joked. He heard Charlie sigh, and quickly confirmed that he would be over soon, adding a thanks for the Professor's willingness to have his day disrupted for the sake of their case. Again.
Thirty-five minutes later, Agent Edgerton made his way up the driveway of the Eppes family home. The sun was still shining, but he could tell from the clouds scattered across the sky that there would be storms in a day or two. Not unusual for September in Southern California.
Ian heard Charlie yell for him to come in a few seconds after he rang the doorbell. He hesitated, not particularly comfortable with just walking into a colleague's house, but figured there was probably a reason that Charlie hadn't come to the door. Ian took a few steps into the entryway, raising an eyebrow at the various papers, books, and clothes strewn about the room.
"Ian, come in here!" Charlie called from the kitchen. Ian let out a soft chuckle as he obliged him. Just like your brother, trying to order me around. "Could you stir the eggs while I finish the toast?" The poor man looked so overwhelmed that Ian kept his sarcastic comments to himself as he complied with the request.
"Do I smell coffee?" Ian asked after Charlie had finished buttering the toast.
"I usually have orange juice, but Don's told me how obsessive you are about coffee." He moved over to a cabinet and pulled out two plates. He loaded one with eggs and toast and handed it to Ian. "Mugs are in the cupboard next to you."
Ian stared at the plate for a moment, and then took it a bit reluctantly. Charlie filled up the second plate while Ian grabbed a cup and poured himself some coffee. He never questioned coffee. The Professor grabbed some forks and napkins and then casually took a seat at the dining room table.
Ian followed behind him, completely bewildered. Did he actually... ask me over here to have breakfast with him? Ian took a long drink from his cup; he hadn't found time yet for coffee that morning, and he intended to enjoy it no matter how strange the circumstances.
Charlie had begun digging into his food, and when he noticed that Ian hadn't done the same, he looked at the agent with what could only be called puppy dog eyes. "Are you not hungry?"
"I'm famished actually," Ian said, picking up his fork. Hell, when was the last time I ate? "But your brother's right about me and coffee." Thankfully, this alleviated the young man's nervousness. After a mouthful of eggs, Ian added, "Thank you, Professor."
"Hey, no problem. I figured since I missed out on dinner the other night..." There was something about the Professor's attitude that suggested to Ian that he had spent a lot of his life feeling left out. Five years younger than Don and in the same grade in school. Bet that was fun. "So what happened last night with the stake out?"
Ian recounted to the Professor how his voodoo had accurately pinpointed the killers' next target, how the team had been in the perfect position to take them, and how Buck had mysteriously shown up alone and given them no information on Hoyle.
"They've never split up before," Ian said, clearly frustrated with Hoyle's good fortune. "Never. There's no telling what she'll do now that Buck's in custody."
"So... what do you want me to do?"
Ian grimaced at the question. "I was hoping you could tell me, Professor."
Agent Edgerton did not like the look on the Professor's face. After breakfast, Charlie had suggested they look over the data they had collected on Hoyle's movements, hoping they could ascertain some sort of pattern in the randomness. Ian got the impression that Charlie was grasping at straws, afraid of disappointing him. Or worse, disappointing his brother.
Ian sipped at his second cup of coffee, watching the Professor lean over a map. So far, Crystal's movements had only been loosely connected to what they had established as her motives. A second map marked the locations of reported sightings of the fugitive killer made by the public, who were notoriously unreliable. As evidenced by the dozens of conflicting dots Ian had counted.
"I can try to weed out some of the bad data here," Charlie said, drawing Ian's eyes back to the map on the table. "If we eliminate some of the points that conflict – for example the three different locations reported at the same time, since that's obviously not possible – we can get a better idea of her actual movements. I did it once before actually, about two years ago, when Don was tracking this escaped fugitive with his old partner."
"Coop was here?" Ian asked, surprised. He knew that Don Eppes had been partners with Agent Billy Cooper when he worked in Fugitive Recovery. And Coop knew that Edgerton had worked a few cases with Don since he transferred to L.A., but neither of them had mentioned to Ian that they'd worked together recently.
"You know him?" Charlie asked cautiously. Ian imagined that the two of them had not exactly gotten along famously.
"Of course. He's one of the best fugitive trackers in the FBI." He paused to take another sip of coffee. "Not as good as me though," he added with a mischievous smirk.
"No one is." Ian raised his eyebrows at the younger man's casual comment, grinning slightly. When Charlie noticed the agent's expression, he was quick to amend his praise. "At least that's what Don told me."
"I don't feel all that great on this case," Ian replied, before he could think about what he was saying. What the hell? Since when am I so forthcoming with my feelings? He was grateful that the Professor didn't try to reassure him with empty words.
"Yeah. I know how you feel. I wish I could do more to help, you know? But to be honest, I doubt this is going to turn up anything we can use. The data is insufficient to derive any accurate predictions based on past behavior. And we've yet to determine how the removal of Winters as a factor will affect her decision process."
"Back to square one. We don't know enough about her motives to know where she'll go next, or how she'll react to Buck being captured," Ian translated for his own benefit. I may not speak voodoo, but I understand the hunting principle well enough. "No magic soap bubbles for this one, huh, Professor?"
Charlie smiled at the reference. "Nope. No Steiner trees either."
The Professor's phone rang, and Ian looked over the map again as he listened to Charlie's side of his conversation with his brother. A few times, Ian felt Charlie's eyes flick over to him, and he could tell by his voice that something was making the younger man nervous.
He ended the call, and Ian turned to ask, "Problem?"
"Most likely. Don got a call from LAPD about a stolen vehicle. Looks like Crystal left it for them to find."
"What makes him say that?"
"There was a message in it. 'Buck goes free.'"
"No body?" Charlie shook his head, and Ian furrowed his brow. "Guess we were right about her behavior becoming unpredictable. That's way off her MO."
"Don sent someone to pick me up and take me over there." Ever since the incident with the sniper, Ian knew Don had been very strict about Charlie going to crime scenes. If he had to be there, Don always personally arranged transport for him. The Professor probably chafed at his brother babying him, but that policy actually came from the Bureau, who quietly considered consultants to be a liability in the field.
"Let me know if you get any insights," Ian said, making for the break room to refill his mug. Charlie followed after him.
"You're staying here?"
"I doubt she just happened to find the car sitting around. She had to have taken it from somewhere else after Buck took the Trans Am, and then left it there for us to find. I'm gonna see if LAPD has anything on where it was stolen from. See if I can get an idea of what she might've been doing in the area."
"You really think that'll help?" Charlie asked softly.
Ian continued out of the room, and didn't answer.
An hour later, Ian stood, bent over a table, next to Eppes, replaying the security camera footage of their own office from the night before. When they learned that Reeves had been kidnapped by Hoyle, the tracker had figured that the fugitive must have followed her at some point after Colby and David left to move Buck to the Federal Detention Center.
As Granger entered to inform the team that Megan's cell phone had been located and road blocks put in place throughout the city, Ian raised a hand to indicate Don should pause the playback, then pointed out a blurry figure in the driver's seat of a van – which looked to be the same as the one they had found this morning – parked a few spaces behind Reeves's vehicle.
"There she is," Ian said, recognizing his prey instantly.
"All right. Let's see how long she waited," Don said as he began rolling back the footage. It showed Hoyle pulling up to the building, right behind the agents as they brought Winters in for processing.
"She didn't wait," Colby observed. "She followed."
"All right, look," Don began, his leader persona coming out full force. "Crystal wakes up. She finds Buck missing, right?"
"They've already killed one old boyfriend, Pierce Brenner," Ian reminded.
"Now he's out looking for this other guy, Billy Rivers, who's boyfriend number two."
"She must've showed up right at the time we locked up Buck," Colby interjected with a slightly angry edge to his normally calm voice.
"And followed us straight back here," Ian finished.
"Tch, that takes some kinda guts parking right out there, man." Don, it seemed, was even more exasperated than any of them, except maybe Edgerton.
"What kind of person takes that kind of risk?" the Professor asked, trying not to show how nervous he felt at the idea of one of their teammates in the hands of the ruthless killer. Ian knew he was afraid though, because he was afraid too. The sniper was simply much better at hiding it.
"The scariest kind," Ian softly responded to the Professor's rhetorical question. "Too crazy to care. Smart enough not to get caught."
Colby and Charlie both looked to Ian, who simply stared into the video monitor as if leering at it would gain them some answers, and then exchanged a nervous glance with each other. Don stormed out of the room just for the sake of making his frustrations known, as if his precarious emotional state wasn't already clear to the team.
How the hell could I have let this happen? Hang in there, Reeves. We'll get you back. And then I'm taking Crystal Hoyle down, once and for all.
I trust you guys have a pretty good idea of what happens between Ian and Don in the next chapter...