Because what the hell is the FBI's best fugitive hunter doing all this time while an FBI agent is in the hands of a fugitive? You'd think Ian would play some kind of role here! (Yes, time constraints on television, etc. Well, luckily this isn't television) Also, I'm aware some people probably have radically different takes on Ian's feelings regarding the torture, but this is my story based on my observations and interpretations. So there ya go.
Agent Edgerton was visibly tense as he exited the conference room and stalked over to Eppes, leaning against a cubicle wall a few feet away. He kept his features controlled, but he was sure they showed at least some of his revulsion at the necessity of what he had just done. And his bitter disappointment at the scant bit of new information that he had to show for it.
Ian could tell that he was on edge by the degree to which Eppes's posture irritated him. He looked so casual, as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had been happening behind those blinds. As if he had simply been waiting for Ian to deliver a report on the latest local crime statistics. I'd like to see him try to look so damn relaxed about this if he'd been the one in that room.
He shoved the piece of paper with the address Buck had written in Don's face. "They were staying in an abandoned house off of Wilshire. She's probably not there anymore." He crossed his arms guardedly over his chest while Eppes passed the note to Colby and instructed him to put together a raid team.
"He tell you where she'd go next?" Don asked shortly. Ian clenched his fists a little tighter under his arms. Yeah, Eppes. I know exactly where Reeves is and I just want to watch you run around the city for the hell of it. He knew Eppes's harsh tone came from his anger at the situation and disappointment that they hadn't received a more promising lead, but it still took more than his usual restraint for Ian to hold back the impulse to lash out at him for the tactless question.
His dark eyes darted past Eppes, refusing to meet Don's or even Colby's, as he answered. "If he knew, he would've told me."
He didn't wait for a response, and didn't really expect one as Colby left to grab David and get geared up with the SWAT team and Don went to check for any progress from LAPD and the State Troopers in locating his missing agent. Ian doubted they would provide them with any valuable clues, but Eppes was being driven by the simple compulsion to do something, anything, to fill the seconds that may be quickly ticking down for Agent Reeves.
Ian was grateful for their distraction; he didn't have to worry about concerned colleagues watching him as he stalked down the hall to the staff restrooms, though he noticed that people were even quicker than usual to get out of his way and no one he passed made eye contact with him. He was also quite relieved to find the room empty. He stubbornly avoided looking in the mirror as he leaned over the sink and splashed some cold water across his face. As the droplets ran down his chin and the back of his neck, Ian began scrubbing his hands. He hadn't actually gotten any blood on him – hadn't drawn any blood from Winters at all, with all of his punches concentrated on the kid's midsection – but the act was more for the sake of cleansing his mind than his hands.
Ian Edgerton was definitely no stranger to acts of violence, and this wasn't the first time he'd been forced to rough someone up for information. Because both of these facts, coupled with his infamously untamed and dangerous image, were well-known throughout the Bureau, no one ever suspected that what he did actually affected him so deeply. The Professor had once accused him of being so dispassionate that he considered killing to be a sport. Nothing could be further from the truth, but passion didn't exactly serve one well in the war-ravaged villages of Afghanistan or the crime-laden streets of Los Angeles.
He forced himself to stop scrubbing before he rubbed his hands raw. He wasn't given to compulsive behavior, and succumbing to it now would do no one any good. Finally giving in to the natural temptation to look in the mirror, Ian saw that his face looked drawn and tired, dark eyes reflecting his exasperation with this case and a bit of the apprehension he felt about what had happened, and what could be happening, to Reeves and all the other victims and potential victims of a killer he had failed to catch. He thought he looked a little pale too. No damn wonder people were tripping over themselves to avoid me.
He dried the last of the water from his hands and face before composing his features as best he could into something less intimidating and returning to the bull pen. Granger and Sinclair were probably at the house by now, searching for any evidence to lead them closer to Reeves and Hoyle. Eppes was nowhere to be found.
At least, Agent Eppes wasn't. Ian spotted Professor Eppes standing in the middle of one of the glass conference rooms, staring forlornly at one of his white boards with one arm crossed over his chest and his other hand cupping his chin. Unexpectedly, Edgerton found himself wishing Colby was here. He hadn't realized until now how much he actually valued the understanding companionship of his fellow former Army agent, and the support he'd shown this morning in regard to what Eppes had asked him to do. He was accustomed to being alone, but feeling alone wasn't something that usually bothered him.
At that moment, however, Ian Edgerton found himself standing in the middle of his favorite field office, completely alone, with an almost entirely unfamiliar longing for human contact. A memory sprang to his mind, of him reaching out for the hand of the woman who sat beside him on his bunk back in Afghanistan after a mission made possible by her torture of a Taliban prisoner, and he realized he finally understood, almost a decade late, that she had been compelled by the same need to be in the presence of a friend that he was feeling now.
Guess the Professor will have to do. Maybe he'll use some voodoo to make me feel better. Ian forced himself not to think anymore of another genius he had known, who had often done just that, as he made his way over to the room the mathematician was using. He was still staring daggers at the assortment of numbers on the white board, and didn't acknowledge the agent as he entered. Damn, even the math geek looks better than I do.
With nothing better to do, Ian walked over to stand right behind the oblivious Professor, looking over his shoulder at the equations he'd drawn on the board. Another minute passed before Edgerton finally spoke. "I hope you're having better luck than I did, Professor."
Ian actually found himself smiling a little when Charlie nearly jumped out of his skin. "Ian! I didn't hear you come in." No kidding... "Did you, uh... find out anything?"
He quirked an eyebrow at the obvious meaning behind the Professor's question. He couldn't tell I was standing right behind him for two minutes, but he's aware of that?
"Colby said you were going to... question him." Ian gave the Professor a hard look. He could tell by the way Charlie spoke about the subject that no one had told him directly what he'd done, which didn't surprise him, as it probably wasn't something Eppes wanted his baby brother to be aware of him participating in. He had to have worked it out himself, which meant he wasn't as innocent as people - Edgerton included - assumed he was.
He apparently mistook Ian's evaluating expression for one of anger, because he swallowed nervously and backed away a step. Ian was quick to soften his features for the Professor's sake, and tried not to take Charlie's reaction personally. Who could blame him? I scare people enough when I haven't spent the morning beating up prisoners.
"I wish I could say it was worth it," Ian said softly.
"I can't believe he didn't talk!" Charlie replied. The unmasked incredulity in his voice made Ian raise his eyes back to the Professor's. "I was ready to spill my guts to you a minute ago."
Despite himself, Ian chuckled at the Professor's forthrightness. Still, he sobered quickly. "Oh, he talked. But he couldn't tell me what I needed to know." Ian was grateful that, unlike his brother, Charlie had the sense not to question how certain he was of that.
"You said he talked, so he must've told you something?"
"He gave me the address for the house they'd been staying in before we arrested him." He gave Charlie another appraising, and slightly hopeful, look. "Could you put that into a... pursuit curve or something?"
"Well... Like I told Don earlier, the pursuit curve isn't really applicable anymore. Especially since she went completely into left field when she..." Charlie looked away for a second, unable to finish that sentence, before looking back at Ian with warm, compassionate eyes. "But hey, ya know, it's always good to have more data."
Ian reflexively tensed, ever so slightly, when the Professor's hand came down on his shoulder. He didn't meet many people who had the guts to try to touch him, and didn't generally like it when they did. But right now, with the quirky Professor of all people, Ian actually found the gesture comforting. I really must be getting soft.
Charlie gave Ian a small smile, moving his hand away as he reached past the agent to grab one of the maps strewn across the table they had been leaning on. He plucked a handful of magnets from a cup near the board and used them to pin the map over his equations. Next, he grabbed a marker and drew dots over the known locations of Crystal Hoyle's activities for the past forty-eight hours. Ian watched him in silence, always fascinated by the way the math genius worked.
The other agents might have been impressed that Charlie didn't need to consult with the files to remember the locations, but Ian barely noticed; to him, it didn't seem particularly unusual. He smirked at the odd look Charlie gave him when he supplied the address Buck had revealed to him during his "interrogation."
"You're not the only one with a good memory, Professor."
Charlie laughed. "I'm a bad influence on all of you. I've already got Colby thinking in numbers. Next thing you know, you'll be using soap bubbles every time you have to track a fugitive through the mountains."
Ian scoffed good naturedly and gave the mathematician a look of mock sternness. "My boot prints and broken tree branches serve me just fine, Professor."
"Like your instincts?"
"Yep. Those too." Ian grinned. It seemed the Professor enjoyed trading their friendly jabs as much as he did. He still felt tired and useless, but Charlie's easy acceptance had taken some of the edge off of his frustrations. "May as well give up, Professor. I'm too set in my ways for your voodoo to change the way I hunt."
Ian was concerned that his statement had actually hurt the Professor's feelings when the young man's eyes shot up to his, an almost surreal look in them as they seemed to stare right through him. "What?" When he didn't respond, Ian stepped closer and patted him lightly on the arm. "Charlie?"
"You remember what I said earlier? About how we couldn't predict Hoyle's movements because we didn't have sufficient data about how Buck's arrest would change her behavior? Well, we assumed that that factor would have a significant effect on her decision making process. What if we were wrong?"
Ian pondered that for a few seconds, keying in to the Professor's reasoning. "Whatever her motives were, they were strong enough to make her give up her entire life and run across half the country to get here."
"If she's that set in her ways..."
Their train of thought brought something Buck had said earlier straight to the forefront of Ian's mind, with a sudden clarity that he was sure he would have had at the time if his mind had not been so clouded by weariness, frustration, and fear. "Buck said Crystal wanted something from Billy Rivers. She was looking for him for a reason, and from what the kid said it sounded like more than revenge."
"If that's true, and she was that determined to find whatever it is she wants..."
"Then she's probably still looking for him. We have to get to him somehow. It's our best shot at finding Hoyle." Ian paused, feeling the momentary adrenaline rush taper off as their previous difficulty reasserted itself. "Problem with that is... we still don't know where to find him."
Charlie's eyes drifted over his white boards, waiting for a mathematical miracle to present itself. Unlike the rest of the team, Ian wasn't so smitten with Charlie's abilities as to believe it actually worked that way. Even the voodoo has its limits. The Professor would bust my balls for saying this, but not everything in the world can be solved by math. In this particular instance though, a convenient algorithm would be much appreciated. Even by Edgerton.
The Professor, however, seemed to be pursuing a different approach this time. "What do you do... when there are no broken tree branches?"
Ian waited for him to follow that up with one of his typical longwinded answers to his own rhetorical questions, but realized when the man looked at him that he legitimately wanted the agent's input. "Well, if I don't have a trail to follow, I usually go back to basics. What are his goals? What does he need? And where might he go to get it? If we're talking about tracking in the wilderness, those options are usually pretty limited; there are only so many sources of fresh water... or shelter. Once I get an idea of where he's gonna go, I can lay a trap."
"So... the same principle as hunting animals?"
Ian immediately realized that the similarity to a comment Charlie had made when they'd first met was unintentional, and let the irony go unspoken. "Pretty much, Professor. But how does that help us find Billy Rivers?"
"Well," the Professor began, picking up a marker and beginning to scrawl out strings of numbers that Ian knew would mean nothing to him. "What if we take the same concept – assigning values by using his most likely motivations to determine probabilistically the target's most logical actions – and apply Game Theory to select the course that will most strongly compel him to alter that behavior to benefit our investigation?"
Ian stood there, arms crossed over his chest, and pointedly looked from the Professor to the equations he had written and then back again. No way... Can't be... "We figure out what he wants... and use it to lure him out of hiding so we can question him?"
For a moment, they both just stared at each other in silence. The Professor fixed Edgerton with an appraising gaze, his eyes sparkling and his mouth widening into a broad smile. Ian just looked like he wanted to crawl out of his skin.
Dear god... I'm starting to understand his damn voodoo...
Even with his exceptionally keen sense of awareness, Ian couldn't guess how long he had been sitting on the edge of a table in one of the FBI office's many conference rooms, watching the Professor work with his equations. He'd sent Agent Edgerton to get him all of the information they had collected on Billy Rivers, which was disappointing even considering his lengthy arrest record.
Ian assumed, based on his disturbingly intuitive understanding of the Professor's mathematical approach, that he was trying to use it to figure out what exactly the agents could use to draw Rivers out of hiding. They tossed out the idea of using him as bait again; they couldn't afford to be patient when time was of the essence. Now more than ever.
And if they pinned Hoyle into a corner, Reeves would be the first to fall in the shootout that would undoubtedly ensue. Buck had proven that the two lovers held no regard for their own lives, and would sooner go down in a blaze of glory with a few dead law enforcement agents than answer for their crimes. Only the legendary sniper's quick, well placed shot had saved Sinclair from having to kill the boy during his arrest.
Ian's eyes shot up and Charlie jumped as they heard a yell from somewhere outside their conference room. David, still wearing the bulletproof vest he'd suited up in earlier, was apparently trying to explain to a fuming Eppes the results of their search. Whatever it was, it obviously wasn't what Eppes wanted to hear. Behind the closed door and insulated glass walls, Ian couldn't make out the words Don was shouting, but his sharp eyes told him that David's patience with his boss was wearing thin.
Edgerton thought about going to intervene, but decided against it. His own patience with Don Eppes had already come dangerously close to running out, and he knew it would be foolish to get in the middle of the heated argument between him and Sinclair. Instead, he silently assigned himself a slightly more useful task: keeping the agents' harried disagreements from bothering Charlie.
"You okay, Professor?" Ian asked, gently enough so as not to rattle him any more than his brother's outburst already had, but with enough firmness to draw his focus back to their own isolated little room.
"Yeah." Charlie paused, swallowing anxiously. "Yeah, it's just... I don't think I've ever seen Don so angry."
Ian heard the slight tremble in the Professor's voice, and took another look toward Eppes. He'd finished his tirade and was apparently in the process of issuing some unfavorable new orders, leaving David rubbing at his temples and shaking his head. Edgerton subtly moved up to stand at the Professor's shoulder, angling his body to block the smaller man's view of his brother. I used to rag on Don for sheltering him. Now look at me. Charlie took a deep, shaky breath before returning to his equations.
They stayed that way for several minutes, the mathematician eagerly losing himself in his numbers. It didn't seem to bother him at all to have the tall, intimidating sniper looking over his shoulder, arms still crossed over his chest. Wonder if he even realizes I'm here anymore. He knew the Professor had a tendency to get so absorbed in his math that he completely stopped paying attention to his surroundings. At one point when they'd been hunting McHugh, Charlie had pulled out his map to do something with his soap bubbles and gotten so engrossed in it that only Ian's quick pull on the back of his jacket had kept him from going face first into a creek. Eventually, the opening of the door and a softly spoken greeting drew their attention.
Ian and Charlie turned to find Colby, face still slightly red and shining with sweat, entering the room, apparently having just removed his gear from the raid. Which, Ian could tell by the crestfallen look on his normally cheerful face, had been as unsuccessful as Don's outburst had suggested.
"Did... did you find Megan?" Charlie asked cautiously, obviously deeply worried for the missing agent, but trying not to show it. Fleinhardt must be a mess. Gotta admit... the Professor's a good friend.
He shook his head. "No, Charlie. We found her car ditched at the abandoned house, but no sign of her." Ian knew that was actually a good sign; it meant they hadn't found a body. Granger came over to join them by the white board, looking curiously at the map and the haphazard jumble of equations. "What are you guys up to?"
"We're assigning values to determine the probabilities of Billy Rivers taking certain actions, and using Game Theory to figure out what action we should encourage to benefit our investigation." Edgerton remained completely straight faced throughout the explanation, using the same tone he did when laying out a plan to track an escaped convict.
"We're gonna hunt the bastard down and lay a trap for him!" The Professor added excitedly. Ian smirked.
Granger slowly moved his open-mouthed stare from Edgerton's face to Charlie's, and then back again, clearly believing that both of them had lost their minds. I'm thinking in math, Granger. You can't be too far off the mark. And the Professor... Ian vaguely wondered if he should invite Charlie along on his next hunting trip.
Colby slowly sank into one of the chairs around the table, rubbing a hand over his eyes almost as if he were trying to ward of a hallucination. "Okay," he said slowly. "But... why are we 'hunting down' Rivers, and not Hoyle?"
"We don't have any more of a clue on where to even start looking for Hoyle than we ever did," Charlie answered bitterly. "Right now, the only possible lead we have is the guy we know they were looking for."
"Buck said she wanted something from him," Ian cut in. "It's possible she's still looking for him in order to get it. If we can get to him, he may be able to tell us what she's after." Ian paused, casting a slightly apologetic glance at Charlie for having to say this in front of him. "And in Don's current frame of mind, I'm sure he wouldn't mind having Rivers to use as extra insurance."
Granger caught Ian's meaning, but thankfully the Professor didn't seem to in this case. "Okay," Colby said slowly. "But we couldn't find him either, remember?"
"Well, that's where Agent Edgerton's hunting 'voodoo' comes in." Ian quirked an eyebrow. My what now? Charlie quickly outlined their plan to draw Rivers out of hiding, throwing in some of his famous analogies for Colby's benefit. "I think we've found our lure. When I was looking over his arrest record, I noticed that he's used the same attorney in... over eighty percent of these cases."
"So... we call his lawyer? Get him to bring Rivers in to talk to us?" Colby asked, glancing over to Edgerton to confirm that he was correctly understanding the Professor's reasoning, which disturbed the other agent to no end. What am I... the voodoo expert now?
Ian tended to resort to his sarcastic humor when he was uncomfortable, and this seemed like a good time for it. "Not even a lawyer can argue with math, eh, Professor?"
Let's just hope "my" math doesn't let us down on this one.
Hopefully that math stuff was fairly accurate. I understand the concepts pretty well (which scares me more than it scares Ian) but I've never studied the math itself. Ian and Charlie make such a good pair because they really do use a lot of the same ideologies in their work, even if they're different on the surface.