Disclaimer: No. I still don't own Numb3rs. I didn't miraculously come back from D.C. with the rights to Numb3rs. Although that would have been cool.

Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait. I apologize. D.C. was awesome. For those of you who know what Mock Trial is, my team won both of our rounds and I won an Outstanding Witness as an Expert Witness award. Judged by people who were judges at the Nationals (college level) this year. My expert witness was a Lead CSI with ten years of experience no less. :) Funny how that worked out. Anyway, without further ado, here is the next chapter. I made up Colby's height where I thought he would be around.

Wunderkind: a child prodigy; one who succeeds in a competitive or highly difficult field or profession at an early age.

"I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment, I am a wunderkind"

-Alanis Morissette-

Blonde strands fell, brushing again against the littered papers. She exhaled upward again, as if they would listen to her this time and get out of her face. They didn't. His visitor stood from studying the papers haphazardly strewn on his desk. Subconsciously her fingers moved, tucking her hair behind her ears, as she continued to focus her attention on the folders and files beneath her. Charlie noted all of these things as he waited for an answer to his question. He was interested in watching her, noting her movements, and comparing this genius to himself. When she didn't respond, he assumed that she hadn't heard him, and repeated it once more.

"Can you read out the last set?" Her head snapped up, taking in him and his chalkboards. Now she had heard him.

She cleared her throat and glanced down. "Which set?"

Hovering his hand over the board, he answered over his shoulder. "The set containing the figures on the ebb and flow of the tide in the bay."

Charlie heard her shift around. After a moment the rustling ceased. "I've got them."

As she read down the list, Charlie made them reappear in white. She spoke clearly, he noted, enunciating every syllable. Lost in his world of numbers he didn't hear her approach over the clack of the chalk in the otherwise silent office. When he finally did notice the extra presence at his beloved chalkboards, he stopped, thinking that she had found something wrong with his work. "Is there something wrong?"

Her lips were set in a small frown, her eyes narrowed at his numbers and symbols. He prepared himself and sighed with relief when she gave a small sideways shake of her head. "No. I know enough about you and your prestigious mind and work to know that you know exactly what you're doing. I have no doubt as to that. I understand some of this. Some of what these formulas and equations mean. I am no novice to higher mathematics; it comes with my territory as well. But, this," she waved a finger. "I don't understand."

Charlie couldn't suppress the small grin that came over his face. He wasn't cavalier or arrogant about knowing more than her. The doctor beside him was not a doctor in the same field as him. She held no masters in applied mathematics or any that overlapped his own. To put it bluntly, there was no competition to be had from her. She could not prove that she was smarter than him in mathematics and statistics, but then again, Charlie could not prove that he was smarter than her in analytical chemistry and physics. Unlike Marshall Penfield, who he always found himself trying to outdo, Charlie only felt the urge to explain his work to her. He was eager to teach her, in hopes that maybe she would allow him to work with her again. To work with the Dr. Huntzberger was as much of an honor as was working with the Dr. Eppes.

Charlie thought for a moment, racking his brain for a suitable way to explain what his algorithm was going to do. What he was doing was similar to what he had done for Don's bird flu case a year ago. He could try to explain it that way. "Are you familiar with kinematics, Dr. Huntzberger?"

"Yes. The motion of an object disregarding the force or mass that brought about the movement. It shows how the position of an object changes with time."

He nodded his head and gestured while he spoke. "Right. So, we are looking for the head of your victim. And by using translational kinematics I can discern where it probably wound up. Think of a surfer. The undercurrents and the flow pull him along no matter how hard he fights it right? Well, your head is pulled along no matter what until it comes to a final resting point. By using these equations, and factoring in the tide, the time, the downward movement of it, its rough weight, and the weather this morning, I can tell you roughly where it will be, give or take a few hundred yards. But it will still pinpoint an area for you to look in, which saves you a lot of time and man power."

"Ok. I believe that. But, how do we know the head is even still in the bay. Is it not possible that it was carried away and out into the Pacific? In fact, is it not entirely likely that that is exactly what happened?"

Charlie mulled this over for a moment, seeking the answer, as always, from his numbers. No, his gut told him otherwise. His numbers would prove otherwise. His numbers never lied. "No. Don said that Megan and Colby asked the fisherman how he fished and how his nets actually operated. His nets drag on the bottom before coming back up. So for our sake, we are going to assume that when the head escaped from the net that the net itself was only a few feet from the bay floor. This means that the head would have floated or dropped back down to the floor. That's what I believe happened and what my numbers are showing," he paused for a moment, a sudden thought passing through. "You'd be better off worrying about a fish eating your missing head."

She turned sharply and gave him a fierce green look. "That's not even funny, Eppes." Charlie wondered how it was that she was able to make her vocal chords growl like a lion's.

Charlie blinked as he watched her move around his office, peering and touching various items. Now he knew why Don said that Dr. Huntzberger was frightening. Speaking of Don, just how long did it take to get something for dinner for just three people? His older brother had been gone for almost an hour now.

Silence filled the cluttered room once again, the only sound being the clacking of his chalk every few seconds.

"To whom does this belong to?"

What now? From the corner of his eyes, Charlie saw her holding a record in one hand, a bemused look on her face. Never pausing in his work, he answered her, hoping she would drop the subject and let him get back to this. "A friend of mine. Larry Fleinhardt."

She didn't. "Dr. Fleinhardt?"

Charlie groaned; faltering for a moment, he resumed writing, thinking that for a genius herself she wasn't very keen on the idea of silence when someone was trying to do complicated higher mathematics. "Yes, Dr. Fleinhardt."

She nodded and replaced the record on his self, next to a stack of folders and a rubix cube. "Dr. Fleinhardt is a good man. Respectable. I've consulted with him and asked for his expertise before. The last I heard was that Larry was in space. That new NASA program."

He was close. He could see it all coming together. "Yeah. Two hundred and fifty miles above our heads. That's where he is."

Charlie was saved from any other questions by the return of his brother. He was grateful. Now he could finish with this train of thought and find the missing head. Without either of them to ask him anything directly, he was able to block out their voices as they murmured to each other. So close. So close. Almost there. And there it was. Almost allowing a 'Eureka!' to escape his lips, Charlie whirled around. In his excitement he startled the two other people. They froze: Don with his straw close to his mouth and Peyton holding a sub in her hand, eyes wide, mouth open. He was fairly certain that he caught the doctor whispering to Don, asking if he always did that. He chose to ignore that.

"I've got it." Outlining a grid on the map with a black marker, he held it up to their questioning gazes. "It's here. Your victim's head is somewhere in this grid."

Their food and drinks were forgotten as they approached him, smiling and speaking words of gratitude.

"That's great, Charlie."

"That's fantastic; it'll be even more fantastic when I have it in my lab."

Charlie grinned, pleased as always that he had helped his big brother and also that he had helped the newest addition. His happiness was short lived though, as Don looked down at his wrist and swore.

"Damn. It's almost seven. No one's going to want to respond to this. I don't have enough weight to get the SAC to put together a diving team at this time."

"You can't, but I can." The forensic doctor pulled a BlackBerry from her hip. Punching a few buttons, she gave them a wicked grin and a wink. "Leave that to me. This is one part of the job I love. Being able to make people do whatever I want at any hour of the day. If it's where he says it is, I'll have it by midnight."

"You don't have to stay here with me. You can leave. I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself."

"I know."

"They don't really need you here. I'm sure you have better things to do tonight that keep company with me, overseeing a recovery crew."

"Yeah a mountain of paperwork maybe." Colby looked down at his companion for the night. The auburn haired scientist was not nearly as short as her blonde friend, but she was still shorter than his six foot two frame. Though, he found that he didn't exactly mind looking down at her.

Kathryn gave him a smile and then a laugh. "I wasn't exactly talking about you catching up on your paperwork. More along the lines of a date, but okay."

They both shifted their feet as the diving cutter rocked in the bay, water lapping at the sides. They were alone on the boat, except for the captain who remained at the wheel. The three divers were all underwater. Both had adopted stances of wide spread feet and arms crossed against the night wind as they waited for them to reappear.

"Well, the same could be said for you. These people don't exactly need you to watch over them. They can find it themselves."

"No. They don't. But it's better this way. Allows for no mistakes."

"Meaning that Dr. Huntzberger wanted you here."

She smiled again. "No, she didn't. She was going to come herself, but I volunteered. And Peyton's really not a bad person. She's really good. Loyal. Passionate. I've never met anyone else more dedicated to their job. She's taken it upon herself to fight the fight and make this city better."

"Well, when you put it like that."

"Yeah. But she's also very proud of what she does. I won't deny that. Peyton is proud of her title and her intelligence. She's my best friend and a sister. I've known her my entire life."

"Then I'll have to give her another chance, if just for you." He grinned and she smiled out at the dark water.

"Thank you. I think you will be pleasantly surprised."

Silence reigned over the deck until a dark shape popped to the surface. Colby moved forward, helping the diver pull himself on deck and back stepping to give him space. The man sat a round shaped bag aside and removed his mask, speaking as soon as it was discarded.

"We found it, Ma'am. Right where the professor said it would be."

It was Colby's turn to brag. "That's how our genius rolls."

Kathryn ignored him, awarding him only a look and saying thanks to the diver. The diver moved off, leaving them alone, no doubt seeking warmer clothing. She grabbed a flashlight from her belt and clicked it on. With latex fingers, she clumsily undid the knot.

The head was just as disgusting as the body to which it belonged to. Colby studied it as the beam from her flashlight illuminated it in the dark. Ratty strands of hair still clung to the scalp.

"The eyes are gone." She stated the obvious feature, as if she was ordering dinner. He was quickly learning that nothing fazed CSI's.

"Yeah. No doubt eaten by a fish."

She bent down closer, blocking his sight until she was only an inch away from the revolting thing. A second later she pulled back with a grim look as she turned to him.

"No. They were cut out."

Dun, Dun, Dun... Another piece falls into place.

Review. Please. Reviews are nice. It only takes about thirty seconds to hit the button, type a few words, and hit ok. If I read your story, I leave you a comment. It's nice and is writer courtesy. Thank you. Thanks to those who have reviewed and sorry again for the long wait.

Anyone want to name our victim? Taking names...now.