Chapter 14
DAVID'S DESK, FBI OFFICE, 22 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST
Charlie approached just as David was finishing up a conversation on his cell phone. "All right. You take care, okay? Remember we're all still here for you, every one of us. Yeah, uh-huh. Bye, boss."
The words in association with the unusually serious and caring expression on the senior agent's face told Charlie exactly who David had been speaking with. "Is he okay?"
"He has a hunch. Got an idea from something Lobell said that a movie studio might have hired him to make the recording."
Charlie frowned. "Why would a movie studio want to frame Don?"
Liz leaned over the partition. "Taking reality television to newer and even more tasteless lows?"
"His hunch wasn't kind enough to take it quite that far. But we don't seem to have much happening tonight, so brainstorming session in about two hours?"
RECREATION ROOM, US DOJ METROPOLITAIN DETENTION CENTER
Don was stretching after a brisk run on the treadmill when the door to the rec room was unlocked. The mandatory hour out of his cell was over far too soon, but he was staying fit and making the best of it. Being physically exhausted tended to make the rest of the time pass more easily. He didn't recognize the officer outside the door, and that small fact made his senses snap into sharp focus.
He knew all the detention officers who worked his unit. Their names, their working styles, even something of their carefully concealed personalities. They were professional, competent with a keen grasp on how to maintain control. This guy wore the insecure swagger of a novice.
Don raised his hands, palms forward in a submissive gesture, but he met the man's gaze squarely. "Who are you?"
"None of your business." The officer marched in with a tangled mess of shackles in one hand, the unguarded door open behind him. A group of general population prisoners was ambling down the hall, loosely escorted by a single guard.
This jackass was opening the door with twelve guys outside who could take them in a second. He was either stupid, incredibly careless, or this was a hit.
He angled sideways so that his face wasn't visible to the prisoners, and spoke to the officer in a low voice. "I'm an FBI agent. I'm in protective segregation. What happened to locking down the hall?"
The guy rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah, cry me a river. Dirty cops are always the worst fucking whiners. Guess what, you're supposed to protect society, not the other way around."
It was looking like stupid and careless, which meant Don's chances of surviving the next few minutes were pretty good. "I haven't been convicted," he reminded the smaller man in as mild a voice as he could muster.
"Hands behind your head." Stupid and careless wanted to shackle him, that is if he could ever get the chains untangled. Don eyed the prisoners, two of whom had fallen behind the group and were starting to take a keen interest.
He focused on the officer and spoke calmly. "If you cuff me without locking the area down, you're putting my life on the line. Sure you wanna take responsibility for that?"
Stupid and careless swelled up his chest like a puffer fish, and Don girded his eardrums for the inevitable stream of shouted curses. His guess was that about ninety percent of them would be Full Metal Jacket misquotes. Instead, the guard raised his arm with a sudden swing and whipped the collection of metal sharply into Don's side and back.
Don blinked.
The blow was sharply painful, and the sensation only got worse in the following seconds, but Don was too startled to yelp. Instead he managed to control the reflex reaction to take the guy down, and blinked again. He'd never experienced any sort of genuine abuse from the detention officers, let alone deliberate physical cruelty, and it was taking him by surprise.
"Really? That's where you're going with this?" He knew he sounded like a smartass, but he'd seen the reaction the straggling prisoners had to the guard's attack. They averted their eyes and moved on, wanting no part of it. Given the choice of who was going to kick his ass, he'd take one ticked-off guard over a group of prisoners.
The last one vanished from sight, and he laced his fingers behind his head and stood still to allow himself to be cuffed. Arguing about clearing the halls was going to get nowhere; he was just going to have to hope they didn't run into anybody who recognized him.
The officer wrenched his arms behind his back without comment, and Don bit his lip to avoid reacting when the handcuffs were clamped around his wrists with incredible force. He added "cruel" to "stupid and careless" to keep his mind distracted from the pain.
Who the hell was this guy?
WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE
"I know this has to be personal, but I just can't come up with a rational explanation for the methodology. I mean – I get that a lot of people might want to hurt Don, but considering the violence of the cases we've worked on, this hardly seems – well, sadistic enough," said Charlie.
Colby winced. "I was thinking the same thing. Just wasn't something I was wild about saying out loud in front of his kid brother. I'd say we either have an bizarrely evenhanded act of vengeance, or we're still missing something."
Charlie rubbed his forehead. "The movie studio angle?"
David sat forward in his chair. "We're running down all the studios Lobell did side jobs for. Could take a while, he wasn't overly concerned with paying his taxes so the records we got from Starscape aren't much help."
"Why would a movie studio want to frame Don?" asked Amita. "I mean – these are legitimate businesses with plenty of money and goodwill in the community."
"Well, the big studios are pretty clean, but any big corporation is vulnerable to employees on the take," said Liz. "I'd assume that if Don's right, we're still looking at a personal motive."
"Yeah, but what about the money?" asked Nikki. "If someone did this, they dropped millions. That implies the backing of-"
"Wait a minute. If? IF?" Charlie felt anger like no other flash over him, and he grabbed the sides of her shirt and shoved her against the white board. "If that's how you're thinking, get out of this room."
Charlie's legs flew out from under him, and before he had time to comprehend what was happening he was flat on the floor with his right arm twisted behind his back and Nikki's knee pressing down on his ribs. He squirmed, trying to catch his breath. "Ow. OW!"
"Do you know how many hours of my own damn time I've spent these last few weeks trying to clear your brother?"
"Get off him, NOW." There was a force behind David's order that Charlie had rarely heard from him, and it secured his immediate release.
Charlie rolled onto his side, gasping for breath and scared. Scared that he had just shown violence against a friend, a woman, an FBI agent. Scared of Nikki, and of the anger in David's voice. Scared of that word if, and the doubt and fatigue it implied.
"What the hell do you two think you're doing?" Charlie couldn't look at David. This had all the misery and disappointment of being yelled at by Don, without the familiarity that made it bearable. Don didn't even mean it half the time. "We're all exhausted, we're all stressed out, and we're all completely miserable because this isn't ending. We're all worried about Don and we've been letting him down for weeks. That is no damn excuse for going at each other's throats!"
"Nikki! Charlie is a civilian, what the hell do you think you're doing taking him down like that? Don't tell me for one second you thought you were in danger, if Don were here he'd kick your ass. Charlie, don't you ever touch one of my agents like that again, do you hear me?"
Charlie nodded, and Nikki responded with a clipped, "Yes, sir," before walking out.
After an incredibly awkward silence, Colby knelt down by Charlie, giving him a reassuring look. "Hey. It's okay. This is over."
"I'm so sorry." Charlie looked at Amita, who was standing frozen to the side, and wondered if he'd destroyed her trust in him. "I'm not violent, I never wanted to hurt her, I just – God." He closed his eyes, wanting to vanish into the floor.