Chapter 47

See Chapter 1 for disclaimer

A/N: The reviewers have spoken...(many thanks)

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J. Scott Marsh stepped out of the doors of the LAX airport terminal and took a deep breath of smog-tinged sunlit air. He glanced around quickly without seeming to, and strode for his rental car. No sooner was he inside than he pulled out his cell phone.

"Express Packaging," said a pleasant female voice on the other end. "How can I help you?"

"You have a prepaid package there addressed to Mr. Don Eppes," said Marsh. "I'd like you to deliver it to his apartment. Expedited delivery, today."

"Yes, sir," she replied. "Do you have your confirmation number?"

He gave it to her, got her promise of a quick delivery, and hung up, then immediately dialed again. Jorge Cazares' voice came over the line, lazy, insolent. Marsh could hear faint music in the background. "Yeah."

"No wonder you haven't gotten him yet," said Marsh coldly. "It's probably tough to get a shot from your seat in the bar."

Cazares' voice stiffened defensively, and dropped a decibel or two. "I tole you before, man, I can't do it in the daytime. I'd never get out of there. I'm goin' back in tonight."

"All right," said Marsh. "You get one last chance; after that you're off the job. If you don't get him, you'll get one tenth of your money for your efforts, but if you succeed, you'll get all of it. Either way, you get out after tonight and disappear – do not come back. I'll get the money to you."

"Don' worry, man." Arrogance had crept back into Cazares' voice. "I'll get him. Tonight's the night."

"Did you get the guns?"

"Yeah. I left them where you tole me. You can pick them up there."

"Glad to hear it," said Marsh dryly, and hung up. He sat for a moment, thinking. It wouldn't hurt to give Cazares one more chance at Dr. Eppes. He might get lucky; then his main problem would be taken care of, and he'd only need to deal with Don Eppes. And if Cazares wasn't successful, well, Marsh had a backup plan. With the wiring still in the agent's head, and Marsh in possession of the controls, Don Eppes was his own personal assassin. A nice little murder-suicide would address the problem effectively.

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Alan heard the front door shut, and then moments later the soft swoosh of the kitchen door as it opened behind him. Charlie drifted in, and Alan shot a quick glance at him over his shoulder as he sliced a cucumber.

Charlie's face was troubled, and his voice matched it as he said, "I hate lying to them."

He paused for a moment, then sat heavily in a chair and rubbed his face with a hand. Alan laid down the knife and swung around to face him, snatching a paper towel to wipe his hands. For a moment or two, he simply studied his son. Charlie had been an enigma since he returned; he refused to talk about what had happened, and Alan hadn't pushed. The truth was, he didn't want to know the details; he was too afraid it would indelibly color his perception of Don, and he didn't want that, especially if Don was able to be fully reprogrammed. He knew Charlie was trying desperately to get things back to normal, and he had to admit, he had been, too. It occurred to him, though, as he stood there looking at Charlie, slouching despondently in the kitchen chair, that perhaps that wasn't fair to Charlie. He probably should be getting therapy himself, thought Alan to himself.

"Maybe you should talk to Jonathan Wilkes," he suggested. "The man's a licensed psychiatrist, and he seems to be helping Don. You need to deal with what happened, too."

That drew Charlie out of his downcast reverie; he scowled, and his eyes flashed, hard and obstinate. "I don't need to talk to anyone – and especially not him."

"You don't have a lot of choices," said Alan gently. "I can't imagine there are too many therapists out there cleared for this kind of thing."

Charlie's eyes snapped. "I know that. If there were, I'd make sure Don was going to someone else, other than the man who did this to him to begin with." He looked away, the anger fading a just a bit. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. I don't need to talk to anyone."

"No of course not," said Alan wryly. "You drift around the house looking like you're seeing ghosts, you jump at the drop of a pin, your hands shake, and you scream in your sleep. All perfectly normal."

Charlie's eyes widened anxiously. "I scream at night? Did I do it last night?"

Alan raised an eyebrow. "No. I imagine you received some therapy of a different sort."

Charlie flushed a little, and looked downward. "It was good to see her," he admitted softly. "I missed her so much." He looked up, and away, his expression wistful. "I miss life the way it used to be." He broke off, and shook his head. "She suspects something. She saw my scars this morning, and said she didn't think they looked like anything from an accident. I insisted they were."

"Is she coming back, later?"

Charlie nodded. "She just left. She went to her apartment to unpack, shower, and change. I told her and Larry that we're having pizza here at seven. I thought maybe that would give Don and me some time to talk beforehand."

Alan almost hated to tell him. "Don called – he is coming, but Colby, David, and Ian are coming with him. I think they're meeting with Brian Rogan and Bill Masters to discuss options for tracking down the man you saw. They're conferencing with Washington again, and they think the house is the best place to do it. As a matter of fact, Masters asked me to order pizza for everyone, and said that he'd pick up the tab. Don told me they'd be done before seven."

Charlie sighed, and his shoulders slumped dejectedly. "Great. What am I supposed to tell Amita and Larry? They're going to wonder who Rogan and Masters are, and why all of them are here."

"Don said he'd tell them they were agents out of Atlanta, too, the same way he introduced Wilkes. They'll say they're working on a case that has a connection between Atlanta and L.A."

Charlie shook his head. "This is never going to work. Even if we keep up this charade, Amita and Larry are eventually going to wonder why I never leave the house."

"Maybe they'll catch him soon," Alan said, trying to sound comforting. "Then we can all move on." His words were light, but in fact, he was terrified by the thought that someone might still be out there, after his sons. He shook a finger at Charlie in mock sternness. "That wouldn't change the fact that you could stand to talk to someone about all this." His expression softened. "You've been through a lot, son. You can't deny it happened, and you can't hide from it. It will catch up with you, eventually."

Charlie just shrugged impatiently, rose, and pushed out through the kitchen door.

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Masters hung up his cell phone and looked at the group. "So the DNA says it definitely was Bishop," he said.

Charlie said nothing; he was lying back in his chair, scowling, his arms crossed across his chest. Don sat across the dining room table from him, between Colby and Ian, his face a mask. Charlie glanced at him, then quickly away. He was afraid to look at him, after that morning – what if he had a flashback again? His eyes roamed the table restlessly, and finally settled on Colby's watch. He felt as though he was on pins and needles; he couldn't sit still. He could sense Don's eyes on him.

"He had to be in on it," said David. "Why else would he take a flight down to Mobile, and end up in the Mississippi outside New Orleans? He wasn't on a sanctioned mission."

"Yeah, but who was he there to see?" Ian's dry laconic voice broke in. "Jack and Pierre Montreaux were in prison in D.C. It had to our unknown perp. Who else would it be?"

"We need to wrap this up," Charlie said impatiently. "My friends will be here any minute." He stood, abruptly.

Masters eyed him with disapproval. "You realize, professor, that this discussion is in your own best interest."

"I don't believe that it is," Charlie retorted. "I think whoever pulled this off, whether he's the man I saw or not, is long gone. He would have tried something by now if he were still interested in me. I've looked at hundreds of pictures, with no luck. I think we're wasting our time." With that, he spun on his heel and strode into the living room.

He was wired. He had been edgy since that morning, since facing Don in the hallway. Since the attack, he'd had flashbacks in his dreams, but until that moment, never while awake, and it had been disturbingly vivid; he'd felt fractured, transported in time. For a few heart-pounding seconds, he had been convinced he was back in the office, trapped, facing Don, about to be stabbed. He'd heard of war veterans breaking with reality when faced with a stimulus like a car backfiring, and becoming convinced they were back in battle. He knew now what that felt like, and he was terrified it would happen again.

The rest of them followed him into the room, and Charlie advanced further to make way - hell, to get away. He couldn't sit; instead, he settled for pacing the length of the living room. He turned, saw Don move to stand by the wall, near him. His heart flipped, but he was able to look at him, he realized. Don had been there for several minutes now, and nothing had happened. Maybe that morning had been an isolated occurrence, he told himself, trying to calm the butterflies in his stomach. Take a deep breath, calm down. He slowed his pacing, and turned to see Wilkes' eyes on him, shrewd, appraising.

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J. Scott Marsh sank onto the bed in his hotel room, and adjusted the dial in the control vest. He'd picked it up from the health club locker where he'd stashed it, and now was examining it. He was careful not to touch the controls that would send signals to Don Eppes' brain; he left those off for now, and instead familiarized himself with the screen tied into the cameras. One of them was the camera wired into the button of the denim jacket; he'd turned the video feed on, but it was still dark. There was a good reason for that; Don Eppes had not come home to his apartment and opened his package, yet. The mail service had called and confirmed, saying that someone had signed for the package and taken delivery. Marsh didn't bother to ask for a name; he knew that the person was a government agent, assigned to keep watch at Don Eppes' apartment when he wasn't there.

He knew because he could see the agent now, sitting on the sofa in the apartment; the control vest was tied into the cameras that had been installed there. According to a listing in the vest pocket, kindly filled out by Dr. Allman before he delivered the vest to Marsh that night in the bayou, cameras had been installed in several locations: in Dr. Eppes' home, in Don Eppes' apartment and at the FBI offices. The video feed in the control vest had been programmed for all of them. Out of all those cameras, only two were left – the one in the denim jacket, and one that had apparently been missed, still in Don Eppes' apartment. The rest had all been discovered and removed. That had been a disappointment, but in reality, the two that were left were the most vital. Marsh had a good view of the living room of the apartment, and he could see the package, sitting unopened on the coffee table. The agent ignored it; he sat slouched on the sofa, idly flicking through the channels of Don Eppes' television set, oblivious to what sat in front of him.

Marsh checked the control for the audio feed, and then set one of the controls for the brain wiring, but left the power off. He understood from the notes that current applied to the particular wire he had chosen would scramble Don Eppes' decision-making center, making him susceptible to instruction. He made one last check of the settings; then opened the fast food bag next to him, pulling out a sandwich, and settled in to wait, his eyes still on the screen. As soon as Don Eppes came through the door of his apartment, he would switch on the controls and take command. He couldn't afford for Eppes to open the jacket in front of his protection detail. In the meantime, he would eat, and wait for a call from Cazares, which he hoped would deliver the message that Dr. Eppes was dead.

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Jorge Cazares licked his lips, and bent his head to peer through the scope of his rifle. There was a crowd at the Craftsman tonight. A group of men had arrived a little before six, and then at around seven, a young woman and a man had arrived. He'd seen the man the night before; he had obviously arrived at the Craftsman sometime during the day, before Jorge took up his post, but Jorge had seen him leave, at around midnight. Jorge had examined the man carefully; he was older than the professor was, but he also was about the same height, and through the filmy curtains, he might be confused with Dr. Eppes. This evening, when the door opened, however, Jorge was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of his subject. The moment was too brief for a shot, but Jorge got a quick look at Dr. Eppes in the doorway, and saw that he was wearing a white shirt. The visitor had been wearing blue. The two men would be easy enough to distinguish, even through the semi-transparent curtains. He merely needed to watch for the shorter figure with a dark head, in a white shirt, to pass in front of the window.

The fact that there was a crowd there didn't perturb him. In fact, it might play to his advantage; the more people, the more confusion, and the more chance he had to slip out of the house and away in the darkness. His finger tightened on the trigger as the professor's figure passed briefly behind the filmy curtains; he'd seen him pacing moments earlier, and knew now for certain that the figure was his target. He had observed him enough that he knew the way he moved, and the white shirt confirmed his guess. To his disappointment, the professor moved out of sight, but Jorge didn't relax; rather, he kept position, and lowered his head to the scope. Dr. Eppes was on his feet, pacing into the room past the window, then back out. If he held to that pattern of movement, he would pass by the window again within seconds, and Jorge would be ready. He lightly fingered the trigger, and as the figure moved into view again, took a breath, let it out, and squeezed.

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End Chapter 47

A/N: Cliffie! That was mean, I know.