Mind Games

Chapter 53

See Chapter 1 for disclaimer

A/N: The whumping begins – and both brothers are in for it…

Charlie woke in the gray of dawn, stifling a groan as he tried to turn in his sleeping bag. He was stiff and aching, and he shivered in the morning dampness and pulled the bag around him. He felt awful, and was sure that the infection was making a return. He was only half-awake and still bone tired; the memories of the day before were just disturbing scattered fragments in his mind, but he could sense the presence next to him, and turned his head to look at his brother.

Don was still out, sleeping on his back, and Charlie studied his face. In sleep it was relaxed, the constant frown erased, but Charlie could still see faint lines of fatigue. The whole ordeal had to have been draining for him, and Charlie felt a sudden surge of sympathy and an impulse to throw an arm over his brother and tell him that everything would be okay. He didn't, of course. He didn't want to wake him – mostly for Don's sake, but partially for his own. When Don was awake, he looked like another person – someone who Charlie feared. Asleep, he was his brother again, and for a little while, Charlie could pretend things were normal again. He was too tired to think otherwise, too tired to be frightened, wary, on edge - so tired…

His eyes drifted shut again, his brother's face the last image in them before they closed.

Sunshine filtered through the fabric of the tent, and the chirp of a bird brought Don back to consciousness. It was followed immediately by memory of the day before, of the situation they were in, and his eyes flew open with a start. He propped himself up on his elbow and took a quick look through the flap of the tent, assuring himself that all was quiet outside. Early morning sun filtered through pines and cast blue shadows on their campground; blue interspersed with dappled gold where the sun hit the ground. He turned his head to look at Charlie.

His brother was lying on his side, facing him, still sound asleep, and his appearance struck Don suddenly. Perhaps it was the fact that Charlie was sleeping and he could really study him; or perhaps it was because he was still half-asleep himself and his mind was not yet consumed by the constant battle against the current in his head, but he felt as though he was really seeing his brother for the first time in days, undistracted. His first thought was to wonder when Charlie had gotten so thin. Charlie's dark, intense eyes usually consumed a person's attention, and now that they were closed, Don focused on the rest of his face, which was drawn and pale, shadowed with a day's worth of stubble. His curly hair hadn't seen a trim in weeks, and somehow the length made Charlie's face look even thinner – thin enough to match the bony wrist that lay next to the sleeping bag. That arm was stretched toward Don, almost as though Charlie had been reaching out to him in his sleep.

Charlie looked so tired, and almost a bit feverish, that for an unguarded moment Don felt a rush of protectiveness. It had been insane to bring him out here, to subject him to the physical rigors of the trip and mind-fraying fear that Don saw in his face every time he looked at him. Just as quickly came a rush of fury at the man who had put them in the situation; and Don let it come, let the anger take him. He couldn't afford feelings of protectiveness, sympathy and love. He'd allowed it for a brief moment, gave himself a tiny opportunity to feel human again, just to know he could. Now, the day was here, and he had to shut that down and channel his emotions back to the dark side, turn himself back to something inhuman. It wasn't hard, he realized with a flicker of despair, as Charlie seemed to change right before his eyes into a weak, lazy sloth – something to be despised.

"Get up," he commanded roughly, as he climbed out of the tent. "We need to hit the trail."

J. Scott Marsh frowned as he watched the flickering bars on the vest monitor. He'd been up for an hour, watching the bars fluctuate while Don slept. The camera now told him that Don was awake; it shifted as Don moved, propping himself on an elbow. What disturbed Marsh was the brief surge of positive emotions as Don first looked at his brother; a short but sizeable increase in the bar over 'love,' before a rush of hatred came and blotted it out, followed shortly afterward by disgust and impatience. Those last feelings were as they should have been, but the 'love' reading wasn't, and Marsh had noticed other fluctuations the previous day; short spurts of positive emotions mixed with the bad. Don Eppes was unstable, it was clear. Perhaps not so unstable that hatred would not win out when the time came, but Marsh would have to be prepared to intervene if Don balked and refused to carry out his commands.

He stood and trained his binoculars on the Eppes camp down the valley from Marsh's ridge-top post. They were both moving now, packing up; Charlie was walking slowly, stiffly. Marsh swung his field glasses along the trail behind them, looking for any signs that anyone was following them, and saw none. Then he turned, and climbed a little higher on the ridge and looked west, toward the ocean.

He was at a high point on the trail. Ridges stretched away west toward the sea, but they were all slightly lower than the one he was on, and beyond the next one, he could see a dark smudge. The winds had changed, and the fog bank that had been sitting off the coast was finally moving, rolling inland. Marsh was no weather forecaster, but earlier he'd counted the ridges between him and the cloud on the horizon, and he realized there were now at least two less in the hour since he'd been sitting there. There was now only one ridgeline between him and the grayness. At that rate, and considering the fact that they would be hiking toward the fog, Marsh figured that it would envelop them within an hour. The reduced visibility would allow him to get closer to them, so he could step in if he had to when he gave Don the command.

"They're moving," said Ian, as he looked through his binoculars at the Eppes brothers, who had just broken camp and were setting out on the trail.

Colby and David each watched their respective man silently for a moment with their own field glasses, Colby noting that Charlie had put on a different jacket. Different pants, too, he realized with a frown. Charlie had changed from jeans into jogging pants, and Colby hoped he'd remembered to transfer the GPS tracker from his jeans pocket to the clothes he was wearing now. 'Of course, he still has it with him, even if he didn't transfer it,' he reminded himself. 'His jeans and the tracker would be in his backpack.'He would have liked to talk to Charlie, to remind him - the situation was yet another reminder of their forced silence, of the fact that they couldn't communicate.

Ian frowned, and pulled out his radio, connecting with the command post. "Bill – Ian here. They're up, and we're moving. You picking up their GPS trackers – and ours?"

Twelve miles to the southeast, Bill Masters glanced at the screen set up on a table under the military grade open-air canvas shelter, as Rogan peered over his shoulder and Wilkes listened in, Styrofoam coffee cup in hand. "Yes. Their trackers are both moving; yours are showing up, but stationary."

"Okay," said Ian. "Listen, do you guys have a weather report? I see gray on the horizon – are we supposed to get rain today?"

Masters, Rogan, and Wilkes all looked at the sunshine outside the canvas overhang, and then at each other, blankly. "Hold on a minute," said Rogan. "I can pull it up on my Blackberry."

He searched a weather site, which gave him a brief report. "No chance of precipitation, it says," he recited with shrug. "Looks like pretty much the same forecast as yesterday."

Bill Masters spoke into the radio. "Brian says they're predicting the same weather as yesterday. Maybe it's just morning mist on the hills."

Ian frowned again, and looked back through his binoculars. There appeared to be a definite line between the advancing cloud and the ridges between them. 'Maybe it's just a coastal phenomenon. It'll probably burn off,' he thought to himself, and then his attention was captured by movement on the ridge across the valley. He swung his glasses there quickly, but whatever he had seen was gone. "Okay, Roger that," he said, and clicked the radio off. He spoke to David and Colby, while still scanning the ridge. "I just saw movement," he said, "on the facing ridge, in the direction that Don and Charlie are headed. Not sure what it was; it's gone now."

David squinted toward the opposite ridge. "If it is our man, he's ahead of them on the trail. They're between him and us."

Ian scanned the ridgeline again, and trailed his glasses down the slope. "It might just have been a deer. I didn't get a good look. It could have either gone over the top of the ridge away from them, or come down the east slope into the cover of the trees."

Colby had his glasses up. "If it came down the slope, it was headed towards them, and us."

Ian pulled his glasses down. "We'd better get moving, but we need to stay back. If it's our man and he's circling back behind them, we don't want to run into him."

"This is when it would be nice to be able to contact them," said Colby, "and give them a heads up. That camera Don's wearing really buggers things up."

The voice started as soon as they hit the trail. Don could hear it in his head; it was relentless, maddening. 'Look at him. He's pathetic. He can barely make it up the hill. Soon you'll be far enough in. You can lure him off the trail and finish him, finally rid the world of his presence. He's a danger to our country, and has no redeeming personal qualities – he's egotistical, selfish, a lying traitor. He'd kill you at the drop of a hat if he thought that you knew what he'd done. Better for you to take care of him first…'

The voice went on, but the subject matter began to change. Painful moments from their past began to surface, times they'd argued; times he'd been furious with Charlie. Don could no longer tell which thoughts were his, and which were the controller's – how could this man possibly know about their past? Some of the thoughts had to be his own, he thought in despair, some of the rage that was beginning to smolder inside him had to be coming from him. As he got to the top of the next ridge, which looked over a small hollow, the voice suddenly stopped its litany of hate, and said, 'Look at the next little hollow, below you. Look at the next ridge, and the fog creeping over it. Somewhere along that section of trail, find a place to stop for a break. You'll want to spend a little time in the hollow, let the fog come in. Where will you go?'

Don swallowed and looked back down the trail. Charlie was several yards back; he seemed to be moving a little more quickly this morning after his rest, but Don still outpaced him, easily. The man was working up to something, and he wanted an answer. Don shot a glance nervously back up the trail past Charlie, hoping to catch a glimpse of Edgerton and the team, but saw nothing. He had to play along, had to buy time until he figured out where the man was. Doing what the man said - stopping and waiting - would also give Edgerton and the team a chance to get closer. He turned back to look into the hollow, and spoke into the mike in his jacket lapel. "There's a big dead pine sticking out, about halfway up the slope to the next ridge," he said. "We'll stop there."

Charlie paused for a moment to catch his breath and looked up the trail at Don, standing where the trail crested the ridge. 'Not too much farther,' he told himself, and then caught his breath. He could see Don in quarter profile, much of his face was turned away, but Charlie was sure. Don was speaking; Charlie could see the motion of his jaw, and then Don's hand came up, nudging his lapel upward, closer to his face. There was no doubt; Don was speaking into the mike attached to the camera – talking to the man on the other end. Charlie's heart flip-flopped, and he ducked his head just in time as Don turned to look back at him. That morning, in the light of day, he'd talked himself out of his suspicions – the fear that perhaps Don hadn't been truthful with them and had been under the control of the unknown man all along. Those suspicions came roaring back now, with a vengeance. The way Don turned away to talk and his guilty backward look afterward spoke of something furtive, something that Don didn't want him to see.

He closed his eyes, trying to fight down the panic rising inside of him, and was faced with a vision – Don's face, peering at him through the glass of the conference room at the FBI offices. He knew he was perilously close to experiencing a flashback. He wrestled the vision back down and opened his eyes, putting one foot in front of the other on the trail, numb with fear. He had to play along – the man was still nowhere in sight. He had to keep up with the charade until the man was close enough for Ian, Colby, and David to apprehend him. He couldn't blow it now; they were so close. Keep walking, keep pretending, keep the faith that Don knew what he was doing…

The fog crept towards them as they trudged along, and Don headed for the gray cloud like a zombie, his mind buzzing. Or rather, the trail headed toward it; they really had no choice of direction. He was so consumed with handling the voice in his head that he didn't realize how thick the fog was until they started up the following slope. They were in a small hollow – not a big sweeping valley like the one they had just come out of, and the next ridge was much closer. Sooner than Don expected, they were approaching the pine he'd picked out, and his stomach lurched with the sudden realization that the man was undoubtedly close by. He cast surreptitious glances around them, trying to pick him out, and wondered again how far behind them the surveillance team was. If they didn't come over the ridge behind them soon, they would lose them in the fog.

Charlie was breathing heavily again, and as they reached the pine, Don said, "Let's stop here for a minute."

Charlie didn't even look at him; he nodded but kept his head down and headed past him for a nearby boulder in the small clearing, pulling off his backpack and setting it next to the rock. Don turned away to look around them; he could feel the hair prickling on the back of his neck. Someone was out there in the mist… Tendrils of fog were trailing about them now; he could still see, but patches of forest were beginning to be obscured. Don could feel the reassuring solidness of the gun inside his jacket, but if the man came at them suddenly out of the fog, it might not be effective – he might not get a chance to pull it and aim. It would be best to have some backup, he thought, and pulled his own backpack off, set it on the ground, and unzipped it. He'd better make sure he had access to that knife…

'Where are you?' The voice was in his head again, and Don feverishly rummaged through his backpack feeling as though any second the man would charge out at them from the brush. There – he found it.

He straightened, examining the knife in its sheath, and spoke quietly into his lapel. "We're here," he said, his gut tightening with apprehension, "where I told you we'd be."

He could hear Charlie shuffling around behind him, but he kept his gaze on the woods around them, turning slowly, until suddenly the sound of running feet registered on his consciousness. He whirled around to see Charlie, running full tilt up the trail, faster than Don would have imagined he could move. His brother hadn't simply been shuffling around the clearing, he taken off in full flight. "Charlie!" he yelled, as fear asserted itself, and he twisted around, taking a moment to peer at the woods around him, trying to see what had driven his brother into panicked flight, scanning, searching, still looking, even as his feet started to move, and he finally took off after Charlie.

He still had the knife in its sheath in his hand as he sprinted up the trail after his brother, and it occurred to him suddenly why Charlie had fled. It hadn't been the sight of someone lurking in the brush – it had been him – standing there with a knife, and murmuring to the man who was stalking them through the mike in his jacket. It had to have seemed horribly suspicious, incriminating. No wonder Charlie had taken off. They were only yards from the top of the ridge, and he could see Charlie nearing it, heading over the top, already partially obscured by the growing fog. Don was gaining, but he wasn't close enough – not with the reduced visibility.

"Shit!" he swore aloud as fear coursed through him, and he screamed at his brother. "Charlie! Stop!"

Ian, Colby, and David were nearing the top of the trail in the larger valley that the Eppes brothers had just left, moving as quickly as they dared. It had become apparent that what had appeared to be coastal mist was a heavy bank of fog, moving inland, and they knew they had to close the distance between themselves and Don and Charlie, or risk losing sight of them. As they neared the top of the ridge, Ian's radio buzzed. He stopped short to answer it, and Colby and David stopped with him, casting impatient searching glances around them as Bill Masters' excited voice poured in a tinny stream from the radio. "Don is on the move, fast, about two klicks from your position! Do you have a visual?"

Ian shot a sharp glance at the two agents, and they began to run up the trail toward the top of the ridge. "Negative!" he shot back. "We're cresting the ridge they just went over. Fog is moving in here; we closed the distance between us. We're not too far behind them, but the visibility is getting bad. You said only Don is on the move?"

"Yes – Charlie is showing stationary, between you and Don, about a klick and a half from you, right off the trail."

"Roger that," panted Ian, and signed off, running hard up the trail after Colby and David. The three of them bounded to a stop at the top of the ridge, and looked across the small hollow. "There!" exclaimed David, pointing at the shadowy figure disappearing into the fog at the top of the next hill. "That looks like Don!"

They charged after him in full pursuit, slowing as they reached what they figured to be Charlie's position, according to Masters. There was no Charlie, but Colby spotted his backpack against the rock. "Aw, shit!" he groaned. "That's Charlie's pack – the GPS chip must still be in it!"

"Damn it! He's running too!" Ian took off up the path, now shrouded in gray, with Colby and David after him. 'Too far,' thought Ian, 'they're too far ahead in this fog.'

Charlie tore blindly up the trail, gasping from a combination of exertion and mindless fear. The image of his brother standing there with the knife and coldly telling his controller their position had stunned him. Fear hit, an icy shot; then white-hot panic surged through him, driving him to his feet, adrenaline giving his legs speed that would have seemed impossible moments ago. He shot up the trail but in his mind he was home at the Craftsman, and Don was chasing him up the stairs. Monster, with a knife. Charlie flew over the top of the hill and missed the turn in the trail, but kept going through the brush, heedless of the trees, the undergrowth, the branches that tore at his body like grasping hands. Terror had short-circuited his brain; he could think of nothing other than escape.

He could hear Don swearing, yelling at him to stop. The sound faded, but still Charlie plunged onward, across a long slope, then down, down, until he hit bottom, splashing and stumbling across a shallow creek. In and out of layers of mist, sometimes clear, sometimes so thick he could barely see two yards in front of him.

The hole in the creek bank might have been made by an animal, or perhaps was just the result of water erosion when the small stream flooded. It was a little less than a foot in diameter, and went straight down for about eighteen inches before it turned. It was nearly invisible in the fog, and as Charlie crossed the stream and bounded across the other bank his lower left leg went in the hole neatly and stayed there, as his body catapulted over it. There was a sickening snap, and he jolted to a stop in a sea of agony, lying there, not breathing, not existing, he was nothing any longer – nothing but all-consuming pain.

End Chapter 53

A/N: Oh, I'm just getting started here…