Wow. Thanks a lot for your reviews. Didn't see that coming.
So I'm all the more sorry to disappoint you once again. There will be (only) Charlie-hospital-scenes (yes, in the plural form) and scenes of coping with the aftermath. There are only a couple of chapters left, so let's just get this over with. If you're of notsing's opinion, just have a nice laugh.
Anyway, please enjoy.

34 – CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR – 1,109^34

It was Charlie.

Curled up, he lay there, motionless, his face unnaturally pale in the cold light of the torches.

"Charlie," Don whispered, choking. Time was passing immensely slowly. In a fraction of a second Don took in every detail of the scene before him; a picture that would be burnt forever into his mind. His little brother was in a rectangular hole whose surface wasn't even two square meters, curled up, his skin pale and cold and lifeless. Shining dampness glowed on the gray stone around him. The dark curls were wet, sticking to his clammy forehead. The red T-shirt, the same in which he had told them about the Janus List an eternity ago, intensified the pale impression and also stuck wetly to the gaunt body that lay on the floor as if dead.

Without further hesitation Don jumped down and bent down over his little brother. From down here the picture of Charlie wasn't really better. He didn't look good, not good at all... He was haggard, his cheeks sunken, gray. Just like the stone he was lying on, only paler.

Don halfway extended his hands towards him. They were trembling violently. He didn't know what to do with them. But his sub consciousness also worked without him. It made him take Charlie's face in his hands. He could feel how cold the cheeks were under his own more or less warm fingers, and desperation dominated the whispers that were suffocated by his tears, "Please Charlie, please wake up! Please! Please wake up! You can't just leave me alone! Please don't do that to me, please don't!"

But Charlie's face didn't show any motion. The pale face didn't even so much as twitch.

Frantically, Don's trembling hand searched its way to Charlie's carotid. With growing desperation his finger jumped from one point to another on the icy-cold skin, searching for a pulse, a sign that his heart was still beating.

Nothing.

Panic wanted to take hold of him. He couldn't feel anything, no sign of life. Don had to summon up all his strength not to be overcome by his fear. His breathing was shallow.

"Come on! Wake up, Charlie! Come on!"

His fervent begging wasn't heard by a soul. "Please Charlie, don't be dead! Please, don't be dead!"

Tears were running down his tense cheekbones. His hand flew over Charlie's ribcage. It just couldn't be! Charlie couldn't be dead! Don would have done anything to prevent that!

He just wanted to try to reanimate him, to breathe life into him, to bring him back, when he thought he saw something move; a slight heaving of the ribcage.

"Charlie?"

This time Don laid his trembling hand over Charlie's heart. Oh please, make it beat! Please, please, make that he's not dead, pleas...

There – what was that?

Don thought his own heart had come to a standstill while he desperately hoped to feel his brother's beat. Now! Hadn't there been something? Yes? No?

Tears were running down Don's face, tears of relief.

Charlie's heart was beating!

It didn't feel strong, but at least it was beating, albeit slowly and faintly.

"Oh my God, Charlie," Don choked. He was sick with relief. Charlie's heart was beating, he was alive, they weren't too late!

"He's alive!" he shouted upwards and hardly noticed how weak his cracking voice sounded. "He's alive," he then whispered silently for himself and closed his eyes behind which the tears continued to well. Before he set his eyes again on Charlie with eagerness, he whispered a choked "Thank You".

0 – 0 – 0

Alan stared through the window down into the endless depths. His gaze and his spirits lowered, though the windows and the walls of the plane prevented his body from following them.

Somewhere down there, deep below him, there were his two sons. The thought was almost comforting. Somewhere down there the two of them were there – a few miles in one direction or another didn't make a difference. They were there and he was on his way to them. Soon they would be together again. From up here, everything looked fine. Problems? Of course not.

But Alan didn't manage to fool himself. He had been down there himself; he knew what it was like there. He knew that down there a few miles did, very well, make a difference – especially when you didn't know in which direction these miles had to be made in order to reunite them all.

For nearly twelve hours, for half a day, he hadn't heard anything from Don. Of course not, after all he was sitting on a plane. And his last piece of information had been that the groups had been shattered, but Charlie still hadn't been found.

Should he be relieved at that news or not?

And what had happened in the meantime? Maybe nothing, a voice in Alan's head said and irrationally it sounded a bit hopeful. If nothing had happened then there wouldn't be any bad news. If there were still no answers then there was still a reason to hope.

Subconsciously, he shook his head. All this was so... so unreal, so unbelievably unbelievable. It was as if he was beginning to realize everything just now: Charlie had been abducted. Full four days ago. And somewhere in the much too truth-loving depths of his mind Alan was aware that four days was much too long a period.

The plane landed a bit roughly on the runway. The remnants of the storm of the past two days were still perceptible. But Alan didn't bother much, he was only glad that the plane had managed to take off in the first place; in the direction of the storm... in the direction of home... in the direction of his family.

Even while Alan was hurrying towards the baggage pickup he tried to reach his eldest son. Without success. His mobile was turned off and nobody was answering the phone in his office.

In front of the airport building, Alan fought his way into a taxi. Quite a few minutes later he stood in the elevator on the way to the floor where Don's office was, a visitor's badge around his neck. The doors slid apart and through the hustle and bustle he tried to catch a glimpse of a familiar face.

He was successful. Determined, he went towards Megan. On his way towards her he noticed, subconsciously, the pale faces of Amita and Larry. He remembered dimly that Don had told him about their collaboration with the case; the presence of all of them, however, wasn't his priority at the moment. "Where is Charlie?"

Megan's head jerked around and her eyes widened. "Alan! …How did you –"

"Where is my son?"

None out of the four of them knew of which of his sons Alan was talking, but there was a certain hope that the answer would be the same in either case, if only Megan had known it. "I don't really know, Alan. But they've got a lead. They're supposed to be calling at any moment." To inform us that they've found him, she specified silently for herself. She didn't consider it advisable though to raise their father's hopes unnecessarily.

The father. That was it. That was why Megan had hardly recognized Alan. Not because of her weeks in Washington. The person standing in front of her was at this moment more than ever the father of the Eppes brothers. The father worrying for his anxious son searching for his kidnapped brother. And of course, he was the father frightened for his abducted son. And all of a sudden Megan felt completely lost. All the training she'd had wasn't enough to prepare her for this, for the conversation with the father of two of her former colleagues, the father of a victim of abduction.

The ringing of the phone saved her from seeking for insufficient words of consolation. "Reeves." She dared a quick glance at Alan before lowering her eyes again. "Okay," she said into the receiver, but her features told everyone that nothing was okay. "Alright, I'm gonna pass that information on. Thanks, Martin. See you."

After she hanged up, she stared for some further seconds at the phone, lost in thoughts, before directing her words to Larry, Amita and Alan, "That was someone from O'Connagh's team. They were in one of the apartments Sanchez talked about. Charlie wasn't there."

The three of them lowered their heads. "And what does that mean?" Alan asked quietly.

"That doesn't have to mean anything," Megan tried to placate them all. "There are still two further potential places where they could have imprisoned Charlie. We've got to –"

Once again the phone rang. "Reeves. – Yes. Yes, I see. Thanks, Vicky. – No; that is, Martin's called but the others haven't yet. Maybe they're having more luck. – Yes, see you."

It appeared to them as some sort of déjà-vu when Megan again began to speak, "The others haven't found anything either."

Alan shook his head slightly. "What... what is happening here? What does all of this mean?"

"We got a clue earlier, Alan," Megan explained to him. He and the two other silent observers admired her for the calmness of her voice. "Someone who has also been held by the mafia was able to tell us about three of their hiding-places. Our colleagues have now more thoroughly searched two of the ones we already knew about, but didn't find anything. Don, David, Colby and James O'Connagh however have gone with the witness to a hiding-place that was hitherto unknown to us."

For the first time Megan hesitated, and she chose her words with increased care, "We don't consider it unlikely that Charlie is being held in this last hiding-place or at least that he had been there once."

Alan stared at the three of them one after the other. "That means... that means you know where he is?"

"Not with absolute certainty," Amita admitted in a low voice. Despite the quietness of her voice it was very noticeable how much her voice was trembling. "But at least it sounds hopeful that this hiding-place exists in the first place. The mobster's activities hint at a more or less regularly visited location in this area. In hindsight you can see that there's a pattern where the hiding-places can be found." Her eyes began to fill with tears, certainly not for the first time this week, and she had to pause for a moment to collect herself a bit, before she could go on. "There is a pattern there," she repeated, sounding a bit pressed. "But we just didn't see it. If we had noticed it earlier –"

"Amita, you two have done your best," Megan admonished her gently, but determinedly. She was still looking for more words when Larry ruined her efforts.

"And what if that isn't enough?" he asked quietly and there was suddenly a tense and shocked silence in which he continued his much too realistic thoughts, "Have you... have you considered the possibility that they may arrive too late?"

The answer was clear. Of course all of them had thought about that, but always only briefly, always only for a fraction of a second. They had always managed to put that ugly and treacherous thought aside in order to make space for hope.

"We'll know it soon," Megan said with new determination and with a rough voice.

Alan nodded and swallowed. There wasn't anything lost yet. They could still be hopeful for Don and the others. They just had to wait.

Already after five minutes of wearing silence Alan wondered if it hadn't been a mistake after all to come back. While Megan silently sifted through some files, Amita and Larry seemed to feel just as helpless as he himself. He had thought he'd be closer to the action and that it would help him to cope with the situation. And indeed he did feel a bit closer to everything – even if it was a 'mere' 2,250 miles – and still he couldn't say that this was of any help to him. His tension was even greater than in Baltimore; he was jittery.

His senses were sharpened to the upmost and at the same time strangely numb. Due to the lack of having a useful activity he observed his fellow-sufferers. His mind was so caught up in worry his view was narrowed down to noticing all the small things in front of his eyes, though missing an overview. He noticed Amita's reddened eyes, her dry lips. It was obvious that it wasn't a long time ago since she had been crying. Neither did he miss the dark circles under Larry's wide-open eyes. Not only work, but also worry had had to have been keeping him awake for the most time of the past days and nights. And he also saw the furrows on Megan's forehead and the looks she was throwing every few seconds at the phone. He realized that she was trying to concentrate, that she wanted to hide her fear and tension from them.

Alan now followed Megan's example, staring at the phone. It had to, it just had to ring some time, soon, now...

When an electronic melody broke in on their thoughts, Alan almost thought that his telephone hypnosis might have had an effect. That he wasn't that useless after all, but he realized his mistake when Megan didn't answer the desk phone, but tore her mobile out of her jacket. "Yes, Colby?"

The three literally hung on every one of Megan's words, and on her eyes and on her features. There – hadn't they relaxed, wasn't that a relieved smile about to spread on her mouth? No... no, it couldn't be; for now her forehead was furrowed again, her eyes widened; she swallowed. "Okay. Thanks, Colby." Her voice sounded sore. "We'll meet there."

She hung up and lifted her gaze, looking into the three tense faces in front of her. She had to breathe deeply before she found the strength to speak. "They've found Charlie. He's alive."

0 – 0 – 0

Half an hour after the first signs of life from Charlie in four days, Don was standing in front of the swing doors leading to the emergency entrance, breathing shallowly. When they had finally lifted Charlie's slack body out of his hole with ropes, the ambulance had already arrived. Later, Don could only remember two things of the drive to the hospital: one, that it had taken much too long and two, that he would never be able to ban that one picture from his memory: Charlie's pale face that only stood out against the white sheet under him thanks to his dark curls.

Here the medics had left him. Here he had left Charlie. The thought made Don shudder. I'm with you, Charlie, he thought with effort, don't give in, you hear me? I'm with you. Always.

A white coat rushed past him and made him stagger out of his trance and over to the waiting area. He stumbled towards a chair, suddenly so weak on his legs that he only desired to be finally able to rest. When he eventually sat, he took his head in his hands, trying to become clear thinking again.

He failed miserably.

And not for the first time.

It was his fault that all this was happening. He shouldn't have allowed Charlie to stay in Los Angeles after the first abduction. He shouldn't even have let it happen that he was working on the case in the first place. He shouldn't even have let it happen that Charlie had ever worked for him. He shouldn't have given way to Charlie. He should have remained strong. He shouldn't have been so selfish; he should have rejected Charlie's help and collaboration. He shouldn't have been glad to work with his brother.

Don drew in the sterile hospital air through his nose. You haven't been that innocent either, Chuck, he thought while a desperate smile tried to struggle its way onto his face. Charlie would just have made his life harder; he used to be so good at that. He should have prevented Don from appreciating working with him so much.

He hadn't done that though, and that was why he was lying in there, struggling for his life.

Why not? Don wondered and suddenly felt slightly irritated. Why didn't you simply stop when you had the opportunity? The withdrawal of your security clearance should've been an excellent excuse...

But Charlie hadn't stopped working with Don. He had continued, on and on, even illegally. And nobody had forced him to, on the contrary.

He did it voluntarily, Don suddenly realized. But why?

Again he sniffed. Again that affectionate, but so desperate smile that went unnoticed by everybody and couldn't console a soul. Why, he asked? He of all persons should know, did know. He himself had made it his job, that task Charlie performed only on a part time basis. Apparently he wasn't so unlike his brother after all.

But still – why hadn't Charlie just realized the danger? Why hadn't he taken the appropriate measures? Why had he been so silly...

As if out of nowhere he suddenly heard Charlie's voice. Trust me, it's best if I stay... It seemed to have been an eternity ago that they had sat on that park bench... Just stop worrying. Nothing will happen to me, for sure...

How the hell could he have been so stupid to believe that?