In the back room of the warehouse, Charlie stood with a furrowed brow, looking at the stacks of cardboard boxes, the chair, the door and window.

"So what do you think, Charlie?" said Colby.

"Are you sure that no one moved any boxes in here?"

Colby nodded. "This is how we found it when we busted the place. Why?"

"And you're sure they're not lying to you about the set-up with the guard?"

"We can't be completely sure of that, but I don't think they are. Why? What are you thinking?"

Charlie pointed toward the boxes.

"None of these stacks are high enough or in the right place to allow Don to climb out that window. Even if he'd knocked over a stack after he'd reached the top, there would be a pattern in the way the boxes fell to indicate where they had been."

Colby nodded. "And that's assuming Don was even able to climb like that. If the suspects are being straight with us, he was drugged enough to last for several hours. Unless they messed up on the dosage, I'd be surprised if he was even close to being at the top of his game with that going on."

Just then, Megan and David walked in.

"How are we doing? Any theories?" said Megan.

"Charlie doesn't think Don could have gotten up to the window, and I think he's probably right," said Colby, as he put his hands on his hips.

"So where does that leave us?" said David.

"I see three options," said Charlie, ticking them off his fingers. "One, Don had help from someone to make it out that window. Two, the guard either didn't notice Don coming through the door or helped him get out. Three, Don was never even here."

"I don't know about that last one, Charlie," said Megan. "It looks pretty clear that someone was held prisoner here. For four guys who clearly didn't expect to get caught, that's a lot of thought to put the cuffs and zip ties out just to set it up for us."

"Where do we go from here? I don't think any of these guys helped him escape, so how did he get out?" said David. "Don's a good agent, but he's not Houdini."

Megan's phone beeped, and she looked down at it. Frowning, she said, "Does this mean anything to you guys?"

On the screen was a series of numbers: 911 127 34.146344 -118.091316.

"Not to me," Colby said. "Charlie, take a look at this. It's all numbers. What does this say to you?"

Pulling a small notebook from his inside jacket pocket, Charlie glanced at the screen before copying the numbers down. He tapped at the pad with his pen.

"With the wide differential in number length, it's unlikely to be a code. We know that the 911 likely means 'emergency'."

"If it's Don, why doesn't he just use the distress word?" said Colby.

"I'm not sure, but these last two numbers… They look like GPS coordinates, somewhere local," Charlie said.

David pulled out his phone.

"I'm looking them up now," said David. "It looks like at those coordinates there's a motel about five miles away—Sleep Rite & Tite. We should check it out."

"I agree. Let's go," said Megan.

Catching Charlie's hopeful gaze, she said, "I'm sorry, Charlie, but I can't let you come with us—it could be an active crime scene. Stay here with SWAT, and if it's safe, we'll come back and get you."

Charlie bit his lip and nodded, then leaned against the cold cement wall and slid to the ground to sit. Balancing his elbows on top of his knees, he looked at the floor, holding his head in his hands.

With a glance back at Charlie, Megan walked out of the warehouse and got into her SUV. Colby and David took their sedan and pulled onto the highway. Within a few minutes, they were at a run-down motel that could have used a few coats of paint at the least. Stepping out of their cars, they huddled for a moment.

"There's got to be 50 rooms here. Where do we start? Manager's office?" said Colby.

"No, wait. There was that extra number on the text we couldn't account for—127. What if it's a room number?" said Megan. "We don't have a warrant, and we don't have enough probable cause—David, get the manager's permission, and we'll go in."

Minutes later, Megan and David were on either side of the door to room 127. Colby stood in front, and reached for the doorknob. It turned in his hands, and he whispered, "Unlocked."

With a nod at Megan and David, he pushed the door open, yelling, "FBI!"

Spotting Don lying on one of the double beds, Colby pushed forward to clear the bathroom, while David cleared the area around the second bed, and Megan ran over to Don.

"Clear," yelled Colby.

"Clear here, too," said David.

Pressing two fingers against Don's neck, Megan breathed a sigh of relief.

"He's alive, steady pulse," she said. "Don, can you hear me?"

As she tapped his cheek gently, he reacted.

"Meeehgn?" he slurred, struggling to open his eyes.

"Don, it's going to be OK. We're here," Megan said.

David had stepped away to put out a call on his radio. "I need paramedics to the Sleep Rite & Tite Motel now. We have an agent down. Please be advised we have located Agent Eppes."

He walked back over to the bed.

"How's he doing?"

"He woke up there for a second, but I think he's unconscious again," said Megan.

"But how did he even get here?" Colby frowned. "I mean, we're a good five miles from that warehouse. We can't even figure out how he got out of that room, let alone how he could have made it five miles down the road and broken into a motel room."

"Look at him," said Megan, gesturing to Don as he slept on the bed. "Someone's already patched him up, and I don't think it was our guys at the warehouse. Something's not right here."

Their radios crackled to life. "Be advised, paramedics approaching Sleep Rite & Tite Motel."

Thirty seconds later, the ambulance was there, and the paramedics were checking Don's injuries.

"He looks stable," one of them said to Megan. "Did you treat him before we got here?"

"No, we found him like that."

"It looks like he'll be fine, but we're going to take him over to UCLA to be checked out."

Megan looked over to Colby and David.

"I'm going to ride with Don to the hospital," she said. "Colby, take my car, get Charlie and meet us there. David, I need you take stay here and take charge of the scene. See if you can get surveillance or anything else to tell us what happened here."

The paramedics had transferred Don to a stretcher and were carrying him into the back of the ambulance. Megan climbed in after them. They shut the doors and took off.

Two hours later, Megan, Charlie and Colby were sitting in Don's hospital room, talking with the doctor while various monitors beeped in the background.

"We're a little concerned about his head injury, but we'll be able to tell more once he's fully aware. The paramedics say he had already been treated when they got there."

Megan sighed. "We're not sure how that happened. We found him miles away from his last known location, already patched up."

The doctor nodded.

"Whoever fixed him up did him a favor and knew what they were doing. None of his wounds look infected, and from the inflammation on his shoulder, it appears that it was dislocated and properly reset. The sling was textbook perfect, and the quick treatment on his wrists means they should heal much faster," said the doctor.

He handed Charlie a plastic bag full of clothing.

"This is everything Agent Eppes had on him when we brought him in."

Charlie smiled slightly. "Thanks."

The doctor walked out, and the three of them sat there for a few minutes in silence, watching Don sleep. His face was blank—no crinkled brow, no wide smile. The nurses had only attached one IV to his right hand. They had also replaced the makeshift sling with a dark blue hospital-issue one, and his injured arm was draped on top of his chest, moving up and down with every steady breath. Then the rhythm was interrupted. He groaned, and his eyelids fluttered.

Slowly opening one eye, he said, "What happened? I feel like I've been run over by a truck."

Charlie reached over and held Don's hand, careful not to dislodge the IV. As he looked at Don, the worry had left his eyes, and a mischievous sparkle was back.

"You had us worried there for a while," Charlie said. "We were looking for you for about 16 hours. Plus, I think they might be getting close to punching your card for a free visit here. What is it, six times and the next one is free?"

Don smiled, then raised an eyebrow.

"Seriously, what happened? I've got bits and pieces floating around in my head, and they don't all make sense."

Megan scooted her chair closer to the bed.

"We were hoping you could tell us, because I don't think we have all the pieces either," she said. "What's going through your head?"

He started to sit up, then stopped, wincing slightly at the effort. Leaning back against the pillows, he sighed.

"Well, I remember going into the house. You and I split up, and I went to clear a room, but it turned out to be a door to a basement staircase. I went down there, and someone got the jump on me and knocked me out," he said. "So I'm not sure how long I was out or where they took me, but when I woke up, I was tied to a chair in a warehouse. I sort of remember someone wrenching my arm, and I think they got me pretty good across the face too."

He looked over at Charlie.

"Charlie, are you sure you want to hear all this? You don't have to stay, buddy."

Charlie shook his head. "I need to know. It's OK. I can handle it."

Don took a deep breath. "I think I was there for hours, but I didn't have a good way of telling the time. I remember a guy in a ski mask coming towards me and forcing water down my throat. I remember choking on the water, but then things get fuzzy."

Colby crossed his arms. "We found the warehouse, Don, and I think your ski mask guy too, but when we got there, you were gone."

Don nodded. "Yeah, that's where it starts to get strange. You're going to laugh, but I have the weirdest sensation that I was floating there in mid-air for a few minutes."

"That's why they tell you to stay off drugs," Charlie teased.

"No, seriously, Charlie. I mean it. It's not exactly a memory—more of an impression. Then I opened my eyes, and the warehouse was gone, and I was on a bed in some dingy room with yellow walls. And there was this girl there."

Megan and Colby looked at each other.

"A girl? Can you tell me about her?" said Megan.

"She was… blonde. Long blonde hair. She smiled at me and said… something. I can't remember. Then the next thing I remember, everything was moving. I think I was in the ambulance. Did you talk with her? What did she say? Where is she?"

Megan smoothed her hands gently on top of the bed. "Don, we found you in a motel room, but no one was there with you."

Don squinted at her. "What? What do you mean?"

"She means, Houdini, that you apparently escaped handcuffs, zip-ties, a heavily-guarded warehouse with no obvious escape route and magically transported yourself five miles away into a motel room where you didn't have a key, all with the help of a blonde mirage," Colby said with a smile. "Did you turn into James Bond when we weren't looking?"

Don stared back at Colby with a look of utter bewilderment.

"Chuck, this isn't a joke you thought up, is it? Because it isn't funny."

Charlie threw his hands up and shrugged. "This is all you, Don."

"We believe you about the girl," Megan said, nudging Charlie on the arm. "When we found you, someone had definitely treated your injuries. They had bandaged you up and even made a sling for your arm out of the motel's pillowcase. According to the doctor, you were drugged pretty heavily, so I don't think you could have done all that on your own."

Don nodded.

"That's not all either. We found you because someone texted Megan your exact GPS coordinates," Colby said.

"Did you trace the text?" Don said.

Colby nodded. "Sure, but it didn't do us much good. It traced to a burner cell, only used once, and whoever used it left it on the motel bed next to you."

"But you're sure I didn't send it," Don said.

"You couldn't even say my name clearly when we found you," said Megan. "I don't think you could have typed out eight or nine-digit GPS coordinates. Plus, you wouldn't have wiped your own prints off the phone."

Don leaned back on the bed and ran his right hand back through his hair. "I can't even get my head around all of this."

He clicked the button to raise the head of the bed up and noticed Charlie rummaging through a plastic bag.

"Whatcha got there, Charlie?"

Charlie looked up. "The doctor gave us a bag of everything you had on you when you came into the hospital."

"So you had to go dig through it? Charlie, come on."

Charlie put a hand up. "Don, there could be clues in here."

Don pursed his lips. "You're right. Did you find anything?"

"That depends. Did you have a letter in your pocket addressed to an Agent McSweeten?"

Shaking his head, Don said, "No, I wouldn't have been carrying a letter in my pocket when I was going to raid a house."

"McSweeten. Wasn't that the name of the lead agent on the D.B. Cooper case?" Colby said.

"I thought there was a guy working the financial crimes division with that name," said Megan.

"Here in L.A.?" said Don.

Megan nodded. "Open it up, Charlie. Let's see what it says."

"It's addressed to this agent. Isn't it a federal crime or something to open it?" Charlie said.

Don frowned and shook his head. "It's not technically mail, since it wasn't sent through any official channel like the postal service."

Unfolding the paper, Charlie read aloud, "I found something you seem to have misplaced. Next time, you owe me a smoothie. I would have stuck around, but you know how it is. Glad to see you're not in Kansas."

"That's it?" said Colby. "That's… cryptic."

"To say the least," said Don.

"It could be some sort of code," said Charlie.

"The person who would know that the best is probably Agent McSweeten," said Megan. "I'll call the office and get him down here."