Numb3rs/Supernatural Fic: Alliance, Chapter Six/9
Title: Alliance
Author: ALEO
aleo_70
Genre: Gen
Characters: Don Eppes, Charlie Eppes, Dean Winchester, and cameo by Sam Winchester
Fandoms: Numb3rs/Supernatural - crossover
Rating: PG 13+
Warning: violence, supernatural themes, horror
Disclaimer: I don't own them, I just borrowed them. Numb3rs, Supernatural and associated characters are the property of those that created them. No copyright infringement intended. No financial reward gained. All real places and organisations are used in a fictional sense. Anything you don't recognise comes from my imagination.
Spoilers - Numb3rs: Hot Shot & Thirteen; - Supernatural: nil.
Status: Chapter 6 of 9
Wordcount (this chapter): 2300
Total wordcount: ~21,400
Summary: Investigating a series of occult related murders in Los Angeles FBI Special Agent Eppes has another encounter with Dean Winchester.
CHAPTER SIX
An hour later, despite his assertion that his brother knew more about this type of research than he did, Dean was agreeing with Charlie’s assessment that there would be no more victims. When Best finished sacrificing Sam the spell would be complete. They still had no clue as to what Best was summoning but Dean insisted it was something very dangerous given how securely it had been imprisoned behind layers of seals.
“We have to stop him,” Dean finally stated, shoving the laptop away.
“Working on it,” Don acknowledged.
“You do that. I’m calling Bobby to see what he’s got on the lore.” Dean stated.
Don let Dean walk off, cell phone already to his ear as he called this ‘Bobby’. He glanced at his watch, “Charlie, you need to head in.”
The younger Eppes looked up from where he’d started typing on his laptop. He glanced warily at Dean before speaking. It was one thing to suggest his older brother contact the Winchesters but it was something else to have one hanging out at Don’s apartment. “What about you?”
“I’m staying here,” Don answered. He didn’t bother looking over at the real subject of their conversation. “Wright ordered me to bring in my informant which I can’t for obvious reasons. I have to stay away from the office for now. If anyone asks, I’m out looking for my CI.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess. What about my data, should I give them what I’ve got?”
“Absolutely. Call in that professor that helped with the occult stuff last time, see if she can help out again.”
“Numerology,” Charlie corrected. “I’ve already called Professor Trowbridge, she couldn’t help us herself but she did give me some names.”
“Call them, see if they can give any general advice,” Don suggested. If they weren’t cleared they couldn’t get all the case details but they may be able to point the FBI in the right direction. Whilst they had the best thing to an expert in Dean with his involvement being kept secret they had to attempt to source other experts on the subject or questions would be asked.
“What about him?” Charlie had to ask. He wasn’t so sure it was the best way to handle the situation but he had to allow that Don usually landed on his feet.
“’Him’ is staying with your brother ‘til this is over,” Dean said, interrupting his call from the other side of the room. Again there was no threat in his tone but both brothers were more than aware of the potential meaning to Dean’s words.
“I’m staying here,” Don said firmly. “I’m still building a profile and Dean has the answers I need. I’ll call in if I have anything more to add, but remember as far as the FBI is concerned I’m searching for my CI, got it?”
“I remember,” Charlie said as he shut down his laptop. The repeated order was a sure sign of the stress Don was under. He packed the laptop away and headed for the door, Don following. Again he hesitated. “You’re sure?”
“Sure, buddy,” Don answered. “I’ll be fine.”
Charlie lowered his voice to almost a whisper as Dean had already demonstrated sharp hearing. “If it goes wrong I’ll tell them.”
Don could live with that. “It won’t. But yes, if it does.”
After his brother had left Don felt much more at ease, well as much as it was possible to be with a fugitive sitting on his couch anyway. He set the coffee machine and started firing more questions at his guest.
It wasn’t long before Dean had once again had enough. “What more do you want? He likes porno mags. He likes his tequila straight up and gets a hard-on for butterscotch ice-cream of all things. That’s it, you got it all. Now can we find him?”
Don ignored Dean’s frustrated anger. “How did you find him before? You said you tracked him to that house, can you do it again?”
Dean grimaced. “We followed him here due to the killings and narrowed it down to the area but then we bumped into a friend of a friend who had seen him.”
“So call this friend of a friend,” Don suggested.
“Tried. He’s gone. I’ve called everyone I know in town and got nothing.”
“So you found me,” Don concluded.
“I needed to keep things moving while I got patched up. Think I’m about good to go now,” Dean finished.
Casting a critical eye over the injured man Don wasn’t so sure. Dean was far healthier than he’d been the night before, an improvement beyond anything Don could have expected, but that didn’t mean he was up to hitting the streets in search of his brother. “Let my people work on this a bit more to narrow down the search area if nothing else.”
“Not much time left, the sacrifice has to happen tonight,” Dean reminded him.
“I know,” Don replied. At the reminder of passing time another glance at his watch told him it was past the point where he should have called in to see how things were developing.
“Sinclair,” David answered on the fourth ring.
“Update,” Don demanded.
Over the sounds of shuffling paper as he thumbed through the returned taskings David provided his report before providing a summary. “As best we can tell South Central LA still seems to be the most likely place Best is holed up. We’ve had a few unconfirmed sightings down that way and we’re working on confirming those now by pulling CCTV footage.”
Supposedly searching for his informant Don couldn’t actively provide any of the new information he’d gained from Dean this morning but it had led him to an idea that he could use. “I want you to get LAPD to send over all their occurrence sheets. We might catch a break by keeping an eye out for any odd incidents.”
“I’ve already asked for the sheets and I’ve got someone on them,” David answered.
Don wasn’t too surprised, David was a good operator. “Have them sent to my laptop would you? I may as well get some work done while I try to track my CI.”
“No luck?”
“I think he’s gone to ground til this is over,” Don said. “I’ve got some calls out so I’ve got time to look over the LAPD sheets until I hear back.”
“Don, I-” David started.
By the other agent’s tone Don had a fair idea where he was going and interrupted him. “Nah, David. It’s cool. Let’s just get this done, we’re running out of time.”
“Oh, Charlie’s shown up,” David announced after a brief pause. “He said he’d spoken to you.”
“He gave me a run down on his results. Anything new?”
“Not yet. I’ll get those sheet to you,” David said before hanging up.
“Well?” Dean demanded.
“We think he’s in South Central,” Don started.
“I already know that!”
“We’ve had some sightings, David is working on getting them confirmed which will give us a much better area to concentrate on.”
“Should have found him by now,” Dean complained.
“How long did it take you before your friend of a friend told you where he was?” Don challenged. Dean had earlier admitted they’d been in town for almost a week before yesterday’s confrontation.
“There’s just two of us, you’re the FBI.”
Don didn’t point out that it had barely been twelve hours since he got the extra intel from Dean. With the resources they were throwing at the case things were moving relatively quickly but investigations still tended to move at their own pace no matter how hard you tried, especially when relying on information from witnesses. At least they had a smaller area in which to concentrate now rather than the whole LA basin. Don also didn’t point out that it had previously only been more good luck rather than investigative skill that had led to the Winchesters being taken into custody in the past. Best was from the same background and was proving to be just as difficult to find.
“Give us a chance, the more eyes we have on this the better.” Don finally said. “What are you doing?”
Dean had climbed to his feet and was gathering his stuff. “We’re heading out. Like you said, the more eyes the better and I know him on sight.”
“You’re not ready yet,” Don insisted, closing in. He put his hand on Dean’s shoulder eliciting a wince. “You need more rest, you nearly died last night.”
“That was last night,” Dean grunted but sat back down.
Don dug out his laptop and powered it up. Opening his email he found several new messages waiting with LAPD occurrence sheets as attachments. David had been thorough with the listed documents including the supervisors’ sheets as well as the individual crew logs. “Here, help me go through these.”
As time wore on Dean was getting more and more restless requiring all of Don’s negotiating skills to keep the wounded man from rushing out to attempt his own search. They ate a scratch up lunch from what he could find in the fridge and kept at it with updated occurrence sheets arriving on his email and Don calling in for updates. Some of the sightings had been verified with CCTV footage and the net was closing in. There was still plenty of ground to cover but it was looking promising.
“That’s it,” Dean announced. “I’m done with this. Let’s go.”
By the time the words filtered through Don was on his second read of a report. An LAPD crew had attended a disturbance at a small market in South Central. Nothing unusual in that, disturbances, robberies, whatever were common and this sounded relatively run of the mill - a man going berserk, shoving things off shelves and pulling over displays. After a string of particularly violent threats the man had stormed off. The detailed report stated that the attendant had seen the man drive off in a black ford and had ducked his head outside to see the car turn into the vicinity of some abandoned businesses. The crew had been about to investigate that area when they were called away to a more serious matter.
What drew Don’s eye was the cause of the disturbance. Seems the man had been visiting the store daily for the past week, each time buying butterscotch ice-cream along with other groceries. Today, the store ran out of the ice-cream and the man flew into a rage.
Don checked the physical description, white, tall, muscular, red hair with a goatee beard. That along with the detail of the black car almost matched Best. The biggest area of doubt was the lack of mention of tattoos on the man’s arms. Even without that key point it was what seemed to be the freshest possible sighting of Best and a possible location where he could be holed up.
“Dean, wait,” Don said urgently. He was about to explain what he’d found when he stopped, surprised at what he saw.
He had earlier noted Dean fidgeting and that he’d left the room for a few minutes but hadn’t really paid too much attention to what he was doing as long as it wasn’t trying to leave. Now he saw that Dean was dressed neatly in a suit, a suit that Don recognised from the last time Dean had played FBI agent.
“What are you wearing?”
“What does it look like? I’m blending in. You got a problem with that?”
Yes, Don had a problem with that but he could see the point. He knew it had about reached the time when Dean’s insistence on going into the field would be too difficult to prevent. Given the numbers of FBI agents in South Central Dean would certainly draw less attention dressed as one, particularly as Don was going to be with him. He let it go in favour of turning his laptop around so Dean could see the screen. “Read this.”
Dean dropped his bag and pulled the laptop to him. He read the report that Don had highlighted, his expression tightening into an angry mask.
“Where is it?”
“I know the area,” Don answered. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep Dean contained any longer. “We’ll check it out, it might not be him.”
“Do you see me standing around arguing?” Dean snapped. “Let’s go.”
“I’ll give David a call. Hey!” Don started as his cell was snagged from his hand.
“Like you said, it might not be him. We’ll check it out then call it in,” Dean insisted.
About to argue a thought struck him, he really didn’t want to be seen in Dean Winchester’s company and calling in backup when they were going to be at the same location didn’t seem to be such a smart idea. They could check it out first, just the two of them. If they found Best then he would call it in after getting Dean stashed somewhere away from prying eyes. He wasn’t going to make the mistake of taking on another hunter with just the wounded Dean for backup, even if he seemed to be making a miraculous recovery.
Getting into the elevator Don automatically pressed the button for the basement then remembered that Dean would need to get off and went to press the one for the ground floor but Dean stopped him.
“I’ll ride with you,” Dean explained.
It was far enough out of character that Don blinked at that. The connection between the older Winchester and his black impala was almost a legend, even in the rather clinical FBI files.
“More believable if we’re both in the same car and yours says ‘fed’ better than mine does,” Dean added.
Next chapter ... here
Author: ALEO
aleo_70
Genre: Gen
Characters: Don Eppes, Charlie Eppes, Dean Winchester, and cameo by Sam Winchester
Fandoms: Numb3rs/Supernatural - crossover
Rating: PG 13+
Warning: violence, supernatural themes, horror
Disclaimer: I don't own them, I just borrowed them. Numb3rs, Supernatural and associated characters are the property of those that created them. No copyright infringement intended. No financial reward gained. All real places and organisations are used in a fictional sense. Anything you don't recognise comes from my imagination.
Spoilers - Numb3rs: Hot Shot & Thirteen; - Supernatural: nil.
Status: Chapter 6 of 9
Wordcount (this chapter): 2300
Total wordcount: ~21,400
Summary: Investigating a series of occult related murders in Los Angeles FBI Special Agent Eppes has another encounter with Dean Winchester.
CHAPTER SIX
An hour later, despite his assertion that his brother knew more about this type of research than he did, Dean was agreeing with Charlie’s assessment that there would be no more victims. When Best finished sacrificing Sam the spell would be complete. They still had no clue as to what Best was summoning but Dean insisted it was something very dangerous given how securely it had been imprisoned behind layers of seals.
“We have to stop him,” Dean finally stated, shoving the laptop away.
“Working on it,” Don acknowledged.
“You do that. I’m calling Bobby to see what he’s got on the lore.” Dean stated.
Don let Dean walk off, cell phone already to his ear as he called this ‘Bobby’. He glanced at his watch, “Charlie, you need to head in.”
The younger Eppes looked up from where he’d started typing on his laptop. He glanced warily at Dean before speaking. It was one thing to suggest his older brother contact the Winchesters but it was something else to have one hanging out at Don’s apartment. “What about you?”
“I’m staying here,” Don answered. He didn’t bother looking over at the real subject of their conversation. “Wright ordered me to bring in my informant which I can’t for obvious reasons. I have to stay away from the office for now. If anyone asks, I’m out looking for my CI.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess. What about my data, should I give them what I’ve got?”
“Absolutely. Call in that professor that helped with the occult stuff last time, see if she can help out again.”
“Numerology,” Charlie corrected. “I’ve already called Professor Trowbridge, she couldn’t help us herself but she did give me some names.”
“Call them, see if they can give any general advice,” Don suggested. If they weren’t cleared they couldn’t get all the case details but they may be able to point the FBI in the right direction. Whilst they had the best thing to an expert in Dean with his involvement being kept secret they had to attempt to source other experts on the subject or questions would be asked.
“What about him?” Charlie had to ask. He wasn’t so sure it was the best way to handle the situation but he had to allow that Don usually landed on his feet.
“’Him’ is staying with your brother ‘til this is over,” Dean said, interrupting his call from the other side of the room. Again there was no threat in his tone but both brothers were more than aware of the potential meaning to Dean’s words.
“I’m staying here,” Don said firmly. “I’m still building a profile and Dean has the answers I need. I’ll call in if I have anything more to add, but remember as far as the FBI is concerned I’m searching for my CI, got it?”
“I remember,” Charlie said as he shut down his laptop. The repeated order was a sure sign of the stress Don was under. He packed the laptop away and headed for the door, Don following. Again he hesitated. “You’re sure?”
“Sure, buddy,” Don answered. “I’ll be fine.”
Charlie lowered his voice to almost a whisper as Dean had already demonstrated sharp hearing. “If it goes wrong I’ll tell them.”
Don could live with that. “It won’t. But yes, if it does.”
After his brother had left Don felt much more at ease, well as much as it was possible to be with a fugitive sitting on his couch anyway. He set the coffee machine and started firing more questions at his guest.
It wasn’t long before Dean had once again had enough. “What more do you want? He likes porno mags. He likes his tequila straight up and gets a hard-on for butterscotch ice-cream of all things. That’s it, you got it all. Now can we find him?”
Don ignored Dean’s frustrated anger. “How did you find him before? You said you tracked him to that house, can you do it again?”
Dean grimaced. “We followed him here due to the killings and narrowed it down to the area but then we bumped into a friend of a friend who had seen him.”
“So call this friend of a friend,” Don suggested.
“Tried. He’s gone. I’ve called everyone I know in town and got nothing.”
“So you found me,” Don concluded.
“I needed to keep things moving while I got patched up. Think I’m about good to go now,” Dean finished.
Casting a critical eye over the injured man Don wasn’t so sure. Dean was far healthier than he’d been the night before, an improvement beyond anything Don could have expected, but that didn’t mean he was up to hitting the streets in search of his brother. “Let my people work on this a bit more to narrow down the search area if nothing else.”
“Not much time left, the sacrifice has to happen tonight,” Dean reminded him.
“I know,” Don replied. At the reminder of passing time another glance at his watch told him it was past the point where he should have called in to see how things were developing.
“Sinclair,” David answered on the fourth ring.
“Update,” Don demanded.
Over the sounds of shuffling paper as he thumbed through the returned taskings David provided his report before providing a summary. “As best we can tell South Central LA still seems to be the most likely place Best is holed up. We’ve had a few unconfirmed sightings down that way and we’re working on confirming those now by pulling CCTV footage.”
Supposedly searching for his informant Don couldn’t actively provide any of the new information he’d gained from Dean this morning but it had led him to an idea that he could use. “I want you to get LAPD to send over all their occurrence sheets. We might catch a break by keeping an eye out for any odd incidents.”
“I’ve already asked for the sheets and I’ve got someone on them,” David answered.
Don wasn’t too surprised, David was a good operator. “Have them sent to my laptop would you? I may as well get some work done while I try to track my CI.”
“No luck?”
“I think he’s gone to ground til this is over,” Don said. “I’ve got some calls out so I’ve got time to look over the LAPD sheets until I hear back.”
“Don, I-” David started.
By the other agent’s tone Don had a fair idea where he was going and interrupted him. “Nah, David. It’s cool. Let’s just get this done, we’re running out of time.”
“Oh, Charlie’s shown up,” David announced after a brief pause. “He said he’d spoken to you.”
“He gave me a run down on his results. Anything new?”
“Not yet. I’ll get those sheet to you,” David said before hanging up.
“Well?” Dean demanded.
“We think he’s in South Central,” Don started.
“I already know that!”
“We’ve had some sightings, David is working on getting them confirmed which will give us a much better area to concentrate on.”
“Should have found him by now,” Dean complained.
“How long did it take you before your friend of a friend told you where he was?” Don challenged. Dean had earlier admitted they’d been in town for almost a week before yesterday’s confrontation.
“There’s just two of us, you’re the FBI.”
Don didn’t point out that it had barely been twelve hours since he got the extra intel from Dean. With the resources they were throwing at the case things were moving relatively quickly but investigations still tended to move at their own pace no matter how hard you tried, especially when relying on information from witnesses. At least they had a smaller area in which to concentrate now rather than the whole LA basin. Don also didn’t point out that it had previously only been more good luck rather than investigative skill that had led to the Winchesters being taken into custody in the past. Best was from the same background and was proving to be just as difficult to find.
“Give us a chance, the more eyes we have on this the better.” Don finally said. “What are you doing?”
Dean had climbed to his feet and was gathering his stuff. “We’re heading out. Like you said, the more eyes the better and I know him on sight.”
“You’re not ready yet,” Don insisted, closing in. He put his hand on Dean’s shoulder eliciting a wince. “You need more rest, you nearly died last night.”
“That was last night,” Dean grunted but sat back down.
Don dug out his laptop and powered it up. Opening his email he found several new messages waiting with LAPD occurrence sheets as attachments. David had been thorough with the listed documents including the supervisors’ sheets as well as the individual crew logs. “Here, help me go through these.”
As time wore on Dean was getting more and more restless requiring all of Don’s negotiating skills to keep the wounded man from rushing out to attempt his own search. They ate a scratch up lunch from what he could find in the fridge and kept at it with updated occurrence sheets arriving on his email and Don calling in for updates. Some of the sightings had been verified with CCTV footage and the net was closing in. There was still plenty of ground to cover but it was looking promising.
“That’s it,” Dean announced. “I’m done with this. Let’s go.”
By the time the words filtered through Don was on his second read of a report. An LAPD crew had attended a disturbance at a small market in South Central. Nothing unusual in that, disturbances, robberies, whatever were common and this sounded relatively run of the mill - a man going berserk, shoving things off shelves and pulling over displays. After a string of particularly violent threats the man had stormed off. The detailed report stated that the attendant had seen the man drive off in a black ford and had ducked his head outside to see the car turn into the vicinity of some abandoned businesses. The crew had been about to investigate that area when they were called away to a more serious matter.
What drew Don’s eye was the cause of the disturbance. Seems the man had been visiting the store daily for the past week, each time buying butterscotch ice-cream along with other groceries. Today, the store ran out of the ice-cream and the man flew into a rage.
Don checked the physical description, white, tall, muscular, red hair with a goatee beard. That along with the detail of the black car almost matched Best. The biggest area of doubt was the lack of mention of tattoos on the man’s arms. Even without that key point it was what seemed to be the freshest possible sighting of Best and a possible location where he could be holed up.
“Dean, wait,” Don said urgently. He was about to explain what he’d found when he stopped, surprised at what he saw.
He had earlier noted Dean fidgeting and that he’d left the room for a few minutes but hadn’t really paid too much attention to what he was doing as long as it wasn’t trying to leave. Now he saw that Dean was dressed neatly in a suit, a suit that Don recognised from the last time Dean had played FBI agent.
“What are you wearing?”
“What does it look like? I’m blending in. You got a problem with that?”
Yes, Don had a problem with that but he could see the point. He knew it had about reached the time when Dean’s insistence on going into the field would be too difficult to prevent. Given the numbers of FBI agents in South Central Dean would certainly draw less attention dressed as one, particularly as Don was going to be with him. He let it go in favour of turning his laptop around so Dean could see the screen. “Read this.”
Dean dropped his bag and pulled the laptop to him. He read the report that Don had highlighted, his expression tightening into an angry mask.
“Where is it?”
“I know the area,” Don answered. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep Dean contained any longer. “We’ll check it out, it might not be him.”
“Do you see me standing around arguing?” Dean snapped. “Let’s go.”
“I’ll give David a call. Hey!” Don started as his cell was snagged from his hand.
“Like you said, it might not be him. We’ll check it out then call it in,” Dean insisted.
About to argue a thought struck him, he really didn’t want to be seen in Dean Winchester’s company and calling in backup when they were going to be at the same location didn’t seem to be such a smart idea. They could check it out first, just the two of them. If they found Best then he would call it in after getting Dean stashed somewhere away from prying eyes. He wasn’t going to make the mistake of taking on another hunter with just the wounded Dean for backup, even if he seemed to be making a miraculous recovery.
Getting into the elevator Don automatically pressed the button for the basement then remembered that Dean would need to get off and went to press the one for the ground floor but Dean stopped him.
“I’ll ride with you,” Dean explained.
It was far enough out of character that Don blinked at that. The connection between the older Winchester and his black impala was almost a legend, even in the rather clinical FBI files.
“More believable if we’re both in the same car and yours says ‘fed’ better than mine does,” Dean added.
Next chapter ... here