C is for Casus Belli (Part II)
Title: C is for Casus Belli (Part II)
Author: hope_tang
Disclaimer: Other than being a fan, I have nothing to do with Numb3rs.
Part I
*~*~*~*~*
Standing at the table, half-smiling as she watched her partner and their friends work, Megan straightened her back, her posture taking on a sudden tension as she tilted her head toward the open doorway to the room. She held up a hand, cutting off Charlie in mid-sentence. None of the academics missed how her other hand casually settled on the butt of her weapon.
“Did you hear that?” she asked softly. Amita and Larry shook their heads, but Charlie nodded stiffly, his eyes growing a little wide with fear. A moment later, his colleagues heard what the special agent had subconsciously registered: a muffled thump coming from downstairs.
There was someone else in the house.
“Where’s Alan?” she asked him and Charlie stared at her for a moment, his mind blanking before he responded, “I think…I think he said he had a lunch with Art today and then he was going to meet with a couple of clients.”
Assimilating that information into her thoughts, she nodded firmly as she stared off into the distance. A moment later, Megan’s eyes darted to the three civilians. Her nonverbal instructions were, nevertheless, extremely clear. She made a “keep on talking” gesture with one hand as she drew her weapon from its holster with the other. Larry caught her eyes and they stared intensely at each other for a moment before she slipped silently out of the room.
“Well Charles,” the older man said in a steadily calm voice, “I think we can turn our attention to my calculations now.”
“Yes, yes,” nodded Charlie, even as he quietly gathered the case file into its folder. Amita had stolen his cell phone and was whispering frantically to someone - judging from the way she was talking, it wasn’t Don but either David or Colby-on the other end of the line. “I put them around here somewhere. Let me find them.”
Larry seemed serene as he closed laptops and gathered papers from around the room, almost gliding in his silent footsteps. Charlie wished he could have the same semblance of calm because he was just on the edge of grabbing them both and running for safety. Amita touched his shoulder, drawing him out of his thoughts.
“David says they’re on their way,” she whispered quietly, shutting the phone and, setting the ringtone to silent, slipped it into her jean pocket. “Pasadena PD is also coming. We’re supposed to barricade ourselves in one of the rooms, in case…” Amita darted a worried look at Larry who nodded solemnly.
“I trust her,” he said simply. The other two could only nod in silent agreement with that statement. It was no longer a secret that the relationship between the professor and special agent had gone beyond that of mere friends. Even though he wasn’t sure if Larry knew it himself, but Charlie suspected that his mentor was engaged in a prolonged courtship ritual with his brother’s second-in-command. But that thought wasn’t relevant now.
Clutching their belongings with them, they quickly and silently crept toward the Master Bedroom, shutting the door behind them with a soft snick of sound. They frantically dumped their laptops and bags on the bed to shift the heavy oak dresser in front of the door. He wondered if the fragile barricade would be enough to stop an assassin, and then sternly told his calculating mind to shut up. Panic was the number one way that victims got themselves killed. Still, his rational mind offered a variety of escape scenarios-all of which involved shimmying out the window and having Larry and Amita getting out of the room first.
The three mathematicians ducked down to sit on the side of the queen-sized bed that was away from the doorway and closest to the windows. Larry was sitting next to him, his expression distant and slightly terrified. His lips were moving slightly as they shaped soundless words, and Charlie guessed that his mentor was reciting mantras or prayers that he had learned either at the monastery or in his youthful travels.
Sitting on his other side, Amita was hugging her laptop to her chest, her posture radiating tension as she silently suppressed her fears. He draped an arm across her shoulders and drew her closer. She rested her head against his shoulder and he could feel her body relax just a bit. He held onto her a little tighter, wishing that he could promise her that they’d all be okay.
It was a waiting game-either for Megan to come back upstairs to say it was just a false alarm or for-
“FBI! Freeze!” Megan’s voice was firm as she spoke, betraying none of her fear-for herself and her friends. Charlie could imagine her stance: relaxed but unyielding as she held her weapon at ready, trained steadily on the invader. He tensed at the silence which was harshly broken by a startled cry of surprise.
Charlie nearly surged to his feet when he heard his father stammer in a panic, “What the-”
“Drop it Lady, or I’ll-”
A gunshot cracked through the air.
*~*~*~*~*
Don let out a shaky sigh as he leaned against the hood of the PPD squad car. Most of the excitement on the street had settled down once most of the emergency personnel departed the scene. Now the majority of the cars parked on either sides of the street had Bureau plates, with the lone exception of the car he was currently using as a support for his adrenaline-drained body. The car’s owner had probably been elected (sacrificed) as the liaison between the FBI and PPD, and at the current moment, Don presumed that the man was somewhere taking statements from someone. There had been some squabbling over who would have primary jurisdiction on the case, but that had been resolved when he had walked over to the most stubborn of the Pasadena police officers. The man had taken one look at his expression and quickly conceded that the FBI probably had a stronger claim than the local police department to an incident involving not only an agent’s family members (and consultants) but also an agent herself. Once that had been established, things started to calm down as the first responders left and the main investigators had arrived, along with the ERT personnel.
“You okay?”
He smiled at the question and quipped, “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? You had a gun pointed at you.”
“Yes,” agreed Megan calmly, settling next to him, “but it isn’t my father who nearly got shot.”
“But he didn’t,” responded Don defensively, even as his voice wavered a little. He ignored the little spike of fear that still caused his heart rate to jump whenever his mind even considered the idea that his father could have died a few hours ago if Megan hadn’t done what she did.
“No,” she said quietly, “he didn’t.” There was a pregnant pause where he knew he was supposed to look at her. The silence was just on the verge of edging into uncomfortable when he gave up his act and glanced at his second-in-command. She was studying him with concern before she soothed, “They’re okay. We’re all okay. No one got badly hurt today. That’s what matters.”
“I should have seen this coming,” he said flatly.
“No one can know everything,” she pointed out. “None of us expected this.”
“Jones has the guts to torture and kill a couple of guys who pissed him off. Of course, he’d come after Charlie.”
“We don’t know that,” soothed Megan. “We don’t know who sent the man, and we don’t know why he came to Charlie’s house. Let’s not leap to conclusions here, okay?”
He abruptly deflated. She was right, of course. Logically speaking, they didn’t have much to go on at the moment, not until the man she had to shoot was out of surgery, in recovery and could be interrogated.
“You think Wright would let me assign a few agents to watch Charlie and Dad until this is all over?”
Megan snorted, “Even if he didn’t, I don’t think you’re going to get rid of Colby or David that easily.”
Watching Colby essentially hovering over his little brother’s movements, and knowing that David was pretty much guarding Alan as his father was being checked over by the paramedics, he chuckled.
“You’re right about that,” he admitted ruefully before his amusement faded into utter seriousness. “We’re pretty raw right now, aren’t we?”
She winced, “Yeah, a little, but we’ll get through this, like we always have.”
He nodded and sighed, “Yeah.”
*~*~*~*~*
The chirp of his cell phone set a jolt of adrenaline through him. After what had nearly happened a few hours ago, he was still a little bit on edge, and yes, overprotective about the safety of Charlie and their father. While he knew that logically, it wasn’t his fault that his father nearly was shot by a panicked idiot, he still felt responsible. After all, he was the one who brought Charlie into consulting for the FBI and made his own family a target for out-of-control maniacs. If he hadn’t opened the door for Charlie, then chances were his brother would be still safely tucked away in his ivy tower and completely safe from crazy people.
On the other hand, he wasn’t sure that they’d have the relationship they had now if Charlie hadn’t started consulting four years ago. Don shoved his emotions into a messy box in the corner of his mind. He’d deal with his issues later, when the case was wrapped and he knew for sure that everyone was okay.
After hearing Megan’s initial report about the shooting and then the burglar/wannbe-murderer’s confession, Wright had approved the request to put a security detail on his family. Needless to say, Alan had put a token fight about being fussed over, but Charlie had quietly accepted the protection without saying anything. He hoped that it wasn’t a sign that his brother was retreating into his mental sanctuary of numbers again to deal with what had happened.
“Eppes,” he answered, half-expecting to hear Bridwell’s voice on the other end of the line. Instead, what he got was Charlie’s excited babble, “He just accessed his inbox and we’ve got him! Amita’s emailing the address to you right now, but the-”
“Don,” Colby leaned over the top of the cubicle wall with a cocky smirk, “we’ve got something.”
David appeared out of nowhere, it seemed, and handed him a computer printout, “We ran the name Gary Jones through the property databases and limited our search to-”
“-it’s located in the Silverdale district, which would fit the-”
“Turns out that there is a warehouse being rented by a Gary Jones, about six blocks away from-”
“Stop!” he said sternly, and there was sudden silence from David, Colby and Charlie. He took in a breath and said, “Charlie, you’ve got an address?”
He wiggled his mouse, reactivating his computer and opened up his inbox.
“Yes, it’s-”
“How sure are you about this?”
The quietly confident response came from the world-renowned mathematician and not a younger brother, “Ninety-nine percent sure. He’s there.”
“All right, I’ll talk to you later.” Don hung up and turned to his colleagues, “Okay, only one of you, talk.”
Colby was already on the phone, talking to SWAT and giving them the address Don had just handed to him. Megan hung up her phone and half-ran to the fax machine. David said simply, “We’ve got an address, and it matches Charlie’s.”
Clipping on his service weapon and grabbing his keys from the desk, Don grinned, “Don’t you love it when that happens?”
There was a wolfish side to David’s smile. Megan held up a sheet of paper as she breezed past their grouping of workspace, pausing only to grab her own gun, “We’ve got the warrant.”
Don ordered, “Let’s roll.”
*~*~*~*~*
He didn’t see it coming.
One moment, he was at his computer, working alone in his office that overlooked the silent warehouse. The next moment, he was thrown to the floor and being yelled at by a lot of people who sounded very angry and very dangerous. The din that echoed through the warehouse-shouting and screaming and a few gunshots-nearly drowned out all capacity for rational thought.
Staring at the barrel of a cocked .9mm Sig-Sauer that was pointed squarely at his forehead, Gary Jones began to reconsider the course of events over the past few months. The first and foremost thought was that he might possibly die in the next few seconds, and that was closely followed by the realization that he had gambled everything he had amassed in his life, and lost it all.
“FBI! Hands above your head! On the ground! NOW!”
*~*~*~*~*
“So…it’s wrapped?”
“It’s a wrap,” said Don, leaning back in the chair. “Jones is going away for a long time.”
“Good,” sighed Charlie, sitting back in his own seat, staring out at the backyard. They could both hear their father puttering away in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on a dinner he had forbidden both sons from helping with. “Did you find the Semtex?”
“Yep,” the special agent took a long pull of his beer, “It’s safe and secure. You don’t need to worry. It looks like we’ve got the whole crew. We’ve got enough information from Jones’ computer to keep Walker and a lot of other people busy for a long time.”
“Do you need my help with-”
“Whoa Buddy,” he chuckled at his brother’s eagerness, “If we need your help, I’ll ask for it, but I think I’d rather have your encounters with violence be limited to the academic, verbal kind for the next few years, or with the geek fans of your book.”
“My fans aren’t geeks!”
“Oh, really? So those girls at your last book signing-”
“We’re not going to talk about that! But they weren’t geeks!”
“They were going on about your hair.”
“We are not talking about this.”
“Your curls-”
“DON!”
*~*~*~*~*
Author: hope_tang
Disclaimer: Other than being a fan, I have nothing to do with Numb3rs.
Part I
*~*~*~*~*
Standing at the table, half-smiling as she watched her partner and their friends work, Megan straightened her back, her posture taking on a sudden tension as she tilted her head toward the open doorway to the room. She held up a hand, cutting off Charlie in mid-sentence. None of the academics missed how her other hand casually settled on the butt of her weapon.
“Did you hear that?” she asked softly. Amita and Larry shook their heads, but Charlie nodded stiffly, his eyes growing a little wide with fear. A moment later, his colleagues heard what the special agent had subconsciously registered: a muffled thump coming from downstairs.
There was someone else in the house.
“Where’s Alan?” she asked him and Charlie stared at her for a moment, his mind blanking before he responded, “I think…I think he said he had a lunch with Art today and then he was going to meet with a couple of clients.”
Assimilating that information into her thoughts, she nodded firmly as she stared off into the distance. A moment later, Megan’s eyes darted to the three civilians. Her nonverbal instructions were, nevertheless, extremely clear. She made a “keep on talking” gesture with one hand as she drew her weapon from its holster with the other. Larry caught her eyes and they stared intensely at each other for a moment before she slipped silently out of the room.
“Well Charles,” the older man said in a steadily calm voice, “I think we can turn our attention to my calculations now.”
“Yes, yes,” nodded Charlie, even as he quietly gathered the case file into its folder. Amita had stolen his cell phone and was whispering frantically to someone - judging from the way she was talking, it wasn’t Don but either David or Colby-on the other end of the line. “I put them around here somewhere. Let me find them.”
Larry seemed serene as he closed laptops and gathered papers from around the room, almost gliding in his silent footsteps. Charlie wished he could have the same semblance of calm because he was just on the edge of grabbing them both and running for safety. Amita touched his shoulder, drawing him out of his thoughts.
“David says they’re on their way,” she whispered quietly, shutting the phone and, setting the ringtone to silent, slipped it into her jean pocket. “Pasadena PD is also coming. We’re supposed to barricade ourselves in one of the rooms, in case…” Amita darted a worried look at Larry who nodded solemnly.
“I trust her,” he said simply. The other two could only nod in silent agreement with that statement. It was no longer a secret that the relationship between the professor and special agent had gone beyond that of mere friends. Even though he wasn’t sure if Larry knew it himself, but Charlie suspected that his mentor was engaged in a prolonged courtship ritual with his brother’s second-in-command. But that thought wasn’t relevant now.
Clutching their belongings with them, they quickly and silently crept toward the Master Bedroom, shutting the door behind them with a soft snick of sound. They frantically dumped their laptops and bags on the bed to shift the heavy oak dresser in front of the door. He wondered if the fragile barricade would be enough to stop an assassin, and then sternly told his calculating mind to shut up. Panic was the number one way that victims got themselves killed. Still, his rational mind offered a variety of escape scenarios-all of which involved shimmying out the window and having Larry and Amita getting out of the room first.
The three mathematicians ducked down to sit on the side of the queen-sized bed that was away from the doorway and closest to the windows. Larry was sitting next to him, his expression distant and slightly terrified. His lips were moving slightly as they shaped soundless words, and Charlie guessed that his mentor was reciting mantras or prayers that he had learned either at the monastery or in his youthful travels.
Sitting on his other side, Amita was hugging her laptop to her chest, her posture radiating tension as she silently suppressed her fears. He draped an arm across her shoulders and drew her closer. She rested her head against his shoulder and he could feel her body relax just a bit. He held onto her a little tighter, wishing that he could promise her that they’d all be okay.
It was a waiting game-either for Megan to come back upstairs to say it was just a false alarm or for-
“FBI! Freeze!” Megan’s voice was firm as she spoke, betraying none of her fear-for herself and her friends. Charlie could imagine her stance: relaxed but unyielding as she held her weapon at ready, trained steadily on the invader. He tensed at the silence which was harshly broken by a startled cry of surprise.
Charlie nearly surged to his feet when he heard his father stammer in a panic, “What the-”
“Drop it Lady, or I’ll-”
A gunshot cracked through the air.
*~*~*~*~*
Don let out a shaky sigh as he leaned against the hood of the PPD squad car. Most of the excitement on the street had settled down once most of the emergency personnel departed the scene. Now the majority of the cars parked on either sides of the street had Bureau plates, with the lone exception of the car he was currently using as a support for his adrenaline-drained body. The car’s owner had probably been elected (sacrificed) as the liaison between the FBI and PPD, and at the current moment, Don presumed that the man was somewhere taking statements from someone. There had been some squabbling over who would have primary jurisdiction on the case, but that had been resolved when he had walked over to the most stubborn of the Pasadena police officers. The man had taken one look at his expression and quickly conceded that the FBI probably had a stronger claim than the local police department to an incident involving not only an agent’s family members (and consultants) but also an agent herself. Once that had been established, things started to calm down as the first responders left and the main investigators had arrived, along with the ERT personnel.
“You okay?”
He smiled at the question and quipped, “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? You had a gun pointed at you.”
“Yes,” agreed Megan calmly, settling next to him, “but it isn’t my father who nearly got shot.”
“But he didn’t,” responded Don defensively, even as his voice wavered a little. He ignored the little spike of fear that still caused his heart rate to jump whenever his mind even considered the idea that his father could have died a few hours ago if Megan hadn’t done what she did.
“No,” she said quietly, “he didn’t.” There was a pregnant pause where he knew he was supposed to look at her. The silence was just on the verge of edging into uncomfortable when he gave up his act and glanced at his second-in-command. She was studying him with concern before she soothed, “They’re okay. We’re all okay. No one got badly hurt today. That’s what matters.”
“I should have seen this coming,” he said flatly.
“No one can know everything,” she pointed out. “None of us expected this.”
“Jones has the guts to torture and kill a couple of guys who pissed him off. Of course, he’d come after Charlie.”
“We don’t know that,” soothed Megan. “We don’t know who sent the man, and we don’t know why he came to Charlie’s house. Let’s not leap to conclusions here, okay?”
He abruptly deflated. She was right, of course. Logically speaking, they didn’t have much to go on at the moment, not until the man she had to shoot was out of surgery, in recovery and could be interrogated.
“You think Wright would let me assign a few agents to watch Charlie and Dad until this is all over?”
Megan snorted, “Even if he didn’t, I don’t think you’re going to get rid of Colby or David that easily.”
Watching Colby essentially hovering over his little brother’s movements, and knowing that David was pretty much guarding Alan as his father was being checked over by the paramedics, he chuckled.
“You’re right about that,” he admitted ruefully before his amusement faded into utter seriousness. “We’re pretty raw right now, aren’t we?”
She winced, “Yeah, a little, but we’ll get through this, like we always have.”
He nodded and sighed, “Yeah.”
*~*~*~*~*
The chirp of his cell phone set a jolt of adrenaline through him. After what had nearly happened a few hours ago, he was still a little bit on edge, and yes, overprotective about the safety of Charlie and their father. While he knew that logically, it wasn’t his fault that his father nearly was shot by a panicked idiot, he still felt responsible. After all, he was the one who brought Charlie into consulting for the FBI and made his own family a target for out-of-control maniacs. If he hadn’t opened the door for Charlie, then chances were his brother would be still safely tucked away in his ivy tower and completely safe from crazy people.
On the other hand, he wasn’t sure that they’d have the relationship they had now if Charlie hadn’t started consulting four years ago. Don shoved his emotions into a messy box in the corner of his mind. He’d deal with his issues later, when the case was wrapped and he knew for sure that everyone was okay.
After hearing Megan’s initial report about the shooting and then the burglar/wannbe-murderer’s confession, Wright had approved the request to put a security detail on his family. Needless to say, Alan had put a token fight about being fussed over, but Charlie had quietly accepted the protection without saying anything. He hoped that it wasn’t a sign that his brother was retreating into his mental sanctuary of numbers again to deal with what had happened.
“Eppes,” he answered, half-expecting to hear Bridwell’s voice on the other end of the line. Instead, what he got was Charlie’s excited babble, “He just accessed his inbox and we’ve got him! Amita’s emailing the address to you right now, but the-”
“Don,” Colby leaned over the top of the cubicle wall with a cocky smirk, “we’ve got something.”
David appeared out of nowhere, it seemed, and handed him a computer printout, “We ran the name Gary Jones through the property databases and limited our search to-”
“-it’s located in the Silverdale district, which would fit the-”
“Turns out that there is a warehouse being rented by a Gary Jones, about six blocks away from-”
“Stop!” he said sternly, and there was sudden silence from David, Colby and Charlie. He took in a breath and said, “Charlie, you’ve got an address?”
He wiggled his mouse, reactivating his computer and opened up his inbox.
“Yes, it’s-”
“How sure are you about this?”
The quietly confident response came from the world-renowned mathematician and not a younger brother, “Ninety-nine percent sure. He’s there.”
“All right, I’ll talk to you later.” Don hung up and turned to his colleagues, “Okay, only one of you, talk.”
Colby was already on the phone, talking to SWAT and giving them the address Don had just handed to him. Megan hung up her phone and half-ran to the fax machine. David said simply, “We’ve got an address, and it matches Charlie’s.”
Clipping on his service weapon and grabbing his keys from the desk, Don grinned, “Don’t you love it when that happens?”
There was a wolfish side to David’s smile. Megan held up a sheet of paper as she breezed past their grouping of workspace, pausing only to grab her own gun, “We’ve got the warrant.”
Don ordered, “Let’s roll.”
*~*~*~*~*
He didn’t see it coming.
One moment, he was at his computer, working alone in his office that overlooked the silent warehouse. The next moment, he was thrown to the floor and being yelled at by a lot of people who sounded very angry and very dangerous. The din that echoed through the warehouse-shouting and screaming and a few gunshots-nearly drowned out all capacity for rational thought.
Staring at the barrel of a cocked .9mm Sig-Sauer that was pointed squarely at his forehead, Gary Jones began to reconsider the course of events over the past few months. The first and foremost thought was that he might possibly die in the next few seconds, and that was closely followed by the realization that he had gambled everything he had amassed in his life, and lost it all.
“FBI! Hands above your head! On the ground! NOW!”
*~*~*~*~*
“So…it’s wrapped?”
“It’s a wrap,” said Don, leaning back in the chair. “Jones is going away for a long time.”
“Good,” sighed Charlie, sitting back in his own seat, staring out at the backyard. They could both hear their father puttering away in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on a dinner he had forbidden both sons from helping with. “Did you find the Semtex?”
“Yep,” the special agent took a long pull of his beer, “It’s safe and secure. You don’t need to worry. It looks like we’ve got the whole crew. We’ve got enough information from Jones’ computer to keep Walker and a lot of other people busy for a long time.”
“Do you need my help with-”
“Whoa Buddy,” he chuckled at his brother’s eagerness, “If we need your help, I’ll ask for it, but I think I’d rather have your encounters with violence be limited to the academic, verbal kind for the next few years, or with the geek fans of your book.”
“My fans aren’t geeks!”
“Oh, really? So those girls at your last book signing-”
“We’re not going to talk about that! But they weren’t geeks!”
“They were going on about your hair.”
“We are not talking about this.”
“Your curls-”
“DON!”
*~*~*~*~*