FIC: Holding on to a lie, Part 18 (Charlie/Colby, Larry/Megan, Don, David, Liz, Alan, OMC, PG-13)
Title: "Innocent"
Series: Holding on to a lie, Part 18
Characters: Charlie/Colby, Larry/Megan, Don, David, Liz, Alan, OMC.
Rating: PG-13.
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: None.
Summary: While Megan talks to Amita, Larry tries to find a way to escape.
Feedback: I love feedback. Every comment is a cup of coffee that keeps me posting. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Numb3rs or anything related to it. But I do own any OCs.
Beta: The wonderful fredbassett. Thanks so much, sweetie!
Previous chapter: "Payback" (PG-13)
Holding on to a lie
Part 18: “Innocent”
“Don!” Megan yelled as she got out of her car, followed by a SWAT team. “C’mon, guys, let’s do this!”
The woman’s boss ran towards her and looked at the people she had brought. “Good job.” Nervously, he ran his palm over his face.
“What’s the situation exactly?” Megan wanted to know.
“Amita has gone crazy. She’s got Colby’s gun and she certainly knows how to use it.”
“How? She’s never had one in her hands…”
From the corner of her eye, Megan could see David grumbling something as he walked around. His hands were on his waist, his steps not exactly steady, and he was sweating. He was definitely tense, and from the way he licked his lips from time to time and shook his head, Megan was sure he had some information he hadn’t shared yet with the team.
She’d have to find out what was going on with him if she wanted to save the hostages. However, defining an offensive strategy was the first thing she had to do.
“What do you think we should do?” she asked her boss.
Don shook his head, still looking very angry and unstable. “I…”
“The SWAT team’s surrounding the house.”
“Good, good. We’re not breaking in until we get everyone safe.”
“Ok. By the way, Liz went to get Berenson. He's flying to London in two hours.”
Still running his hands over his face, Don nodded. Megan put a hand on his shoulder and then she went to give the SWAT team specific instructions about the house they were going to surround.
When she finished talking to them, she stared at the residence. So many horrible things could be happening there, given Amita’s response to psychological treatment. Megan just hoped she could do some good, that she could help created a situation that didn’t involve violence or torture this time.
She had to talk to Amita. She had to understand what was going on inside her head.
Even if her body was trembling, Amita was perfectly capable of smashing Charlie against the wall and leaving him there. She knew he wouldn’t move; he was too scared of her and didn’t want things to end badly.
As he stood there, seated on the floor against the wall, shaking, looking at her pointing a gun at him, Amita’s brain worked a thousand thoughts a minute. “Colby, show me your handcuffs. Keep one of them, but put the other and the keys to unlock them both on the table.”
As she expected, Colby shook his head and took a deep breath. He was obviously trying to find a way to end the situation. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in control right now.
Soon Amita got one pair of handcuffs and two keys from the table. She smiled at them, thinking they would provide her some of the happiness she had been seeking for so long.
“Let me see the pair of handcuffs you have there,” she asked Colby, and she waited for him to show her the cuffs she had asked him to keep. “Now cuff yourself to the banister.”
“What?” the green-eyed man mouthed.
She could hear Colby curse in a low tone of voice as he did what she had told him to. Now there was no way for him to attack her or even to get out of the house unless for some strange reason she decided to release him.
“Charlie… Come here,” she asked her ex-boyfriend.
“No,” Charlie muttered. “Why are you doing this?”
“I told you why.”
“It’s not enough reason. What else happened to you, Amita? What else?”
Charlie’s trembling voice made her shiver, but it didn’t erase her improvised plans from her mind.
“Sit on the chair,” she commanded him, and she waved her gun at him. “Now!”
With messy movements, Charlie managed to get up and slowly walk towards the chair. He sat there and looked into her eyes as she cuffed one of his hands to it.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered. “This will teach you… how to be more careful with actions that affect others.”
Charlie looked away breaking eye contact with Amita.
Then the front door of the house came open again.
While Megan put on her Kevlar and left her gun on one of the vehicle’s hood, she saw Don walking towards her.
“Are you going in?”
“Yeah. Talking to her will be the only way for us to determine what kind of things she’s actually capable of, and how to make her realize how insane what she’s doing is.”
“Are you sure it’s going to work? I mean… Amita knows how we work,” Don said. “Maybe she’s never been in the field with us, but she certainly has a clear idea of how we perform operations…” He shook his head. “Damn it, if it was anyone else inside that house, I wouldn’t have doubts about this for a second…”
Megan took a breath and he tried to help Don to get his thoughts organized. “It’s your family that’s in there, it’s totally normal that you’re thinking things through over and over again. It’s not the same when someone you love is involved.”
This time, Don spent a couple of seconds just looking into her eyes. “And you’ve got to get Larry safe, too.”
“Yeah,” she muttered, and when Don walked out of her way, she knew he was letting her know that she could proceed with her idea of approaching Amita to get a good picture of her mental state.
But as she walked towards the house, Megan was also very aware that Don knew she was hiding her fear and her worry. She hadn’t showed her desperation since she had arrived, she had managed to act like the efficient FBI agent she was without making mistakes.
However, what Don didn’t know was that Megan used to keep a lot of emotions to herself. She didn’t like to talk about her work at the DOJ, she didn’t like to talk about her family or her adolescence. And to her, that was one of the things that made her strong.
“Alright, guys, we’ve got an agent coming in! Is everything ready?” Megan heard him say. And before opening the front door, she saw her boss give her a thumb up.
She adjusted her earphone and her microphone, nodded at the other agents and finally pushed the door open with her leg, as she kept her hands in the air.
“Amita,” she said with a steady voice.
“Megan,” Colby said, turning to her.
Megan noticed he had been handcuffed to the banister.
To the left, she could also see Charlie, the wound of his neck still bleeding slightly, his clothes a disaster, his hair a mess, with the little drops of sweat falling down his face as Amita adjusted his handcuffs.
And that was when Megan’s arrival seemed to startle the dark-haired woman.
Amita turned to her and opened her lips, but no sound came out of it at first. But she soon raised her gun at Megan and said, “What the hell are you doing here? Don’t you see getting into the house will lead to serious consequences?”
“Of course we know there are consequences… but so there will be for you, if you don’t stop this, Amita.” When Amita shook her head, smiling and running her free hand over thick hair, Megan continued, “I understand that it must be very hard for you to try to go back to your normal life after all that happened to you. Patrick Garner had no right to hurt you and play with your mind.”
Now Amita was paying attention to her.
“But that doesn’t mean you have to be like him,” Megan concluded. “Because what you’re doing here, Amita, is mimicking his acts. Remember what you felt when you were with him. Do you want these people to feel the same way?”
The other woman seemed to be thinking. And slowly, Amita whispered, “Yes.”
Megan couldn’t believe what she had heard.
“Yes,” Amita repeated, nodding and starting to cry. “Yes, I want them to feel the same way, I want them to know what it was like for me to go through that and then find out that they were fooling around behind my back.”
So there was no way for Megan to try to convince Amita using her experience with her ex-boyfriend Patrick Garner, the one who had kidnapped her and tortured her only a few weeks ago. As a result, talking about Berenson wouldn’t work, either.
Megan was about to speak again when she heard someone yelling, away from them. Amita and the two handcuffed men looked at each other. The yells were coming from the backyard.
“Alan… Alan…” Larry had been repeating over and over again as he walked around Alan’s bedroom, never taking his eyes off his friend’s body.
Eventually, he had knelt down beside him and just in case, checked if he was breathing. Fortunately, Charlie and Don’s father had seemed to be ok. But Colby wasn’t there if something else happened to him. A while ago the agent had left the room calling Charlie’s name; there had been noises of something falling down the stairs and he hadn’t returned.
But then Larry had heard people talking in the house. He had got closer to the door, still afraid to go out of the room, and had found out one of the voices belonged to Don.
He had tried to figure out what they were saying, but when two shots had been fired, Larry simply had simply hidden inside the room again and started to think about a way to get out of there himself.
If he could only take Alan with him; did Don know about the heart attack? Larry hadn’t heard Colby tell him about it… in fact, he hadn’t heard anything of their conversation.
When it came to Alan, he couldn’t take any risks, he couldn’t wait. He had to get out of there as soon as possible and find some help.
Time had passed, and suddenly there was the sound of a lot of vehicles getting closer to the house. It was probably the FBI, coming to rescue the hostages.
Now, Larry had just noticed that the window was almost open. An idea popped into his head, and he didn’t like the fact that at the moment it seemed to be the only option he had, as he couldn’t go down the stairs.
It took all his energy to find the peace of mind and the courage he needed to do what he was about to do. Shaking from head to toe, Larry went towards the window, opened it and slowly got out of it, grabbing the sill so he didn’t fall.
Maybe if he could climb down the house and get to the backyard, he’d find the FBI already surrounding the house, ready to break in.
He was right. As soon as he got out of the window, he found some members of the SWAT team located in the corners of the wall that separated the Eppes residence from the neighbor’s. From distance, those men were holding big rifles, which meant they were snipers. They were also talking into their radios, probably asking their boss how to proceed now that they’d seen a crazy man coming out of a window.
In desperation, Larry yelled, “Alan Eppes is in here!” But when he tried to signal to the snipers, his hands slipped from the open window and he fell onto the backyard from four meters up. He landed with a thump and a sharp twist of pain made him think he had sprained an ankle.
“For the love of Newton, gravity!” he grumbled with a vanishing voice, caressing his ankle, which hurt like hell.
But then he heard one of the snipers whistle at him and make him a signal for him to come closer. Larry awkwardly managed to get on his feet leaning against one of the external walls of the house. Then, he took a moment to calm down and control his breathing. Like he had said to Colby a few days ago, life in a monastery had the ability to make him especially vulnerable to highly risky situations.
His ankle hurt a lot, but he used all his energy to make a huge effort to reach the snipers. They were making more signals, encouraging him to go towards them so they could get him out of the house.
Larry didn’t want to leave Alan, he wanted the SWAT team to rescue him right now. Silently this time, because yelling had been silly and maybe it would catch Amita’s attention, he walked slowly, limping, cursing gravity and Newton for the first time in his life.
He finally reached the snipers. They helped him climb up the wall that surrounded the Eppes residence and soon, Larry was telling them about all the things that had happened inside. But the first thing he informed them about was Alan’s health.
“What was that sound, those yells?” Charlie muttered. “They’re coming from the backyard.”
Amita immediately looked at Megan. “Did you bring the SWAT team? Did you and Don tell your people to surround the house?”
Swallowing, Megan held her breath. She had to find the right answer that would keep Amita calm, but there wasn’t any. Avoiding a response would be much better.
But suddenly she could hear Don talking to her on her earphone. “Megan, we’ve got Larry. He got out of one of the windows.”
Megan gasped in shock. She knew that Amita, Colby and Charlie were waiting for her to talk, but she was lost in Don’s voice. She had to find out how Larry was.
“He’s ok,” Don continued. “The snipers say he’s got a sprained ankle, but other than that, he looks fine.”
Now shock had turned into rage. How could Amita hurt Larry? He had always been so kind to her.
“How can you do this to them?” she finally said out loud, taking a step forward, still with her hands up. She looked into Amita’s eyes and snapped, “There are innocent people in this house.”
“Innocent,” Amita said, laughing ironically. “You wouldn’t call them that if you were in my place, Megan.”
“What about Larry?”
The question seemed to upset Amita. She looked like she was admitting Megan was right when she said, “Ok, Larry was the most innocent among them.”
“And Alan?”
Amita took a moment before answering. “Alan was… a plan that wasn’t supposed to go this wrong. I guess… you could call it ‘unexpected, collateral damage.’”
That was too much. “Collateral damage?” Megan yelled. “What the hell are you talking about? Alan’s a good man who did nothing but encourage your relationship with Charlie for years!”
“And then he didn’t care that Charlie left me for Colby!
“How can you know he didn’t care?”
Breathing heavily, Amita waved her gun. “Shut up, I don’t want to talk about that! He just didn’t care, don’t you understand?”
Now it was Megan’s turn to respond. “The only thing I understand, Amita, is that you’re not going to get what you want,” she informed her. “We’ll keep talking and eventually, you’ll have to give up because you’ll realize that this, what you’re doing, is exactly what corrupted your own heart.”
Still looking at Amita, Megan slowly started walking backwards, towards the door. She finally reached it and was able to get out of there without having to deal with any shots.
She was counting on the fact that some of her words had got to Amita’s heart and eventually would have an effect on her.
When she was out of the house, she made signals to the SWAT team telling them she was alright. Then she saw Larry seated inside one of the many vans, his legs hanging from the vehicle as David talked to him and another agent massaged his ankle.
Just seeing Larry like that broke down Megan’s entire confident act. Desperate, she ran towards him and pulled him into a hug. She couldn’t do anything but cry and when she felt the physicist’s hands on her back, caressing it awkwardly, she kissed his cheek, not caring if David was there and would see how weak she was right now.
“Larry… Oh my God, Larry…” she whispered.
“I’m ok, it’s just my ankle… I’m more worried about the ones that are still inside,” Larry answered, and then she pulled him into a hug once again.
“Megan’s ok, Don,” David said, as he approached his boss.
“Well, at least Larry’s out.” Don’s breathing was accelerated and he kept sweating heavily. It was great that Larry was safe, but he still had his entire family in the hands of a psychopath.
And he was still in shock that Amita was guilty of it.
“My father needs assistance ASAP, and I won’t allow Charlie and Colby to remain in there much longer,” he continued. Slowly, he started to feel the confidence he usually had in other cases. “Look, I don’t want to take any chances. Maybe good won’t be enough.” Turning to his agent, he stated, “David, we’re going to need our best sniper.”
Without saying a word, David nodded, took out his cell phone and stepped aside to make a phone call. As he walked towards the street to find some silence, Don wondered how much more he could know that could help to end the case without any victims.
The private jet was about to fly away when suddenly the operation was stopped. In a second, pilots were asking what was happening, making signals and asking not to be shot.
“FBI, don’t move!” Liz said when the door of the jet opened. She and other agents got held their guns firmly as they made their way into the plane.
And Liz finally found who she was looking for. “Bob Berenson… you’re...”
The therapist smiled from his seat; he never put down the cell phone he had against his ear. “Oh, boy. Agent, do you have any idea who you’re talking to? I work for the DOJ and other federa-”
She went towards him, took the cell phone from his hand, closed it and roughly placed it on the next chair. Then she pointed her gun at him.
“Yeah, I know exactly who I’m talking to. And you’re coming with me, whether you like it or not.”
Series: Holding on to a lie, Part 18
Characters: Charlie/Colby, Larry/Megan, Don, David, Liz, Alan, OMC.
Rating: PG-13.
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: None.
Summary: While Megan talks to Amita, Larry tries to find a way to escape.
Feedback: I love feedback. Every comment is a cup of coffee that keeps me posting. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Numb3rs or anything related to it. But I do own any OCs.
Beta: The wonderful fredbassett. Thanks so much, sweetie!
Previous chapter: "Payback" (PG-13)
Holding on to a lie
Part 18: “Innocent”
“Don!” Megan yelled as she got out of her car, followed by a SWAT team. “C’mon, guys, let’s do this!”
The woman’s boss ran towards her and looked at the people she had brought. “Good job.” Nervously, he ran his palm over his face.
“What’s the situation exactly?” Megan wanted to know.
“Amita has gone crazy. She’s got Colby’s gun and she certainly knows how to use it.”
“How? She’s never had one in her hands…”
From the corner of her eye, Megan could see David grumbling something as he walked around. His hands were on his waist, his steps not exactly steady, and he was sweating. He was definitely tense, and from the way he licked his lips from time to time and shook his head, Megan was sure he had some information he hadn’t shared yet with the team.
She’d have to find out what was going on with him if she wanted to save the hostages. However, defining an offensive strategy was the first thing she had to do.
“What do you think we should do?” she asked her boss.
Don shook his head, still looking very angry and unstable. “I…”
“The SWAT team’s surrounding the house.”
“Good, good. We’re not breaking in until we get everyone safe.”
“Ok. By the way, Liz went to get Berenson. He's flying to London in two hours.”
Still running his hands over his face, Don nodded. Megan put a hand on his shoulder and then she went to give the SWAT team specific instructions about the house they were going to surround.
When she finished talking to them, she stared at the residence. So many horrible things could be happening there, given Amita’s response to psychological treatment. Megan just hoped she could do some good, that she could help created a situation that didn’t involve violence or torture this time.
She had to talk to Amita. She had to understand what was going on inside her head.
Even if her body was trembling, Amita was perfectly capable of smashing Charlie against the wall and leaving him there. She knew he wouldn’t move; he was too scared of her and didn’t want things to end badly.
As he stood there, seated on the floor against the wall, shaking, looking at her pointing a gun at him, Amita’s brain worked a thousand thoughts a minute. “Colby, show me your handcuffs. Keep one of them, but put the other and the keys to unlock them both on the table.”
As she expected, Colby shook his head and took a deep breath. He was obviously trying to find a way to end the situation. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in control right now.
Soon Amita got one pair of handcuffs and two keys from the table. She smiled at them, thinking they would provide her some of the happiness she had been seeking for so long.
“Let me see the pair of handcuffs you have there,” she asked Colby, and she waited for him to show her the cuffs she had asked him to keep. “Now cuff yourself to the banister.”
“What?” the green-eyed man mouthed.
She could hear Colby curse in a low tone of voice as he did what she had told him to. Now there was no way for him to attack her or even to get out of the house unless for some strange reason she decided to release him.
“Charlie… Come here,” she asked her ex-boyfriend.
“No,” Charlie muttered. “Why are you doing this?”
“I told you why.”
“It’s not enough reason. What else happened to you, Amita? What else?”
Charlie’s trembling voice made her shiver, but it didn’t erase her improvised plans from her mind.
“Sit on the chair,” she commanded him, and she waved her gun at him. “Now!”
With messy movements, Charlie managed to get up and slowly walk towards the chair. He sat there and looked into her eyes as she cuffed one of his hands to it.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered. “This will teach you… how to be more careful with actions that affect others.”
Charlie looked away breaking eye contact with Amita.
Then the front door of the house came open again.
While Megan put on her Kevlar and left her gun on one of the vehicle’s hood, she saw Don walking towards her.
“Are you going in?”
“Yeah. Talking to her will be the only way for us to determine what kind of things she’s actually capable of, and how to make her realize how insane what she’s doing is.”
“Are you sure it’s going to work? I mean… Amita knows how we work,” Don said. “Maybe she’s never been in the field with us, but she certainly has a clear idea of how we perform operations…” He shook his head. “Damn it, if it was anyone else inside that house, I wouldn’t have doubts about this for a second…”
Megan took a breath and he tried to help Don to get his thoughts organized. “It’s your family that’s in there, it’s totally normal that you’re thinking things through over and over again. It’s not the same when someone you love is involved.”
This time, Don spent a couple of seconds just looking into her eyes. “And you’ve got to get Larry safe, too.”
“Yeah,” she muttered, and when Don walked out of her way, she knew he was letting her know that she could proceed with her idea of approaching Amita to get a good picture of her mental state.
But as she walked towards the house, Megan was also very aware that Don knew she was hiding her fear and her worry. She hadn’t showed her desperation since she had arrived, she had managed to act like the efficient FBI agent she was without making mistakes.
However, what Don didn’t know was that Megan used to keep a lot of emotions to herself. She didn’t like to talk about her work at the DOJ, she didn’t like to talk about her family or her adolescence. And to her, that was one of the things that made her strong.
“Alright, guys, we’ve got an agent coming in! Is everything ready?” Megan heard him say. And before opening the front door, she saw her boss give her a thumb up.
She adjusted her earphone and her microphone, nodded at the other agents and finally pushed the door open with her leg, as she kept her hands in the air.
“Amita,” she said with a steady voice.
“Megan,” Colby said, turning to her.
Megan noticed he had been handcuffed to the banister.
To the left, she could also see Charlie, the wound of his neck still bleeding slightly, his clothes a disaster, his hair a mess, with the little drops of sweat falling down his face as Amita adjusted his handcuffs.
And that was when Megan’s arrival seemed to startle the dark-haired woman.
Amita turned to her and opened her lips, but no sound came out of it at first. But she soon raised her gun at Megan and said, “What the hell are you doing here? Don’t you see getting into the house will lead to serious consequences?”
“Of course we know there are consequences… but so there will be for you, if you don’t stop this, Amita.” When Amita shook her head, smiling and running her free hand over thick hair, Megan continued, “I understand that it must be very hard for you to try to go back to your normal life after all that happened to you. Patrick Garner had no right to hurt you and play with your mind.”
Now Amita was paying attention to her.
“But that doesn’t mean you have to be like him,” Megan concluded. “Because what you’re doing here, Amita, is mimicking his acts. Remember what you felt when you were with him. Do you want these people to feel the same way?”
The other woman seemed to be thinking. And slowly, Amita whispered, “Yes.”
Megan couldn’t believe what she had heard.
“Yes,” Amita repeated, nodding and starting to cry. “Yes, I want them to feel the same way, I want them to know what it was like for me to go through that and then find out that they were fooling around behind my back.”
So there was no way for Megan to try to convince Amita using her experience with her ex-boyfriend Patrick Garner, the one who had kidnapped her and tortured her only a few weeks ago. As a result, talking about Berenson wouldn’t work, either.
Megan was about to speak again when she heard someone yelling, away from them. Amita and the two handcuffed men looked at each other. The yells were coming from the backyard.
“Alan… Alan…” Larry had been repeating over and over again as he walked around Alan’s bedroom, never taking his eyes off his friend’s body.
Eventually, he had knelt down beside him and just in case, checked if he was breathing. Fortunately, Charlie and Don’s father had seemed to be ok. But Colby wasn’t there if something else happened to him. A while ago the agent had left the room calling Charlie’s name; there had been noises of something falling down the stairs and he hadn’t returned.
But then Larry had heard people talking in the house. He had got closer to the door, still afraid to go out of the room, and had found out one of the voices belonged to Don.
He had tried to figure out what they were saying, but when two shots had been fired, Larry simply had simply hidden inside the room again and started to think about a way to get out of there himself.
If he could only take Alan with him; did Don know about the heart attack? Larry hadn’t heard Colby tell him about it… in fact, he hadn’t heard anything of their conversation.
When it came to Alan, he couldn’t take any risks, he couldn’t wait. He had to get out of there as soon as possible and find some help.
Time had passed, and suddenly there was the sound of a lot of vehicles getting closer to the house. It was probably the FBI, coming to rescue the hostages.
Now, Larry had just noticed that the window was almost open. An idea popped into his head, and he didn’t like the fact that at the moment it seemed to be the only option he had, as he couldn’t go down the stairs.
It took all his energy to find the peace of mind and the courage he needed to do what he was about to do. Shaking from head to toe, Larry went towards the window, opened it and slowly got out of it, grabbing the sill so he didn’t fall.
Maybe if he could climb down the house and get to the backyard, he’d find the FBI already surrounding the house, ready to break in.
He was right. As soon as he got out of the window, he found some members of the SWAT team located in the corners of the wall that separated the Eppes residence from the neighbor’s. From distance, those men were holding big rifles, which meant they were snipers. They were also talking into their radios, probably asking their boss how to proceed now that they’d seen a crazy man coming out of a window.
In desperation, Larry yelled, “Alan Eppes is in here!” But when he tried to signal to the snipers, his hands slipped from the open window and he fell onto the backyard from four meters up. He landed with a thump and a sharp twist of pain made him think he had sprained an ankle.
“For the love of Newton, gravity!” he grumbled with a vanishing voice, caressing his ankle, which hurt like hell.
But then he heard one of the snipers whistle at him and make him a signal for him to come closer. Larry awkwardly managed to get on his feet leaning against one of the external walls of the house. Then, he took a moment to calm down and control his breathing. Like he had said to Colby a few days ago, life in a monastery had the ability to make him especially vulnerable to highly risky situations.
His ankle hurt a lot, but he used all his energy to make a huge effort to reach the snipers. They were making more signals, encouraging him to go towards them so they could get him out of the house.
Larry didn’t want to leave Alan, he wanted the SWAT team to rescue him right now. Silently this time, because yelling had been silly and maybe it would catch Amita’s attention, he walked slowly, limping, cursing gravity and Newton for the first time in his life.
He finally reached the snipers. They helped him climb up the wall that surrounded the Eppes residence and soon, Larry was telling them about all the things that had happened inside. But the first thing he informed them about was Alan’s health.
“What was that sound, those yells?” Charlie muttered. “They’re coming from the backyard.”
Amita immediately looked at Megan. “Did you bring the SWAT team? Did you and Don tell your people to surround the house?”
Swallowing, Megan held her breath. She had to find the right answer that would keep Amita calm, but there wasn’t any. Avoiding a response would be much better.
But suddenly she could hear Don talking to her on her earphone. “Megan, we’ve got Larry. He got out of one of the windows.”
Megan gasped in shock. She knew that Amita, Colby and Charlie were waiting for her to talk, but she was lost in Don’s voice. She had to find out how Larry was.
“He’s ok,” Don continued. “The snipers say he’s got a sprained ankle, but other than that, he looks fine.”
Now shock had turned into rage. How could Amita hurt Larry? He had always been so kind to her.
“How can you do this to them?” she finally said out loud, taking a step forward, still with her hands up. She looked into Amita’s eyes and snapped, “There are innocent people in this house.”
“Innocent,” Amita said, laughing ironically. “You wouldn’t call them that if you were in my place, Megan.”
“What about Larry?”
The question seemed to upset Amita. She looked like she was admitting Megan was right when she said, “Ok, Larry was the most innocent among them.”
“And Alan?”
Amita took a moment before answering. “Alan was… a plan that wasn’t supposed to go this wrong. I guess… you could call it ‘unexpected, collateral damage.’”
That was too much. “Collateral damage?” Megan yelled. “What the hell are you talking about? Alan’s a good man who did nothing but encourage your relationship with Charlie for years!”
“And then he didn’t care that Charlie left me for Colby!
“How can you know he didn’t care?”
Breathing heavily, Amita waved her gun. “Shut up, I don’t want to talk about that! He just didn’t care, don’t you understand?”
Now it was Megan’s turn to respond. “The only thing I understand, Amita, is that you’re not going to get what you want,” she informed her. “We’ll keep talking and eventually, you’ll have to give up because you’ll realize that this, what you’re doing, is exactly what corrupted your own heart.”
Still looking at Amita, Megan slowly started walking backwards, towards the door. She finally reached it and was able to get out of there without having to deal with any shots.
She was counting on the fact that some of her words had got to Amita’s heart and eventually would have an effect on her.
When she was out of the house, she made signals to the SWAT team telling them she was alright. Then she saw Larry seated inside one of the many vans, his legs hanging from the vehicle as David talked to him and another agent massaged his ankle.
Just seeing Larry like that broke down Megan’s entire confident act. Desperate, she ran towards him and pulled him into a hug. She couldn’t do anything but cry and when she felt the physicist’s hands on her back, caressing it awkwardly, she kissed his cheek, not caring if David was there and would see how weak she was right now.
“Larry… Oh my God, Larry…” she whispered.
“I’m ok, it’s just my ankle… I’m more worried about the ones that are still inside,” Larry answered, and then she pulled him into a hug once again.
“Megan’s ok, Don,” David said, as he approached his boss.
“Well, at least Larry’s out.” Don’s breathing was accelerated and he kept sweating heavily. It was great that Larry was safe, but he still had his entire family in the hands of a psychopath.
And he was still in shock that Amita was guilty of it.
“My father needs assistance ASAP, and I won’t allow Charlie and Colby to remain in there much longer,” he continued. Slowly, he started to feel the confidence he usually had in other cases. “Look, I don’t want to take any chances. Maybe good won’t be enough.” Turning to his agent, he stated, “David, we’re going to need our best sniper.”
Without saying a word, David nodded, took out his cell phone and stepped aside to make a phone call. As he walked towards the street to find some silence, Don wondered how much more he could know that could help to end the case without any victims.
The private jet was about to fly away when suddenly the operation was stopped. In a second, pilots were asking what was happening, making signals and asking not to be shot.
“FBI, don’t move!” Liz said when the door of the jet opened. She and other agents got held their guns firmly as they made their way into the plane.
And Liz finally found who she was looking for. “Bob Berenson… you’re...”
The therapist smiled from his seat; he never put down the cell phone he had against his ear. “Oh, boy. Agent, do you have any idea who you’re talking to? I work for the DOJ and other federa-”
She went towards him, took the cell phone from his hand, closed it and roughly placed it on the next chair. Then she pointed her gun at him.
“Yeah, I know exactly who I’m talking to. And you’re coming with me, whether you like it or not.”