Lessons Part 5

[cat_13145]

Title: Lessons Part 5
Author Cat_13145
Pairing(s): Don/Ian, OCs
Rating: I think this one's PG 13, but if you disagree, let me know.
Summary: Pre Series. Don doesn't know Charlie,but how well does Charlie know Don?
Notes/Warnings: Ian is in a bad mood, and discussion of the aftermath of volience. Nothing else I think. 
Beta None, they have all flown away :(

 

Chapter 5

St. Joseph’s had prided itself on providing a traditional education.

Ian wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was pretty sure it didn’t include most of the stuff that had gotten him here.

Like how to pick pockets, how to hot wire a car, how to sleep on the floor and, he thought, as he fiddled with the tiny knob, how to bypass a federal alarm.

Carefully, he pushed the door open, revealing in the silence. Don’s father, Mr. Eppes, had come back, after Don had slept for nearly two hours. Slipping Don off had been the hardest thing he’d done in a long time, but...he froze, his ears straining. He’d heard...something.

Carefully, his hand slid down to his weapon. Moving like a panther, he came to the door to the room.

This helped. This centred him. This was not where some son of a bitch tried to kill the person who meant the most to him. This was just another crime scene.

His hand slid, pushing the door open.

“FBI! Freeze....”He trailed off, as he found himself staring at Pavel’s curls and Don’s kid brother.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded, glaring at them.

The kid had enough sense to back off slightly, looking scared, but Pavel shared his sister’s immunity to Ian.

“The same thing you are I suspect.” He said, as though it was oblivious, before return his attention to the piece of string.

“How did you...?”

“We grew up in same place, Ian.”

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t...”

“You would have to explain what you were doing here.” Ian shook his head. Pavel had him over a barrel, and what was worse, the little bastard knew it! He muttered something under his breath. Pavel smiled.

“nah. Another pair of eyes might help.” He moved. “Something is not right here.”

“Beside someone shooting up a room full of agents.” Ian snarled. Looking over the white chalk outlines, he could see the string back tracing to the shots.

“You said yourself. They were wearing Kevlar. Statically, it should have been head shots.” Ian turned his eyes on Charlie, and watched the man retreat. It was a hollow victory, but it looked like it was the only one he was going to get tonight.

“Statics aside,” Pavel said, shaking his head. “The time makes no sense. The positions of the students, the Kevlar suggest it was early in the class. But Nic always starts at 2 pm.”

Ian shrugged. “So she decided to start late.”

“Nic is never late!” Pavel said staring at Ian, liked he suggested the earth rotated around the sun or that Silverstone was held at Nürburgring. And Ian had to admit that Pavel had a point.

“And even if she was, Don was to return home that Friday. He wanted to. Don’t you remember, he told you? His flight was at 2:30. You found him when?”

He stared ahead, trying not to think. “3:30”

“Why would he be late, or at least that late?”

They stood in silence, the moon light the only lamination in the room.

Then Charlie gave a small laugh. Ian rounded on him, not entirely sure why, just that at the moment he was the only person in this room he could intimidate. Pavel was also glaring at him, but the effect on Pavel was always nearer cute than frightening.

“I’m sorry. I was just thinking of what my old professor at Princeton would have said. He’d have talked about time being relative, forces in motion, the absence of a few hours, Einstein’s theories on time travel.”

Ian was struggling to remember why he couldn’t strangle this guy, when Pavel suddenly grinned, his eyes resting just over Ian’s head.

“It’s not the time that’s missing.” He said, softly. “It’s the clock.”

***

“Think about it.” Pavel said when they were sitting in the bar nearest the academy. At two am, it was relatively deserted, which Ian was grateful for. If this conversation was going into quantum mechanics, he was going to need a beer.

“Nic never wears a watch.”

This was true, Nic hated anything that put weight on her wrists, and it was something that always drove her superior’s nuts.

“There wasn’t a watch among Don’s personal processions at the hospital.”

“It was in his room,” Pavel volunteered adding to Baby Eppes’s statement. “Battery dead.”

Ian nodded, thinking. The clocks were on a central system, linked to the computer system. To alter them, even by an hour, which was what the shattered clock had suggested, would need a high authorization. The same level of authorization that would persuade a sniper to back off, the same level that would be needed to supply faulty Kevlar.

He didn’t like the way his thoughts were going.

Slowly, he sipped his beer.

“Let’s see what we can figure out.”

 

 

Comments

[lilacs-roses.livejournal.com]

Love this story :) Can't wait for more, hun :) Keep it up!