Pounding through his skull with a dull ache, Don tried his best to ignore it. What was it? A doubt? Something niggled away deep inside telling him he'd missed something. Ignoring it, he convinced himself this was a good headache. Sort of. The case was closed. Now all that lay ahead of him was beer and bed. Oh, ok, after the paperwork. Oh yeah, and after Robyn…

A hand wiped across his brow in an effort to focus, get it done.

"Need a hand?"

Don's gaze lifted from the paperwork to see Megan in the process of pulling her jacket on.

"No. Go home. I'm just finishing these. See you in a couple of days."

"OK. But don't say I didn't offer."

"Thanks."

In case he changed his mind, Megan quickly grabbed her things and effortlessly navigated her way to the lifts while shuffling through her bag to look for her car keys.

Ping.

The lift opened and Megan began to enter while still firmly absorbed in her bag.

"Hey."

Charlie's warm welcome came as a surprise, and a soft thud, as they gently collided at the entrance of the lifts.

"My brother still here?"

"Yeah. Guess someone's looking for a lift."

"Hey, can't a guy just drop by on family?"

"Sure, but you haven't." Megan smiled as she pressed the button (and Charlie's at the same time!). She didn't want to seem rude but man did she want to get home.

Charlie smiled too as he dragged himself to Don's desk. A buzz hung in the air of the office. Other agents with cases still unsolved moved about with a determined urgency. It wasn't until he reached Don's desk that a calm descended.

"Case closed huh."

Charlie startled Don, but he didn't show it.

"Oh. Yeah, hey thanks for your help too."

"No problems. So you gonna be long?"

"Huh. No, maybe another half hour. Paperwork." Finally Don glanced up from the paperwork to properly look at Charlie. "What do you want?"

Charlie just grinned back at Don.

"Oh man. Seriously bro. You'd wait half an hour just to get a lift home! Take the bus."

"It's late…ish. I'd have to wait at least that for a bus. Dad's not home for dinner tonight but I can cook you something."

This time Don couldn't hide his thoughts and visibly grimaced.

"Hey!" Charlie was genuinely insulted.

"Woah! Put the family fight on hold for one second." Megan forced a smile as she slunk back to her desk.

"I thought you'd left. You follow the exit signs."

Megan gave Don 'a look' while she rummaged through her desk searching for something. Her frustration was under control but enough brimmed to the surface to get noticed.

Don had a thought. "Hey, you going home?" His intentions were pretty clear to Charlie but Megan seemed too preoccupied to pick up on it.

"With any luck."

Don motioned his hand towards Charlie then leant back in his chair with his hands behind his head and proceeded to ask Megan the favour.

"You wouldn't mind dropping Charlie off would you? If it's not too far out of your way of course."

Megan didn't even look up from her methodical, yet hurried, search of the desk.

"Only if I can find my keys" she said.

Charlie smiled. Not because of the chance of a lift straight away, nor because she'd lost her keys. He smiled because he knew something they didn't. Something with a number to it.

"You know some mathematicians at Cambridge in England conducted a study on losing keys. They worked out the probability and likelihood of various locations and came to a surprising yet simple finding."

"Oh yeah". Megan was certainly not as amused as Don was. Even the headache seemed to pale in light of Megan being the focus of Charlie's lecture, not him.

"Yeah" Charlie said indignantly. He looked at Don's smirk and, undeterred, continued.

"What they found was that 76.4 percent of the time the keys are where you first looked. You see, people look harder for something once they believe it to be missing.

When you first look for your keys you don't assume they're lost, you assume they are in a different spot. Once you've checked that second spot you think they are lost and begin to look harder everywhere else.

As you've already checked the first spot, and the second most likely place, you then begin to look harder in all the rest. But you never go back to the first place. You assume you've checked there. Yet when you checked there, you didn't know the keys were missing so you didn't look very hard. You need to go back to the first place you looked BEFORE you thought your keys were missing. The first place you always go, without thinking, for your keys."

"Trust me Charlie, they are not where I first looked."

Don steadied himself in his chair as he repositioned himself in an effort to go back to work. He didn't want to embarrass Megan. He knew how annoyingly right his little genius brother could be.

"Where was that?"

"What?"

"Where did you first look? Your bag?"

"Yes and they're not in there."

Megan pulled out her bag, opened it to the section she always put her keys and, in frustration, showed Charlie.

"See. Not there."

Charlie took the bag gently. He didn't want to show Megan up, he was trying to help. Carefully, he let his eyes wander over the key area then down to the depths of the bag. "Wow! You really are a girl. Look at all that 'stuff', no wonder they're lost."

Megan crossed her arms in front of her chest. Charlie had 10 seconds of his little game left.

"Oh oh." Don went straight back to his paperwork. She's getting ready to kick butt.

Gingerly, Charlie looked up at Megan and then shook the bag, fairly hard. The soft tinkle of metal, keys to be precise, could be heard.

Heat began to flush to Megan's cheeks. Oh man!

Charlie gently removed a set of keys from the bottom of the bag. A soft chuckle was swallowed by Don. It didn't go unnoticed by Megan as a glare bore down on him.

Turning to Charlie, she graciously accepted defeat. "76.4 percent huh"

"76.4 percent" Charlie nodded.

"Hey, well, good to know you're part of the majority" Don cracked.

Charlie fumed. "It's not about majorities Don, it's about probabilities…"

A laugh and "whatever" from Don waved off Charlie's indignation at another ignorant misuse of language in the description of math. Megan took the cue, grateful to have not lost her keys, grateful to be going home. She grabbed Charlie by the elbow and linked hers to it.

"I guess I owe you that ride now."

ooOoo

Half an hour of paperwork had turned in to an hour and a half. Don rose from his desk and headed to the break room to grab another coffee.

On the way back, he popped 2 aspirin and washed them down with the black gold. At his desk he stood and stared at the folders in front of him.

Yes it was a case closed, but when a victim dies you never really feel like it's closed. There was nothing they could do. They couldn't have gotten there earlier, heck, Charlie's analysis of the data was faster than any computer at times. They'd done everything they could, he'd done everything he could. I hope. Despite this, a mother was coming to terms with the fact that yesterday her teenage daughter was alive and today she was gone.

It was a kidnapping gone wrong. Over drugs. Sure the daughter wasn't some innocent, but she didn't deserve to die, not for drugs, not for money and not because the FBI couldn't get there in time.

Rationally, Don knew they'd done a great job. It was just, this time, great didn't equal a happy ending. That was life and he was used to it. Still a twinge of guilt bubbled below the surface, adding weight to the burden his job accumulated. Or is it something else?

Something, there was something he missed. He just couldn't put his finger on it. They had a confession; the evidence, the case, everything was tidied up so why did he feel this way?

He picked up a crime scene photo of the girl from one of the open folders. Death by overdose. It seemed like it should be a calm way to die. The picture told a different story. Bruises, matted hair, scratch marks where she'd fought for her life. Fear leached from her glassy eyes as death came, unwanted and with such violence. Her mouth was open in a scream, something that happened after death when the muscles relaxed. Inadvertently Don's hand rubbed his neck over the ghost of an old memory.

Was it numbness? Was he actually numb to these kind of images. He certainly didn't feel much at the moment. At least the headache meant he felt something. It was simply a burden, he felt weighed down by the senselessness of all these deaths.

Again he wiped his hand across his forehead, in recognition of the faint throbbing. As he did, something glistened on his desk, catching his eye.

Shoving aside the paperwork from the folders he noticed a sealable plastic bag. The victim's personal effects, not a forensic evidence bag thankfully.

Inside lay an unusual silver band glinting from the desk light bouncing off it. It was a cross between a sorority ring and the kind of ring a teenager wears to feel grown up yet unique. It was well made, expensive and would have been confused for a sorority ring if it weren't for the fact the letters on it were not Greek, maybe just symbols. It was too well made, too unique and too expensive to not have some significance for the girl.

A sigh escaped Don's lips.

His early reprieve from paperwork had gone haywire, and now this. His day was not going to end, and neither was this headache. He couldn't leave this for someone else, he had to do it himself and he wasn't going to enjoy this. Something about Sarah Peckham had disturbed him and he did not relish having to speak to her again.

With the last of the paperwork completed, Don piled the folders onto the assistant's desk who would file it in the morning. He flung on his jacket, grabbed his keys and then quickly snapped his arm out to look at the time. 8:47pm. Too late? Nah, she'll be up, she won't sleep. Who could. Oh man, I forgot again. Robyn!

The last action before leaving the office was to grab the bag with the ring in it. He then walked to the lifts and flipped open his phone.

"Councillor….Yeah…sorry, look…oh. OK. Well what about tomorrow?…No, ok, don't worry about it. I'll talk to you tomorrow. I promise."

Snapping his phone shut, and looking a little disappointed that Robyn was clearly busier on a case than he was, he slipped in to his car. He didn't need an address, he knew where he was going, hopefully for the last time. In a few hours this thought would seem prophetic.

ooOoo

Lights flashed in a steady stream on to his face as he drove down the highway in the dark to the outer suburbs of LA. With the lack of affluence came a proliferation of bars which sped past him by the side of the road as though mocking him.

If he wasn't so diligent he'd be drinking a beer right now. Oh well. Robyn then popped in to his head. I'd be having a beer WITH Robyn. Then he realised she was still working on her case so actually it would be just him and a beer, but that was a better option than this. What a great pairing.

Finally the big black "hey, look at me, I'm FBI" van turned in to the driveway of a dilapidated house. A huge sigh escaped Don's lips again as he turned off his lights and sat there for a second. He did not enjoy this but he had to remind himself he was doing a good thing.

Gradually he managed to pull himself out of the car and walk up to the front door.

Knock.

Almost from habit he was about to shout "FBI" but caught himself just in time.

Knock. Knock.

Light from the window flickered as the curtain opened quickly and then fell back in to place. Is that whispering inside? It was late, he was tired, he had a headache, he needed sleep and he needed for this case to be really over.

Finally the door creaked open, catching on the security chain and groaning. A tearful woman in her early 50's looked back at Don.

"Agent Eppes?"

It was more than surprise in her voice. What the hell was it?

She lived alone, now. God, how do you cope? The first night. At least I expected mom to die, at least I could prepare.

"Sorry to bother you Mrs Peckham. Can I come in?"

"No!"

Don was genuinely shocked for a second. Maybe she blames me, the FBI, for what happened. Of course she does.

"Ok, look, I am truly very sorry for your loss. I only came here tonight to pass on one of Anita's personal effects that seems to have been waylaid with her files." Don brought out the ring, still in the bag. He didn't want to touch it. She'd want to touch it, connect with her daughter. He knew that.

"I thought you'd want this."

Mrs Peckham just stood there, unemotional and unresponsive. Her face puffed from her evening of crying no doubt.

As she seemed incapable of responding Don felt the burden of keeping the conversation flowing.

"I found it in the file as I was finishing up the paperwork tonight". Ouch, wrong thing to say.

"Finishing up the paperwork? Finishing up?"

That had snapped her out of her trance.

"Finishing up her paperwork. You. The FBI. You think this is over?"

Don's shock at the statement didn't last long. What's going on here? He didn't get the chance to find out. CLICK. He knew that sound all too well. Only it usually sounded different when he did it, on the other end of the shiny barrel.

"Don't move". The gun spoke to him. At least with a gun pointed behind his skull that was the way it seemed.

Sharp, stinging, familiar pain. Then numbness. A needle. What the hell? What is with me and being drugged?

All Don could do was stare at Sarah Peckham while the drug stunned and immobilised him. She stared back with what he thought was fear. Blood drained from his face and he then fell heavily on the porch. One sweet relief was that his headache seemed to subside. Then again, the whole world seemed to subside. A swift kick by a boot to his side brought him back briefly and a moan escaped his lips, he thought. Nothingness took hold and Don slipped away from reality. What was it he had said about hoping this was the last time he visited this place?