Thanks to everyone who read and bindsy and narwhaley for reviewing.

"Morning," Prophet greeted, sticking his key in to lock his car doors as Mick came alongside him.

"Hey," Mick returned. "You know, these days most people do that with a button."

Prophet shrugged and dropped his keys into his pocket. "It works well enough." Besides, aside from the cost of a new car, it was much easier to keep a vehicle running when it was more mechanical than computer. In the last couple years, the scales had been tipping the other way.

Mick shook his head but didn't say anything else, and the two of the matched paces into the gym in silence.

Mick was looking a little more human this morning, Prophet noted, taking a sideways glance as he started his computer. Prophet had enough demons in his past that he wouldn't go prying into anyone else's without some indication that it was welcome—and judging by the way that Mick had reacted when Prophet had woken him up from his insistently not-a-nap it most definitely wouldn't be—but that didn't mean that he didn't sympathize when it came to rough nights.

"I…." Mick grimaced and squared his shoulders as he turned to face Prophet. "Sorry if I bit your head off yesterday. Wasn't exactly in a great mood. Damn truck."

The last was muttered under his breath and was pretty useless as far as explanations went, but it was still more of an acknowledgement than Prophet had expected, and he waved off the apology. "No worries, man. Just find something you like to drink to keep yourself up next time, all right? Must have wasted a pot and a half of perfectly good coffee." Which reminded him that while Mick didn't seem to care for the stuff, he did, and he pushed himself to his feet and went to put some on.

"There's no such thing, mate," Mick called after him.

By the time Prophet returned with a cup, Mick had started up his computer as well, and Prophet gestured towards it absently. "Anything?"

"Nothing from Coop, but church probably isn't out yet. I did get something about ethics, though."

"Ethics?" Prophet frowned and dropped back into his seat to see what had ended up in his inbox. "Oh, the course is back up."

"Can I get few more details? There's not much here except the link."

"You know, one of the web courses we have to take for the academy?" Prophet frowned, thinking back. "I guess maybe you haven't heard about them, they've been down for updates since before you got here."

"No, now that you mention it, I think I do remember you saying something about that once." Mick ran a hand through his hair. "Great, one more thing that I have to do on top of rescheduling that damn law exam and whatever other courses I'm supposed to be starting next week. And, you know, our missing child."

"Have you even gotten your official exam score yet? Maybe you got lucky and squeaked by."

Mick snorted. "Trust me, no one is that lucky. I mean, just to make sure, my name is spelled R-A-W-S-O-N, right? I haven't seen it yet, but there's got to be a line somewhere in the FBI handbook where if you can't spell your own name right they aren't keeping you around."

Prophet shook his head. "Don't worry so much about it. You've got time, and I'm sure Cooper can get you more if this case drags out. And if they kept me, I'm pretty damn sure they'll keep you." He paused, thinking for a moment. "Tell you what, if we aren't here too long today do you want to come over to my place for dinner? I know I've got chicken that needs to get eaten, and maybe between the two of us we can get at least a chunk of the ethics stuff out of the way." He wouldn't mind the company, and Mick was kind of getting screwed over having to deal with not only the web stuff but also normal coursework and an active case as well. At least Prophet had only had cold cases to work on while he'd been going through the academy; the couple times that he'd needed to take an extra day or two to study, he'd been free to do so.

"Are we allowed to cheat off each other on an ethics course?"

"I don't think it's cheating as long as we take our own tests." He grinned. "And hey, at least I didn't suggest that we finish off the beer in my fridge at the same time."

Mick rocked back in his chair and his lips twitched. "See, now, that might actually make it bearable."

"—looking closer and there's definitely something off about her, but it's nothing that I can put my finger on. And her worry for Emily seems genuine, but…."

Cooper trailed off, and Prophet nodded despite the fact that Cooper couldn't see him. There was just no guarantee that you'd see crazy coming, even when you were trained to look for it.

"I'm sure you're both glad to be at the end of your neighbor-and-teacher list," Cooper continued, "but I'm afraid you're going to have to start on a new list. All the people that Mrs. Addison knew. Check her routines, and see if anyone has noticed anything unusual about her behavior recently. I sent both a recording of our last interview and a scan of my notes so you should have everything."

"I saw it come in a few minutes ago," Mick said.

"Anywhere in particular you like us to start?" Prophet asked.

"Well, I'm heading back to the church after this to talk to the priest—she did some volunteer work through there—so why don't you two start on her other major social activities. Bridge and bingo, as I recall."

"Living on the edge," Mick murmured.

"We'll get started," Prophet said, returning Mick's grin. While he wasn't exactly looking forward to more phone calls—this would be way easier if he and Mick could just go to Michigan and drive to the various locations—he was well aware that that was the job sometimes.

"And let me know what you get from Garcia," Cooper said after a moment. "You're right, if we can get the current location of Mr. Addison narrowed down a little, I can request that the FBI offices down there get involved in the search. I've been working with Mrs. Keady and the locals to put together a profile for the kidnapper assuming that Mrs. Addison isn't involved, but the more information that we put in, the less and less likely it looks. Even if he's not directly a part of this, I think a chat would be a very good idea."

"You don't think Mrs. Addison will get suspicious about all these questions we're going to be asking?" Mick asked. "I mean, at least some of these people are going to be her friends, and friends talk."

"Hopefully not. Keep it discrete as best you can, but I did tell her that calling them was standard procedure. That we needed to know all of her routines in case someone had been watching her as part of a plan to kidnap Emily, and that we'd already run through the same exercise with Mrs. Keady. Which I did do as part of the standard profile so we're safe enough if she asks. It meant that I had to concentrate on places that she and Emily had gone together to keep from tipping her off, but if she's the one who took Emily, I don't want to risk driving her to any kind of drastic action."

Because a woman kidnapping a surrogate granddaughter was a lot less likely to intentionally harm the child than most of the other options when it came to kidnappers, Prophet knew. Unfortunately he also knew as well as anyone that people backed into corners sometimes did desperate things. "We'll get started," he said, "but I'm guessing we'll have more luck with the business-type stuff tomorrow."

"Probably. Do what you can, and let me know what turns up. I'll do the same."

"So, bridge or bingo?" Mick asked as the line cut off.

"Well, figure bridge is going to be a whole lot faster since we won't be talking about a room full of people. And regular bridge partners should know her pretty well. You've got names there?"

"Yeah." Mick turned his computer so they could both see Cooper's message. "Actually, forget bridge or bingo, it looks like Coop wrote out as many names as he could get, so do you want to split the list? You start at the top, I'll start at the bottom, and whoever finishes their half first can start making another list from Coop's interview recording."

"Works for me. Although if we both listen to the recording and compare notes afterwards, we'll be a lot less likely to miss something." Mick nodded in agreement, and Prophet glanced down at the first name, before opening up his computer again as well. "All right, Ms. Tanya Appleby. Let's just hope there aren't too many Applebys in the phone book."

"Hey, I'm starting with a Williams so I don't think I'd complain if I were you, mate."

It took Prophet three long hours to get through his half of the list—and, like every other collection of phone calls he'd been making recently, there were several that he was going to have to revisit—but it looked like Mick was still working on his half when he finished, so he grabbed a new pad of paper and a set of headphones to start on Cooper's recording. Hopefully there would be something from one of the names Cooper hadn't already listed…so far, aside from some commentary about how worried Mrs. Addison had been about the missing girl, none of her friends had had much to offer.

Cooper was a good interviewer. Prophet had noticed it before, but it was even more obvious now that they had a potential suspect. He'd been on the receiving end of a few interrogations in his life so he had that perspective covered, and he'd done reasonably well in the classes he'd taken, but this was so far out of his league that it wasn't even funny. Without seeming to try, Cooper managed to coax more details out of Mrs. Addison than Prophet had been able to get with direct questions. Clearer answers, too, bits of extraneous information that he doubted that she'd intended to offer…. If Prophet was half as good by the time he left this place he'd be happy.

"Please try back again later," Mick said with a sigh as he flipped his phone shut. "For the hundredth time."

"Yeah, I had quite a few like that too. Was about to send off an email to Cooper to give him a rundown, do you want to add your stuff before I send it?"

"Yeah, thanks."

Prophet pushed the computer over and then went to rinse out his cup. It was a little early to be heading out, but there wasn't a whole lot else either of them could do at the moment.

"You sure you don't mind me coming over for dinner?" Mick asked as Prophet returned. "I don't want to put you out having to drop me back off at my place afterwards."

Prophet shook his head and grabbed his jacket, flipping his computer shut. "It's no trouble. And there really is no sense in us working on the ethics stuff separately if we can get it done faster together. Come on, grab your stuff."

Another reason Prophet was glad that they were based out of the gym and not the FBI offices was that he didn't have to cross the whole city to get to his apartment, and it wasn't long before he was pulling into an empty spot in the alley. His place wasn't much to look at, just a one-bedroom walkup in a low-rise that had seen better days, but he had a corner unit on the third floor with a decent-sized window in every room—a decent-sized window without any bars on it—and it was never any trouble finding parking in the area. He was happy enough with it.

He flipped on the radio automatically as they entered and then waved Mick into the open kitchen-slash-living area. "Toss your jacket wherever and ignore the mess. I don't have company too often."

"Looks better than my place," Mick said with a shake of his head, laying his jacket over the arm of the couch and setting his laptop bag below it. "Of course, that might just be the lack of cardboard-lined walls."

"Still unpacking?" Prophet asked as he opened the fridge. The chicken…there it was. There were three breasts in the package rather than the two he'd thought, but none of them were very big.

"No, that's done, or at least as done as it's going to get, but I just sort of stacked the boxes along the wall afterwards." He shrugged. "Not really sure what else to do with them. I don't want to toss them since I'm going to have to move out of the FBI flat eventually, but they didn't plan the whole storage thing very well."

"Welcome to the city."

Mick grinned. "I hear that. Though I guess it's not much different than back home so I probably shouldn't have been surprised. Can I help with something?"

"Well, if you don't mind chopping veggies, I can put on rice and do chicken stir-fry." That would use up all three of the breasts, and Rosa had dropped off some peppers and onions from her little container garden on the roof in thanks for fixing up her car that needed to get eaten soon as well.

"Sounds good," Mick said, flipping on the faucet to wash his hands, and Prophet directed him to the knives and cutting board while he put the rice on and pulled out the chicken.

Slicing up the chicken didn't take long, and he tossed it in the pan with some oil about the same time that Mick finished with the vegetables.

"Where's the toilet?" Mick asked.

"Back through there," Prophet said with a jerk of his head towards the hall. "The door on the left."

"Thanks."

He waited until the chicken was cooked most of the way through to toss the vegetables in, and he was starting to add a little more oil—he really needed to pick up some new pans—when Mick spoke again.

"You've got a brother?"

More of the oil went in than Prophet intended, and he took a moment to collect himself before he answered. "No. Not for a long time." He knew what Mick must be looking at even without turning his head, and he leveled a mental curse at himself for forgetting to stick that damn thing in deep, dark drawer somewhere. At some point a previous owner of this place had built in bookshelves all along two of the living room walls, and despite the occasional visit to the thrift stores down the street, Prophet didn't have anywhere near enough books or music or DVDs to fill them. In an attempt to keep the shelves from looking hopelessly bare he'd ended up tossing up almost all of the keepsakes that he had just to fill in space. It didn't do much good considering that even if he'd had the inclination to collect trinkets he'd lived too much of his life out of a backpack to give in to it, but among the few things that had gone up was an old framed photograph that should have remained with a couple other items that would never see the light of day. It was the only photo that he had from back when he was a kid, and it was one thing when it was just him rattling around this place, but on the rare occasion that he'd had company over…well, James had asked about it too, and Prophet had meant to put it away as soon as he'd left. "You got any brothers or sisters?" he asked as Mick returned to the kitchen, trying to keep it casual.

"A sister. Jenna. She's just getting started at university."

There was suddenly something in Mick's tone that didn't encourage further questioning, but since Prophet was perfectly fine with letting the entire subject of family drop, he didn't have any problem with that. He glanced over again. "I think this is about done, and the rice should be in a minute or two too. You mind pouring drinks?"

"Sure. Or, what's the phrase? I don't care to?"

Prophet rolled his eyes at Mick's smirk. "Smartass. Glasses are up there." He nodded towards the cabinet to the left of the sink. "I've got milk and OJ in the fridge, or the tap water isn't bad, if you prefer that." He paused. "Or there's the remains of the six-pack I picked up last weekend, but…."

"Yeah, that whole potential ethics violation thing." Mick grinned. "Shame, though."