"Megan! Amita!" Don rushed forward. "David, see anything?"

"Not a thing, Don." David allowed the senior agent to move in, keeping a watchful eye around the surroundings. The kitchen was marginally less dirty, showing evidence of recent cleaning interrupted by circumstances. Two bodies lay in the dirt, neither one of which was moving. One had a gun clenched in her hand, unwilling to let it go even in unconsciousness.

Don knelt. "They're alive," he reported with relief. "They're breathing, and each one has a pulse. What happened?"

"Good question." David was still scanning the room. The safety of the women assured, he began to methodically examine everything. "Doors are all unlocked, except for the one to the basement where Larry was. Back door: unlocked, knob works okay. This door here to the hall doesn't have a lock, knob's a little loose. Not seeing any footprints. Nothing obviously missing or broken. Revise that: got a bunch of broken plates and glasses here, but with this much dust on top of 'em, don't think it's recent. How are Megan and Amita?"

"Not a scratch on them," Don said. "Wait, Megan's coming around. Megan?" he called anxiously. "Megan, you okay?"

"Don't…think so…" she muttered, refusing to open her eyes. "Don, is that you? What the hell happened? What are you doing here?" She took a deep breath, trying to retrieve what little intelligence she had left, and groaned. "Would someone please amputate my head, and put me out of my misery?"

"Not yet, Megan," Don gently helped her to sit up, deftly relieving her of her gun and slipping on the safety. He frowned; the chambers were empty of bullets, and the smell of sulfur told him that the gun had recently been fired. The empty shells were scattered around her on the floor. His gut tightened. "What happened?"

"Didn't I just ask you that?" A memory attacked her, and Megan twisted swiftly around to look for the other member of her party. "Amita?"

Mistake. Moved too fast. She started to crumble into Don's arms, and he eased her back down onto the floor, using his jacket to cushion her head.

"Amita's okay," Don told her, "just taking a nap, like you were."

"Don't let her wake up. This headache's a killer."

"I won't," Don assured her, with a relieved grin. Megan was going to be all right, as was Amita. The complaint showed that to be true. That was three members of their party accounted for, three people alive if not exactly healthy. "Feel up to telling me what happened, Reeves?"

"No."

"Need a report anyway." Gently. There was still one mathematician missing and needing to be found.

Megan knew that, but there was a piece that she didn't know. "Larry! Larry's down in the basement!" she exclaimed, trying to get up unsuccessfully.

Don eased her back down a second time. "Yeah, we got him."

"He's all right?"

"He's all right," Don confirmed. "A little dented, but okay. What happened to you and Amita?"

"Charlie! Where's Charlie?"

"That's what we'd like to know," Don told her, keeping his own fear under tight control. Megan's question had just confirmed what he feared: that his brother was still among the missing. Time to get the profiler back onto track. "Larry told us what happened up until he dropped into the nether world. Now it's your turn. Reeves, report!"

Megan squeezed her eyes tightly together, took another deep breath, and began. "We—Amita and I—went after Larry, after he'd fallen into the basement. We knew where he was, and we didn't know where Charlie was, only that Charlie had gone upstairs and then yelled."

"Right." Not a good sign, but Megan had made the correct tactical decision. Don couldn't fault her. "Then?"

"We walked into the kitchen, and Bigfoot was there."

"Bigfoot?" Don couldn't help the skeptical tone.

"Right. Bigfoot. Six foot six, maybe more, lots of fur. Tall. Did I mention tall?" Megan added bitterly.

"You shot at it." Megan's gun was empty. Don had checked it himself.

"I shot it directly," Megan corrected him. "I emptied the clip into it. I put bullets into its gut, into its heart, I put two straight between the eyes, Don. It staggered, but it didn't go down."

David didn't take his eyes off of the windows, keeping watch. "You're telling me you emptied a whole clip into this thing, and didn't stop it?"

"Almost. I wasted a few bullets earlier, in the Great Room, trying to do the same thing with just as little luck, David. I'm telling you, Don," she shifted painfully around to look at her team leader, "Don, that thing is impervious to bullets. I don't know what it is, but I didn't kill it. And I know that I hit it over and over. I was less than ten feet away from it, Don!" Her voice was rising. "I put an entire clip into that thing, Don!"

"Okay, you hit it," Don soothed. "It didn't go down. What next? We found you unconscious, Megan, you and Amita. What happened after that? Did that Bigfoot thing attack you?"

Megan tried to remember. "No. No, Don, there was someone else here, someone that I didn't see at first. Someone, or something," she emphasized. "I smelled something, everything went black, and next thing I know, I'm waking up here on the floor."

"Not so loud," Amita groaned from her own spot on the floor. "What the hell happened?"

David holstered his gun—there didn't seem to be anyone or anything menacing them at the moment—and helped the young math professor to sit up herself, steadying her.

"Let's get them both into the Great Room," Don decided. "Safety in numbers."

"We have to go after Charlie!" Amita exclaimed. "Don, I heard him yell! He's in trouble!"

"And we're going after him," Don told her, "but we can't let ourselves get into more trouble. I want you and Megan in the Great Room with Larry and Colby. David and I will look for Charlie. And we'll be looking out for your Bigfoot guy."

"Don—"

"No argument, Reeves." When he used that wording, Megan knew that Don had made a command decision. "You'll back up Colby. From a sitting position." He handed back her gun.

Megan looked at, made a moue. It was empty. She'd fired everything she'd had at their attacker, and still came up short.

There was now a lump on his forehead, and a headache to go along with it, courtesy of yet another low-lying ceiling beam that he hadn't seen in the low light. This one, Charlie estimated, was the size of a hen's egg. He could feel it, soft and squishy with the underlying blood, swiftly swelling and probably turning dark purple. Not that he could see it. Feeling it was bad enough. Gonna look really great walking into class Monday morning, he thought ruefully.

There seemed to be more light at this end of the corridor. Either that, or his eyes were becoming more accustomed to the darkness. He still didn't dare move swiftly, for fear of more beams swinging down to knock him over the head, but his progress became a bit more secure.

A box caught his eye, one that was wrapped in old burlap and leaned against the side of the corridor. No, not a box, he decided, but an old picture covered over to protect it against all the filth around. Larry's cousin was certainly an odd one, Charlie decided. They say it runs in families. I'll have to be sure to remind him of that, once I get out of this mess. 'Mess' being the operative word here. But he couldn't resist pulling off a bit more of the covering, peering to see what elderly relative was immortalized within.

Nope. Some sort of still life, the ubiquitous bowl of fruit sitting on a table. Charlie couldn't make out the artist's signature. It looked old, it felt heavy, and that was Charlie's bottom line assessment of the thing. Larry could have it evaluated later to see if there was any real monetary worth to the thing. Right now, getting out of this predicament was Charlie's top priority. Middle to low end art collected by an eccentric relative—and, considering Larry himself, calling a relative of his eccentric was going some—could wait.

This was business. This was not simply holing up in Larry's old castle waiting for a thunderstorm to pass. There was a missing FBI consultant and a Federal agent passed out on the floor of the kitchen along with a respected math professor who was another FBI consultant, so the FBI team would take an entirely justified temporary break from their primary hunt for the stolen Michelette in order to resolve this mystery before it turned into something for which they'd have to call in the National Guard. It had nothing to do with the fact that Charlie was Don's brother. That was beside the point. Don and David silently leap-frogged their way up the stairs to the hall on the second floor where Charlie had been heading so very long ago.

Of course, all of this could be just a boatload of coincidence, Don realized, doubting that it was so but being honest with himself. Finding Megan and Amita passed out in the kitchen? A cloud of cooking gas, left over in rotting pipes in a house that had been abandoned for years. Movement within had caused those pipes to leak. 'Bigfoot'? Hallucinations, caused by that gas and a really good haunted house story by the locals. Ghosts flying across the room, as Amita had said that she saw? Plenty of white curtains ready to drop from their rods, wafting through the corner of her eye with more of the gas seeping up from the kitchen to alter her perception of reality. People—like Charlie—disappearing? Rotted out floorboards. Look at Larry falling through the staircase. The same could have happened to his brother, and probably had.

But on the other hand…

Don gestured with his gun to David. Clear. Move forward.

David slipped ahead, silent on the dusty carpets, hugging the walls and sliding around the figurines on pedestals that seemed to dot every available square inch of wall space available. He paused, listening for movement, heard none, and moved again. He nearly bumped over another pedestal, catching it before it could crash and alert everyone and everything that the pair of them were upstairs. Just because Bigfoot might be a figment of people's imagination doesn't mean that it is a figment.

Don pussy-footed it behind him, catching up and over-taking his team mate. He poked his head into the first room for a quick peek, hoping not to get his head blown off or removed by the swipe of the over-large claws that Amita had described just moments earlier.

Nothing. Not a thing was moving, not even the curtains with the wind sweeping in past window panes long past their prime for keeping out the cold. Looking at springing for new insulated windows here, Dr. Fleinhardt? No holes in the floor where his brother could have plunged through, not even the thick dust disturbed. And the curtains were still hanging limply from their rods; not one had flown down to the floor or out through the window pretending to be an apparition. Not this room; it was innocent as the fallen snow that would try to hide out in the unheated closet once winter settled in. Don backed out, shaking his head silently at David. Let's try the next one.

They backed out into the hall, watching 360 degrees worth of real estate and belatedly even thinking about something flying down on them from above a la Amita's ghost. Mustn't forget the floor, either, Don thought sourly, thinking about Larry ending up in the basement which presumably was where his brother was as well. But procedure was very clear: look for the missing man first where he had vanished unless there was clear evidence of where he was. And since Larry hadn't seen or heard from Charlie, darkness or no, the basement where they'd rescued Larry from was not the basement where Charlie was. Was there more than one basement? Possible. This was a big building. Rotting and ready to collapse, but big and it would take a while to search thoroughly.

Supernatural or not, there was definitely a spooky feeling about this place. Don paused to sniff, wondering if the gas that had felled Megan and Amita could be smelled. He tightened his lips. Either there was no gas, or it was odorless, in which case Colby might end up dragging two more bodies down the staircase in a hurry. Don winced at the thought of the bruises that would be left to heal over the next few weeks.

It was the shadows. It had to be the shadows. The storm was finally deigning to clear out, leaving broken branches and minor downhill floods behind, but it was well into night and the starlight just wasn't about to cut it, not with all the dirt preventing photonic entry. Don suddenly wished for not just the flashlight in his hand but an entire array of spotlights to light up all the various corners, to separate the dust bunnies from the tarantulas ready to leap upon them.

Another floor board creaked and dipped beneath him, offering a naked threat to break and stab Don with a splinter the size of a harpoon. Don halted in his tracks, easing his weight back before disaster could befall him—literally. It had happened to Larry, it had likely happened to Charlie, and it could happen to Don as well. David too paused, waiting until safety was re-established.

Wait. Don stopped. Something niggled at him, something that around him. Something, or someone, was watching him. No, it was just those damn oil paintings that dotted all the walls like an Eighteenth Century Rogue's Gallery of—

Crap. That one, that one right there, the old guy with a skinny little beard-let dressed in a pumpkin suit. Don had a sinking feeling that he'd seen it before. Not the real thing, but a picture of a picture. A picture of a really ugly old dude with really bad taste in fluorescent orange clothes. He tapped David with his free hand, gesturing toward it.

David's eyes widened, confirming Don's suspicions. David looked more closely at the painting, shining his flash a mere few inches from the oil. He shook his head grimly and mouthed, real?

Ya think? You know more about art stuff than I do, David.

It's got dust on it.

Not as much as some of the other stuff around here. Looks newer. Like it got put up not too long ago.

Another unvoiced word emerged from David's lips which Don thankfully couldn't see well enough in the dark to translate but that he had little difficulty figuring out the meaning of. That opened up another set of questions, beginning with how the hell did the Michelette get here in Larry's inherited mansion? Somehow Don tended to doubt that Larry, despite his smaller shoe size, fit the description of a high end art thief cat burglar. No, if Dr. Fleinhardt was in the mood to steal a painting, he'd come up with some elegant physics thing that would waft this monstrosity across the room and out through the front door of the museum. Dr. Fleinhardt was not the type to scuttle out through a window. A steam tunnel, maybe; but never a window.

David looked closely again, unable to believe what his eyes were telling him. He took a deep, grim breath. Could be the real thing, Don. I think it is.

An entire scenario flashed into existence, one that Don wasn't particularly pleased to be thinking about, his thoughts roaming around the three Duckett sisters that they'd interviewed earlier this rainy evening. Yeah, that one was in a wheelchair, but she seemed to be the computer whiz who could have been the one doing the tune up on the Chromantic and the Wrachet. And there was nothing saying that the other two couldn't have teamed up with yet a fourth person, yet to be identified, to work the job. There were, after all, three sets of footprints on the roof of the museum.

And from David's expression, the same scenario was oozing through the other FBI agent's thoughts as well. But who could it be? There weren't many people in Ferresville, and leaving a painting like the Michelette hanging around—no pun intended—was not something that a thief was likely to do. No, whoever the culprit was, it had to be someone local, either someone that the FBI had met or one of the other thirteen inhabitants that Ferresville boasted.

This outing had suddenly become a lot more serious, and Don was grateful that his gun was in his hand. There wasn't anyone to shoot at, but that could change in an instant. This quantity of money tended to make people just a little more than nervous and people who lived in the hindquarters of nowhere like Ferresville tended to be just a mite handy with guns, just as a general rule.

That led to a whole series of unpleasant concepts: the whole 'haunted house' thing was a ploy to encourage unwanted visitors to move on and not take a close look at an expensive stolen painting or two. The gas that had knocked Megan and Amita for a loop hadn't come from any rotted out pipes but from a deliberate attempt to get rid of them. It would take a Forensics team to say for certain, but Don wasn't about to rule out the deliberate weakening of the stair treads that had sent Larry crashing to the basement.

And his brother? Where was the man? Another basement accident? Or something more sinister, like Charlie discovering the truth and being captured or even killed by the art thieves? High end art thieves tended not to be murderers, but that didn't mean that they wouldn't take whatever steps they felt necessary to prevent exposure. Hiding in shadows was their stock in trade, and having a world class mathematician with connections all the way up to the highest levels in Washington in their collective face was not the way to maintain a low profile.

All of which meant that Don was now in high stress mode, nerves stretched and taut, ready to take whatever action was needed in a split second. And from David's stance, his fellow agent was in a similar state of readiness. They eased their way through the corridor, now identifying many of the objets d'art as potential stolen objects. Don tightened his lips. Recovery of those items would take a back seat to both recovery of Don's brother and recovery of the thieves.

Next room: Don listened carefully, heard nothing. He used the barrel of his gun to gently nudge the door open, wincing at the creak that screeled out to assault their ears. Well, no use in pretending that they weren't coming in to look around. And no use in getting his head shot off; Don crouched as he eased his way inside, grateful that his eyes had already adjusted to the dim light.

Nothing. Nothing but more art objects. Nothing living or breathing unless one wanted to count the spiders and bats, and right now Don didn't want to count them. He wanted Charlie to count them or at least estimate the sheer number of the beasts based on whatever formula the man wanted to use, because that would mean that Charlie was safe and under his brother's watchful gaze.

Just like when we were kids, right, Eppes? Things haven't changed much. The guy might be a genius at CalSci with a track record to rival Einstein, but Don was still looking out for him. Maybe I don't want to stop? Maybe if I stop, he'll prove to everyone that he really can take care of himself, just like everyone else. That he doesn't need me.

Get your head out of your ass, Eppes, and your mind back where it belongs. Eat a bullet, and you won't have to worry about Charlie.

Third room: a little more alarming. It wasn't the large bed off to one side with the linens that looked clean, as though someone—Amita, most likely?—had recently done a baseline restoration. It wasn't even the substantial lack of cobwebs that had been ripped from every corner of the room. Don's eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and very quickly identified the black spot in the center of the room as a hole that someone had fallen through. The splinters on the edge suggested that the hole was not the type to have been carefully planned out in advance with a saw to make the edges neat and tidy. No, Don made the very obvious deduction that his brother, going into the room to fetch more candles, had walked across those floor boards and dropped through when the wood had cracked underneath his weight. The question was: was the fall engineered ahead of time? Had someone deliberately weakened the floor to make that happen? Or had Charlie simply been the unlucky person who had stepped on the wrong floorboard at the wrong time? All a coincidence?

Don knew what Charlie would say: "Let me tap in the insert theorem name analysis along with the parameters of the wood and the age of the house, and I'll have the answer for you in a moment." But Don didn't want probabilities, he wanted his brother back, preferably in one piece.

David pointed his flashlight into the hole. The light disappeared into the depths, not revealing anything but a very deep pit with nothing moving down below. "Charlie? Charlie?"

No answer, not that Don expected one. "Where do you think it leads to?" Don asked.

David shrugged grimly. "We're on the top floor, and this hole looks like it leads through the main level to something down below. Does this place have two basements? It's big enough, but that sounds odd, even for a relative of Larry."

Don peered more closely, trying to decipher which room was directly below. "That look like the pantry, off the kitchen? Maybe we can take a better look from there."

David swung the flash around, trying to identify some of the surrounding items. "Yeah, I think you're right. Those look like shelves over there, with a few cans on them. Probably the pantry, although those cans could be paint cans. Maybe an outside shed, attached to the house?"

"Maybe," Don allowed. "Let's head back downstairs, see what we can find out. And fill in the others," he added. He thought a moment. "And bring the Michelette, too," he decided. "We came a hell of a long way for it, and I'll be damned if I'm leaving it behind."