It turned out not to be a pleasant trip at all. Mr. Cochrane had chosen an extensive site on which to build his multi-million dollar home, very near the coast. This meant the only way in was a cliff top road.

"Please."

"No."

"Come on, for me?"

"No"

"Please? Ach, don't act like this. Listen I'll do whatever you want if you just drive down it a little bit."

"NO!"

"I'll drive on the wrong side of the road so you can stay as far away from the cliff as possible."

"….. There's a bridge there too."

"Oh ye gods. Please!"

"Jessica, I refuse to go anywhere near that road."

"Fine. Be that way. I shall just walk the whole bloody way shall I? When I have a perfectly operable car that I can't drive because the AI inside it's too big a wuss to go near a cliff."

"I am not a wuss. It is just the memories cliffs bring back are not pleasant."

"I'm pretty damn sure that the memories a gun brings Michael aren't that nice; or the memories a chemical tanker, any sort of missile or 18-wheelers bring Kitt aren't either. And I know that I can't bear to even think about memories the surname 'Knight' brings back, but Michael's happy enough around guns, Kitt is fine around any of those things and, well, technically, if you had a surname it would be Knight….. If we can stick it, you can too."

Michael sighed, Jessica was not getting anywhere.

"Come on, Jess, you can come with me and Kitt."

The girl shrugged, climbed out of her Trans-Am and slammed the door viciously.

"Just stay there, OK?" she snapped. No response. Aha, Michael thought, Karr has mastered the delicate art of the guilt trip.

Jessica's expression softened and she rolled her eyes.

"All right. Sorry. Happy? I'm sorry. I'll do something to make up for it later."

She stalked over to Kitt and gently pulled the door open. Kitt shut it behind her, and sped off down the road. Behind them, Karr slid off in a different direction.

Five minutes later, the black Trans-Am drew to a halt on a perfectly spread out gravel driveway, surrounded by perfectly manicured green lawns. And for some strange reason there was already a Trans-Am sitting there.

"Either we stepped into a time-loop or there was a back-road", Jessica remarked casually as they got out.

"Back-road" replied Karr. Even Michael sniggered at that and loped up to the door.

A middle aged man dragged it open on the fifth ring and glared at them suspiciously.

"We don't want any."

"We're not selling anything, Mr. Cochrane. We just need to ask you a few questions," said Michael. Jessica stopped the door with one of her feet as Cochrane tried to slam it closed.

"I don't have to answer any of them!" he spat back, tugging helplessly at the door. Jessica and Michael exchanged glances. She flicked her head towards Cochrane and he nodded. It couldn't hurt for her to have a go at questioning him.

"All right, that's fine by me," Jessica replied, "We're from the Foundation for Law and Government and we…"

"I'm not drilling for oil on that patch of land! Now go away!"

"… I didn't say anything about oil."

"Well….. Everyone's been asking that lately." Cochrane went red and re-opened the door. As he swung it shut, Jessica took her foot away and he smacked himself up the face with the door. The girl sighed, shrugged and wandered down the steps.

"Well that was productive," she said, rapping her fingers against Karr's roof.

"I didn't really expect it to go well anyway," said Michael, "He is very jumpy about the oil though, and I didn't think there were any articles on it in the papers." He paused and slid into the driver's seat.

"Kitt, could you check all the news stories for the past couple weeks. Check if Cochrane's in any of them."

"You don't think that anyone has asked him anything?" growled Karr over the speaker system. The monitor switched on, showing Jessica with an exasperated look on her face. She looked down at the screen and mouthed something that looked like 'You got the brains, I got the brawn', grinned and started the engine.

"I did see that you know," hissed Karr bad temperedly.

"Chill mate. It was a friendly insult."

"Oh" Karr didn't know that there was such a thing.

"What would have looked like if it wasn't friendly?"

"Well, I would have said it for a start, and there would be more cussing and offensive gestures and I would have put a bit more venom into my voice."

Michael and Kitt listened in silence as they descended into a complex conversation about how the tone of someone's voice could convey an emotion and the figures of speech used to describe them.

"Michael? You were right. Cochrane hasn't even had a mention for 9 months in any news anywhere," said Kitt quietly.

"I knew it." Michael tapped the steering wheel. "After those two shut up we'll find the guy who informed us."

"But they're talking very calmly. You could tell them we're going now."

"Yeah, but look at which road we just drove down" Michael pulled up at a stop sign.

"Oh right"

Jessica rubbed the bridge of her nose,

"I give up. I'll explain later, OK? And by the way, look behind you."

Karr stopped in the middle of the road as soon as he did.

"You….. That…….. The cliff…." Karr spluttered in embarrassment, and came up with the only reasonable reply he could think off.

"I HATE YOU!"

Which, of course, he said in the friendliest way possible.

At least by his standards anyway.

Sorry for the really massive delay. My bad. I shall now blame it on my English teacher giving us all the homework we needed to do for this term as early as possible so we got it over with. And I'll blame my HE teacher too, cause she made us do that food poisoning report. Apart from that, they're very nice people.

Oh, and since I finished this chappie on the 17th March – Happy St Paddy's Day!