"Stay in the van!" Peter ordered Neal. "If it's not our art thief we need your cover intact for tomorrow."

"You want me to stay here while you deal with the psychopathic serial killers? I can do that."

Peter finished strapping on his vest and pulled his gun from his holster. "I mean it, Neal. Do not leave this van."

Muffled voices echoed through the bug, followed by a lot of loud crashing and banging and then the unmistakable blast of a shotgun.

"Shots fired, we're going in," Diana said into the radio she was using to call for back-up.

Someone inside the building swore loudly.

Peter glanced back at Neal once more and crept around to the rear of the building, Jones and Diana forming up behind him.

Peter nudged the door open with his foot, checking the room, leading with his weapon. The back room was empty, but judging by the noise coming from the main gallery, there were several people in the building.

An irritated voice was asking, "What the hell are you doing, Cas?"

"Who's Cas?" hissed Jones.

"I don't know, but that's Dean Winchester talking." Diana replied.

In the next room, a voice rumbled deeply in reply: "I do not feel comfortable standing in front of Sam when he's so heavily armed."

Diana whispered into her radio that there were three armed men in the gallery.

"I'm not going to stab you again, Cas," the third voice said angrily, "and I was completely justified the first time."

"Guys, can we not do this now? We need to burn the damn thing and get out of here; someone will have heard the shots."

There was a loud crash as something flew against the wall, and the smash of glass as a framed painting hit the floor. The shotgun blasted again.

"Dean? Are you okay?"

"Urgh?"

Peter nudged the door open. The room was completely dark. He stepped in, his shoe crunching on broken glass.

"What was that? Burn the damn thing before it comes back!"

"FBI! Put down your weapons!" Peter shouted, echoed by Jones and Diana.

"Crap, I told you this was a bad idea!"

"Burn it, then we can go," Dean groaned. He sounded wounded. Peter surmised that the loud thumping had been him being thrown against the wall, although quite why his colleagues had chosen to attack him remained unclear. From everything Peter had heard he seemed to be the peacekeeper.

"Put down your weapons, I am turning on the light," Peter said calmly. He flicked the light switch. Nothing happened.

"The power's out," the man Peter assumed to be Sam Winchester told him, "We don't want to hurt anyone. If you just let us take care of this, we'll be out of your hair in no time."

"We have a problem," the low tones of 'Cas' stated expressionlessly.

"What kind of problem?" Peter asked.

"The painting is gone."

"What?" a chorus of voices asked.

"There is no painting here. Only a sign that states the painting is a reproduction."

"Son of a bitch!" Dean exclaimed. And then, "Where did you move the original?"

"I can't tell you that, Dean," Peter said, "Yes, that's right. We know who you are. Dean and Sam Winchester, and James Novak. We got your fingerprints from the hotel."

"Jimmy Novak is not responsible for my transgressions," Novak said, "My name is Castiel – "

He broke off when Dean interrupted: "Shut up, Cas!"

Diana's radio crackled with the news that SWAT was a minute out.

"Well, scintillating as this conversation is, we have to be going now," Dean Winchester said.

Peter wasn't exactly sure what happened next, but there was a flurry of noise and movement, and suddenly he was opening his eyes to a pair of SWAT-issue boots, and the gallery was lit with powerful flashlights.

Not a Winchester was in sight.

XXXX

"Well that went well," Dean said when they were back at their motel.

"No it didn't," said Cas.

Dean chose to concentrate on icing his bruised ribs rather than acknowledging the statement of the obvious. "So what now?"

"We have to leave," Sam insisted, "There are still warrants out on us. Not to mention the new breaking and entering and assault charges those Feds are going to stick on us when they find us.

"We can't leave. This spirit is killing people, Sam. Not to mention, how the hell did it get the fake painting out?"

"Dean, there's nothing we can do. The real painting is in Federal custody. That means it's locked in the FBI building."

Dean opened his mouth.

Sam shook his head, "Don't even think about it, Dean. We are not breaking into the FBI."

Dean could see where his brother was coming from, but he didn't like it. It wasn't even just that the spirit was killing people violently, or that it had got the jump on him in the darkened gallery (although that always pissed him off). It was that the case was meant to be a simple run of the mill salt-and-burn to get them back on their feet. He'd picked New York because Sam had always got stupidly excited about things like museums when they were kids, and maybe it was wishful thinking but he'd thought Sam might need a reminder of how he used to be. That maybe reminding him of the good things in life would soften him up a bit again, stop him scratching at the wall, and maybe even stop him festering in resentment towards Cas, just for a few days. He'd picked the case for Cas, because Cas needed purpose, and maybe helping stop a spirit would stop the violent mood swings between guilt and indignation he'd been suffering from since the souls had been taken from him. And he'd picked it for him because he just couldn't handle thinking about anything more complicated right now, and he wanted to hang out with his brother and his best friend and stop worrying for a little while. He'd picked this case for a reason, and he was damned if he was leaving without seeing it through, even if the Feds chose to interfere.

Dean tossed his bag of ice on the table with rather more force than necessary. "What do you suggest we do about all the dying people then?"

Cas picked up the bag of ice and pressed it against Dean's ribs again. And, okay, it was a little weird, especially combined with the glare he was giving Dean, but Dean let it go because at least Cas was interacting, which was more than he did most of the time lately.

"We must kill the witch," Cas said, with somewhat frightening intensity.

XXXX

Neal headed home from the hospital once he was sure Peter was going to be alright. The doctor said Peter had a minor concussion, but Peter was more concerned about the Winchesters escaping again than about his head, so Neal took that as a good sign.

Neal lay back on his bed in his silk pyjama bottoms. The night was hot, but he'd made sure the windows were securely latched. Diana had said Dean Winchester and James Novak had been watching him. If they could overpower Peter, they could certainly overpower him. He closed his eyes to mull over what had happened that night. They still had an art thief to catch, after all.

Combining what he'd heard over the bug with Peter's account of what had happened, he listed in his head what he knew. First of all, the art thief was not working with the Winchesters. There had been too much crashing and shouting for that, and they were working at cross-purposes. The Winchesters had been upset when the painting was not there for them to burn. Secondly, the thief must have either been inside the building prior to the entry of the Winchesters, or have been hiding outside and slipped in immediately after the Winchesters, but before Peter, Jones and Diana. Thirdly, he or she must have either had a companion or set up a booby trap in advance to make the Winchesters believe they were being attacked, in the hopes of distracting them until the FBI arrived and arrested the Winchesters, thus solving the problem of being hunted by vigilantes. He or she must have deliberately cut the power to increase the confusion, allowing them to escape with the painting while the FBI and the Winchesters were distracted with each other. The problem was the escape. The canvas had been removed from the frame and presumably rolled up inside a tube, but then thief still needed an exit. Nobody had exited the front of the building; Neal had been watching. There was a possibility that the thief had stepped over the unconscious bodies Peter and Jones in the short space of time between the Winchesters attacking and SWAT's entry, but Diana had been awake and hadn't heard anything. That left an escape through a ceiling panel, ventilation shaft, or prepared hidden exit. Neal would have to look in the morning.

It didn't make sense to Neal. If he wanted to steal a painting, he would paint a reproduction, set up an identity that would allow him to case the place without anyone suspecting, and switch the paintings without anyone noticing. So maybe he wouldn't be able to resist doing it under the nose of the feds, but he wouldn't try to hurt anyone or complicate things by drawing in other people who weren't involved in the planning. And he certainly wouldn't deliberately set the alarm off to call in the FBI. All the extra stuff was unnecessary, and it would get the guy caught.

Neal eventually drifted off. Maybe he'd ask Mozzie's opinion in the morning.

XXXX

Sam woke early from a fitful sleep. Disturbing images had filtered through the wall when he'd relaxed. Mostly he couldn't even identify them, just woke with a faint burning sensation on his limbs or a feeling of floating horror with a source he couldn't remember. He tried not to think about what it had felt like when Cas had broken the wall, and the more he tried not to think about it, the harder it was.

He gave up on trying to sleep just as light was beginning to seep through the blinds. Crawling out of bed, unrested, he looked over at Dean, stretched out on top of the covers in the other bed. He didn't look like he was having a good night either. Sam hardly ever saw his brother sleep these days, but when he did it was usually calmer than it had been in the first couple of years after hell. It was just sometimes, like today, when his breathing was too fast and his eyes rolled crazily in their sockets that showed he still felt it. Sam suspected the only reason he didn't see it more was that Dean had started to stay awake and worry until Sam fell asleep.

That was really why Sam had agreed to stay. It wasn't because of the deaths, although that contributed. Mostly it was because Dean seemed to think seeing it through would prove they were still a team, or that they could still do something just because it was the right thing to do, or something. Dean was showing the strain. He seemed tense and anxious, hiding it behind jokes and smiles, especially when Sam and Cas disagreed about something. Dean needed something to go his way, to make it seem like everything was fine. So Sam was giving him this, even though it was a terrible idea.

He switched on his laptop, blinking in the sudden bright light, and began to research how a witch could control a spirit through a painting.

"Sam?" Cas was lying perfectly still on the extra cot.

"What?"

"I really am sorry about the wall."

Sam looked up, confused about the sudden apology.

Cas sat up in bed, his hair sticking out in all directions. "The job went badly because we could not co-operate. Dean is making us stay because he doesn't like us to fight. If we restore our friendship, the job will be finished more quickly, and we will have more chance to evade the police."

Sam nodded. Castiel's logic made sense. But it wasn't a real apology. And Sam wasn't going to apologise back.

XXXX