Peter sighed into his breakfast cereal and tapped his fingers on the table.

Elizabeth glanced at him. "I know that look. Case not going well, honey?"

"This guy's good, El. He must have been in the room with us, and slipped right between our fingers. We don't know what he looks like. We don't even have a name."

"You'll find him. You and Neal will go back to the gallery in the light, you'll figure out how he escaped, and then you'll have a lead. You always get your guy in the end. You got Neal, remember."

"Neal was chasing Kate. He walked into our trap because he cared about someone. This guy... he has no problems hurting or even killing people. The painting isn't worth much, and can't have too much sentimental value, because he keeps re-selling it. It doesn't make sense. Why would he go to the trouble?"

"Maybe it's a game, like it was with Neal, only instead of escaping the FBI, he's set himself a challenge to always get that painting back, making it harder and harder each time," Elizabeth suggested.

Peter smiled fondly at her. "Now I remember why I married you." He took a final bite of his cereal and carried the plate to the sink. "I'll call if I'm not going to make it home for dinner."

He dropped by June's to pick Neal up on the way to the gallery. Neal could have met him there, but the detour was worth it for June's Italian roast. They didn't pause for long, though. The thief already had the advantage on them, and he was only getting further ahead.

"What about the Winchesters?" Neal asked on the way.

"Road blocks and wanted posters," Peter replied dryly. He was doubtful that the Winchesters would be caught that way – after all, they had evaded the FBI for almost two years and only been in custody twice, once essentially turning themselves in, and the second time after an anonymous tipoff. However, Hughes had handed the investigation over to violent crimes, and there was really nothing he could do about it. Except investigate in your own time, a little voice said in his head. Which he was definitely not going to do this time. El would kill him.

"I think they'll be back," Neal said, "They seemed pretty determined to burn that painting."

"I think so too," said Peter, "I've got Jones following it up. There might be a connection between the reason they want to burn it and the reason it keeps being stolen."

"It's a game," Neal said, "He's selling it and stealing it back from places with more and more sophisticated security systems."

"I know," said Peter, "Now we just need to figure out who he is and how he's doing it."

Peter let Neal out of the car around the corner, in case the thief was watching the gallery, having realised the painting was fake. Neal would arrive at work like it was a normal day, and meet Peter there. He drove up to the gallery, parked, and entered the building, ducking under the crime scene tape across the doorway.

The room was a mess. Broken glass decorated the floor where paintings had fallen, lighting panels were cracked, and there were scuff marks on the walls. One of the walls was heavily indented, like something big had been thrown against it hard. That must have been where Dean Winchester had been thrown against it the night before, and Dean was obviously made of some pretty sturdy stuff if he could be thrown against a wall that hard and still walk. There were a few drops of an oily substance that the forensic team assured him was lighter fluid decorating the floor near where the reproduction of Rivers in Flood had been hanging. They really had come in to burn it, then. Despite the multiple shotgun blasts, there was no buckshot to be found, but there was a large quantity of what appeared to be rock salt embedded in the walls.

But the weirdest thing of all was that there was no sign of forced entry except where the Winchesters had picked the lock in the back room.

XXX

Neal was stopped by an agent he didn't know very well on the way into the gallery. He feigned ignorance, all wide-eyed shock and questions, while the agent took him to Peter. If the thief was watching or had the place bugged, he wouldn't know Neal was with the FBI.

"What happened?" Neal asked.

"It's okay, we've swept for bugs. Ours was the only one. Now, how would you get a painting out of here without opening any doors?"

Neal examined the wreckage. The paintings were askew on the walls, and some were on the floor, canvas torn where the glass of their frames had bitten into them. It improved some of them drastically. It could almost be an art exhibition itself – The Destruction of Horror, or Chaos Breeds, or something. He ran his fingers along the walls, tapping for hollow spots, listening to the sound of his footsteps on the floor.

There were no trapdoors and no loose wall panels, which left ceiling panels and ventilation shafts. None of the ceiling panels could be easily removed from below, but there was always a way into the ceiling – builders included them for access to wiring and insulation. The entry point was in the back room, which meant the thief would have had to get past three Feds and probably three psychopaths who thought they were hunting ghosts. Therefore, there must be another way into the main gallery from the ceiling, either through a ventilation shaft, or through a ceiling panel that was locked in place from above.

The ventilation grate was high up on the wall. Neal dragged Melinda's desk chair under it and climbed up, removing the grate and sticking his head and shoulders inside the shaft. He shone a flashlight up it.

"What do you see?" Peter's voice was muffled.

"Narrow, but doable," Neal reported, his voice echoing around his head. "It's only a couple of feet up into the ceiling, but he'd have to be small and flexible, with decent upper body strength."

"How small?"

"Not much bigger than me. I think he probably used a ceiling panel locked from above, though. Even with a rope, this would be hard to get to in the dark. Wait... it's been used for something."

"What?"

"Someone's been in here; there are scuff marks on the sides."

"Okay, come out, we'll get CSU to look at it."

Neal wriggled backwards out of the small space. Behind him, Peter's voice rose in excitement. "Neal, Neal, look at this and tell me what you see!"

Neal turned and followed Peter's gaze across the room. Directly opposite the ventilation grate was the dent where Dean Winchester had smashed into the wall.

"This is where the booby trap was."

XXX

When Dean woke up, Sam and Cas were already awake. They were peering at something on Sam's laptop, and miraculously not arguing. The smell of motel room coffee wafted over to him.

Cas brought him a cup. "How are your ribs?" he asked. Today was a guilty day, then.

"Fine," Dean said, trying not to grimace as he sat up. "Food?"

"There was a cookie but Sam ate it."

Awesome.

"The feds know about Samuel Angus. We can't use that card anymore, and really shouldn't use credit cards at all. Do you have any cash?" Sam asked. "We should get new IDs. But food first."

Dean nodded, waving his hand in the general direction of his duffel bag, where his wallet was. It was lucky he was friggin' awesome at poker.

They sent Cas for food, because Dean was injured and Sam's size made him conspicuous.

"Wait, Cas," Dean said as Cas opened the door to leave. "Take off the trench coat. It's the middle of summer, people will remember you."

"But-" Cas looked like he was going to refuse for a moment, before the logic of Dean's argument won him over. He frowned, removing the coat slowly and unwillingly. He folded it carefully and handed it to Dean.

It struck Dean as he watched his friend leave that Cas seemed a lot smaller without his coat.

"We're going to have to work on the coat thing," he said to Sam.

Sam looked at him. "Do you really want to talk about people using coats as security blankets? How about cars?"

Point taken. But Cas was getting obsessive about it.

When Cas came back with breakfast, he put his coat back on immediately. He seemed to relax a little when it was back on, and Dean was slightly alarmed to find that he felt better too. Cas looked weird without it.

"So, two things – if the spirit is linked to the painting, how did it attack us when the painting wasn't in the room? And how did it make the painting disappear? Also, what makes you think this witch is controlling it?" Sam asked, carefully finishing his bite of cereal first.

"That's three."

"Three things, then."

Dean considered for a moment. "The reproduction was in the same frame, right? So maybe some tiny traces of the dried blood were left in it when the feds switched the paintings?"

"Okay, that makes sense, I guess, but it's a stretch. I suppose if the witch is binding the spirit it might be able to detach it from its source, too. But what about the fake one disappearing?"

"Maybe it's like the ghost ship, and can disappear and reappear at will."

"Explain yourself," Cas ordered.

"So the witch binds the spirit to the fake painting, right? Only the witch doesn't know it's fake. Then it calls the spirit back to it. The spirit has to follow the spellwork, and the painting is bound to the spirit, so the painting has to go with it. There you go, vanishing painting."

"I don't know, Dean. I guess it's possible in theory, but how do you know there's even a witch involved?"

"He was improbably perfect," Cas said.

"In what way?"

"He sold two of those terrible paintings while we were watching."

"His hair was too perfect."

"His suit was old fashioned, like if someone in the forties made themselves stay young and never changed the way he dressed."

"His second girlfriend had some kind of rare flower I didn't recognise in her buttonhole."

"His second girlfriend?" Sam asked

"They were both smokin' hot, too. And classy."

"Are you sure you aren't just jealous?"

"He was too likeable," Cas backed Dean up. "He made you want to please him. It's some kind of witchcraft."

"I think I was hypnotised by his tie pin," Dean said, "I almost wanted to buy the painting."

"So basically, he's good looking, charming and fashionable, and you stalked him all afternoon?"

"He's suspicious, Sam. All the customers came out with kind of dazed smiles, like they'd been whammied with something."

"Okay, fine. But only because the flower sounds suspicious. Did you get a good look?"

"We were across the road, Sammy."

"We need to find out where he lives."

Ten minutes later, all they could work out was that they were never going to find Matthew Grayson from the internet phone listings. There were thousands, and it probably wasn't even his real name. They would have to follow him home.

They separated for the morning. Dean would follow the witch home, because Sam was a head taller than everyone else in the crowd, and therefore very visible to feds. Sam insisted on buying him an 'I heart NY' cap and a pair of cheap sunglasses as a disguise. Dean felt ridiculous, but had to admit he blended in with the summer tourists, and it was kind of nice to have his face shaded in the heat. He sat outside a different cafe with iced coffee and watched the crime scene across the road. He hoped the guy was inside, because if he hadn't turned up for work Dean was wasting his time and risking his freedom for nothing.

Sam had gone to buy ingredients for a counter-spell that would unbind the spirit and send it back to the original painting, so that it would die when they burned it. He said he'd found it on the internet, but Dean suspected he'd learnt it from Ruby. He didn't push it, though. Sam was still touchy about Ruby, and heightened emotion was bad for the wall.

Cas was sight-seeing, which probably meant he was sitting in the park looking like a homeless person. Which he kind of was. Dean didn't want to think about it.

The witch came out of the gallery at a little before noon. He flipped his hat onto his head, looking far too pleased with himself for someone whose workplace had been broken into and trashed in the night. Dean followed him along the street, keeping well back and blending in with the lunch rush. The insane number of people was good for hiding in, but they also crowded in on him, making him feel trapped and tense and somewhat breathless, and he was glad when the witch turned down a side street with less people. He crossed the road and watched the guy's reflection in the store windows.

Fifteen minutes later, Dean was becoming concerned that he was running out of places to hide. He stood casually behind a streetlamp and resisted the urge to kick a fancily-dressed old lady's pug as it sniffed his feet. It growled at him.

"Not a dog person?" The old lady smiled at him.

"Not anymore," Dean mumbled, watching from the corner of his eye as the witch went into the well-kept old building on the corner.

He arrived at the park to meet Sam and Cas and hour later. Cas was already there, and Dean strongly suspected he'd been sitting there, staring at the trees the whole morning. There was a paper cup beside him that looked like it had contained ice-cream at some point, which was good. At least he was eating now. It jingled when he picked it up so he could sit next to Cas. It was full of change.

"Awesome," said Dean, "About time you started contributing to our finances."

Cas almost cracked a smile.

XXX