The FBI agent that had questioned Cas did not come back into the room for several hours after Cas had stopped talking. Cas was growing impatient. Despite the glass walls, the room was growing confining. Being trapped in a small space with no escape was not something he had experienced before the loss of his grace, and he found it unpleasant. It reminded him of the days immediately after the souls had been taken from him, when he had first realised he could no longer escape the confines of his human body. Something was happening in the office next door. A large number of agents were crowded around a telephone. It would ring periodically and the agent who had questioned him would speak into it briefly, sending those around him into flurries of activity. The agents were looking excited, the way Dean and Sam looked when they were getting close to figuring something out. Everyone seemed to have forgotten him, except the agents at the door.

Cas couldn't sit in the chair any longer. He stood up and began to pace the room, watching the agents through the glass wall. Back and forth, back and forth. The agents looked altogether too gleeful. It worried him, because it meant that either they thought they had solved they case, and were going to confront the witch without the proper preparation and get killed, or that they had found the Winchesters. He thought maybe he should feel a little bad that he hoped it was the former. It disturbed him sometimes how many lives he would trade for Dean's.

Cas was making his seventy-ninth trip across the room towards the door when the agent who had interviewed him came back. He was holding coffee and a donut, and the man Cas and Dean had thought was a witch was with him.

"Sit down, Mr Novak," Agent Burke said, placing the coffee and food on the table. Cas wished he would stop calling him Mr Novak. He did not sit down.

"Remember me?" The man who wasn't a witch asked. He smiled. Cas eyed him suspiciously. People didn't smile at those who had just threatened their life.

"Sit down," Burke insisted, with a somewhat sinister pleasantness. "Eat your breakfast." He indicated the food.

Cas resisted for another moment and then sat down slowly. He sipped some coffee. It was difficult to manoeuvre while wearing handcuffs, but he managed it.

He looked at Agent Burke, wondering if they had come to take him to prison.

"We've been talking to your friend Dean."

A spark of hope rushed through Cas, followed by a groan as he realised it had been Dean on the phone, and he was about to do something stupid.

"He's been asking us questions about our case. Now what we want to know from you, Jimmy, is why he's still here. Is he really that stupid, or does he have some sort of ulterior motive?"

Oh. They were staying for the case. For a second, Cas had thought they might be coming back for him. He mentally kicked himself. A few years ago, before he'd betrayed them, the Winchesters would have certainly come after him on a reckless rescue mission. But not anymore. Cas had seen to that.

Apparently Dean really was stupid enough to stay around and finish the case. Cas wasn't going to say that to the smug man sitting across from him, though. It gave him a strange feeling of annoyance when other people called Dean stupid.

"Do not call me Jimmy," he said.

The shiny man was looking at him with big blue eyes. His hair was perfectly arranged and he was wearing a blue shirt that matched his eyes. He seemed remarkably calm for someone who had been tied up and threatened not long ago. There was something abnormal about him. The man smiled at him. Cas found himself wanting this man to like him, and had to stamp down on the urge to tell him all his secrets. He wasn't at all sure there wasn't some magic involved.

XXX

Dean met up with Sam for breakfast, relying on the hoards of people at the busy fast-food joint to hide them. He hadn't slept all night and from the looks of him Sam hadn't either. They sat in a booth in the back corner to compare notes while they ate.

"Got anything?" He asked Sam through a mouthful of bagel.

Sam opened the laptop and slid it across to him. "Well it took me a few hours," he said, "but I found a few possibilities. This is the most likely."

Dean skim read the article. It was nearly six years old and summarised the conviction of a woman called Felicity Case for art forgery and her subsequent murder after being released from prison. It contained quotes from the arresting officer Peter Burke as well as her husband, Justin Case. Dean snorted at the name.

"Looks likely," he said. "Any way to get hold of him?"

"You're not going to like it," Sam warned him.

"Just say it."

"Justin Case was suspected of working with his wife. Felicity would paint forgeries, Justin would break in and replace originals with the copies, and they would sell the real paintings through a fence. Justin was never caught because the Feds had no evidence and his wife wouldn't testify against him. One of the fences they were suspected of using wasn't arrested at the time but was put away two years ago for a different crime and is still in prison. He probably knows how to get to Justin."

Dean groaned. "You want to go talk to someone at a prison while the feds are after us?" He hissed, leaning across the table to make it harder for the people in the next booth to overhear them. "And you say I'm reckless."

"Well, we could just leave, Dean."

"Dude, we have to save Cas. He won't survive in prison."

"Well, those are our only two options. I already checked the phone directory. There's about a million J. Cases in New York, and he's probably not even using his real name."

Dean took a last gulp of coffee. "How do we get in?"

Sam smiled a little. "Remember that guy we helped out with the poltergeist a few years ago?"

"You're gonna have to be a bit more specific, Sammy."

"Steven Paul. Poltergeist nearly killed his wife. He's a guard at the prison where the fence is doing his time. I already talked to him. He can get us in to talk to him today."

XXX

Neal looked across the table at Jimmy Novak, who was frowning slightly at him. The man sat stiffly in his chair and stared. Neal kept his smile firmly in place and tried not to think about the coldness with which the blue-eyed man had held a gun to his head. He was very glad that Peter was with him and maybe was hiding behind his friend just a little bit.

"We need to know what the Winchesters are planning," Peter prompted again. "We can protect you from them, but you need to tell us what's happening."

Neal thought that this might be a slight miscalculation on Peter's part, but then Peter hadn't been there when Dean was holding his friend back from killing Neal.

"I am not afraid of the Winchesters," Jimmy Novak said, glaring at them.

Neal tried a different tack. "We're going to catch them. It's only a matter of time. They'll never get another false ID again. You gave yourself up so they could get away, so you must have a reason for wanting them to escape. Give us a reason not to shoot if the try to escape when we catch them." He ignored Peter's disapproving look and looked imploringly at Novak.

The man's expression did not change much, but Neal thought he looked a little worried.

"Do not be foolish," Jimmy Novak said, his voice seeming to become deeper and more gravelly. "You are interfering in things you do not understand. The Winchesters are more important than you know and their imprisonment or death will have repercussions for earth and the heavens. You should stop investigating this painting and you should stop chasing the Winchesters. Both are dangerous."

Neal fought the urge to move back and hide where those eyes couldn't bore into him. It was the longest speech the suspect had made and he made it with such intensity that Neal almost believed him. He snuck a glance at Peter, and even the implacable FBI agent seemed a little ruffled. Not so anyone who didn't know him well would notice, but even so it was worrying.

There was a knock on the door and Diana entered. "We got a hit," she said. "Oh, and the psychiatrist is here to talk to Novak."

Neal had very rarely been glad to leave a room in his life. As Peter closed the door behind them, Novak's voice warned: "Do not enter the room with the painting. It will not end well for you."

Diana had been chasing down connections between J.C. and the gallery. If Dean Winchester's deduction was correct, the man responsible for the thefts and murders was cocky enough to use the same initials for all his aliases. Any maintenance worker or electrician working in the area before the opening of the gallery was under suspicion.

"We've got an electrician going by the name of James Carr who came in to set up the lighting for the gallery and a roofer who was repairing the roof two doors down called Jack Carlson," Diana reported. "Either had access to the ceiling and could have set up the escape route without raising alarm bells. Neither has an arrest record or is a known alias and both work for reputable companies."

"Follow them up," Peter said, "We can't miss anything on this one."

A young agent came up to them. He was relatively new and somewhat nervous of Peter. "Sir? We found a connection between Justin Case and you. You arrested his wife nine years ago for art forgery. He was under suspicion for art theft but nothing could be proved."

"But nothing to suggest that J.P. Collins is an alias for Justin Case?"

"No sir."

"Keep looking."

The agent scurried back to his computer.

Neal's cell phone beeped. He pulled it from his pocket, inspecting the screen.

A source informs me

The artist uses the name

Of a German fish

"Mozzie's found Case's new alias," he informed Peter.

Peter read the message over Neal's shoulder. "What the hell does that mean? Why can't he communicate like a normal person?"

"This way is more fun. It means the name Case is going by is Jerry followed by a type of fish that starts with C."

"You couldn't get him to be more specific? What fish starts with C?"

"Well, Clownfish seems improbable. Also Catfish," Neal made his way to the only computer in the place that wasn't in use. "You know Moz. He doesn't want people to know he's helping the feds. He's only doing this because of me."

Diana came back while Neal and Peter were running possible names through the system. Neal was drumming his fingers impatiently. He was glad he wasn't a real FBI agent. This was nearly as boring as sitting in the van.

"The roofer, Jack Carlson is in the clear. He's been with his firm eighteen years, hasn't put a foot wrong the whole time, and has a solid alibi for the night the painting was stolen. There are no irregularities in his bank accounts or phone records. He was fixing the roof seven weeks ago, and says there was no sign of the exit onto the roof then. The firm employing James Carr as an electrician says he had an impeccable record and they checked his references. He demonstrated his ability as an electrician before the hired him, and then quit two weeks ago and hasn't been seen since."

"When did he do the lighting?" Neal asked, glad for the distraction from the computer screen.

"Three weeks ago," Diana said triumphantly.

"Can they identify him if they see him again?" Peter asked.

"Absolutely," Diana replied.

Peter finally stood up from the seat at the computer and collected the list of names and addresses from the printer. "Let's go," he said.

XXX

Steven Paul let Sam and Dean into the prison just as the prisoners were being taken to the mess hall for lunch. Knowing the FBI was after them again made the prison seem darker and colder than last time, and Sam couldn't wait to get out of there.

The man Steven brought to talk to them was small and dapper and visibly trembled when they pretended to work for the mob. Sam didn't really know anything about the mob except what he'd read in books, and Dean was apparently channelling The Godfather, but it seemed to work.

The guy sang like a canary.

Sam had always wanted to use that expression.

XXXX