Thanks to everyone who read and A ninny Mouse and two guests for reviewing.

This is clearly not going to be a two-shot, but we'll see how long it does get.


He was going to be sick. It was the first thought that Prophet had upon waking, and it wasn't until the dry heaves finally stopped—he should have eaten something when Mick had been making a mess of his cupboards in search of sandwich supplies earlier; it wouldn't have been any more pleasant but at least it might have hurt less—that he realized that it was dark out. He could see some light coming from the living room, but from the muted color and inconsistent flickers it was just something playing on the television.

There had been plenty of light when Mick had pulled him inside, but he didn't have any idea when that had been. He'd come in because Mick had wanted him to, not because he'd cared about the time or the temperature or anything else. The sight of the first little boy had been bad enough, but the second with his blond curls and freckles….

A flash of fire—pain and sorrow overwhelmed by fury—swept through him and Prophet jerked around and slammed a hand against the wall. He had to lock his teeth as another violent roll of his stomach warred with a spike of pain shooting up his arm, but he welcomed the distraction. For the most part he took after his father in appearance, but Ty's features had been an echo of their mother's, and if that second boy hadn't been identical he'd still looked more like him than Prophet was comfortable with. Or maybe it was just the manner of his death drawing more parallels than there really were in his mind.

When the image faded he took a few deep breaths to settle himself again and then rinsed his mouth out in the sink. The pain in his hand redoubled as he gripped the faucet, and when he flipped on the light he winced at the mess he'd made of his knuckles. The palms and heels of his hands were badly bruised as well, and that hit against the wall a moment ago hadn't helped the situation. He gritted his teeth and then closed both hands slowly into fists before relaxing them again, hissing as more scabs split and bled. At least nothing felt broken. He'd gotten lucky.

He glanced back towards his room and the punching bag as a vague memory intruded. He really, really hoped that he wasn't remembering correctly and that Mick hadn't been holding the bag when he'd finally lost it, but he doubted it.

Damn it all, Mick knew better than that. It was smarter than the sparring that Coop preferred, granted, and that was probably just as well for both of their sakes because Mick had taken a few turns against the bag as well, but all it would have taken was one miss, one wild swing….

Prophet turned back around, taking a few minutes to clean his hands and bandage the worst of the cuts, and then headed out into the main room.

"Mick?" He kept his voice down as he looked over the back of the couch and was glad that he had when he found Mick lying on his side fast asleep. The numbers glaring out at him from the box under the television read out barely half past ten, but he wasn't the only one who hadn't gotten much sleep on this case, and apparently the soccer game—Mick had an unholy knack for finding them on channels that Prophet didn't even know that he got—hadn't been worth staying up for. "Night, bud."

He wasn't at all hungry and under the circumstances probably wouldn't feel hungry again for a few days, but given that he hadn't eaten with Mick earlier or had any breakfast after the plane landed…actually now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure when he had last eaten. He had a vague recollection of Gina shoving something into his hand yesterday, or maybe it had been Beth since she had a thing for weirdly-colored smoothies, but that was about it. Yeah, time for dinner. Or at least some crackers or something.

The bag of tortilla chips that had been living on top of the fridge was gone, but there were some saltines in the back of the pantry, and he grabbed the opened pack out of the box and a glass of water and went to sit on the floor in front of the couch. Soccer was not his favorite sport, although he was a lot more familiar with it now than he had been a few years ago, and he rescued the remote from Mick's loose grip—even in the low light his knuckles didn't look too much better than Prophet's—and began to flip. There had to be a baseball game on somewhere.

As it turned out there wasn't, but an old not-actually-supposed-to-be-funny horror flick was good enough, and he leaned back against the couch and began to eat through his pack of crackers. He was pretty sure they were stale. He was also pretty sure that he didn't care.

"Snacks."

The word actually followed on the heels of a hand reaching over Prophet's shoulder and snatching away the cracker halfway to his mouth, and Prophet bit off a startled curse and twisted around to glare at Mick even as he ordered his heart to get back into his chest.

"Sorry," Mick said with a grin, making short work of the cracker. And then grimacing. "Nasty. You need to buy new snacks, mate."

"A, no you're not, and B, there used to be chips but they've mysteriously disappeared."

"You act like that's my fault."

"It usually is."

Mick rolled onto his back, and Prophet heard his shoulders pop as he stretched. "What happened to my football game, anyway?"

"Don't remember seeing any football, but during the soccer game one of the players stubbed his toe and the screaming was getting on my nerves. Do they all take drama classes before they're allowed to step onto the field?"

"Football involves people using their feet," Mick said with exaggerated patience. "See how that makes sense? What you call football is a bunch of guys dressing up in a hundred pounds of padding to play rugby."

"You're going there again, huh?"

Mick rolled back onto his side and reached out to steal another cracker. "Seriously, mate, these are disgusting."

"Then stop eating them."

"You first."

Prophet had eaten far worse than stale crackers in his lifetime and knew Mick had too—different circumstances, maybe, but they both knew that there were times when you ate what was available—but there wasn't much point in bringing that up. Especially since this wasn't one of those circumstances. "All right, all right. You want something else? Spaghetti?" A real meal wouldn't hurt either of them even if they weren't actually hungry, and that was about the fastest thing he had.

"I like spaghetti," Mick agreed.

Or regardless of whether he was actually hungry, apparently. "Come on."

Mick followed him into the kitchen, snagging the pack of crackers and tossing in the trash before Prophet could put it back in the pantry. Prophet started to object, but Mick's "Shite, mate, your hands are a mess," when he turned the lights on cut off the words before he could voice them.

"Yeah, I noticed. I also notice that yours don't look too much better. There are more bandages in the bathroom if you want."

"Yeah, that's not a bad idea. Meatballs first, though." Mick rescued them from the freezer and put them in the microwave to thaw and then headed for the bathroom.

Prophet put the water on to boil and followed. "Need a hand?"

Mick looked up and grimaced. "Wouldn't argue. Fingers are a pain."

"Especially when they're on the dominant hand." As long as they were in here, he was going to get Mick to help with a couple more of his. "You know it was damn stupid to be holding that punching bag, don't you?" Prophet asked as they worked.

"I don't see it that way."

"Yeah, well, you need to have your head examined."

"Don't see it that way either."

They were never going to agree, and Prophet knew it. He'd explained to Mick a time or two before that they didn't put people in prison for creative use of invectives—you'd think Mick would know that by now, but sometimes Prophet wondered—and Mick knew him well enough to know that on the worst days his temper still scared him, but he didn't care. Or he didn't believe that Prophet would ever lash out at him which wasn't exactly something that Prophet wanted to prove him wrong about, but…. "I don't like you in front of me when I'm like that," Prophet said. "You know that."

"I know you worry too much." For a minute it looked like Mick was going to say something else, but then he shook his head. "And you're going to need more tape."

Prophet glared and then gave it up. For now, at least. "There's more in my dresser."


Prophet checked his watch and then shifted the bag of Chinese and hit the bell. Good, still plenty of time to get settled in before the game despite the hold up in the takeout line.

The door opened a moment later, and Mick grinned and waved him in. "You got the good noodles this time, right?"

"Yes, I got the good noodles this time," Prophet said with a roll of his eyes, pushing past towards the kitchen. "If you don't stop bringing that up I'm going to keep all the fortune cookies for myself."

"Try it; I've got the beer."

That was actually a good defense. Prophet dropped the takeout bag on the counter and grabbed a plate. "Anyone else coming over? I know Gina said she was having dinner with her sister." And was as conflicted as ever about it, although she was definitely less hesitant about those dinners when her mother wasn't also planning to attend. He'd picked up enough food for all of them, but it wasn't like he or Mick objected to leftovers.

"Nah. Coop said something about an art gallery opening, and Beth asked where I got the impression that she was at all interested in basketball."

Prophet grinned and dished himself a few extra pieces of chicken. "Sounds about right."

"Kind of needed to talk to you anyway."

His tone was enough to make Prophet pause. "I'm always here if you want to talk, you know that. What's up?"

"You might kick my arse for it."

He still wasn't holding a plate, and Prophet frowned and put his down. "Managed to keep myself from doing that so far, despite all temptation and stolen pens. What's so different about whatever this is?"

Mick opened his mouth to answer and then stopped himself and reached for a plate. "Let's eat first."

"That's not real comforting, you know." The last couple weeks had been reasonably quiet, enough so to let them all regain some equilibrium, and Prophet had no idea what might be making Mick look worried now. Prophet and Gina had had their heads together over a pair of serial rapist profiles for most of it—one in Anchorage and one in Austin, but with enough similarities between them that they could handle both remotely at the same time especially after Coop had joined them—but as far as he knew Mick's focus had been with Beth on a geological profile of a stalker up in the Olympic Mountains. And before that he'd been getting some courtroom experience, going with Coop up to Boston when Coop had been called to testify in a spree killer case. Neither of those was something that was likely to have shaken him, and why he thought Prophet might be upset Prophet didn't even have a guess. Prophet hadn't even had a serious nightmare in almost a week. "Come on, spit it out."

"I asked Garcia to do some digging."

"We're always asking her to dig. I'd nominate her for sainthood if I didn't know that she prefers gift baskets."

"I asked her to dig for cases that matched the signature in your brother's."

Prophet was suddenly very glad that he'd put the plate down. "Damn it, Mick."

"Told you that you were going to be angry." He shook his head. "I know I shouldn't have, and I'm sorry, but with what you told me it seemed like there had to be something. And if I asked you would have said no."

He already had said no as he recalled, or at least he'd said something that should have been interpreted as such, and Prophet hooked his arms over his chest. "As tempting as it is to knock a couple teeth in, I'm assuming you're telling me this for a reason." It was entirely possible that Mick's entire reasoning was that he didn't want Prophet finding out on his own—Garcia was a great tech analyst but not always the best at keeping secrets—but even so Prophet wanted to hear it.

"She found something. Seven somethings."

For a moment Prophet couldn't even process what he'd heard, and when he had he still couldn't believe it. "You're shitting me. I looked; there was nothing."

"You said nothing in the last twenty years. I looked earlier." Mick shrugged slightly. "There's been a big push to bring rural police precincts into the 21st century. Special grants for technology, training, all of that."

"I know that," Prophet snapped, suddenly borderline furious, and his arms snapped back to his sides. "They've been trying for years. Make a point."

"One of the requirements for one of the latest grants was that a certain percentage of records had to be computerized by the end of last year. Apparently it was enough money that a bunch of places actually did the work."

The surge of anger ran out again as quickly as it had come. "Christ."

"Search parameters were boys ages eight to sixteen killed in rural areas in the southeastern part of the country between 1975 and 1990." He met Prophet's eyes and then looked away. "But that turned up too many records so I had her filter on cases where the bodies had evidence of mutilation with an edged weapon."

"And she found seven of them?" He heard his voice crack on the last word and clenched his hands hard enough that his nails bit into his palms. He'd told himself that it was better that he hadn't found anything when he'd looked—he'd known that there had to be others somewhere, but if he couldn't find them he couldn't do anything—but the fact that he had confirmation now….

"Almost twice that, but a couple had evidence of severe, ongoing physical abuse before their deaths, one died in a very twisted family annihilator situation, that kind of thing. There were seven that matched your brother's." He met Prophet's eyes again. "All of them are unsolved. A couple files list suspects, in one or two towns they even made an arrest, but nothing came of any of it. As far as I could tell none of them seemed to involve any actual evidence."

"Every town has a couple scapegraces." It wouldn't have been out of character for some town n'er-do-well to have been arrested, tried, and even convicted even with no evidence given the kind of fear that followed a killing like Ty's. "Where are the files? On your computer?" A pause as his stomach dropped. "Don't tell me at the office." If they were at the office he was going to have to go there, and right now he was damn sure that he didn't have any business driving. Coop tended more towards sharp comments than real dressing downs, but Prophet had gotten a couple of them after their last case—specifically after he'd driven off unable to even focus on his own teammates after their last case—and he wasn't interested in receiving any more.

"I printed them out. They're in my bag." Mick looked at the food on the counter again and then shook his head. "Come on."

Prophet sank down on the couch and accepted a stack of folders from Mick. It was hard as hell to open the first one, but when he did he had to fight to keep his breathing even. He didn't know the boy in the picture, but that didn't make it any better. The knife work from their last case had been enough to give him nightmares, this….

"Mate?" Mick asked quietly.

Prophet closed his eyes and made himself focus. This boy was a little older than Ty had been, just barely a teenager, and the cuts were more extensive than he remembered. The pattern was damningly similar, though.

"It looks like he was working his way up this line of mountains," Mick said slowly, producing a map with multiple dots on it.

"The ridge," Prophet found himself correcting, surprised at how even his voice was.

"What?"

"We called it the ridge. All the locals did."

"Oh. Okay. Well, the oldest killings are from down in this area, and then they start to work their way north, and then at the end of the ridge he starts south again. Only two going that direction, though, and then it just stops."

Mick tapped two dots lightly, the last ones in the series from the dates next to them, and then passed the map to Prophet.

"Did he take up somewhere else?" Prophet asked.

"It doesn't look like it. I asked Garcia to do a nationwide search and widened the date range up through 2000 just in case but it didn't turn up anything similar. And I know you searched after that. Plus those records would have gone straight into the computers anyway."

Prophet traced the line of dots lightly and then frowned and did a quick count of the files in front of him. "Where's Ty's?"

"What?"

"Ty's file."

Mick looked away. "There isn't one."

"You've got Cartersville marked, Mick, and I know damn well I never told you where I grew up. I doubt even Coop knows since we didn't have a hospital of our own and my birth certificate will tell you that I'm from over in Watertown. With eight dots and seven files here it's not hard to figure which one you'd keep back."

"Proph, you don't need to see—"

"Now, Mick. I won't much like myself afterwards, but I will hit you if you don't hand it over."

Mick sighed and pulled another folder out of his bag. "Please, mate."

"I've seen it before."

"That isn't going to make it better."

He was right, but Prophet wasn't going to let that stop him. He'd been stubborn enough at fifteen to look even when he hadn't really understood what he was seeing; he was stubborn enough now to do so again when he did. He braced himself and flipped the folder open. It was even worse than the first since he knew the eyes looking up at him from that first grainy photo—they matched the ones he saw every day when he looked in the mirror—and the curly blond hair and freckles were just like he remembered, but after a few minutes he closed his eyes and turned the photos over, making himself focus on the diagrams instead. He hadn't misremembered; it was bad but there were definitely fewer cuts than the first he'd opened. Not nearly enough fewer, but it was an indication of something. "He was still evolving, wasn't he?" Pheard himself ask.

"It looks like it," Mick agreed. "I've checked all of them, and it gets more extensive the further north you go. And then more when he started coming back down too. He had his base pattern down early, the killing stroke for sure, but I think he was still working up to his fantasy."

Prophet swallowed bile. "Do the others know about this?"

"Coop, does. Or at least he knows what I asked Garcia to look into. I told him when we were up in Boston. I don't think Gina or Beth do, but they'll help. If you want to tell them." A pause. "Like I said, I know I should have asked, but you would have said no, and you know how well I handle being told to drop something."

He didn't handle it; the kid was like a damn pitbull when it came to things like that. Most of the time Prophet appreciated that quality. "God." Prophet rubbed his forehead.

"There's no reason we can't, Proph. We've all got our cold cases."

"And we have active cases and victims we might still be able to save."

Mick's expression couldn't have said 'don't be an idiot' any more clearly than if he'd actually said the words, and it wasn't like he didn't have a point. Active cases had priority, sure, but cold cases were what they worked in their downtime, and adding one more wouldn't make much of a difference.

"Do you want to drop it?" Mick asked quietly.

Prophet closed his eyes and then shut Ty's folder carefully. "I'll talk to Coop. And maybe Gina and Beth. But not until after I've looked through the rest of these." A pause. "Keep your mouth shut until then, all right?"

"That I can do."

"And I'm keeping the fortune cookies."

"Well, I'm sure as hell not sharing the beer tonight."