A/N: Here's another update. Sorry it's been so long between them. This last week has been very tough with Mom and very busy with a new account at work requiring overtime. Add in all my spring orders arriving to plant plus music, and my unclaimed time has been nearly nonexistent. Lots of writing going on mentally, though. I've often wished I could simply download from my head instead of typing it up; it would be faster. The spring plantings and the current music push should both ease up in another few weeks.

About Foreman, yes, he should have searched better, too. House will address that. It's fun to give Taub a little quality time and interaction with House in this case. I always sensed a link and fondness between Taub and Kutner, though Taub tried to stay unemotional. To me, one of the most poignant scenes in Simple Explanations was Taub breaking down privately at the end.

Enjoy this update, and thanks for reading and reviewing.

(H/C)

House simply pulled out Kutner's keys as they approached the door to his apartment. He did catch Templeton's faint air of disappointment, quickly concealed. "I'll take your word for it that you can pick a lock and credit your score appropriately. So can Ramirez. Hollingwood, now, that surprised me."

Templeton eyed him. "That surprised me, too. But how do you know Ramirez can? She didn't do anything yesterday except stand there."

"Right. She so pointedly didn't do anything that it was clear that she could have done something." House inserted the key in the lock, and the beginning of his nightmare stirred in the back of his mind. The door hadn't been locked there. Was that trying to tell him something?

It was definitely locked now. Foreman had at least been that careful with the search yesterday, leaving all secure behind him. House mentally scheduled a private talk with Foreman later today, but that could wait until after the current assignment. The research he and Taub were doing might make a difference to Kutner; maybe something new was known in the world that he had somehow missed. House had to admit that the last six months, slammed full of his mother's death, his father's presence, and the track explosion, had diverted some of his attention, and he hadn't been reading medical journals as voraciously as he usually did.

The door yielded to the key, and he stepped in. The apartment already had that feeling of emptiness, knowing its person was absent. Now that his nightmare was back in mind, House made himself face it and call it for what it was, just a dream. Neither Kutner nor Blythe nor the old man was in that bedroom right now, help if needed for any reason was only a phone call away, and the ceiling wasn't going to fall in and bury him. He soaked up the atmosphere of the real apartment, even empty, and it helped. The dream was not the reality.

All at once, he felt guilty. Cuddy had needed to see him this morning for the same reason. He could have been a little more understanding in that encounter than he had been. He had even belittled her dream while still shaken by his own.

Templeton, unaware of House's thoughts, made a beeline for the desk. House shook himself into action and followed him. Templeton searched swiftly but thoroughly, inspecting each item on the surface, going through the contents of each drawer. There was no passport. Templeton's shoulders relaxed slightly. "I did search the whole desk yesterday," he said, turning to face House.

House nodded. "But you still thought after the fact that you might have been distracted by the laptop, so you did it again. That's good. Never be afraid to double check your work if you think later that you might have missed something." Templeton looked surprised. "Newsflash, hot shot. Nobody goes through a medical career without missing things. Even I have once or twice over the decades. Everybody has. How you react to that can still make a difference to your patient." House looked around the apartment, turning slowly for a full view. "Now, the new question is, if not in the desk, where is that passport?"

"Safe deposit box? No key." Templeton answered his own point even before House could.

"Yes. Also not in character. Consider the patient's style if you know it. Kutner likes gadgets and games, is half a kid on some level even while he's still a very good doctor. Anything with cool factor gets bonus points from him. Where would a very intelligent kid put his valuables? What's wrong with how you searched now?"

Templeton was trying hard, House could tell. "I'd hide it." House waited, wanting to see if he could come to it. Templeton turned back to the desk. "Some kind of secret compartment? But if we're assuming he was already not feeling well when he got back from his trip, didn't even unpack his suitcase, would he take time to rehide the passport that extensively right then?"

"Good question," House admitted. It was one.

Templeton removed the top desk drawer completely and checked the underside of it - nothing taped there - then peered into the gap. He stopped after a moment and looked back at House. "Do you already know where the passport is?" he asked suddenly.

"No," House said. Templeton studied him, then turned back to the search. "What makes you think that?" House asked.

"There's something different in your attitude this morning. Can't quite put a finger on it." Templeton pulled out the second drawer.

House picked up a framed picture from the top of the desk. It was a double frame, Kutner with his biological parents on one side, with his adoptive parents on the other. The good and the bad together. He was impressed all over again with his fellow's strength and courage in how he'd dealt with his past.

"Behind the picture frame? Wouldn't fit." Templeton had finished emptying the desk and was watching him again.

"No, it wouldn't." House put the picture back. Wrong timetable or not, that anniversary last week mattered in all this. He could feel it. He turned to the drawer-less desk. "Get down and tap on it all around inside."

Templeton at least didn't point out that House would have had trouble doing that, though House had tightened up his grip on the cane, defensive in posture himself now. He caught it a moment later and forced himself to relax, listening to the taps. No different wood or thickness tones. No hollow areas. There wasn't a secret compartment in the desk.

"It's not here," Templeton confirmed. He stood back up.

"Put the drawers back," House ordered. Not that that was necessary to the search, but might as well leave Kutner's place as near original status as they could. "Where else would be a good, neat hiding place. Think." That last was an order to both of them. He started next for the shelf of DVDs and video games.

Templeton was getting into the spirit of it now and caught up with him after replacing the drawers. "Behind the cases?"

House's hand was running along the back of the upper shelf, and Templeton started doing so himself on the bottom. "Nice theory, but no." Templeton sighed. "What about in the cases?" House suggested. "A dummy case. Kutner would appreciate that."

Templeton started at one end without comment, opening and inspecting each case. He again took the lower shelf, kneeling, and House started on the one above. "We should have had a class on breaking and entering and search in med school," Templeton joked as he worked. "It would have helped."

"Yes, you should have," House agreed, and the younger man looked up at him, surprised. "Remember this, damn it. Passports aren't the only things that hide. Diseases do. If people thought of it even in the differential as looking for what's hidden, either intentionally or accidentally, or as trying to pick locked doors, it would help. This has a lot of relevance to diagnosing a patient."

Slowly, Templeton nodded. They kept working in silence, but there was a new awareness in him now. House watched him. This one would go a long way, he thought. Eventually. He had to get past his arrogance and innate competitiveness first, which were strong enough to interfere, but the raw materials were there.

House froze, his eyes on the next case. He knew even before he picked it up. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a thicker multidisk pack with lots of bonus features advertised. The crazy comedy about searching for buried treasure. Kutner would appreciate the joke. He pulled it out and opened it.

The case was just a shell. Inside was a passport, a Sentry firesafe key, a small birthday card, and a blood draw tube with a stopper in the end of it. House opened the passport first. It was stamped in and out of Delhi four weeks ago, arrival and departure barely a day apart. A very slammed 1-day trip during a weekend to India. Counting air time, roughly 15 hours each way, it was possible between Friday afternoon and Monday morning but strenuous.

Templeton pressed in, looking at the different contents, and House handed him the passport. India. Home of year-round malaria with its wide-ranging climate. Damn it, Kutner, why didn't you take preventative pills? House answered his own question. Because it had been a last minute trip, impulsive, not prepared for and thought out. But why? And why not last week during the week of vacation when it would have been much less of a frantic timetable?

"India." Templeton shook his head. "That opens up a whole new field."

"Call the others and tell them," House said. Templeton pulled out his cell phone. House looked at the other items in the case. The key taped to the back obviously went to one of those firesafes, and it would be here in the apartment somewhere, too, also hidden. Templeton had missed it, and what's more, Foreman had. Might not be relevant now, but it might.

The birthday card was a small one and had a cartoon child surrounded by balloons. Happy sixth birthday! Inside, it was signed love Mom and Dad. The last card ever from his birth parents. The test tube was next considered. It seemed to be full of dirt. House pulled the stopper out and sniffed the contents. Yes, dirt. He restopped it, put it in his pocket along with the safe key, and replaced the card into the case. Reshelving Mad World, he turned to Templeton.

"That is interesting," Templeton said to Hollingwood. House could tell from tone that he had called her, not Ramirez. But what was interesting? "Okay. We haven't finished searching yet, but we'll be back to the hospital soon." He hung up.

"What's interesting?" House demanded.

"He found an old friend of his parents on Facebook back around January. His dad finally remembered that, but he doesn't remember the name. It's probably in that laptop."

"Do we need to go further in searching now that we have the passport?" House asked. He wanted to see what the kid's answer was.

Templeton took time to actually think about it, not just curiosity on display. "I'd say yes. At least make sure there's nothing else obvious that we've missed. We don't know what else might be relevant. And we did miss the car yesterday."

House nodded. "Okay. Good." Templeton started to head for the bedroom, then stopped, looking back. "How do we know there's only one false case?" House prompted.

Templeton returned, and they resumed checking the DVDs and games. "We didn't really look through his suitcase that thoroughly either," he admitted. "We also might be able to tell how long his trip last week was from the number of clothes in it. Didn't think about that before."

"Now you're getting the idea."

They kept working, Templeton musing out loud about tropical diseases. Before they had finished the apartment, he had suggested malaria, and House told him to call and tell the women to run a blood smear. His call found them in the lab doing it at that moment. They had already had the same idea.

With the diagnosis in hand and all aware of it, the two men left the apartment, heading back for the hospital with a quick look into the car on the way. After House locked the front door again, his fingers brushed the test tube in his pocket, and he carefully put Kutner's keyring in the other one so there was no chance of breaking it. Time to go check on treatment - but he was still going to test whatever this was himself, and later, he would find that as-yet-unfound fire safe.