For: The lovely and patient dm24, who bought me in Sweet Charity
Betaed by: doccy, jebbypal and mitchy who went way above and beyond and made it to read good! any lingering errors or Englishisms are mine all mine. Also, thank you to deathisyourart and the-blonde-one for their physics knowings!
Notes: Nothing belongs to me, not making any profit, etc etc etc.
Feedback: A kindness, not a toll

The latest victim was in her fifties, remained unidentified and had brought them no closer to finding a link than the victim before her had. But here he was, in his father's – Charlie's – house, closing in on nothing but midnight and trying to connect the dots anyway.

Didn't he used to have better things to do on a Saturday night?

Alan sat quietly in the easy chair in the corner, reading the newspaper he'd rescued from under a pile of books on the coffee table. He glanced up from behind it with a questioning expression. "Okay, Donnie?"

"Yeah. There's just a hell of a lot of … ", he gestured at the files and folders piled around him. "Nothing. There's a hell of a lot of nothing."

He let the report fall onto the table and slumped back in the chair, stretching the tightness in his back away.

A hand, followed by an arm, reached past his shoulder and put a bottle of beer on the table at his elbow, then picked the file up on its way back. "'The Lightning Killer', that's lurid. And this data is anomalous."

"Thanks." The beer was cold and washed a little of the fog gathering in his mind away. "Anomalous how?"

"Last year there were over two hundred fatalities from lightning strikes, but that was over the entire country. You've got sixteen in one city - city, not rural, for a start. And over half of them are women? Statistically, men are four times more likely to be struck by lightning."

"Seems kinda …" Don turned his head to look up at his brother. "How do you even know that?"

Charlie grinned down at him. "Actually, it's interesting. I went to a talk on the application of neural networks in-"

"Never mind." Don took the file back and flipped it closed as he dropped it back down amongst the others. "Anyway, why are you still here? I thought you and Amita were, you know. The weekend?"

"She got caught up in her work. I was in the garage."

"And you ... don't mind? You've been talking about it all week."

Charlie shrugged and drew a chair out from under the table. "Hey, it's a real breakthrough for her, I'd do the same thing. There're other weekends but there's only one traveling salesman. It's exciting."

Don studied him blankly for a moment. "Right. Sounds it."

"So, lightning strikes?"

He half-smiled and shook his head. "Well, probably not. I mean, we didn't go to a talk, but we caught on that it wasn't natural, or random, pretty fast. The victims weren't killed by lightning."

"It does only kill about twenty percent of the people it strikes."

"Decapitation's odds are a little higher." A condensation trail ran from the bottle and began to pool on the tabletop; he pushed the papers most in danger away and heard a couple of soft thuds as he lost files over the side.

Charlie took the opportunity to lean forward and claim the report again, and Don let him. Maybe he'd see something they'd missed. Hell, at this point Don was ready to bring in the psychics; he wondered whether he should have involved Charlie already. Probably, but it got a little easier every time he did and that made him uncomfortable. Until he figured out why, his brother would stay the last resort.

Charlie's eyes flickered left and right as he skimmed over the document, Don could tell he'd reached the coroner's notes when they widened. "They all had their head cut off?"

"Uh huh. Then, they were fried. Overkill, huh?"

"Except they weren't. A dead body would still be damaged by electricity; it can't have been lightning. Not a direct strike, anyway. Where is this?"

"Seacouver. It's their local media calling them 'The Lightning Killings'. Pretty weak."

"Huh. Larry lectured there for about half a year, came back to CalSci. He never said why. Well, he said something about swallows, but …"

"Did you ask him?"

Charlie scowled. "Of course I asked him."

Don raised his hands and then dropped them down on the table. "Hey, sometimes you get a little-"

"I asked him." Charlie decided not to mention it had been Amita who'd asked. He'd just been glad Larry was back. "Seacouver's up near Washington, right? Why did you, you know … catch it?"

Don hid his smile at Charlie's hesitation at 'catch', he tried to speak the jargon he heard the others use, but he still hadn't gotten it down yet. "Because it's got the same markings as a case from a few years ago and a guy from our department was SAC. He was already there, so. I don't know. I guess they figured that made it ours again.

"David and Colby flew in yesterday, me and Megan are driving up tomorrow."

"You taking anyone else?"

"You saying you want to come along?" Don didn't hide his grin this time and Charlie ducked his head.

"Hey, you know, you don't want-"

"Be outside the door at six. And I mean six, okay? In the morning. Six."

"I know what six is, Don."

From behind his newspaper, Alan spoke levelly. "You know what it is, you've just never been there."

Don nodded. "Thank you."

Charlie laughed. "I've seen more early mornings than either of you."

Don shook his head and began trying to pull the paperwork into a manageable pile. "From the wrong side; it doesn't count when you've been up all night."

"Does." Arms crossed and the head drew towards the shoulders. Don would have sworn on a stack of bibles that Charlie was pouting like he was six and it was the last cookie incident all over again.

"Doesn't." He reasoned that he kind of couldn't help it; the petulant tone hit on every brotherly instinct in him. He hadn't been able to help it with the cookies either.

Alan coughed before they could reach the embarrassing 'times infinity' levels of bickering. "Seacouver, huh?"

"What, you want to come now too?"

The newspaper rustled as it was lowered and folded; Alan shook his head with more vehemence than Don was used to. "No, I do not."

"Sounds like the voice of experience."

"Eh, conference back twenty, twenty five years. Didn't think much of the place. It's where I got that seashell for your mother." Don followed his father's gaze to the pearl-sheened shell on the mantle.

"Well, maybe it's changed."

"Maybe it hasn't. You'd be surprised how much some things don't change."

Alan took a breath and hauled himself out of the chair with a light groan. "And if you two are going to be clattering around the house so early, I'm going to bed. Stay safe, Donnie."

That was an old code, from long before the FBI. It meant, 'stay safe and watch Charlie like a hawk.'

"Always do. Night."

Don turned back to his brother as Alan made his way up the creaking stairs.

"Six."

Charlie sighed and stood to help gather the papers that had fallen to the floor. "Six. It's a perfect number, a harmonic divisor and, and the fourth all-Harshad, I get it already."

"Perfect? It's got a nice shape, I guess. Curly. I like it."

"Never mind. Six. In the morning." Charlie handed him the files and waved him impatiently towards the door. Don grinned and left.

Charlie was standing outside the door at six but Don wasn't fooled. He was right to be suspicious; once the car had drawn up to the curb, Charlie took all of two steps towards it and then turned a one eighty.

"There's a book I should-"

Don nodded. "You have five minutes and we're leaving."

Megan watched Charlie sprint inside the house. "We're going to hit traffic anyway, there's no rush."

"No, but if I give him five he'll take fifteen. Tell him there's no rush and we'll still be sitting here tomorrow. When we were kids, going on trips, Dad didn't even bother trying. Just threw him in the back seat, blankets and everything." Don smirked and Megan shook her head, amused.

"Let's call that 'Plan A', or we'll run out of sandwiches."

"You made sandwiches?" That seemed weirdly domesticated for Megan.

She shook her head again and pulled the top of a deli take out bag from her sports bag. "I bought sandwiches."

"Everything's right with my world."

"I can cook when I want to."

"Yeah," he turned his head to look at her. "I don't think sandwiches count as cooking."

"You haven't seen my sandwiches." She sniffed and straightened in her seat, the model of offended womanhood. He might have apologised if she hadn't had the laughter lighting her eyes.

"If they burn, you're doing it wrong – hey!" He hunched away from her light smack on his shoulder. "No hitting the driver."

Megan subsided and the light faded but stayed warm. "You're in a good mood."

"Yeah," he nodded and righted himself again. "I guess I am."

They watched as Charlie struggled out of the door with another bag to match the two already lying on the curb.

Don tapped the wheel lightly as all the bags were slung in the trunk and waited until Charlie was half sprawled in the back seat of the Sedan to speak. "Six."

"Six minutes past six. I would have made six seconds but Dad cornered me about the light in the basement."

Oh. Yeah. Don turned enough to look at his brother and delivered the forgotten message deadpan. "You need to fix it."

"Yeah, I got that. Thanks. Hey Megan."

"Charlie." Megan smiled and shifted to avoid being kicked in the back while he settled himself comfortably. As the car pulled into the road he leant forward, bracing his arms on the backs of their seats.

"So, tell me who would cut their victim's head off and then create power surges massive enough to mark the crime scene."

"Well, that's the question of the day." Despite herself, she fell into the reporting cadence, even if Don had heard all this before and Charlie wouldn't care. "It's someone who likes attention, obviously. Or someones. This could be a copycat; there was a very similar case in the nineties. There's some pretty compelling evidence that it's the same person, though."

"Yeah, Don said something about that. What happened last time?" Charlie's hair brushed her face, she fought the urge to tell him to sit back and put his seatbelt on. He had to know better anyone else the forces involved in collision and given how safety-conscience he usually was, she could only assume he thought the odds of that happening were small.

She wondered if Don knew how much faith Charlie had in him.

"Last time. Well, we'd like to know that too." Megan smiled thinly. "The SAC closed the case and it stayed closed for twelve years, buried. Four deaths under the same MO. There've been sixteen since - sixteen we know about, anyway. One or two a year and then seven in the last two weeks. I have no idea what the Seacouver PD was thinking, trying to keep it under wraps."

Charlie nodded, understanding Megan's sudden lack of humour. "But you think he hid it. Originally."

Don coughed a laugh that barely managed to be half amused. "It's that or he was really incompetent. I don't know which one's better."

"Is the agent-in-charge still around?"

"McCormick dropped off the grid in ninety-seven. There was an investigation but the working theory is he was taken out by the mob. The guy's record was impeccable, though. He doesn't read like someone who'd bury a file deliberately or by mistake."

"But McCormick disappears a year after this case is buried and that's not … weird?"

Megan nodded. "Let's just say we're not ruling out a link on that one."

Charlie drew back and she heard the sounds she associated with someone trying to get comfortable in a space too small to do it. She felt a faint pang of guilt but nowhere near enough to give up the front seat. He finally leaned forward again. "You realise we're not going to get there until midnight, why are we driving?"

Don answered soberly. "Budget cuts."

"You're not serious."

"Sure. They have us make our own badges too, now."

"Funny. Tell me or I'm going to be asking if we're nearly there yet every third of a mile. That averages every eighteen point three nine seconds, Don. Not counting how long it takes to actually say, 'Are we there yet?' Over the next seventeen and a half hours, I'll spend approximately seven point eight three percent of the time asking if we're there,Don."

Megan turned her head enough to look back at him and didn't try to hide her horrified admiration. "You guys must have been a lot of fun to take on trips."

Don smirked as she straightened again. "Ask me about cow bingo some time."

"Yeah, I don't think I will. McCormick's ex-partner retired to Sacramento, Charlie. We're going to call on her and drive the rest of the way on Monday."

"I thought you had people for that kind of thing. An entire bureau of investigation, you know?"

She shrugged. "I want to talk to her myself. Besides, what's wrong with a road trip?"

Charlie smiled. "I didn't go on those even when I was a student."

"Then you're due." She dug in her bag for a moment and then held up a slightly greasy wrapped parcel. "Want a sandwich?"

MacLeod dropped his sword as the Quickening arced into him, battering down until he was on his knees. He struggled to stand again, trying to make it to the body of the woman, desperately trying to find her sword. Over the roar of life thrumming through him and the sound of shattering windows above, he could hear the sirens.

Finally the cold metal of the blade was under his scrabbling fingers, vibrating as the Quickening ran down it.

There was a shout from the mouth of the alley and he didn't even turn around.

He ran.

Don liked driving, even when the scenery was nothing special and the highway was taking him nowhere he really wanted to go.

He hadn't shared that with his therapist, he had a pretty good idea what the man would say. Or wouldn't say. He'd just stare until Don said it himself and, seriously, it was the oldest interrogation technique in the book and it shouldn't have worked.

Yeah, it always did.

He tuned out Megan and Charlie's talking and kept his pace to the beat up truck ahead, and he let his mind wander.

McCormick was involved somehow; Don would put money on it. But everything in the man's record said he was an incorruptible during a less than clean period in the Bureau's history; it didn't make sense. That was why Megan wanted to talk to the man's partner and he'd agreed. Paper could tell you whatever it wanted to, but it didn't know a damn thing.

The cell receiver on the dash chirped and he reached out to push the button. "Eppes."

"Don? David."

Sinclair's voice was tinny, Don wasn't sure if it was the hills around them bouncing the signal, he didn't think so.

"What's up?"

"There's just been another death, we're at the scene now. There's still -ic or something around, it's mess- with the cell and-"

"David? You're breaking-"

"- asing a sus – "

There was a hiss, a sharp dial tone and then the light on the cell dimmed. Okay. Call over.

"We can skip Sacramento." Megan's voice was carefully neutral, giving no indication of her own opinion, only offering the option.

Don thought about it and then shook his head. "No, they'll handle it."

"Electrical discharge just doesn't last that long without a power source. It shouldn't have lasted for more than a few seconds."

"You got any theories on that? We talking a … Tesla coil or something?"

Charlie stared at him via the rear view mirror. Don recognised the expression – it was the one Charlie generally wore when trying to figure out how to tell someone that they were an idiot, in the nicest way possible.

"To generate that level of activity, it would have to be pretty big. I know David and Colby haven't been there long, but they'd probably have noticed a building wrapped in copper wire. Sorry."

Don nodded. "Okay, there couldn't be a portable one? In a truck, maybe?."

"An old truck, maybe. Really, really old. Crank powered, old. If it had an electric component, well. Let's just say you'd only use it once. And it would have to be diesel because petrol would ignite. Although if the ambient temperature was high enough, diesel would go up as well."

Megan chewed thoughtfully on the last of her sandwich. "How about where the power's coming from? They're not tapping into the grid - the company covering the area hasn't reported any spikes at all. Generator?"

"Not enough power for something that violent or prolonged. The generator would be twice the size of the Tesla coil."

"Okay, not a Tesla coil, I get it. What else is there?"

"There are ways to attract lightning; they're doing some pretty fascinating things with lasers in Geneva." Charlie looked at the twin expressions in the review mirror, patient but glazed. "Which isn't here. Anyway I don't think it is lightning, the collateral damage is mostly concussive and there's nothing in the autopsies to support it at all. It doesn't fit. Were there any theories in the case files from before?"

Don's mouth twisted sourly. "McCormick mentioned it in a footnote, I guess he didn't think it was significant."

Methos was beginning to develop a pure and true hatred for the Seacouver public transport system. It wasn't enough that it seemed to assume 'around then-ish' was a perfectly acceptable timetable, but the bus drivers uniformly ranked those without the correct fare with something that might be found under a rotting log.

Next time - and he was beginning to become resigned to the fact there would be a next time - next time he was forced to accept a Challenge on the outskirts of the city, he was going to remember to search the body for its loose change.

Charlie managed to contain himself to asking if they were nearly there just twice. The first time Don groaned and the second time Megan shot him a pointed look from under precisely arched eyebrows.

Annoying his brother was one thing, annoying Megan was less attractive: she could probably break him with her pinkie finger and if Larry ever found out, Charlie could look forward to weeks of ingenious and potentially lethal devices left hidden in his paperwork.

So he waited until they passed the sign welcoming them to Sacramento and then leaned forward. "Are we there yet?"

Rosaria Monroe was half Scottish, half Mexican and Megan had no trouble at all believing it - the apartment, decorated in dusky Santa Fe reds and yellows and accented with pictures of the Scottish Highlands and tartan cushions, was kind of a tell.

The apartment itself was small and cluttered, dimmed by ornate netting drawn over the curtain-free windows. It would never quite be light or dark, but it was comfortable and smelled faintly of lilac and cigar smoke.

Pictures in a colourful and eclectic collection of frames were perched on all available surfaces and the walls were like the ones she'd seen in the bars cops claimed as their own: half celebration and half memorial.

Some of the pictures were older than others; sepias turning to grays that turned to colors. Children growing into adults, faces that disappeared as the years went on. A large family and a larger circle of friends, was her guess. The image in McCormick's file had been small and blurred, she couldn't be sure if he was in any of the photos here. She didn't think so.

It was tempting to look closer while Rosaria was making coffee in the tiny kitchen, but it would be prying, not investigating, and there she drew the line.

After a few more minutes she could hear the other woman making her way down the short hall and turned back towards the door.

From Monroe's record, Megan had been expecting someone more like the other women she'd met who'd made it in the Bureau through the seventies and eighties. Even the nineties. The ones who were hard as nails and wore it all on the outside.

Instead, she looked like Megan's third grade art teacher: shorter than average but solidly built, and with a natural curve to her lips that defaulted to a smile. Her top and skirt were loose and brightly tie-dyed, and large hoop earrings hung down to brush a chunky beaded necklace. There was a sharpness to her features that meant she'd probably never been conventionally good looking – not enough to use it, anyway – but age had given her a handsome cast and the silver in the dark hair was striking.

Henna patterns swirled around her hands and up her arms in shades of brown and red, and Megan could see glimpses of them as the sleeves rode up.

Rosaria made a space for the tray on the table, amongst the pictures, and then straightened. "Have a seat, Agent Reeves."

"Thank you, Ms Monroe." She sat, pulling a crochet covered cushion shaped like a cat out from behind her.

"Aria, please." She snorted. "You know, I bitched him out for calling me that for eight years and then I couldn't shake it."

Megan tried to overcome the mental dissonance of her third grade art teacher swearing in a smoke-roughened voice. "Him?"

"McCormick. That's who you're here to ask me about, right? I watch the news, I know what's going on up there."

"Yes. Was he difficult to work with?"

"He was a pain in the ass." Aria's expression was poker faced but Megan saw the suggestion of a smile – she'd been intended to see it.

"I see. So, bickering?"

Aria raised her shoulders with an almost philosophical expression. "Matt was a good cop, a good agent. A good partner. Couldn't tell a good baseball team from a bad one is all I'm saying. I guess no one's perfect."

"And you've had no contact with him?" She asked as gently as she could but wasn't surprised to see the humour fade away and leave traces of old grief behind. Twelve years wasn't long when you didn't know if you should be mourning, she knew.

She wondered if they had been involved. There was some kind of connection there and Rosaria would only have been eight or nine years older than McCormick; it was possible, but it didn't feel like the right answer.

"No contact, not since the Cavelli case. He got a call, gave me his fortune cookie and said he'd see me in the morning." Rosaria shook her head with a half-rueful amusement. "That was Matty, never did make the big exits."

"A year before he disappeared, he was agent in charge of the investigation in Seacouver." Megan sipped her coffee, it was sweet and strong and slightly spiced. "Your file has you under suspension during that period."

"Right, I wasn't with him on that one. Three weeks unpaid. By the time I was back, he'd wrapped the case. And now you're re-opening it." Megan nodded and Rosaria smiled. "And you're wonder why he closed it in the first place. Could be a copycat."

"It could be, but if it is the killer is using the original murder weapon. We can't discount any angle."

"Sure, I can see that. But I can't tell you any more than I have. I wasn't there."

Megan gently set her mug on the coffee table, aiming for a coaster rather than one of the many fallen frames. "Yeah, that's actually what I was going to ask you, Aria." She looked up with a smile and saw Monroe's expression shutter. "We have a record of your suspension, but there's also an expense report McCormick filed for a train ticket from New York to Seacouver. Little weird, because he was already up there and you'd think he'd fly … unless he didn't want a name on the ticket."

"Maybe he misfiled."

"Maybe he didn't cover his tracks. I'm betting no one was looking too close anyway. You were with him in Seacouver. I get it. If my partner was investigating something like that, I'd want in."

Rosaria shrugged carelessly "So what if I was there? I was suspended, not grounded."

"Talk me through it."

"You got the case file right there. Four bodies and they were all decapitated. The suspect took a dive off a building and the killings stopped. W-he waited a few more days trying other leads and nothing turned up, he got called back. Case closed."

"Except there was another victim seven months later. Another one sixteen months after that. And the case never got flagged, never got re-opened."

"By then, Matty was missing and I was ... I was on other cases. Not his fault it never got picked up."

"Well, if you remember anything else…" Megan trailed away under the calm regard and shook her head, dropping the rote words. "We're not trying to witch hunt here. There's a killer out there and they're accelerating, anything you know that could save lives…"

"I have nothing for you and I'm sorry about that." Aria's expression was genuine and Megan believed her, but there was still something the other woman wasn't telling her. Something. She could only hope it wouldn't bring them more bodies.

"What did the fortune cookie say?"

Aria smiled crookedly. "'Don't ask, don't say. Everything lies in silence.'"

Megan glanced once more around the room made of memories. "Or by it."

Don and Charlie were still in the diner, most of the lunch time crowd had been and gone and now it was just a few truckers and the fry cook's radio, set to football as far as she could tell through the static.

Don shifted along to make room for her in the booth. "Anything?"

"We were right, she was there. She tells it the same as the report, no more, no less."

Charlie took a final bite out of his sub and then pushed it to the side. "You think she was in on it?"

"She was in on something, but her record was as good as McCormick's."

"She was suspended three times. That's not what I'd call good." Don canted his head back and then raised his hand to catch the waitress' attention.

"But all the suspensions were for misconduct against colleagues. Reading between the lines, she was fighting her way up the ladder. Except for the last guy."

"What happened?"

"She shot an agent in the leg. Three months later, he's under investigation by IA for corruption. After that, she took early retirement."

"So scary, but not dirty."

"But she obviously knows more than she's telling."

"Hey, if we need to, we order a full enquiry."

"I'm hoping we won't have to. I left my cell number." She picked the menu up.

"David reported in. Our guy killed again."

And she put the menu down. "What have they got?"

"One man running from the scene. They're following him while the locals get an ID. The crime scene's coming back clean so far, we're not getting anything that way."

"You think it's him?"

Don toyed with his mug, sending it from hand to hand before finally letting it slide away, to tap gently against the sugar shaker. "I think we're not that lucky, but he might be a witness and that would be something."

Charlie looked between them. "Why not bring him in?"

"Because we've got nothing to hold him on and I want to know who he is before we start asking questions. If he is our guy, no way we want him walking."

With a fleeting regret for the waffles she'd never have, Megan smiled. "If we go now, we could make it through a lot of Oregon."

Don reached for the keys on the table.