By a quarter to three in the morning, the bullpen was still divided, the agents from San Francisco on one side of the room, Blair and Jim at their desks across the corridor that led to Simon's office. Simon had long since gone, taking the agent in charge, George Simmons, with him to the FBI's Cascade office.

Their desks were piled high with papers - names, addresses, potential leads phoned in, maps of Cascade, King County and Washington; their phones had stopped ringing off the hook, but the residue of the callers remained. Everyone from well-meaning citizens, to crackpots looking for sensation, to bored teenagers trying to thumb their noses at authority, had called and given their input. As the hours passed, types of callers had started to lean more towards the latter.

Agent Clark crumpled up a piece of paper and tossed it across the room. "I swear, if one more of those dumb kids comes up with a new nickname for the FBI, I'm gonna hunt down the whole lot of 'em and strangle 'em!"

His partner was a tad shorter and a bit more even-tempered; Derek Lewis peered at the tally sheet of calls they had started on a bulletin board. "Jeez, Lloyd, that's fifty-three of them, wouldn't you get tired?"

"Lewis, he's not going to strangle anyone." The agent who'd restrained Valerie earlier stepped in again, leveling her attention on Lewis and Clark. She cast a wary glance at Jim and Blair and then lowered her voice. "Just keep him out of trouble like you're supposed to."

Even Clark didn't want to stand up to Prince's displeasure, and backed down with an inaudible mutter. The bullpen subsided into a strained silence, with the FBI agents painfully not looking at the two Cascade detectives.

Jim stood finally, shoving back his chair with a loud screech. "C'mon Sandburg." He looked around the bullpen slowly as Blair blinked blearily up at him, then scrambled for his coat.

By the elevator, Blair leaned his head back against the wall as they waited. "Thirty-three kids, I can't imagine what they must be going through."

Jim shook his head and motioned Blair to silence, ears trained on the slow rise of conversation from the Feds they'd left behind. "Lay off already, Andersen! Why the hell are you peddling all that senses crap around the locals anyway?" Clark's voice was a muttered hiss to Jim's ears.

"Well, unlike some of us, those 'senses' get results."

"It's all a bunch of crap -"

"Stuff it, Clark." The whip-crack voice belonged to Prince, who then turned it on her colleague. "Just quit provoking him, Andersen."

"Fine." A slam of heavy paper on a desk echoed briefly, and Jim nearly missed the rest of her statement between that and the opening door. "I'll see you in the morning."

Jim pulled Blair into the elevator, and they saw Valerie stalk out of the bullpen as the doors closed in front of them.

The next morning saw Jim and Blair stumble into the bullpen a few minutes shy of ten o'clock. The presence of the FBI agents was muted by the added support of the entire staff of Major Crimes, and the tension of the previous evening had mostly dissipated.

Jim hung up his jacket and headed straight for Simon's office without a side-glance, but Blair trailed a bit behind him, waving at Megan and Rafe before ducking into the office.

Simon looked up from his desk, which was now overflowing with reports. "You're here. Good." He tossed a folder at Jim. "We need to start covering the leads that the hotline keeps churning in."

Jim glanced in the folder, then up. "Silver vans, sir?"

"That's the most consistent lead we've got - there have been reports of a van in the neighborhood covering most of yesterday afternoon, and even a few days prior. We've got a half a dozen partial plates... unfortunately most of them don't match, so you get to track it down."

Jim handed the file into Blair's outstretched hand. "Is there anything else you want us to cover?"

"Yes." Simon leaned back in his chair, but was interrupted by the door swinging open.

"Sir?" Valerie Andersen leaned in. "I've just got a tip I want to follow..." She stopped and looked around. "Uh, sir, wasn't Special Agent Simmons in here?"

"He headed downstairs ten minutes ago."

"Oh. Never mind then." She smiled brightly and began to retreat.

"But you should probably take Ellison and Sandburg with you when you check out your lead."

"Oh." Her face fell. "Right." She glanced at the two men and then waved her hand. "Fine. Whatever. Your territory. Your car, Your lead...." She closed the door behind her, but the murmured commentary on proprietary policing continued in Jim's ears.

"So why are we going with her, Simon?" Blair asked. "I mean, Jim doesn't exactly 'play well with others' when it comes to the Feds."

"Because I wasn't about to inflict you on a pair of federal agents, Sandburg. Be glad I'm not sending you with Lewis and Clark hunting down the UFO sightings."

Valerie was waiting by the elevator doors for them, head bowed over a Washington state map. The doors opened, and she stepped in without looking up, her finger tracing a line on the map. She looked up as the doors closed. "So which one of you is driving?"

"I am." Jim said. "So which lead, exactly, are we following."

"Thomas Ray. Called in about an hour ago about two silver vans going over the pass on Highway 2 last night." Her eyes narrowed. "That's probably how they kept getting conflicting plate numbers in the reports."

Blair opened up the file Simon had given him. "Thomas Ray? He lives... You want us to go all the way to Skykomish?"

Valerie shrugged, her voice then level and sure. "If that's where the trail leads." The elevator doors opened on the wide expanse of the lobby, and they headed silently to the garage.

She took one look at the blue and white truck sitting in the garage and turned on her heel. "Forget it, I'm driving." She brushed past Blair and Jim and walked to a large black Grand Cherokee. "Coming?"

Jim scowled, but followed, and Blair tried to deflect a little of the insult to the truck. "You gotta admit man, this'll handle the snow on the pass a lot better."

Valerie froze in the middle of unlocking the driver's side door. "Snow?" She turned. "Snow on a pass? As in mountains?"

"Yeah, that's where Ray called from. He drives a snow plow." Blair said.

"Oh." She tossed the keys to Jim. "Forget it. You're driving, detective. I don't do snow."

Past Skykomish, the pass was a bit clearer than Ray had surmised. Snow was still piled up on either side of the road - the layers of white were interspersed with brown and speckled with black exhaust. Despite the plow driver's dire predictions, the roads were not slushy - merely damp. As they approached the mile marker where the chain control station had been established, the snow alongside the road was spotted occasionally with antifreeze and oil, and dirty, muddy footprints surrounded each spot.

Jim and Valerie were silent, each scanning the sides of the road as they slowly crept along the highway. Blair watched both of them, dividing his attention fairly equally. Where Jim's eyes were intensely alert, Valerie's fluttered blankly every once in awhile, as if they were trying to close when she wasn't staring at one specific thing.

It was familiar, but not Sentinel-familiar, and not a recent memory. Blair wracked his brain trying to remember. The eyes had been brown, not grey, but the motion, a half-closing flicker of seeing-not-seeing, was something he'd seen before.

He'd returned his attention to watching Jim, when Valerie shook herself, a convulsive shudder from her neck all along her spine, and flung herself out the car door. She stumbled in the snow, and Jim braked to an immediate halt, the car crunching swiftly to a halt in the roadside slush.

She scrambled for the side of the snow bank, slipping a little in the acid green stain of leaked antifreeze, and started digging in the grit and snow. By the time Blair and Jim had reached her side, she had pulled a small broken strand of green beads from its prison of ice and dirt.

Jim frowned as Valerie's eyes fluttered closed, and she stroked the small strand almost reverently. He looked over at Blair and then turned his attention on the side of the road.

Jim narrowed his vision on the span of snow near the spot she'd pulled the beads from, and picked out a little flash of bright red from the snow. He strode over and brushed away the light covering of snow to uncover a red and blue Cascade Middle School basketball jersey.

"They were here." Valerie's voice was sure, and Jim turned with the jersey in his hand.

"I'll say." Valerie's eyes widened as she saw the shirt. "We're on the right track then," Blair continued.

"And almost out of King County, too."

"Not to worry, detective," Valerie assured him dryly. "My jurisdiction extends at least past the county border." She paused. "Just what is beyond the county border, anyway?"

"We head into a different national forest, but not much else until you hit Wenatchee." Blair considered. "We're still following the railroad, but we switch rivers."

"Next town's Leavenworth, Chief." Jim reminded him. "Might as well stop there for lunch."

Valerie nodded agreement. "If we can find a place that doesn't serve tofu, I'll let the Bureau pay for it."

Jim laughed at that. "That's pretty much a sure bet there, Andersen."

She grinned up at him. "I know. It's so nice to be out of California -- the tofu doesn't grow on trees up here." She turned back to the car.

Jim started to follow, then paused and stooped by the antifreeze stain. He touched a finger to the green liquid, and sniffed it.

"Jim?"

He shook his head at his partner's question and followed the FBI agent to the car.

"Wonderburger." Blair's voice was flatly disbelieving, but he was smiling as they pulled up to the front of the fast food place. The small lot was empty save for two other cars, and three men sat in the front window, slurping cokes and wrangling over a round of cards. "I can't believe that of all the restaurants, you choose Wonderburger."

"What?" Valerie asked. "I need my USRDA of cholesterol and grease."

Blair just rolled his eyes and sat back in his seat. Jim snorted and smiled. "He didn't pay enough attention in the academy to the requirements for red meat consumed by law enforcement officers."

"Ah." Valerie glanced back at Blair as she undid her seatbelt. "I've been meaning to ask, if it's not too intrusive - how did you get into police work? I had gotten the impression from your master's thesis and a couple of your other articles that you were pretty much a career anthropologist."

Blair reached up and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, just under the curls that were finally getting to what he considered a reasonable length. He smiled ruefully. "I am and I'm not." He flicked a glance at Jim. "I was studying the police as a closed society, and then I went native. Being a cop doesn't mean I'm not an anthropologist. It just, it..." His hand came away from his neck to grasp at the air. "It takes away my status as an academic." He grinned then, "I traded in my birkenstocks for jackboots and I got this nice shiny badge, too."

"Don't let it fool you, Andersen. He's still got his Master's degree framed and mounted prominently on the wall." Jim opened the car door. "Now can we eat?"

As they exited the car, both Valerie and Jim grew intent. They brushed by each other, heading in separate directions. Blair threw a helpless glance at Valerie, but followed Jim instead, to a gritty pool of melt water, tinged green with antifreeze.

"It smells piney," Jim was sniffing the tips of his fingers, "not like regular antifreeze. It's the same as the stuff on the pass."

"So they stopped here - maybe someone can identify them?" Blair turned and headed for the door. Jim remained crouched over the pool, staring, but not zoning, and Valerie seemed to be trying to pry up some loose asphalt with her fingernails. Sentinels. Blair shook his head and went inside.

The interior of the Wonderburger held no dirt to sully the clash of the blue and orange decor. The smell of grease and ketchup and salt was heavy in the air, and there was a faint snap-hiss sound of the grills overlying the murmur of conversation from the front window. The three men had turned from their game to stare at the two people poking around in the parking lot.

A young woman with an enthusiastic smile and an even more enthusiastic application of makeup on her face chirped out, "Can I help you sir?"

"Yes, please." He flipped out his badge with a smile. "Is there anyone who was here last night that I could speak to?"

"Oh, sure," she turned and bellowed, "'Manda!"

A short, portly woman with equally short, blond curls framing her face emerged from an office in the back, trailed by an almost skeletal young man. "Can I help you?"

"Yes," Blair smiled again, and proffered his badge again. "I'm Detective Sandburg with the Cascade Police. Did you or any of your employees see two silver vans here last night."

"Oh, yeah, they almost cleaned us out of Wondermeals. It was right at closing time, they parked outside, and one guy came in to order two, three dozen meals, something like that. Kept dancing around the whole time we were making them, threw down his money and ran back outside when he had them."

"Did you get a good look at the license plates?"

"Nope. But I've seen the guy before. Came through a couple of times last month, though I couldn't swear as to when."

"Did you see which way they left?"

"Not really. They tore up the parking lot a bit when they did go - I almost tripped over a chunk of asphalt going out to my car after closing last night. Anyway, that exit leads to Motteler Road, back up into the mountains."

"About what time did they leave?"

"Like I said, closing time, right about eleven."

"Can you describe the man for me? Or anyone else in one of the vans?"

"Young, not quite 30, tall," She eyed Sandburg, "tall like you, not tall like stick-boy here." She gestured to the silent youth who was now puttering over the fry baskets. "Dark hair, dark eyes - I think, I didn't really look, I mean, he wasn't cute or anything, and he was really nervous."

"Thanks." Blair flipped his notebook closed and glanced back at the parking lot. Jim seemed to be shaking Valerie out of some sort of zone. "Three Wondermeals to go, please." Fed Sentinels were happy Sentinels.