Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Lady in White

The bar smelled like stale beer and bad decisions—which made it exactly Rory Donovan's kind of place. She'd mapped the exits before clocking in for her first shift three nights ago: front door, kitchen entrance, bathroom window that opened wide enough if things went sideways. The regulars' drink orders were memorized now, their tells catalogued—which ones got handsy after whiskey number three, where the manager kept the good kitchen knives, how fast she could move from behind the bar to the parking lot if someone recognized what she really was.

Someone was killing men on Centennial Highway.

Woman in White. Had to be. Two days breathing library dust, eyes burning from newspaper archives, death records stretching back to 1975. Cross-referencing until the words bled together and her temples throbbed. Four possibilities. All women who died near water. All of them close, but close didn't mean shit when bodies kept vanishing into thin air.

She wiped down the bar on autopilot, half her attention on Charlie working through beer number four. Any second now he'd start talking about Troy.

"Still can't believe Troy's gone."

Right on schedule.

Charlie stared into his glass like it held answers instead of cheap domestic. "Kid had his whole life ahead of him."

"You knew him?" Rory poured number five without being asked, the practiced motion of keeping them talking, keeping them comfortable. Information came easier with a full glass and a sympathetic ear.

"Since he was yay high." His hand hovered waist-level, trembling slightly. "Good kid. Little wild, maybe, but what college kid isn't?" He took a long pull, Adam's apple working. When he set the glass down, his eyes were red-rimmed. "His girlfriend Amy's been in here twice looking for information. Sweet girl. Completely torn up."

"Police have any leads?"

"Nothing." The word came out flat, defeated. "No body, no car, nothing. Like he vanished into thin air." His voice dropped into that conspiratorial tone people got when sharing secrets in small towns, leaning in close enough that she could smell the beer on his breath. "Course, he's not the first. Last few months, couple other guys went missing on that same stretch of highway. All of 'em near that old bridge on Centennial." He tapped his finger against the bar top for emphasis. "Between you and me? Those guys had reputations. Stepping out on their wives, you know? But Troy wasn't like that. He was crazy about Amy."

Pattern break.

Rory filed it away, turning the information over in her mind like a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit. Woman in White went after cheaters—that was the mythology, the established pattern. So why Troy?

The door swung open on a gust of October wind, bringing the opening riff of "Back in Black" from someone's car stereo and the smell of coming rain. She glanced up—bartender instinct, always know who's walking in—and felt her spine go straight.

Two men. Brothers, from the way they moved around each other without looking, that unconscious awareness that came from years of shared space and shared danger. The tall one looked uncomfortable in his suit, shoulders tense, doing the same scan she'd done three nights ago: cataloguing exits, assessing threats, counting civilians. The shorter one moved with easy confidence, leather jacket worn like armor, like he knew exactly what kind of damage he could do and was comfortable with that knowledge.

Hunters.

Rory knew the walk. Saw it in mirrors often enough.

The shorter one's eyes found her across the bar, and his grin widened—the kind of grin that probably worked on most women, the kind that said he knew it worked and enjoyed it anyway.

Yeah. That one was trouble.

He made his way over with a loose-limbed confidence that would've been arrogant if it wasn't backed up by the controlled violence in his movements. Settled against the bar like he owned it, like he owned every space he walked into. "Evening."

"Evening." She reached for clean glasses, keeping her movements casual. Professional. "What can I get you?"

"Two beers. Whatever's coldest." He leaned in—not aggressive, just present in a way that made her hyperaware of the space between them, of the way he smelled like leather and gunpowder residue and something warmer underneath. "And maybe your name?"

"Beer I can do." She started pouring, steady hands despite the spike of adrenaline. "Name costs extra."

He laughed—genuine, warm, the kind of laugh that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Fair enough. I'm Dean. That's my brother Sam."

"Rory." She slid the first beer across. Dean pulled out his wallet—the Fed badge visible for a split second, decent forgery—and handed over a ten. She studied them both with the careful assessment of someone who'd learned to read people or die trying. Hunter body language, fake IDs, asking questions in a town where men were vanishing. "You're not drunk enough to be locals, and you're too pretty to be truckers. So either you're lost, or you're looking for something."

Dean's eyebrows rose, something delighted flickering across his face. "Pretty?"

"Don't let it go to your head."

"Too late." He grinned. "Keep the change."

"Big spender." She made change anyway, her movements precise. Dropped it in the tip jar with a pointed look.

"I like to make a good impression."

"How's that working out for you?"

"You tell me." The grin shifted into something warmer, more genuine. "Am I impressive yet?"

"Not even close."

"Damn. Guess I'll have to try harder."

"You could try that."

"Oh, I plan to." Something flickered under the charm—something real and raw that made her pulse kick up despite her better judgment. "So, Rory. You from around here?"

"I work here, don't I?"

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

The tall one—Sam—cleared his throat with a long-suffering look that said he'd had this conversation before, many times, in many bars across many states. "Have you heard about the disappearances? The men who've gone missing?"

The playfulness dropped like a curtain falling. Rory set down the second beer, studying Sam properly now—the worry in his eyes, the exhaustion around his mouth, suit wrinkled like he'd been wearing it too long without sleep. Dean still wore that easy grin, but his eyes had sharpened into something calculating, something that assessed and catalogued and made decisions about threat levels.

"Small town," she said carefully, keeping her voice low. "Everyone's heard about it."

"What are people saying?" Dean's voice stayed light, but there was steel underneath now—the hunter coming forward, the charm sliding back.

Rory glanced around. Charlie had dozed off at the end of the bar, head pillowed on his arms. The other two regulars were focused on the game playing on the TV above the liquor bottles. No one paying attention. She leaned in, kept her voice barely above a murmur.

"Three men vanished on the same stretch of highway in the last month. All of them near an old bridge. All of them married." She paused, watching their reactions. "All of them with wandering eyes. That's a hell of a pattern."

"Yeah." Dean's eyes hadn't left her face, reading her the way she was reading him—two predators sizing each other up. "It is."

"So what do you think it is?" Sam leaned forward with an earnest intensity that probably made him good at research and terrible at poker, the kind of focus that meant he actually cared about the answers instead of just collecting information.

Rory straightened, grabbed her rag. Wiped down a spot on the bar that didn't need it, buying herself a moment to think. "I think you two aren't here for the beer."

The silence stretched between them like a drawn wire. Sam and Dean exchanged one of those looks—silent brother communication built on years of practice and shared trauma, a whole conversation happening in the space of a glance.

"You hunt," Dean said. Not a question.

"Sometimes." She kept wiping, her movements casual even as her heart rate kicked up. This was the moment—the decision point where things either got complicated or deadly. "You?"

"Family business."

"All our lives," Sam added quietly, and there was something in his voice—grief, maybe, or exhaustion, or both.

Legacy hunters. That explained the bone-deep competence, the way they moved like violence was a second language, the particular flavor of exhaustion around Sam's eyes like he'd seen too much and couldn't unsee it. The ones raised in it, who'd never had a choice, who wore hunting like skin because it was the only thing they'd ever known.

She made a decision.

"Give me five minutes."

Sam blinked, his research-focused brain clearly not expecting that response. "What?"

"Five minutes. I've got intel back at my motel." She was already untying her apron, movements efficient. "If we're working the same case, we should pool resources."

Dean's eyebrows rose, something approving flickering across his face. "You're just walking out? Middle of your shift?"

"It's a cover job. I got what I needed." She headed toward the back, called over her shoulder without looking, "Green Jeep in the parking lot. Try not to leave without me."

"Wouldn't dream of it, sweetheart."

She shot him a look over her shoulder. "Not your sweetheart."

"Not yet."

"Not ever."

His grin just widened, all confidence and promise. "We'll see."

Three minutes flat. Manager mollified with vague family emergency bullshit—her aunt was sick, she had to go, so sorry—duffel grabbed from the employee closet where she'd stashed it day one. Always have an exit strategy. Always keep your gear close. Those were the rules that kept you breathing.

Dean and Sam waited by a black Impala that made Rory's fingers itch with appreciation. '67. Beautiful condition, chrome gleaming under the parking lot lights. Dean stood next to it with unconscious possession, protective without being obvious about it—the way someone stood next to something they loved.

"Nice car," she said, unlocking her Jeep.

Dean's whole face lit up like she'd complimented his firstborn. "She's my baby."

"Big car." Rory pulled her keys free, couldn't resist. "You compensating for something?"

Sam made a strangled sound that might've been a laugh. Dean's grin turned sharp and delighted, the kind of expression that promised trouble.

"Guess you'll have to find out."

"I'll pass."

"Your loss, sweetheart."

"Still not your sweetheart." But she was fighting a smile as she climbed into her Jeep, and from the knowing look on Dean's face, he'd caught it. "Motel 6. Two minutes down the road. Follow me."

"Yes ma'am."

Her room was functional chaos—everything she owned packed and ready to move at a moment's notice, three hours from packed to gone if she needed it. Death records spread across the table in organized piles. Map of Jericho pinned to the wall, red X's marking the disappearances in angry slashes. Laptop open to newspaper archives, screen dimmed to save battery. Notebook full of theories in her cramped handwriting, cross-references and question marks and dead ends circled in red. The organized chaos of an active hunt, of someone who lived out of motel rooms and kept moving.

Dean whistled low, genuine appreciation in the sound. "Damn. You don't mess around."

"People are dying." Rory dropped her duffel in the corner with a heavy thud, grabbed three water bottles from the mini-fridge and tossed them in quick succession. Dean caught his one-handed without looking. "So. Woman in White."

"That's what you're thinking?" Sam was already moving toward her research with the focused intensity of someone who lived in libraries, who found comfort in facts and cross-references and provable data. His fingers skimmed over her notes without disrupting her system—respectful, careful.

"Pattern fits. Unfaithful men, isolated road, water nearby." She gestured at her notes, at hours of work distilled into red ink and highlighter marks and growing frustration. "Narrowed it down to four possibilities—women who died near water between '75 and '85. Haven't pinpointed which one yet."

"We might have your answer." Sam pulled a folder from inside his jacket, spread photocopied articles across her table with careful precision, not disrupting her organization. "We hit the library before the bar. Constance Welch, 1981."

Rory's pulse kicked up, that hunter instinct screaming this is it. "Sylvania Bridge."

"You know it?" Dean was watching her face, reading her reactions.

"Flagged it yesterday. Couldn't confirm it was her." She pulled the article closer, stomach turning at the details—the brutal economy of tragedy reduced to newsprint and old ink. "Husband was unfaithful. She found out, confronted him. That same night she drowned her two kids in the bathtub, then drove to the bridge and jumped into the river."

The room went quiet. The weight of those words settled like a shroud, like the temperature had dropped ten degrees.

"Jesus," Dean muttered, something raw in his voice.

"They never found her body," Sam said, his researcher brain cataloguing facts even as his face went pale. "Strong current swept her downstream."

Rory flipped through her own notes with hands that wanted to shake, cross-referencing dates and locations. "First disappearance was six months after the anniversary of her death. Second was two months later. Troy Squire last week." She looked up, met their eyes. "This is definitely her."

"All the other victims fit the profile," Sam said, making connections out loud the way he probably always did. "Married men with a history of infidelity—"

"Except Troy." Rory interrupted, tapping that anomaly. "College kid. Everyone in town says he was devoted to his girlfriend."

"Maybe he wasn't as devoted as people thought," Dean suggested, but he didn't sound convinced—the theory was weak and they all knew it.

"Or maybe she's not being picky anymore." Rory tapped the map, three red X's clustered tight like a target. "All the disappearances happened within a two-mile radius of the bridge where she jumped."

Dean studied the map, arms crossed, jaw tight with barely controlled tension. "So we find her grave, salt and burn the bones. Standard job."

"No body means no grave." Rory tapped her pen against the newspaper article, frustration bleeding through. "Strong current swept her downstream. They never recovered her."

"Then she could be tied to where she died," Sam said slowly, working through the logic. "The bridge itself."

"Or where she lived. Where she killed her kids." Rory pulled up another search on her laptop, the screen glow harsh in the dimmed room. "I haven't found a home address yet. Property records from '81 are a pain in the ass to dig up."

"We could check the bridge first," Dean suggested, already reaching for his jacket with decisive movements, all coiled energy looking for a target. "See if there's any activity. Get a feel for what we're dealing with."

"Now?" Sam asked, glancing at his watch.

"Why not? We're here, we're geared up." Dean looked at Rory, something challenging in his expression—testing her, seeing if she'd back down. "You in?"

She should be cautious. Should suggest they wait until morning when they could see what they were dealing with, do more research, make a solid plan before walking into a situation blind. But three people were dead and these two clearly knew what they were doing—legacy hunters didn't survive this long without being good at this.

"Yeah." She grabbed her leather jacket from the back of the chair, felt the familiar weight settle on her shoulders. "Let me get my gear."

"Attagirl," Dean said, and something warm flickered in his voice that made her chest tighten.

"Don't call me that either."

"What can I call you?"

"Rory works fine."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"You're annoying, you know that?"

"I've been told." He grinned. "Usually by Sam."

"I can see why." Rory pulled her duffel over, did quick mental inventory—salt, iron rounds, EMF meter, flashlight. Knife on her belt, another one tucked in her boot. Everything she needed for a Woman in White hunt. Standard loadout, nothing fancy, but you didn't need fancy when salt and iron did the job.

"Can you two flirt later?" Sam asked, rubbing his temples like he had a headache building. "When we're not actively hunting a vengeful spirit?"

"We're not flirting," Rory said.

"I am," Dean said cheerfully. "She's just playing hard to get."

"I'm not playing anything. You're just easy to mess with."

Dean's grin softened into something more genuine, something that felt dangerous in an entirely different way. "I like you."

"Poor judgment on your part."

"Story of my life, sweetheart."

They were heading for the door when Sam's phone rang, the sound cutting through the easy banter like a knife. He glanced at the screen.

Froze.

His face went pale, all the blood draining out like someone had opened a tap.

"It's Dad's number."

Dean straightened immediately, every muscle going taut. The humor vanished like it had never existed. "Answer it."

Sam's hands shook as he put it on speaker. "Dad?"

Static crackled through the line—wrong, somehow, the quality off in a way Rory couldn't name but felt in her gut. Then a voice, rough and urgent: "Sam. Dean. Stay away from Jericho. Don't investigate the bridge. It's not what you think. I'm fine. Stop looking."

The line went dead with a click that sounded too final.

No one moved. Rory's instincts were screaming at her, hackles up, that feeling in her gut that said danger danger danger—the same instinct that had kept her alive.

"That wasn't Dad," Dean said. His voice had gone flat, hard, all the easy charm stripped away to reveal something cold underneath.

"What do you mean—" Sam started.

"The cadence was wrong. Dad doesn't talk like that, doesn't use those words." Dean's jaw was tight, hands clenching into fists like he needed to hit something. "That wasn't him."

"It knows you're here," Rory said, her own hands curling into fists. "Doesn't want you poking around."

"Woman in White doesn't usually make phone calls," Dean said, starting to pace like a caged animal, all that coiled violence looking for a target. "She lures men with sex appeal, not voice messages."

"Well, this one apparently does." Rory grabbed her keys from the table, fingers tight around metal. "Which means we're on the right track and she's worried."

"And Dad's phone is wherever this thing is," Dean said, his voice going dangerous in a way that made her spine straighten. "Which means Dad might be too."

The implication hung heavy in the stale motel air. Sam's face had gone even paler, if that was possible.

"Then we go," Sam said, voice tight with barely controlled desperation. "Right now."

"We go smart," Rory corrected, meeting Dean's eyes and seeing the same violence there that was probably in her own. "EMF readers, salt, iron rounds. We check out the bridge, see what we're actually dealing with. We don't know if your dad is out there or if this thing just got his phone somehow."

"She's right," Dean said, though every line of his body was tense with the need to move, to act, to do something instead of standing here talking while his father might be in danger. "We do this by the book. Gather intel, figure out what we're dealing with, then we make our move."

Sam nodded tightly, swallowing hard.

Dean looked at Rory, and something shifted in his expression—assessment turning into something like respect. "You always this practical?"

"Only when I'm trying to keep people from getting killed."

"So... always?"

"Pretty much."

His mouth curved despite everything, despite the fear she could see underneath the bravado. "Yeah. I definitely like you."

"Feel free to keep that to yourself."

"Where's the fun in that?"

They headed out into the October night. Cold air bit at exposed skin, sharp enough to make her eyes water. Breath fogged in the parking lot lights. Rory climbed into her Jeep and watched the Impala's taillights through her windshield as Dean pulled out, following the red glow like a beacon.

Her hands were steady on the wheel. Coffee going cold in the cup holder. But under her ribs, something twisted—hunter instinct mixed with something more complicated, something that had nothing to do with the hunt and everything to do with green eyes and crooked grins and the way Dean had said attagirl like he meant it.

Three people were dead. John Winchester was missing. Something powerful enough to impersonate voices on phone calls was hunting on Centennial Highway.

But Dean Winchester was trouble—she could feel it in her bones, that instinct that kept you alive when logic failed. The charming kind and the dangerous kind and the kind that got under your skin before you realized what was happening.

Rory followed the Impala toward Sylvania Bridge and told herself complications could wait.

The hunt couldn't.

(She was lying, and she knew it.)

Chapter Text

The bridge materialized through fog like a rusty scar across black water, and Dean pulled the Impala onto gravel, headlights cutting through October mist that clung to everything like cobwebs. Behind them, Rory's Jeep rumbled to a stop, the engine's death leaving a silence that felt too thick, too heavy with anticipation.

When Rory's boots hit gravel, the cold slammed into her—wrong cold, the kind that came from inside rather than out, crawling up her spine with icy fingers. Nausea rolled through her stomach in waves while her hair prickled at the base of her skull, every instinct screaming that something here was fundamentally wrong.

"You good?" Dean was watching her across the Impala's roof, his expression assessing without being obvious about it.

"Peachy." She swallowed hard, forced her shoulders to relax despite every muscle wanting to stay coiled and ready. "Just admiring the view."

"Yeah, it's real picturesque." He popped the trunk with practiced efficiency, revealing an arsenal organized like a military supply depot—salt rounds, iron, holy water, everything they might need lined up and ready.

"EMF's going crazy," Sam called, already moving toward the bridge with the reader crackling and spitting static in his hand like an angry hornet.

They moved as a unit without discussing it—Dean taking point with his shotgun, Rory on his right, Sam on the left. The fog thickened around their ankles as they advanced, each step forward making Rory's skin crawl worse, the wrongness intensifying until she could taste copper on her tongue.

She appeared without warning—white dress, dark hair hanging wet and wrong, standing in the center of the bridge like she'd been waiting for them, like she'd known they'd come. Constance Welch had been beautiful once, probably, but now there was something off about her, something that suggested a thing wearing a woman's shape without quite understanding how it should move.

"You shouldn't be here." The voice scraped like metal on bone, and then she was gone—just empty air where she'd stood a heartbeat before.

Behind them, an engine roared to life with a sound that was too aggressive, too hungry.

Rory turned to see her Jeep's headlights blazing—too bright, almost predatory—and through the windshield sat Constance, hands on the wheel with a grip that suggested terrible purpose.

"Oh, for fucks—"

The Jeep lurched forward before she could finish the curse.

"Move!" Dean's hand closed around her jacket and yanked her sideways hard enough that she stumbled. Metal shrieked as the Jeep hit the railing at speed, and the rusted barrier gave like wet paper under the impact. For one suspended heartbeat the Jeep hung there, front wheels dangling over empty air, gravity and momentum fighting for dominance.

Then gravity won, as it always did.

The splash echoed across the water—a violent, final sound that seemed to go on forever. White foam erupted where metal met current, black water swallowing chrome and steel, headlights cutting through murky depths at impossible angles before they were dragged down into darkness. Rory watched for three seconds, four, her brain refusing to process what her eyes were seeing—

Gone.

Four years of gear vanished in the time it took to draw breath. Research, weapons, Mom's journals—everything except what she carried on her person, consumed by a river that probably wouldn't give any of it back.

Rory's hand went to her jacket pocket automatically, fingers confirming the weight was still there. Small mercies in the wreckage.

"EMF's dead," Sam said quietly, his voice cutting through the shock like a lifeline.

Dean's grip shifted from her jacket to her shoulder, steady and grounding. "Come on. Off the bridge."

She let them guide her back to the Impala, her legs moving on autopilot while her brain catalogued losses—the sleeping bag that had kept her warm through three winters, spare clothes she couldn't afford to replace, the good shotgun that had saved her life twice, her laptop with four years of cross-referenced research that couldn't be recreated. The tape deck with her entire music collection, every song a memory she'd never get back.

The heater kicked on as Dean drove, warm air filling the Impala's interior with blessed normalcy. Rory watched Jericho's streetlights blur past the window and tried not to think about everything now resting at the bottom of a river.

"So," Dean said after a mile of silence, catching her eye in the rearview mirror with an expression that was trying for levity, "Woman in White's a bitch."

A laugh bubbled up from somewhere unexpected—half-hysteria, half genuine amusement at the absurd understatement. "Noted for future reference."

"We'll get you new gear. Whatever you need." His voice was matter-of-fact, like replacing everything she owned was just another Tuesday.

"Generous of you, considering we just met." But the tightness in her chest eased slightly at the offer, at the casual way he said it like there was no question they'd help. "What do I owe you? My firstborn? Eternal servitude?"

"I'll take eternal servitude." Dean's mouth curved into something warm despite everything. "Firstborn's negotiable."

"Pass on both."

"Your loss, sweetheart."

"Still not your sweetheart." But she was fighting a smile even with everything at the bottom of a river, even with her hands still shaking with adrenaline crash—he made it easier somehow, made the catastrophe feel less catastrophic.

Sam twisted in his seat to look at her, his expression serious. "Seriously though. We'll help you replace what you lost. It's—" He hesitated, something flickering across his face. "It's what hunters do."

The slight awkwardness in his delivery made sense—Sam was rusty at this, still finding his footing after leaving the life behind. But the offer was genuine, she could hear it in his voice.

Rory touched the necklace through her shirt, the familiar weight of silver against her sternum. Not everything was gone. The things that mattered most—she'd kept those close.

"Thanks," she said, and meant it more than they probably realized.

The motel Dean pulled up to fifteen minutes later looked like every other roadside dive Rory had ever stayed in—single story, doors facing the parking lot, neon sign flickering VACANCY like it had a neurological condition and might give up the ghost any second.

"Our Dad was staying here," Dean explained, already heading for one of the doors with a lockpick set appearing in his hand like magic. "Hasn't been here according to the manager on the phone, but might've left something. You two keep watch."

The lock surrendered in under thirty seconds—impressive even by hunter standards—and they slipped inside to find organized chaos. Research was scattered across the table in purposeful piles, weapons laid out on one bed in careful arrangement, a duffel half-packed in the corner like John Winchester had left in a hurry. Rory recognized the particular disorder because it looked like her motel rooms usually did, before tonight anyway.

Sam grabbed the journal from the nightstand and started flipping pages, his forehead creasing deeper with each entry he scanned. "Sulfur traces. Cattle deaths. Weather anomalies." He looked up, confusion clear in his expression. "Nothing about Constance Welch. Not a single mention."

"So he wasn't here for her." Dean checked the closet, under the beds, moving with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd searched a thousand hotel rooms. "He was tracking something else."

"Demon, maybe." Sam tapped an entry with one long finger. "These sulfur readings are consistent with—"

"Yeah, I know what they're consistent with." Dean's jaw tightened in a way that suggested this was an old argument, an old fear they didn't want to name out loud.

Rory moved to the table and started sorting newspaper clippings, recognizing the familiar work even if the specific pattern wasn't clear yet. Missing persons from three states, obituaries with suspicious timing, house fires that burned too hot and too fast—the familiar work of piecing together a hunt from fragments and tragedy.

Dean tried John's number again, his expression going darker when it went straight to voicemail. He hung up without leaving a message, jaw working like he was chewing words he couldn't say.

"I'm getting food." He was already grabbing his jacket with movements that suggested he needed to move, to do something useful. "There's a diner down the street. You two look half-dead."

"Dean—"

"Twenty minutes. Lock the door." And then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him with a finality that left Sam and Rory staring at each other.

Sam threw the deadbolt, then the chain, then moved back to the journal without comment, and Rory recognized that too—the need to keep busy, to keep researching, to keep moving forward because stopping meant thinking about all the ways this could go wrong.

"What can I do?" she asked.

"Sort those clippings by date. I want to see if there's a pattern to Dad's route, where he was going and why."

They worked in comfortable silence—Sam reading and making notes in cramped handwriting, Rory organizing a timeline on the table with the systematic precision of someone who'd done this before. John Winchester had been moving west to east over six weeks, following something with single-minded determination. The pattern was there if you knew how to look, and Rory was learning to see the shape of it.

Twenty minutes became thirty, then forty, and Sam was starting to pace.

"Dean should be back by now." He checked his phone like it might have vibrated without him noticing.

He tried calling. Voicemail. Tried again with growing tension in his shoulders. Same result.

"Could be his phone died," Rory offered, but her instincts were prickling again, that same wrongness that had warned her on the bridge.

"Could be." Sam didn't sound convinced.

Three sharp knocks on the door made them both freeze.

"Police. Open up."

Sam and Rory locked eyes across the motel room, a silent conversation happening in the space of a heartbeat.

"We know you're in there. This is the Jericho Police Department. Open the door or we're coming in."

The doorknob rattled—someone testing it, checking the lock. Then came the thud of a shoulder hitting the door hard enough to make the frame shudder, testing how much force it would take to break through.

"Bathroom window," Rory breathed, already moving with the kind of speed that came from years of hasty exits.

They grabbed their bags without discussion—Sam climbed onto the toilet and shoved at the window until it gave with the crack of old paint surrendering, then squeezed through with the graceless efficiency of someone too tall for the space. He disappeared, and Rory followed a heartbeat later, Sam's hands grabbing her arms and hauling her through just as the door crashed open behind them with the sound of splintering wood.

They ran without looking back, feet pounding pavement, taking corners at random until they'd put four blocks between themselves and the motel. Finally they stopped behind a closed gas station, both breathing hard, pressed into shadows that felt inadequate.

"Your brother," Rory gasped, catching her breath with lungs that burned, "has terrible timing."

Sam almost laughed—almost, but the situation was too tense for real humor. "You have no idea."

"So what now?"

"Now we figure out why the cops are after us." Sam pulled out his phone and started searching with fingers that moved across the screen with practiced speed. "And where the hell Dean is."

Rory leaned against the wall, catching her breath while October wind cut through her leather jacket with cruel precision. Everything she owned at the bottom of a river, cops looking for them, Dean missing—the night just kept getting better and better.

"Well," she said with the kind of dark humor that was all she had left, "this is going great."

Jericho County Jail

Dean Winchester sat in a holding cell and contemplated the many ways this night had gone to shit.

Concrete walls. Single cot. Bars that wouldn't budge—he'd tested them when the deputy wasn't looking. Not his first time behind bars, but it never got less frustrating. That job in Arkansas had been worse, at least. The thing in Texas, definitely worse.

But Sam was out there on a hunt with some girl they'd known for all of three hours, probably getting himself into trouble, and Dean was stuck in here like some amateur who'd forgotten every lesson Dad had drilled into him about staying off the radar.

The deputy had been thorough—phone, knife, lockpicks, even the wallet with the fake IDs. Professional bastard.

Dean leaned back against the wall. Sam had been at Stanford for four years, yeah, rusty as hell, but hunting was like riding a bike. Violent, supernatural bike, but still.

Of course, Sam was also teamed up with a hunter they'd just met—smart mouth, quick reflexes, sure, but still a stranger. And Dean knew exactly how well trusting strangers usually worked out.

Dean closed his eyes and tried not to think about his little brother going back to that bridge without him, with someone whose last name they didn't even know. Tried not to think about Dad's journal with no mention of why he'd been in Jericho. Tried not to think about that phone call that hadn't sounded right, no matter whose number it came from.

This was the job. Sometimes you ended up in county lockup. Sometimes your brother had to handle the hunt without you. Sometimes you just had to trust that he wouldn't get himself killed.

Didn't mean Dean had to like it.

He opened his eyes and stared at the bars. Somewhere out there, Sam was hunting.

And Dean could only wait.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway—steady, unhurried, the sound of someone who had all the time in the world because Dean sure as hell wasn't going anywhere. The deputy appeared outside the cell, keys jangling at his belt with each deliberate step.

"You get one phone call, Winchester." He unlocked the cell door with movements that suggested he'd done this a thousand times and would do it a thousand more. "Come on."

Dean followed him to a desk phone that had probably been installed sometime in the Carter administration, picking up the receiver that smelled like coffee and someone else's bad decisions. The deputy stood close enough to listen but far enough to give the illusion of privacy—a courtesy Dean didn't buy for a second.

He dialed Sam's number from memory, each digit pressed with steady fingers even as his mind ran through a dozen scenarios, most of them bad. The line connected. Rang once. Twice.

"Pick up," Dean muttered under his breath, watching the second hand tick forward on the wall clock. "Come on, Sammy. Pick up the damn phone."

Three rings.

Four.

Chapter Text

The gas station's security light buzzed overhead, casting everything in that particular shade of fluorescent ugliness that made four in the morning feel like the end of the world. Rory leaned against brick that still held a ghost of yesterday's warmth, her body beginning the slow inventory of damage accumulated over the past few hours. The sprint through back alleys had left her calves burning. Her leather jacket had rubbed a raw spot on her collarbone where the collar sat wrong. The taste of adrenaline crash lingered metallic and unwelcome on her tongue, mixing with the stale coffee she'd had six hours ago at the bar.

Sam paced three steps in one direction, pivoted, paced back. The movement was controlled but barely, all that height and energy looking for somewhere useful to burn. His phone stayed dark and silent in his hand, and Rory watched him check it for the fourth time in as many minutes even though he had to know it hadn't rung.

He moved differently than Dean—less swagger, more tension. Where Dean's confidence was performative, Sam's uncertainty was genuine. The suit looked wrong on him somehow, like he'd borrowed someone else's skin and hadn't figured out how to wear it yet.

When it finally did ring, the sound made them both flinch.

Sam had it to his ear before the second ring. "Dean?"

Rory straightened off the wall, her eyes tracking the shift in Sam's expression—relief bleeding through first, then concern darkening around his eyes, frustration tightening his jaw. She couldn't hear Dean's side of the conversation, but she'd spent enough years reading people across bar tops to know what Sam wasn't saying carried more weight than what he was.

"How did they—"

Whatever Dean said next made Sam's free hand curl into a fist. The knuckles went white in the security light. His shoulders tensed like he was bracing for impact from something he couldn't see coming.

"Okay, we'll—"

Sam pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it with the kind of betrayal usually reserved for people, not objects. The screen had gone dark. Call ended.

"What'd he say?" Rory kept her voice level, matter-of-fact. Panic solved nothing, and they had enough problems without adding emotional spiraling to the collection.

"Jericho County Jail." Sam shoved the phone back in his pocket with more force than necessary. "Arrested for impersonating a federal agent. He started to say something else but we got cut off."

Rory let the silence stretch for a beat, watching Sam process and catalog and start running through solutions. She could practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes—weighing options, discarding variables, trying to find the angle that made this fixable.

"Well," she said finally, her voice dry as desert air. "That's not ideal."

Sam's expression suggested her humor wasn't particularly helpful, but something in his face eased fractionally. He scraped both hands through his hair, making it stand up in directions that would've been funny under different circumstances, and started pacing again.

"We need to figure out bail. Or a lawyer." He was talking to himself as much as to her, working through the problem out loud. "Do hunters have lawyers? Dad might know someone. If we could find Dad—"

"We could break him out."

The pacing stopped. Sam turned to look at her fully, both hands still shoved in his pockets like he was physically restraining himself from doing something rash. His expression walked the line between insane and tempting. "We're not breaking him out."

"Why not?" She pushed off the wall, feeling her spine protest the movement. Everything ached in that specific way that promised tomorrow would be worse. "Standard county jail, security's not that sophisticated. Bolt cutters, decent timing, element of surprise—"

"That's illegal."

"So's impersonating a federal agent."

"More illegal." Sam gestured with both hands, emphatic enough to suggest he was convincing himself as much as her. "Like, years-added-to-the-sentence illegal. Felony illegal."

Rory just looked at him. Kept her expression neutral, her posture relaxed, and let the silence do the work. She'd learned this trick behind the bar—sometimes people talked themselves into the right answer if you gave them enough quiet space to think in.

Sam's shoulders dropped. He exhaled hard, the sound carrying about four years of exhausted resignation compressed into a single breath. "Okay. We'll figure something out."

"Something legal?"

"Something semi-legal. Maybe." He said it like the compromise physically hurt him to voice.

"That's more realistic." She started walking, not bothering to check if he was following. He would—hunters always followed the practical choice eventually, even when they hated it. "But first we need to get back to the motel."

"The motel the cops just raided."

"The motel where Dean's car is sitting unattended." She kept her pace steady, not fast enough to draw attention if anyone happened to be watching from dark windows, not slow enough to look like hesitation. "He's going to need it when he gets out. We're going to need it before then. One problem, one solution."

"The cops might still be there."

"Might be." She turned the corner, keeping to the shadows out of habit. At this hour Jericho was dead enough that shadows felt optional, but old habits had kept her alive this long. "Only one way to find out."

Sam fell into step beside her, his longer stride forcing her to stretch her own pace to something that felt awkward. They moved through empty streets where nothing stirred except the occasional car passing in the distance. The October air carried the smell of dry grass and eucalyptus, that particular California scent that lingered even this late in the year. Somewhere a dog barked once and went silent. A streetlight flickered at the end of the block, the bulb fighting a losing battle with its own wiring. The town felt abandoned, like everyone had agreed to stay inside and pretend the night wasn't happening.

"How many times has Dean been arrested?" she asked after two blocks of silence that was starting to feel oppressive.

Sam made a sound that lived somewhere between a laugh and something more complicated. "You want the official count or the realistic one?"

"The realistic one."

"Five, maybe six." He hunched his shoulders slightly, hands shoved in his pockets. "There was this thing in Arkansas where he talked his way out before they actually booked him. Texas wasn't really his fault—some sheriff's deputy had it out for Dad and Dean was just there at the wrong time. Ohio was definitely his fault."

"What happened in Ohio?"

"Bar fight. Some asshole was harassing a woman, Dean stepped in, the guy took a swing, Dean broke his nose." Sam's mouth did something complicated—half fond, half exasperated, entirely familiar. "Guy pressed charges. Dean spent three days in county lockup before Dad could get him out and make it disappear. Complained the entire drive home that the guy started it."

Rory felt her own mouth curve despite everything—despite the exhaustion, despite Dean in jail, despite watching her Jeep sink into black water hours ago. "Sounds about right."

"He's an idiot sometimes." But Sam said it with the kind of affection that only came from years of watching someone be an idiot and loving them anyway. "Gets in his own way trying to do the right thing."

She didn't respond to that, just filed it away with everything else she was learning about the Winchester brothers. The dynamic between them, the history written in offhand comments and careful silences, the particular flavor of protectiveness that clearly ran both directions despite Sam being the younger one. Legacy hunters raised in the life, their father's shadow stretching long enough to cover them both.

The motel materialized through pre-dawn darkness like something half-remembered from a dream. The VACANCY sign still flickered its neurotic rhythm, neon struggling against the inevitable death of its own circuitry. Rory slowed their approach automatically, her eyes moving across the parking lot in systematic sweeps—counting exits, cataloging sight lines, checking for threats.

No cop cars. No officers standing watch with coffee and boredom.

As they moved closer to where the Impala sat—exactly where they'd left it, chrome catching the parking lot lights in a way that made the car look almost predatory—Rory noticed the yellow crime scene tape crossed John Winchester's door two units down, plastic fluttering slightly in the breeze.

"Why didn't they tow it?" Sam voiced the question half a second before she would have.

Rory moved closer, angling her approach to check the interior without presenting too much of her own silhouette. Registration papers were clipped to the driver's side visor, visible through the windshield, exactly where any cop would look first during a traffic stop.

"Not registered to Dean." She squinted at the name on the visible form. "Robert Plant."

Sam made a sound that was definitely a laugh this time, sharp and startled. "Led Zeppelin. He registered his car to the lead singer of Led Zeppelin."

"Of course he did." The corner of Rory's mouth twitched despite everything. The man had commitment to a bit, she'd give him that.

"You have no idea. Before I left for school, we were federal agents named Angus Young and Robert Johnson. Once Dean tried to use Lemmy Kilmister." Sam shook his head, something warm creeping into his expression despite everything. "The cop didn't even blink."

Rory pulled her lockpick set from her jacket pocket, the leather case worn smooth from years of use. She selected the tension wrench and half-diamond pick without looking, her fingers knowing the weight and shape of each tool through muscle memory alone.

"We should wait for Dean," Sam said, but the conviction had leaked out of his voice somewhere between the gas station and here.

"Dean's in jail." She crouched by the driver's side door, fitting the tension wrench into the lock and feeling for resistance. The metal was cool against her fingertips, the mechanism inside old enough to have personality. "We need transportation. He needs his car when he gets out. This is practical problem-solving."

"You're breaking into Dean's car."

"I'm borrowing Dean's car." The lock fought her, older mechanism that required patience. She adjusted the tension by small degrees, feeling individual pins catch and release. "There's a difference."

"He's going to be pissed."

"Probably." The final pin gave with a click that sounded too loud in the empty parking lot. She pulled the door open and reached across to unlock the passenger side. "But he's got to get out of jail first, so I've got at least a few hours."

Sam walked around the front of the car and climbed in with the air of someone who'd already accepted this was happening whether he liked it or not. "This is a terrible idea."

She slid into the driver's seat, and immediately felt like an intruder in someone else's sacred space. Everything about the Impala's interior suggested a car that was loved with the kind of devotion most people reserved for family members. The leather bench seat had been reupholstered at some point, the stitching careful and precise. The dashboard gleamed even in the dim light, not a speck of dust visible. Even the floor mats looked maintained, no accumulated dirt or debris from years of neglect. The interior smelled like leather oil and something else—gun oil, maybe, or the particular scent of a vehicle that spent most of its time on long highways.

She dropped to the floorboard, pulling her small flashlight from her pocket. "Hold this."

Sam took the flashlight and angled the beam where she indicated, his face in the reflected glow looking pained. "Please tell me you've done this before."

"Relax." Rory pulled the panel cover loose, exposing the wiring harness underneath. Red wire for battery, brown for ignition, yellow for starter. Standard configuration for anything built in the sixties. "I've stolen plenty of cars."

"That's not reassuring."

"I always gave them back." She stripped insulation from the battery and ignition wires with careful precision, hyper-aware that she was touching something Dean Winchester clearly loved more than most people loved their families. The wires were clean, well-maintained, the whole harness showing signs of regular care. Even the underside of the dash had been detailed. She worked quickly, connecting battery to ignition with steady fingers despite the small voice in her head pointing out that this was probably going to get her killed when Dean found out. "Consider this a temporary loan."

"Still not reassuring."

The wires sparked when she touched them together, and the Impala's engine rumbled to life with a sound like distant thunder compressed into a confined space. The whole car vibrated with barely contained power, and Rory understood immediately why Dean Winchester treated this vehicle like it was sentient. It felt alive under her hands—responsive and dangerous and absolutely lethal with the right driver. The engine settled into a purr that was somehow both smooth and aggressive, all that American muscle just waiting for an excuse to be unleashed.

She left the wires twisted together and tucked them loosely back under the dash—accessible for the next time they'd need to start it. The panel cover went back in place, hiding the evidence.

"See?" She slid back into the driver's seat. "No permanent damage."

"Dean's going to murder both of us." Sam buckled his seatbelt like he was strapping in for his own execution. "Slowly. With significant planning involved."

Rory tested the wheel, feeling the weight of power steering calibrated for someone who knew how to handle American muscle at speed.

She pulled out of the parking lot slowly, no squealing tires or dramatic exits. Just a smooth departure that wouldn't attract attention from anyone who might still be watching. The engine purred underneath them, all that contained violence waiting for someone to let it loose. The streets were still empty, that dead hour before dawn when even the insomniacs had given up and gone to bed.

"Nice ride," she said after a moment, because it was true and because the silence had gotten heavy again. The Impala responded with precision that bordered on aggressive, every input translated immediately into movement. This wasn't transportation. This was a weapon on wheels.

Sam's head dropped into his hands. "Don't. Don't get attached. Don't talk about it like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're appreciating it. He'll know somehow. He always knows." Sam's voice carried years of experience watching his brother have an unnatural connection with an inanimate object. "And then he'll kill you."

"Noted."

The Motel 6 looked exactly like she'd left it—single story, doors facing the parking lot, the kind of place that asked no questions as long as you paid cash up front and didn't make noise after midnight. She pulled the Impala into a spot two doors down from her room, killed the engine, and felt the full weight of exhaustion settle over her like a physical thing. Her hands ached from gripping the wheel. Her eyes burned. Her body had moved past tired into that strange twilight zone where everything felt slightly unreal.

"We need a plan," Sam said, but his voice was rough with exhaustion that matched her own.

"We need sleep." Rory climbed out of the car, her legs protesting every movement. Everything hurt—muscles she'd forgotten existed sending complaints directly to her brain, joints threatening to quit entirely. The cool morning air hit her face, sharp enough to make her blink. "A few hours. Then we figure out the rest."

"A few hours isn't enough."

"It's what we've got." She unlocked her door, the keycard reader blinking green on the second try. The hallway smelled like industrial cleaner and cigarettes despite the NO SMOKING sign on every door. "Come on."

Sam hesitated in the doorway, clearly working through some internal debate about propriety or boundaries or something equally unnecessary given their circumstances. "I can sleep in the car—"

"Sam." She cut him off before he could finish. "It's five in the morning. You're exhausted. I'm exhausted. There are two beds. Take one."

He looked like he wanted to argue, but exhaustion won. He walked inside, taking in the room with its two twin beds and the research still scattered across the table where she'd left it hours ago. Newspaper clippings and maps and death records, all the pieces of a hunt they still needed to finish. The room was cool—she'd turned off the heater before leaving for the bar a lifetime ago—and it smelled faintly of old carpet and the particular mustiness that lived in every cheap motel room in America.

"Shower's yours if you want it," she said, already pulling clean clothes from her duffel. "Just leave me some hot water."

The bathroom door clicked shut, and a moment later she heard water running through pipes that had probably been installed before she was born. Rory sat on the bed closer to the window, unlacing her boots and setting them beside the nightstand where she could reach them quickly if needed. Always know where your exits are. Always keep your weapons close. Always be ready to move. The rules that had kept her alive for four years, habits so ingrained now that following them required no conscious thought.

She lay back on the mattress, staring at water stains on the ceiling that suggested stories she didn't want to know. The springs creaked under her weight, the sound loud in the quiet room. Her body was screaming for sleep, muscles going liquid now that she'd stopped moving, but her brain kept cataloging—exits mapped, weapons accounted for, Dean in jail, hunt unfinished, John Winchester missing. The tactical assessment ran on loop, easier than thinking about everything she'd lost in that river.

The shower cut off. Sam emerged a few minutes later in clean clothes, his hair damp and sticking up in directions that suggested he'd given up on controlling it entirely. He looked marginally more human, though exhaustion still painted bruises under his eyes dark enough to look like injuries.

"Your turn," he said, already heading for the far bed.

Rory grabbed her clothes and didn't bother responding. The bathroom mirror showed someone who looked like they'd gone three rounds with something mean and lost decisively. Dark circles, pale skin, hair that had given up entirely. She looked away before the reflection could tell her anything else she didn't want to know.

The shower was scalding, the kind of heat that bordered on painful but felt necessary anyway. She stood under the spray and let it wash away dried sweat and the lingering smell of river water. The water pressure was terrible, sputtering and weak, but it was hot and that was enough. Steam filled the small bathroom until she could barely see the frosted glass of the shower door. She counted to thirty—giving herself that much and no more—and then pushed everything down where it couldn't touch her. Later. She could deal with loss later, when the immediate crisis wasn't quite so immediate.

The bathroom was thick with steam when she emerged, mirror completely fogged. She dressed quickly, ran her fingers through wet hair to work out the worst tangles, and stepped back into the main room. The cooler air was a relief after the shower's heat, helping clear her head.

Sam was already asleep, sprawled across the far bed with his long limbs taking up more space than should've been physically possible. His breathing was deep and even, one arm flung over his eyes to block out what little light filtered through the curtains. The kind of unconsciousness that came from exhaustion so complete that staying awake was no longer optional.

Rory set her phone alarm for eleven-thirty—five hours, which still wasn't enough but was better than nothing—and climbed onto the other bed without bothering with the covers. The mattress was lumpy, springs poking through in uncomfortable places, but it was horizontal and that was all that mattered. Sleep came fast and heavy, dragging her down into darkness where nothing waited except dreamless black.

The alarm's shrill cry shattered the quiet like breaking glass.

Rory's hand shot out before she was fully conscious, killing the sound on instinct. Eleven-thirty according to the display. Her body still felt like it had been hit by a truck, but it was an improvement over complete shutdown. Every muscle had gone stiff during sleep, her neck locked at an angle that sent pain shooting down her spine when she tried to move. Her mouth tasted like something had died in it, and her eyes felt like they'd been replaced with sandpaper.

Sam groaned from the other bed, face pressed into the pillow. "What time is it?"

"Almost noon." Her voice came out rough, throat dry. "Time to move."

"Not enough sleep." But he was already sitting up, scrubbing both hands through his hair and making it stand at even more improbable angles. He looked about as good as she felt, which was to say terrible. "Okay. Dean. We need to get Dean."

Rory stood, her body filing formal complaints about every decision she'd made in the past twelve hours. She ignored them. Pain was just information, and the information said she was functional enough to keep moving. Her knees protested. Her lower back sent shooting complaints up her spine. She rolled her shoulders and felt things crack that probably shouldn't have.

"Coffee first," she said, reaching for her jacket where she'd draped it over the chair. "Then we figure out the Dean situation."

"Coffee." Sam repeated the word like it was sacred, like it held the answer to every problem they currently faced. "Yeah. Coffee first."

They looked at each other across the motel room—two hunters running on five hours of sleep that felt like twenty minutes, a stolen car in the parking lot, and a growing list of problems that included jail and ghosts and missing fathers. Sam's expression suggested he was questioning every life choice that had led to this exact moment. Rory probably looked the same.

"There's got to be a diner in this town," she said, pulling on her boots and lacing them with fingers that felt thick and clumsy.

"Every town has a diner." Sam grabbed his jacket, checking his pockets automatically for phone and wallet and weapons. "Whether the coffee's any good is another question."

"I'll take bad coffee over no coffee."

"That's the spirit."

They headed out into midday air that was mild for October, the sky overcast but the temperature pleasant enough in the low sixties. A breeze carried the scent of dry grass and dust, that particular California combination that never quite went away even this late in the year. Rory climbed into the Impala's driver seat. She reached under the dash and touched the exposed wires together—spark, rumble, the engine catching with that same throaty purr. Sam got in without comment this time—apparently they'd crossed some threshold where her driving Dean's car had moved from crisis to accepted fact.

The diner Sam directed her to was three blocks away, a place called Mel's that looked like it had been serving breakfast since the Eisenhower administration. The sign out front flickered intermittently, the letter E giving up entirely every few seconds. The parking lot was half full with pickup trucks and one ancient station wagon that had probably been parked in the same spot for the past decade.

Inside, the diner smelled like burnt coffee and bacon grease and decades of cigarette smoke that had soaked into the vinyl booths despite the NO SMOKING signs that had probably been installed sometime in the nineties. The linoleum floor was cracked in places, patched in others, the pattern worn away near the door and the counter from years of foot traffic. A handful of locals occupied the booths—truckers mostly, a few farmers in work clothes, everyone looking like they'd been awake since before dawn and would probably keep working until well after sunset.

The waitress who approached with coffeepot in hand looked like she'd been working this shift since the Carter administration. Her name tag said DOREEN in faded letters, and she didn't waste time with pleasantries.

"Coffee?"

"Please," Sam said with the desperation of someone who needed caffeine like oxygen.

"Two," Rory added.

Doreen poured without comment, sloshing the dark liquid into stained ceramic mugs that had probably been white once upon a time. The coffee was exactly as bad as expected—burnt and bitter and sitting on the burner too long—but it was hot and caffeinated and that made it perfect.

"You two eating?" Doreen pulled a pad from her apron pocket, pen poised with the efficiency of someone who'd done this ten thousand times.

Rory's stomach reminded her she hadn't eaten since—when? Yesterday afternoon? The timeline had blurred. "Yeah. Burger with extra pickles and cheese. Fries."

"Same," Sam said, then reconsidered. "Actually, make it a double. And can I get extra bacon on that?"

Doreen made a notation that was probably shorthand for 'starving tourists,' and disappeared toward the kitchen without another word.

Rory wrapped both hands around the mug and let the heat seep into her palms while her brain slowly struggled back online. Across from her, Sam was doing the same, staring into his coffee like it held answers instead of just disappointment. He drained the first cup in four long swallows and immediately refilled from the carafe Doreen had left on their table.

"Okay," Sam said after his second cup, his brain clearly starting to function again. "We need a plan for Dean. Bail, lawyer, something."

"Or we figure out why they arrested him." Rory set down her mug, the ceramic making a dull thunk against the Formica table. She could see the gears turning in Sam's head, that methodical way he processed information. "Was it just the fake ID? Random bad luck? Did someone call it in?"

Sam opened his mouth, closed it. Blinked. "That's actually a good point."

"If someone called it in, we need to know who. If it was random, we need to know if the cops are actively looking for more fake feds." She took another sip of terrible coffee, felt it burn all the way down. "Changes our approach."

"And the phone call," Sam added, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. His fingers drummed against the mug, restless energy looking for an outlet. "That wasn't Dad. Dean was sure."

"So something's trying to keep you away from the bridge. From the hunt." The pieces were there, she could feel them starting to click together even if the full picture wasn't clear yet. Like looking at a jigsaw puzzle and knowing what the image would be before all the pieces were in place. "Your dad's journal mentioned sulfur traces. Demon activity. What if—"

"What if there's more than just Constance?" Sam finished the thought, his expression darkening in a way that suggested this possibility wasn't new to him. "What if something else is in play?"

"Woman in White doesn't usually work with demons. But that doesn't mean something else isn't here." Rory paused as Doreen reappeared with two plates loaded with burgers that looked like they'd been assembled with the specific intent to stop a human heart. Thick patties, melted cheese, bacon piled high, fries that glistened with grease. Exactly what they needed.

Sam dug in immediately, the kind of focused eating that came from genuine hunger rather than politeness. Rory took a bite and had to admit—for a truck stop diner in the middle of nowhere, Mel's knew how to make a burger.

"We need to find Joseph Welch," Sam said around a mouthful of food. "Constance's husband. He's still in town according to the obituary."

Rory ran through variables while working on her burger. Joseph Welch had lived with this for twenty years—the town's collective memory of his wife killing their children, then herself. Small towns never forgot. Never forgave. Approaching him wrong would get the door slammed in their faces. They needed an angle that wasn't exploitative, wasn't trauma tourism. Just facts. Just stop more people from dying.

They ate in relative silence, the food helping clear some of the exhaustion fog. Sam finished his double burger and most of his fries before sitting back with a satisfied sound.

"That helped," he said.

"Food usually does." Rory pushed her plate aside, half the fries still remaining. Her stomach had shrunk after years of irregular meals, couldn't handle the volume anymore.

Sam was already scanning the diner, eyes landing on the payphone mounted on the wall near the bathrooms. "Phone book's over there. Let me check if Welch is listed."

He stood and crossed to the phone, and Rory watched him flip through the tattered White Pages that dangled from a metal cord, pages yellowed and soft from decades of use. Small towns were good for something at least—everyone was listed, addresses included, no privacy in a place where everyone already knew everyone else's business anyway.

Doreen reappeared to clear their plates. Rory left cash on the table that included enough for a decent tip—the woman looked like she needed it—and stood as Sam came back.

"Got it," he said, his voice low. "Joseph Welch, 459 Lindbrook Road."

"Then that's where we start." Rory pulled on her jacket, feeling the familiar weight settle on her shoulders. "Talk to Joseph, figure out what's happening with Constance, then we deal with Dean."

"You think he'll talk to us?"

"Only one way to find out."

The afternoon air was warm enough that Rory unzipped her jacket, the October sun breaking through the overcast in patches that felt pleasant rather than harsh. The promised rain seemed to have backed off, the clouds thinning slightly. Rory started the Impala again—the process faster this time—and Sam directed her toward Lindbrook Road.

Jericho looked different in full daylight than it had in the dark hours before dawn. The downtown consisted of maybe six blocks—a hardware store, a pharmacy, a bank with bars on the windows, a few shops that looked like they'd been struggling since before she was born. Most of the storefronts had HELP WANTED signs in the windows, faded and dusty like they'd been there so long nobody even saw them anymore. A few people moved along the sidewalks, some in short sleeves despite the season, nobody making eye contact with anyone else. An old man swept the sidewalk in front of the pharmacy with methodical strokes that suggested he'd been doing it for decades. A woman hurried past with two small children in tow, grocery bags swinging from her arms.

They passed the library where Sam and Dean had done their research—brick building with white columns, probably built in the thirties with WPA money and pride. The elementary school sat a block over, playground equipment showing its age, the swing sets moving slightly in the breeze with nobody on them. This was a town that was dying slowly, losing its children to bigger cities with better opportunities, aging gracefully into obsolescence.

Lindbrook Road was on the east side of town, where the houses got smaller and the yards got bigger and everything had that particular shabby quality that came from years of deferred maintenance and not quite enough money. The addresses climbed as they drove—412, 425, 438. Trees lined the street, mostly eucalyptus and valley oak, their leaves rustling in the afternoon breeze.

459 was a small ranch house set back from the road, white siding gone gray with age and weather, the porch sagging slightly on one side like it was tired of holding itself up. The yard was neat enough—grass brown from summer heat but cut short, a few shrubs struggling in the California drought. A pickup truck sat in the driveway, rust eating at the wheel wells, a faded SUPPORT OUR TROOPS ribbon stuck to the back window.

Rory pulled the Impala to the curb half a block down, killed the engine. They sat there for a moment, both of them looking at the house where Joseph Welch had lived for two decades with the memory of dead children and a wife who'd drowned herself in the river.

"Ready?" Sam asked.

"No." But she opened the door anyway, stepping out into the mild afternoon. "But let's do it anyway."

They walked up the cracked sidewalk to 459 Lindbrook Road, and Rory cataloged exits automatically—front door, side door visible around the corner of the house, windows on either side. The porch steps creaked under their weight, the wood soft in places that suggested rot underneath the paint. The doorbell didn't work—she pressed it and heard nothing—so Sam knocked instead.

Nothing.

He knocked again, louder this time. Still nothing.

Sam tried the doorbell himself, then knocked a third time. "Mr. Welch?"

Silence answered. Not the weighted silence of someone inside refusing to answer, but the empty silence of a house with nobody home.

"Truck's in the driveway," Rory said, studying the vehicle. "Could be someone gave him a ride somewhere."

"Or he's out back and can't hear us." Sam moved to peer through the front window, cupping his hands against the glass to block the glare. "Can't see much. Looks like nobody's home though."

Rory checked her watch. One-fifteen. "We could come back."

"Or we wait." Sam was already heading back toward the Impala, his long legs eating up the distance. "He's got to come home eventually."

"Stakeout it is." Rory followed, climbing back into the driver's seat. The leather was warm from the sun, pleasant rather than stifling. She started the engine and let it idle, cracking the windows to let in the breeze.

Sam slouched in the passenger seat, his long legs cramped even in the Impala's generous interior. "Could be an hour. Could be four."

"Could be ten minutes." She adjusted the rearview mirror to keep the house in view. "Only one way to find out."

The minutes crawled by with the particular tedium that came from surveillance work—nothing happening, nothing to do but watch and wait and try not to think too hard about everything else. The engine hummed quietly. A breeze rustled through the eucalyptus trees lining the street, their distinctive scent drifting through the open windows. A dog barked somewhere, sharp and persistent, then went quiet. The overcast sky filtered the sunlight into something soft and diffuse, making it hard to judge the passage of time.

Rory watched an old woman two houses down come out to check her mailbox, moving with careful deliberation like her bones hurt. A teenager skateboarded past, earbuds in, wearing a t-shirt like the October temperature was nothing. A minivan pulled into a driveway across the street, and a woman got out with grocery bags, wrestling them toward her front door while two small kids tumbled out behind her.

Normal life. Regular people doing regular things, nobody aware that something was killing men on Centennial Highway, that a Woman in White was drowning people in the same river where she'd drowned herself.

Rory's fingers found the steering wheel, tapping out a rhythm that didn't exist anymore. No tape deck. No music. The Cranberries' "Linger" had been in the player when the Jeep went under. That entire collection, built tape by tape over years. Every truck stop, every thrift store, every rare find carefully curated. Mazzy Star. Soundgarden. That bootleg Pearl Jam recording from the Seattle show. All of it somewhere at the bottom of the river now, plastic cases cracked and waterlogged, magnetic tape unspooling in the current.

She pulled her hand back. Focused on the house. Loss could wait.

"So," Sam said after twenty minutes of silence, "you've been hunting four years?"

"Give or take." Rory kept her eyes on the Welch house. This felt like a test, or maybe just curiosity, but either way she wasn't sure how much to share.

"My whole life." He said it with a flatness that suggested complicated feelings compressed into simple words. "Until I left for Stanford four years ago." His hand went to his phone, checked the screen even though it hadn't buzzed, then dropped back to his lap.

"Stanford." She glanced at him, reassessing. That explained the suit, the restless energy, the way he moved like someone still figuring out which skin to wear. The particular flavor of discomfort that came from being caught between two worlds. "So you got out."

"Yeah." Sam's jaw tightened. "Thought I was done with this. Had a girlfriend, an apartment, law school applications ready to go." He paused, and something raw crossed his face. "Then Dad went missing. Dean showed up. Here I am."

"Girlfriend know what you do?"

"No." The word came out sharp enough to cut. "She thinks I'm helping my brother with a family emergency. Which I guess is technically true."

Rory heard all the things he wasn't saying—the compartmentalization required to keep a normal life separate from hunting, the way those worlds couldn't coexist, the inevitable choice between them. She'd never tried to have both. Had never had the option, really.

"Must be hard," she said. "Keeping those separate."

"It's working. This is temporary—just until we find Dad." But his voice carried doubt he probably didn't realize was audible.

They fell back into silence. Thirty minutes. Forty-five. The breeze picked up slightly, carrying with it the dry, dusty scent of California in late autumn. The afternoon sun had started its slow descent toward the horizon, the light taking on that particular golden quality that came in the hours before sunset.

"Your turn," Sam said eventually. "How'd you get into hunting?"

Rory's hand went to her jacket pocket, checking the weight there without conscious thought. "My dad was a hunter."

She left it at that. Didn't explain about her mother or the demon or why she'd started hunting. Sam was asking the right questions, but she wasn't ready to give him real answers. Maybe later. Maybe never.

Sam seemed to sense the boundary, because he didn't push. "But you hunt alone."

"Yeah."

"Must be tough."

"Has its advantages." She watched a cat slink across the Welch's front yard, moving with liquid grace through the brown grass. "Nobody to worry about except yourself. Nobody to slow you down. Nobody to—"

"Get killed because you made the wrong call?" Sam's voice was quiet, understanding in a way that suggested he'd thought about this before, had run those same calculations.

"Something like that."

"Dean would say hunting alone gets you killed faster." Sam's mouth curved slightly, not quite a smile. "Dad always said the same thing. 'We're stronger together' and all that."

"Your dad's missing and your brother's in jail." Rory kept her voice neutral, factual. "Not exactly a great advertisement for the family business model."

Sam's almost-smile vanished. "Fair point."

The hours continued their slow crawl. Two-thirty became three o'clock became four. The Impala's interior had warmed enough that Rory turned off the engine, letting the breeze flow through the open windows. Sam had given up on sitting normally and was sprawled across the passenger side with his head against the window, eyes half-closed but still tracking movement outside.

The light had shifted significantly by the time anything changed. What had been bright afternoon sun had mellowed into that rich golden hour glow, shadows stretching long across brown lawns. The air had cooled enough that Rory zipped her jacket back up. Five-forty according to the dashboard clock. They'd been sitting here for over four hours.

Sam straightened in his seat, rolling his shoulders with audible pops. "Maybe he's not coming back today."

"Give it another hour." Rory's eyes felt gritty from staring, her back complaining from the awkward angle. "If he's not back by dark, we'll come back tomorrow."

Sam nodded, settling back into his slouch.

Fifteen minutes later, just as the light was beginning that final transition from golden to dusky, a car pulled up—ancient Buick, oxidized paint, one taillight held on with duct tape. It parked behind the pickup, and a man climbed out with the slow movements of someone whose body hurt. Late fifties, weathered skin, tired eyes. He pulled a paper bag from the passenger seat—groceries, from the shape—and headed for the front door.

"That's him," Sam said, already reaching for the door handle.

"Wait." Rory caught his arm. "Give him a minute. Let him get inside, put his stuff down. We show up the second he gets home, he's going to be defensive."

Sam hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Five minutes."

They watched Joseph Welch disappear inside his house. Lights came on in what was probably the kitchen. A shadow moved past the window—putting away groceries, settling in after wherever he'd been all afternoon.

The sky was deepening now, that blue-gray twilight that meant darkness wasn't far behind. Perfect timing. If they could get information from Joseph about Constance, about where she might be tied to, they'd have just enough time to act before full dark brought the Woman in White out to hunt.

Rory checked her watch. Let five minutes tick past with glacial slowness. Then five more for good measure.

"Now?" Sam asked.

"Now."

They climbed out of the Impala, and Rory felt every hour of sitting compressed into stiff muscles and protesting joints. The walk to the front door felt longer this time, weighted with anticipation. The air had cooled noticeably, October asserting itself as the sun continued its descent. Whatever Joseph Welch told them would determine their next move.

Sam knocked. Three solid raps that echoed in the early evening quiet.

This time, footsteps answered. Slow and heavy, the shuffle of someone who didn't move fast anymore. The door opened on a chain, and Joseph Welch's face appeared in the gap—the same weathered skin and tired eyes Rory had seen from a distance, but up close she could see more. The lines around his mouth that spoke of years carrying weight nobody should have to carry. The way his shoulders slumped like something had broken inside him a long time ago and never healed right.

"Yeah?"

"Mr. Welch?" Sam had his most earnest expression on, the one that made him look young and harmless and genuinely concerned. "My name is Sam. This is Rory. We're looking into the disappearances on Centennial Highway. We were hoping we could ask you a few questions."

Joseph Welch's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. Recognition, maybe. Or resignation.

"You reporters?"

"No sir," Rory said. Non-threatening. Matter-of-fact. "Just trying to figure out what's happening before someone else gets hurt."

The silence stretched. Joseph Welch studied them both with the careful assessment of someone who'd learned not to trust easily. His eyes lingered on Sam's suit, on Rory's worn leather jacket, reading them the way she'd been reading people across bar tops for years.

His hand moved to close the door. "Can't help you."

"Mr. Welch—" Sam started.

"You think you're the first ones to come asking?" The door was closing, inch by inch. "Had reporters, had cops, had goddamn ghost hunters with their cameras and their bullshit. All of you wanting to pick at old wounds like there's something new to find."

Rory saw Sam's shoulders tense, preparing to argue, to push. She spoke before he could.

"We're not asking about what happened in 1981." Her voice stayed level, factual. "We're asking about what's happening now. Three men dead in the last month. All of them near the bridge where your wife died. Someone else is going to die if we don't stop it."

Joseph Welch went still. His hand frozen on the door.

The silence felt like it lasted forever. She could see him weighing options—the cost of opening old wounds against the cost of more deaths. His jaw worked like he was chewing words he didn't want to say. Behind him, through the gap in the door, she could see a living room frozen in time—furniture from the eighties, family photos on the mantle that probably included children who'd never grown up.

Finally, the chain rattled. The door opened wider.

"Come in then," Joseph Welch said, stepping back. His voice carried the exhaustion of someone who'd told this story before and knew he'd tell it again. "Might as well get it over with."

Chapter Text

Dean POV

The concrete walls of Jericho County Jail were starting to feel personal.

Dean paced his cell—six feet of government-issued hopelessness. Three steps to the bars, pivot on his heel where the floor had worn slightly smoother, three steps back to the cot that smelled like industrial bleach and decades of desperation. The rhythm kept his hands from curling into fists. Kept him from thinking too hard about Sam hunting with some stranger while Dad's journal sat three rooms away in evidence.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead with that particular frequency that made his molars ache, drilling into his skull with relentless persistence. Each pulse of sound seemed to sync with his heartbeat, creating a rhythm that was driving him slowly insane. Somewhere down the hall, a toilet ran constantly—drip-drip-drip suggesting plumbing installed during the Nixon administration and never properly maintained. The sound echoed off concrete, magnified by the emptiness, counting down seconds that felt like hours.

The air tasted stale. Recycled through vents that probably hadn't been cleaned in years, mixing cigarette smoke from the deputies' break room with industrial cleaner and the particular staleness of a building where nothing good ever happened. Dean could taste it on his tongue, metallic and wrong, like breathing through a filter made of disappointment and poor life choices.

He'd catalogued everything during the walk back from his phone call. Evidence room three doors down on the left—he'd counted the steps, twenty-three from his cell. Metal door with a push-button lock that looked newer than the rest of the building's security, probably installed in the last five years when someone had realized keeping guns and drugs in a room secured by a key from the seventies was asking for trouble. The back exit past the booking desk—emergency bar across the door in that distinctive red that promised alarms if opened, but alarms could be overridden, ignored, explained away in the chaos of an actual emergency.

Two deputies on duty according to the movement patterns he'd tracked. Martinez, who'd booked him with the bored efficiency of someone who'd processed a thousand drunk and disorderlies and saw Dean as just another entry in a long line of poor decisions. And the younger one whose name Dean hadn't caught, nervous energy suggesting he was new enough that the job still meant something. Plus whoever manned the front desk, but that person hadn't moved in over an hour based on the consistent sound of keyboard typing and the occasional phone ring.

Guard rotation seemed informal. Small-town casual. The kind of setup that relied more on the fact that nobody in Jericho had anywhere to run than actual security protocols.

The smart play was waiting. Let Sam figure something out with that girl who was apparently competent enough to orchestrate hunts but stupid enough to trust strangers she'd met twelve hours ago in a dive bar. Maybe call Bobby, get a lawyer who knew how to navigate the particular gray areas that hunters lived in, who wouldn't ask questions about the fake IDs or why a twenty-six-year-old had been impersonating a federal agent in the first place.

The smart play sucked.

Dean completed another circuit. His knuckles cracked as he flexed his hands, joints protesting from being held in fists for too long. The sound was loud in the quiet cell, echoing off walls that had probably heard worse. Somewhere out there, Constance Welch was drowning men on Centennial Highway. Sam was hunting rusty as hell after four years at Stanford—probably second-guessing every instinct that had been honed through childhood, overthinking situations where thinking got you killed and instinct kept you breathing.

And Dad was in the wind. Tracking something that left sulfur traces and dead cattle in patterns Dean didn't understand yet, following leads that had taken him away from his sons without explanation or warning because John Winchester had never been good at explanations.

Sitting in a cell while that went down made Dean's skin crawl worse than any ghost ever had. Made him feel helpless in a way he absolutely couldn't stand, trapped and useless while the people he was supposed to protect walked into danger without him.

He was calculating the feasibility of picking the lock with the underwire from the cot mattress—he'd done it before in Arkansas, that clusterfuck with the sheriff's deputy who'd recognized Dad's face from a wanted poster and Dean had spent two hours working a piece of metal wire through a lock mechanism while Dad created a distraction—when the alarm hit.

The sound was immediate and visceral. A klaxon that made his teeth ache and his ears ring, shrill and urgent, the kind of noise designed to provoke panic in anyone with working ears. The frequency cut through everything, drowning out the buzzing lights and dripping toilet, filling the entire building with sound that demanded action.

Emergency lights kicked on half a second later. Strobing red across concrete walls, turning the institutional gray into something out of a fever dream. The pulsing rhythm made it hard to see, hard to think, shadows jumping and twisting with each flash like the building itself was having a seizure.

Dean's hand went to his belt on pure instinct—reaching for a weapon that wasn't there, body coiling into defensive stance before his brain caught up with the situation. His muscles remembered the movement even when his conscious mind knew the gun was gone, locked in evidence three doors down.

"Possible fire at the elementary school!" The deputy's voice carried over the alarm, sharp with genuine fear that cut through even the relentless klaxon. "During the fall play—building's full of kids!"

The words hit like a punch. Elementary school. Fall play. Kids.

Boots on linoleum. Multiple sets, moving fast with the particular rhythm of people who'd stopped thinking and started acting. The sound was chaos—overlapping footfalls, radios crackling to life, voices shouting over each other in that particular pitch that meant genuine emergency and not drill.

Radios exploded with overlapping transmissions—dispatch trying to coordinate, another voice demanding to know how many units were responding and getting three different answers. The organized chaos of a small-town police force mobilizing for an actual emergency, the kind of situation where hesitation cost lives and nobody gave a shit about proper procedure or chain of command.

Dean moved to the bars. Watched deputies sprint past his cell toward the front of the building with the kind of speed that came from imagining children trapped in smoke, from nightmares about not getting there in time. Martinez appeared first—the one who'd booked him, suddenly looking twenty years older with genuine fear etched into his weathered face. He grabbed his jacket from a desk chair while barking into his radio, words coming out fast and clipped, all business.

Another deputy Dean hadn't seen before materialized in the hallway—younger, pale-faced with the kind of expression that said he was seeing those trapped kids in his mind's eye and couldn't unsee it. He was moving fast enough to nearly trip over his own feet, coordination giving way to pure adrenaline and terror.

"Martinez! We need everyone—the chief says all units—"

"I'm coming!" Martinez was already moving toward the front entrance, radio pressed to his ear hard enough to leave an impression, boots pounding linoleum with purpose. "Lock down the—"

"There's no time! It's a goddamn elementary school full of kids!"

And then they were gone.

Boots pounding toward the front entrance, radio chatter dissolving into distance and alarm noise. The sound faded—Martinez's voice barking orders, the younger deputy's breathing harsh and panicked, both of them moving toward the emergency with single-minded determination that left everything else forgotten.

The hallway stayed empty.

This was too convenient.

Dean's instincts were screaming. That hunter awareness that kept you alive when logic failed, when things looked right but felt wrong in a way you couldn't articulate but had learned not to ignore.

It felt orchestrated. Felt like someone had pulled strings specifically to give him this chance, had known exactly what buttons to push to empty this building in under thirty seconds.

But Dean Winchester had never been one to question good luck when it was staring him in the face. Had never been the type to overthink a gift horse, especially not when Sam was out there hunting and Dad was missing and every second in this cell was a second wasted.

He reached for his lockpick—

Right. Evidence room. No lockpick.

The muscle memory was there before conscious thought, hand reaching for a pocket that didn't hold what he needed. Dean cursed under his breath, the sound swallowed by the alarm. He studied the cell lock instead—old-fashioned mechanism that predated electronic systems by a good thirty years, the kind that used an actual metal key instead of the magnetic cards and biometric readers bigger cities had started installing.

He'd picked locks with less before.

Dean scanned the hallway with systematic precision, cataloguing resources the way Dad had taught him. Eyes moving in a grid pattern, taking in everything, dismissing nothing. The desk where Martinez had sat held the usual detritus of police work—paperwork stacked in uneven piles that suggested no one had filed anything properly in months, coffee cups leaving brown rings on incident reports like the world's most depressing modern art, pens scattered across the surface like someone had given up on organization years ago and never looked back.

A paperclip box sat next to the ancient computer monitor. One of those clear plastic containers from an office supply store, half-full of standard silver clips. Metal catching the strobing emergency lights with each pulse, gleaming with each flash of red like a beacon drawing his attention.

"Come on," Dean muttered to himself, the words barely audible over the alarm.

He pressed his face against the bars. Cold metal bit into his cheek, the sensation sharp and grounding. He wedged his shoulder into the gap between bars, the opening designed to be too narrow for a body but just wide enough for an arm if you didn't mind the pain.

The angle was wrong. Physics working against him with the casual cruelty of mathematics.

"Come on, you son of a—"

He tried again. Pressed harder against the bars until he felt something in his shoulder protest with a sharp twinge that promised bruising, stretched until his arm went completely numb from the pressure cutting off blood flow. His fingers touched the desk edge finally—smooth laminate worn soft from years of elbows and coffee spills, the surface slightly tacky with accumulated grime.

He walked his fingers forward across the surface, fingertips scraping against the desk. Searching for purchase, for anything he could grab. The muscles in his arm were screaming, shoulder joint threatening to dislocate from the unnatural angle, but he kept reaching.

The paperclip box was right there. So close he could see individual clips through the clear plastic, could count them if he wanted to waste the time.

One more inch. Just one more—

His middle finger caught the edge of the box. Barely. Just enough pressure to shift it, to tip the balance. The box rocked on its base, plastic scraping against laminate, and then momentum took over.

The lid popped off. Paperclips scattered across the desk like metal confetti, a dozen of them bouncing in different directions with tiny metallic sounds that got lost in the alarm. Dean watched one skitter toward the edge, momentum carrying it forward in a straight line—hung there for a suspended heartbeat while gravity decided, balanced perfectly on the precipice—then fell.

Dean's hand shot down. Fingers closing around thin metal mid-drop, catching it before it could hit the floor and bounce under furniture where it would be useless.

"Thank you, Jesus."

He pulled his arm back through the bars. The return journey was easier, metal scraping against skin already abraded from the attempt. His shoulder throbbed as it came free, joint protesting the abuse. Dean ignored it. Already straightening the paperclip with fingers that had done this enough times for muscle memory to take over, bending the thin metal with precise movements.

The clip bent easily. Malleable steel forming the rough shape of a tension wrench under his manipulation. Not perfect—not the proper lockpick from his kit—but functional. And function was all he needed.

"You beautiful bastard."

Dean crouched by the lock. Inserted the straightened paperclip into the mechanism, feeling for pins with the kind of delicate touch that seemed at odds with his usual problem-solving approach. The lock was old, mechanism sticky with decades of use and intermittent maintenance. He could feel resistance in the metal, could sense where years of keys had worn grooves into pins.

The first pin caught after two tries. That satisfying click-and-hold that meant success. Dean held pressure, maintaining the tension while he searched for the second.

The second pin took longer—the angle wrong, paperclip bending slightly under pressure that was too much for the thin metal. He adjusted. Found the sweet spot. Applied pressure at just the right vector. Click.

The third pin fought him. Refusing to budge no matter how much pressure he applied, the mechanism stubborn in a way that suggested this particular pin had gotten stuck at some point and never properly freed. Dean repositioned entirely. Changed his angle of attack. Tried again with patience he didn't feel.

His hands were sweating. Palms slick despite the cool temperature, adrenaline making everything feel slippery and uncertain. The alarm kept blaring, relentless and disorienting.

Dean forced his breathing to steady. Forced his hands to stop shaking through sheer will. Focused everything—all his attention, all his considerable stubbornness—on the tiny movements of metal against metal. The world narrowed to this moment, to this lock, to the microscopic adjustments that meant freedom or failure.

The third pin gave. Finally. Reluctantly. With a click that felt too loud, too final.

The lock surrendered.

Sound echoing in the hallway despite the alarm, that distinctive metallic snap that meant a mechanism giving way. Dean eased the cell door open with careful hands—hinges protesting slightly with a creak that had probably been there since installation but sounded deafening in his heightened state. The sound wasn't loud enough to matter though, not with the klaxon drowning out everything else.

He slipped into the hallway. Every nerve ending firing. Every sense on high alert. Body coiled and ready to move, muscles tensed for action, ears straining for any sound that meant someone was coming back. His eyes tracked the corridor in both directions—clear to the left, clear to the right, just empty hallway and strobing lights and that goddamn alarm.

The evidence room door hung open exactly as Martinez had left it. Light off inside, but the emergency strobes provided enough illumination to navigate. The pulsing red painted shelves and boxes in intermittent crimson, creating shadows that jumped and twisted.

Dean moved inside. Quick. Efficient. Systematic. The way Dad had taught him to clear a room—eyes moving in a grid pattern, cataloguing contents, dismissing threats, identifying targets.

His leather jacket hung on a hook by the door. Familiar weight in his hands as he pulled it on, worn leather settling on his shoulders like armor. The jacket smelled like him—gun oil and cheap motel soap and the road—grounding in its familiarity. He shrugged it into place, feeling instantly more himself with that weight across his back.

His phone sat in a plastic tray on the evidence shelf. Battery indicator showing sixty percent when he thumbed it awake, screen bright in the dim room. Wallet with the fake IDs still intact in their little leather slots—he checked quickly, making sure nothing had been flagged or confiscated. All good. Knife in its sheath, blade clean and sharp. Lockpicks in their leather case, worn smooth from years of use, the tools that had gotten him out of more jams than he could count.

Dad's journal.

There. On the evidence shelf between a bag of marijuana from someone's traffic stop and a handgun tagged from a domestic disturbance.

Brown leather worn soft from decades of use, pages thick with hunting knowledge compressed into Dad's cramped handwriting and newspaper clippings. The cover was smooth under Dean's fingers, familiar as his own skin. The spine creased in specific places that meant Dad had referenced certain pages over and over—exorcism rituals, salt circle specifications, protection sigils that had saved their lives more times than Dean could remember.

He grabbed it. Tucked it into his jacket's inside pocket where it settled against his ribs like it belonged there, the weight both comforting and heavy with responsibility.

The alarm continued its relentless rhythm. Emergency lights still strobing, painting everything in pulsing red. Dean checked the hallway one more time—still clear, still empty—and moved toward the back door.

The one he'd marked during the walk from booking. Catalogued as the weakest exit point in a building that hadn't updated its security in thirty years. Push-bar across the middle, that distinctive red that promised alarms if opened under normal circumstances.

Except the alarm was already tripped. The building already screaming. One more alarm wouldn't matter, wouldn't register, would get lost in the chaos of emergency response.

Might as well make use of the situation.

Dean hit the bar with his shoulder. Put his weight behind it. The door swung open into October night—hinges protesting slightly but giving way, metal scraping metal. Cold air rushed in, shocking after the heated interior. Maybe fifty degrees, comfortable enough that he didn't immediately regret leaving his heavier jacket in the Impala.

Northern California autumn. Mild compared to the places they'd hunted further north, nothing like the bitter cold of Minnesota in November or the bone-deep chill of Montana in October. This was pleasant. Almost balmy. The kind of temperature that made you forget winter was coming.

The door closed behind him with a soft click that felt final.

He was standing in an alley. Narrow space between buildings, maybe ten feet wide, lit only by the spill of emergency lights through windows above. The strobing red painted brick walls in intermittent illumination, creating shadows that jumped and twisted with each pulse. Dumpsters lined one wall—the smell of garbage mixing with eucalyptus in that particular combination that was uniquely California. Sweet and rotten at the same time.

Dean moved into the shadows between two dumpsters. Pressed his back against brick that still held the day's warmth, the heat soaking through his jacket and into his spine. The wall was solid behind him. Real. Grounding in a way that made his heart rate start to slow, made the adrenaline crash begin its inevitable descent.

Out.

He was out.

The reality hit in waves. Felony escape charge added to his growing collection of bad decisions. Every future hunt harder now, every small-town cop a potential threat who might run his prints and find the warrant.

But Sam was hunting. Dad was missing. And sitting in a cell while that went down had never been an option no matter what logic suggested about smart plays and long-term consequences.

Dean pulled out his phone. The screen was bright in the darkness, harsh blue light that made his eyes water after the strobing red. One missed call from Sam, hours ago. No messages. No voicemails. Just that single missed call that meant Sam had tried to reach him and failed.

He needed to move. The fire alarm was still screaming inside the building, but that wouldn't last forever. Eventually someone would realize it was a false alarm. Eventually deputies would return to their posts and find an empty cell and start asking questions Dean really didn't want to answer.

He had maybe fifteen minutes before this place became the most dangerous location in Jericho. Maybe less.

Dean moved deeper into the alley, checking both directions. Left led back toward Main Street—too exposed, too much light, too many potential witnesses. Right led away from downtown, toward the residential area he'd mapped earlier. Darker there. More shadows. Better for staying invisible.

He started walking, keeping to the shadows where the strobing emergency lights didn't reach. His boots were quiet on pavement, years of practice making his footfalls nearly silent. Every sense on high alert, cataloguing sounds and movement, ready to disappear if headlights appeared or voices carried from nearby streets.

The alley opened onto a side street. Elm, according to the sign on the corner. Residential area spreading out before him—modest houses with small yards, cars parked along the curb, porch lights creating pools of yellow illumination. The kind of neighborhood where people minded their own business but would definitely call the cops if they saw someone suspicious lurking.

Dean crossed the street quickly, moving with purpose that suggested he belonged there. Not running—running drew attention. Just walking like he had somewhere to be. Like he was a resident heading home after a late shift, nothing unusual, nothing worth a second glance.

He passed a church three blocks from the jail. Small building, white clapboard siding, modest steeple. The sign out front read JERICHO COMMUNITY CHURCH in faded letters, and the parking lot was empty except for a single car that looked like it had been abandoned there weeks ago. Tall hedge surrounded the property on two sides, creating shadows deep enough to hide in.

Perfect.

Dean moved into those shadows, positioning himself where he could see the street but anyone passing would have to look hard to spot him. Pulled out his phone and hit redial. Counted rings while his heart tried to remember its normal rhythm, while his hands slowly stopped shaking from adrenaline and relief and the particular combination of fear and fury that came from being separated from Sam during a hunt.

"Dean?" Sam's voice came through—relief and disbelief mixed in equal measure, that particular tone that meant Sam had been imagining worst-case scenarios, had been running through all the ways this could go wrong and trying to figure out which was most likely. "Dean, are you—where are you?"

"Out." Dean kept his voice low, eyes scanning the alley for movement even though logic said no one was coming. The emergency lights from inside still painted everything in intermittent red, making shadows jump and twist in ways that kept his hand near his belt where his gun should have been. "Fire alarm went off, whole place went crazy mobilizing for some emergency. I took advantage."

"You—" Sam's voice did that thing it always did when Dean had made a tactically sound decision that was also morally questionable. That particular pitch that landed somewhere between admiration and exasperation, the tone that said really, Dean? "You broke out? Dean, that's—you just added felony escape to impersonating a federal officer—"

"Yeah, I'm aware of my expanding criminal record, Sam." Dean moved deeper into the shadows, checking both ends of the alley with systematic precision. Still clear, but that could change fast. Small towns were good at mobilizing, but they were also good at having cops remember where they'd left things and coming back to check.

A pause. Muffled sound like Sam had pulled the phone away from his mouth. Then Sam's voice, quieter but still audible through the connection: "That's why you said we needed the payphone."

Dean's instincts prickled. That hunter awareness kicking in, the one that said something had happened that he didn't know about. "Sam, what—"

"You're welcome." Rory's voice now. Closer to the phone, and something in her tone—satisfaction, maybe, or amusement she wasn't trying to hide. Not performed for effect. Just... there. Genuine. The sound of the phone changing hands came through clearly—rustling fabric, brief fumbling, then her voice came through clearer.

The pieces clicked together in Dean's mind. Fell into place with the particular clarity that came right before understanding arrived and changed everything.

The alarm. The convenient timing that had felt like luck but wasn't.

"The fire alarm." His voice came out flat. Controlled in a way that was actually the opposite of control, each word carefully measured to keep from exploding. "You called it in."

"Elementary school doing a fall play tonight." She said it like she was explaining a particularly clever move in chess, like she was walking him through the logic of a plan that had already succeeded. Confident. Practical. "Lots of parents, lots of kids. Very urgent situation requiring immediate response from all available units." A pause, and he could hear the smile in her voice even though she wasn't performing it, wasn't making it loud. "You were taking too long to figure it out yourself."

Something hot and complicated twisted in Dean's chest.

Fury at the recklessness—using kids as bait, even fake kids in a fake emergency, pulling emergency responders away from their actual jobs, creating a situation that could have gone wrong in a dozen ways. If there had been a real fire somewhere else. If someone had a medical emergency. If the chaos had caused an accident. The risk was enormous and she'd taken it without hesitation.

Admiration for the sheer audacity. The kind of balls it took to pull that off without flinching, to make that call and commit to it fully, to orchestrate a jailbreak like it was just another Tuesday.

It was inappropriately hot. Dean was willing to admit that, at least to himself, standing in an alley behind a jail he'd just escaped from.

"You created an emergency" The words came out carefully controlled, each one measured.

"I created an opportunity." Still that confidence, steady and unshakeable. Then, with what sounded like genuine pragmatism: "You took it. Now you're free and we can finish this hunt." A beat. Her voice shifted slightly—warmer. "Seemed like it worked out pretty well from where I'm sitting."

She was right. Which made it worse.

And now he was standing in an alley, free, with his phone and his Dad's journal and a growing list of felonies, because some girl he'd met twelve hours ago had apparently decided he was worth breaking out of jail.

The implications were complicated. Dean didn't do complicated. Couldn't afford complicated when the job demanded focus and distance and not getting attached to people who could become liabilities.

But Rory Donovan had just committed multiple felonies for him without being asked, and he couldn't decide if that made her crazy or if it made her exactly the kind of crazy he understood.

"Where's my baby?" He couldn't deal with the implications right now. Needed to focus on something concrete, something that didn't make his brain do complicated things. The Impala was simple. The Impala made sense.

"About that—" Sam's voice. Cautious. That particular careful tone that meant Dean was about to be pissed and Sam was bracing for impact.

"What about that?"

Another pause. The guilty kind that confirmed Dean's worst fears. The silence that said whatever came next was going to make him want to hit something.

"Sam."

"We needed transportation—" Sam started, voice pitching into that defensive register that meant he knew he'd fucked up and was preparing to justify it anyway.

"Sam, I swear to God—"

"We're in the Impala." Rory cut in, apparently deciding to rip the bandaid off. Get it over with fast rather than dragging out the reveal. "And before you have a coronary about it—" There was something in her voice. Not quite teasing, but acknowledging his reaction, meeting it head-on without apology. Like she knew exactly how he'd respond and was comfortable with that. "Your car's fine. Not a scratch." A pause. Then, with what sounded like genuine appreciation: "Engine purrs like a kitten. Which, by the way, is an incredible engine. Whoever rebuilt this knew exactly what they were doing."

"Did you hotwire my baby?!" Dean's voice had risen several octaves, climbing into a register that suggested genuine distress. He was aware he should probably be more concerned with keeping quiet, with avoiding attention from any cops who might still be around, might hear shouting coming from the alley behind the jail.

But his Baby was sacred. And someone had hotwired her like she was just any car in a lot, like she was some random vehicle you grabbed for a quick getaway rather than a 1967 Chevrolet Impala that Dean had spent years restoring to perfect condition.

"Very carefully." Still that confidence, unshakeable and apparently unbothered by his reaction. But something like she actually understood why he was upset and was acknowledging it without making a big production. "Red to brown for the ignition, yellow for the starter. Classic setup, really beautiful wiring job." A beat. Her voice carried something that might have been genuine respect. "Took me about thirty seconds."

Dean was caught between genuine fury—because nobody touched his car, nobody hotwired his Baby like she was some piece of shit they'd grabbed for a quick getaway, nobody put their hands on his engine without permission—and inappropriate admiration for the fact that she'd done it in thirty seconds and known exactly which wires to use. That she'd apparently done it without damaging anything, which took skill and care that most people didn't have. That took knowledge of classic American muscle and respect for proper restoration work.

"When I get my hands on you—" He started, then stopped. Because what? Kill her? Thank her? Both seemed equally valid and equally problematic.

"Looking forward to it." Her voice carried something that made Dean's chest do a complicated thing.

Then she immediately shifted to practical, moving past the moment like she'd said what she meant to say and was ready to handle business: "Where should we pick you up?"
Dean looked around the church parking lot, checking sight lines. The hedge provided decent cover from the street, and the lot had two exits—one onto Elm, one that probably led to the alley behind. Easy to disappear from if things went sideways. "There's a church on Elm Street, about three blocks north of the jail. Community Church, white building. I'm in the parking lot behind the hedge."

"Elm Street." The sound of the Impala's engine came through clearly—his Baby, purring exactly the way she should, that distinctive rumble that meant everything was running smooth. Which was somehow both reassuring and infuriating. "We're five minutes out. Maybe less."

"Make it less." Dean scanned the street again, hyperaware that every second increased his chances of being spotted. "And keep your eyes open. Something feels off about this whole thing."

"Yeah." Her voice had shifted, some of that satisfaction bleeding away into something more cautious. "Getting that feeling too. We'll be there soon."

The line went dead.

Sam & Rory POV - The Drive

Rory kept her hands steady on the wheel, fingers light on the worn leather, heading north through Jericho after hanging up with Dean. The dashboard clock read 8:12, green numbers glowing softly in the darkness.

The Impala handled like something alive. Responsive in a way that went beyond good engineering, like the car was paying attention to her inputs and translating them with precision that bordered on aggressive. Every adjustment to the wheel, every touch of the gas pedal, translated immediately into movement. No lag. No hesitation. Just pure mechanical response that suggested someone had spent years perfecting this machine.

She understood immediately why Dean Winchester treated this vehicle like family. It deserved it.

Beside her, Sam slouched in the passenger seat. Long legs cramped even in the Impala's generous interior, knees almost touching the dashboard despite the seat pushed back as far as it would go.

They passed through downtown Jericho. Mostly dark now, most businesses closed for the night, just a handful of lights suggesting life behind windows. The diner where they'd eaten earlier showed warm yellow glow spilling onto empty sidewalk, probably the late shift cleaning up after dinner rush. The library sat closed and dark, brick building solid and imposing even without illumination, steps leading up to locked doors.

A cop car was parked at the intersection ahead—Rory's hands tightened fractionally on the wheel, knuckles going white against leather. But the officer inside didn't look up. Just sat there with his coffee, probably bored out of his mind on night shift in a town where nothing usually happened. Doing crosswords or reading the paper or counting down minutes until his shift ended and he could go home.

Rory kept her speed exactly at the limit. Not over, not under. Made the turn with careful precision, signaling even though there was no traffic. The kind of invisible driving that made you forgettable, unmemorable, just another car on just another night.

"Dean's going to bring up the car thing for weeks," Sam said eventually, breaking the silence that had stretched since they'd pulled away from the church. But there was fondness in his voice underneath the exasperation, affection that came from years of knowing exactly how his brother would react and loving him anyway.

The corner of Rory's mouth curved. Small smile that she didn't bother hiding. "Worth it though."

"That's what you think now." Sam's voice carried that particular brotherly affection that came from experience. "Wait until he works it into every conversation for the next month. Every time he starts the car. Every time someone mentions hotwiring. Every time he sees a paperclip." He shook his head, but he was almost smiling too. "He'll make it a whole thing."

"I can handle it."

"You say that now."

They left downtown behind, heading toward the residential area where the Welch house was located according to the address they'd found earlier. The buildings got sparser, downtown giving way to neighborhoods and empty lots. Streetlights became less frequent, pools of orange sodium glow separated by increasing darkness. The sky overhead was clear—stars visible in a way they never were in cities, the Milky Way a faint smudge across black.

Rory checked the rearview mirror out of habit. Empty road behind them, just their own taillights reflecting off nothing. Just sodium lights casting everything in orange glow, shadows stretching long across pavement. The occasional house showed lights in windows, families settling in for the evening, normal people living normal lives that didn't involve ghosts or hunting or breaking people out of jail.

But something felt off in a way she couldn't name.

That crawling sensation between her shoulder blades. The one that said *watched*. That instinct that had kept her alive for four years, that hunter awareness that transcended logic and went straight to gut feeling, the kind of sense that developed when you spent years living in the spaces between normal and supernatural.

Her hands tightened fractionally on the wheel. Nothing visible in the mirrors. Nothing in her peripheral vision. Just road and darkness and the steady rumble of the Impala's engine. But the feeling persisted.

"What?" Sam's voice cut through her thoughts, sharp with hunter instinct. He'd noticed the change in her posture, the way her eyes kept flicking to the mirrors.

"Nothing." But she checked the mirror again. Still empty. Just road and lights and the occasional house, windows dark for the night. No cars following. No movement. Nothing. "Just feeling like we're being watched."

Sam twisted in his seat, scanning the road behind them with systematic precision. His eyes tracked across buildings, checking windows, looking for anything out of place. Movement. Shadows. Anything that didn't belong. "I don't see anything."

"Yeah." But the feeling didn't ease. Just settled deeper, that instinct that said *something's wrong* even when logic couldn't confirm it. Rory's shoulders stayed tense, muscles coiled. "Probably just paranoia."

The temperature dropped.

Not gradually. Not the slow cooling of October night through open windows. This was immediate and wrong—cold that came from inside rather than out, the kind of cold that made breath fog in suddenly frigid air despite the heater running full blast. Temperature plummeting twenty degrees in the span of a heartbeat.

Frost crept across the windshield in patterns that looked almost deliberate—crystalline formations spreading from the edges inward, intricate designs that were too purposeful to be random.

"Sam—"

She appeared in the rearview mirror.

Just there. Like she'd been sitting in the backseat the whole time, like she'd materialized from nothing. White dress soaked through and dripping, water pooling on the leather seat. Dark hair hanging wet and wrong, strands plastered to pale skin. Skin too pale—the color of things underwater too long, the grayish-white of drowned flesh. Constance Welch smiled, and it was the smile of something that had forgotten how mouths worked, lips pulling back too far, showing too many teeth.

"Shit—"

The wheel wrenched from Rory's hands.

Not pulled—*taken*. Control ripped away with supernatural strength that was absolute and terrifying. The Impala lurched left hard enough to throw Sam against the passenger door with a thud that sounded painful, tires squealing as the car corrected itself with movements that had nothing to do with Rory's input. She slammed her foot on the brake—pedal went to the floor uselessly, mechanism disengaged, offering no resistance.

The gas pedal pressed down on its own.
"I can't—" Rory fought the wheel, throwing her weight against resistance that felt like trying to bend steel. Muscles straining, shoulders burning with effort. The steering wheel was locked solid, completely unresponsive to her attempts to turn it.

"Take me home." Constance's voice scraped like metal on bone, filling the interior with sound that made Rory's teeth ache and her head pound.

The speedometer climbed—twenty, thirty.

The car turned without her input.

Rory's door lock popped up with a click that was too loud. Distinctive mechanical sound cutting through the engine roar and Constance's voice.

The door flew open.

Wind rushed in—October night air mixing with supernatural cold that made her lungs burn, that felt like breathing ice.

Rory's seatbelt release clicked, metal tongue sliding free without her touching it, mechanism disengaging on its own.

Something shoved Rory—invisible, hitting her center mass hard enough to knock her breath out, to compress her ribs.

Rory twisted as she fell to avoid landing head-first, turning her body mid-air, protecting her skull at the expense of everything else. The ground came up fast.

Pavement hit first.

Her left shoulder slammed into asphalt with an impact that drove the air from her lungs in a whoosh that left her gasping. Pain exploded down her arm in waves that made her vision white out—everything going bright and blank before color returned. The force drove her sideways, momentum she couldn't control, body tumbling across the road.

Concrete tore through her jacket. She felt the fabric give, felt rough pavement scraping skin underneath, abrading away layers with each rotation. Her palms hit next—instinctive attempt to catch herself—and she felt skin tear, gravel embedding itself in flesh with stinging precision that made her want to scream.

The world was spinning. Sky and pavement trading places, lights streaking past in disorienting patterns. Her hip hit, bone striking concrete with a crack that promised bruising down to the bone. Her head bounced once—protected by the angle of her fall but still making contact hard enough that stars burst across her vision.

Then grass.

Her momentum carried her off the road and onto someone's lawn. The ground was suddenly softer, yielding instead of punishing, and her body finally stopped rolling. She ended up on her back, staring at an October sky that was spinning slightly, stars wheeling overhead in patterns that didn't make sense.

Rory lay there for three seconds, maybe four. Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Just existed in that space where pain was so complete it became almost abstract, where her body was sending so many distress signals that her brain couldn't process them individually.

Then sensation returned in a rush.

Her shoulder screamed—not dislocated but close, the joint protesting in a way that meant serious damage, torn muscle, maybe cracked bone. Her palms were on fire, embedded gravel grinding against raw flesh every time she tried to flex her fingers. Her hip throbbed with that deep bone ache that promised she'd feel it for weeks. And her head was pounding, that particular ache that came from impact, that said possible concussion and demanded attention she didn't have time to give.

Road rash burned across her left side—patches where the pavement had won, where her jacket and jeans hadn't been enough protection. She could feel blood seeping, warm and wet, soaking into fabric that was probably shredded beyond repair.

"RORY!" Sam's voice—distant, desperate, already fading as the Impala's engine roared louder. Fear and panic compressed into her name.

Rory pushed herself up on arms that shook violently. Muscles trembling from impact and adrenaline and the particular shock that came from being thrown from a moving vehicle. She tasted blood where she'd bitten her tongue, copper filling her mouth. Her vision swam, doubled for a second before resolving into something that resembled normal.

The Impala's taillights were disappearing down the street, moving fast, Sam's silhouette visible through the rear window.

The car turned a corner. Taillights vanishing behind trees and houses. Gone.

Rory dragged herself fully upright, testing weight on legs that held despite the trembling. Her left knee had taken a hit—not serious but definitely going to stiffen up, already starting that hot swelling that meant inflammation and reduced mobility. Every movement sent fresh pain radiating from a dozen impact points, her body filing formal complaints about every decision she'd made in the past twelve hours.

But everything moved. Nothing broken. Nothing damaged beyond repair. She could work with this.

She pulled her phone from her pocket with fingers that didn't want to cooperate. Her hands were shaking, adrenaline making them clumsy, blood making the phone slippery and hard to grip. Thumb smearing blood across the screen as she pulled up Dean's number, leaving red streaks across glass. The phone rang once. Twice.

He answered before the third ring. "Yeah?"

"We've got a problem." Her voice came out rougher than intended, throat raw from the cold and the impact and probably from screaming even though she didn't remember doing that. She pushed herself fully upright, testing weight distribution, finding a stance that worked despite the protests. "Constance jumped us. Took control of the car."

Silence. The kind of silence that meant Dean's brain was processing, was already running through scenarios and solutions. Then his voice came through, flat and dangerous in a way that made something in her chest tighten despite the situation. "Where's Sam?"

"In the car." She looked down the empty street where the Impala had disappeared, suburban houses quiet and dark like nothing had happened. Blood dripped from her palms onto grass, dark spots in the dim light. "She's taking him to the house. Where it happened."

"Where are you?"

Rory looked around, spotted a street sign half-hidden behind an overgrown hedge. Green reflective letters catching light from a distant streetlamp. "Miller and Braverman. She threw me out maybe two blocks from the house."

An engine roared to life in the background—something old, rough. Cylinders firing unevenly, exhaust note suggesting age and poor maintenance. "Stay there. Don't move."

"Dean, she has Sam—"

"I know." His voice was tight, controlled in that way that meant he was forcing down panic through sheer will. The sound of tires peeling out, gravel spraying, engine being pushed hard. "But going in alone against a vengeful spirit is stupid, and I need backup who can actually move. Can you fight?"

Rory tested her shoulder again despite the protest, rolled it carefully. Limited range of motion but functional. Her knife was still in its sheath, blade secure. "Yeah. Banged up, but I can fight."

"Good. What are you carrying?"

She checked automatically. "Knife. Phone. That's it. Everything else went with the car."

"Fuck." The word was sharp, frustrated. A hard turn audible through the phone, tires squealing. "Okay. I've got salt and iron rounds from the evidence room. We make this work." A pause. "She threw you out for a reason. Probably doesn't want two hunters coming after her—easier to deal with Sam alone. We go in smart. Together."

The logic was sound. Tactical. Made sense even through the adrenaline and pain. "What are you driving?"

"Borrowed a car from the church parking lot. Old Dodge. Keys were in it." The engine's whine increased, someone pushing it past what was probably safe. "Three minutes. Stay where you are."

The line went dead.

Rory stood there in the middle of a residential street, blood dripping from her palms and leaving dark spots on the grass where she'd finally stopped rolling. Her shoulder screamed with every breath. Her hip was already stiffening, that hot swelling starting that would make moving difficult. Road rash burned across her left side, exposed nerve endings singing their particular song of agony. Her head pounded in rhythm with her heartbeat, promising a headache that would last days.

Fuck. This really fucking hurt.

Not the worst she'd taken—that honor still belonged to the wendigo in Colorado that had thrown her into a tree hard enough to crack two ribs—but definitely top five. Her hands were shaking, and she wasn't sure if it was adrenaline or shock or just her body's reasonable response to being ejected from a moving vehicle by a vengeful ghost.

She forced herself to breathe through it. Catalogued the damage with the clinical detachment that kept you functional when functional was the only option. Nothing broken. Nothing that would kill her. Pain was just information, and the information said she could still move, still fight, still do the job.

Rory pulled her knife from her belt with blood-slick fingers. Checked that it was secure in her grip, that the blade was still sharp and ready. Rolled her injured shoulder despite the protest, testing range of motion one more time. Limited but functional. She could fight. She could move. She could provide the backup Dean needed.

Three minutes.

Then they'd go get Sam and put this ghost down for good.