A Family Business 3/6
Title: A Family Business 3/6
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing. It’s all Kripke’s and the CW’s and blah blah blah. We all know who the real brain trust is around here.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: General for the series. Takes place in two time periods, one pre-series and the other situated at some point between 3x04 (Sin City) and 3x05 (Bedtime Stories).
Summary: The Winchesters never stay, and when they go they leave more than burned corpses behind them.
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
November 22, 1996
First United Methodist Church
Lansing, MI
The cacophony of dozens of conversations echoed around the draughty community room in the church’s basement. It was a utilitarian room, cinder block walls painted a muted yellow to match the beige and cream speckled linoleum on the floor. Large floor to ceiling windows lined one wall where the hill had been cut away, allowing the good churchgoers a vista of the outside world.
It wasn’t much of a view on a gray November Wednesday, however. The sun had peeked out briefly during the graveside service but had promptly run away again before they’d returned for the reception.
Gillian poked at the food piled high on the plate in front of her. Grandma Dewar had plopped it down with a firm look that clearly communicated that Gillian was expected to clear the entire thing or face stiff consequences. Her grandmother was a formidable woman whose will was law, especially at her only son’s funeral.
“Hey there, kiddo,” Her Uncle Dave sat down in the folding chair to her right. He, too, had a plate brimming with food. “Your aunt sent me over. She said you looked lonely.”
Gillian couldn’t help rolling her eyes. Aunt Paula really was her mother’s daughter.
“Yeah, I know,” Uncle Dave grinned. “Like you need someone looking over your shoulder.”
They sat for a moment in comfortable silence, both picking at their own monstrous piles of victuals. That was the good thing about Uncle Dave, he didn’t push. He just let things be.
“How’s your sister?” He asked quietly.
Gillian glanced over at the table where Angie was surrounded by her friends. Someone said something that made Angie smile. It didn’t have the full-on Angie Effect that looked like it had come straight out of a Crest commercial, but it was something, at least.
She turned back to her uncle. “She’s doing okay, I guess.”
He nodded. “You know, if you or Angie ever need anything, me and your aunt are here for you.”
“I know, Uncle Dave.” She whispered into her potatoes. She blinked and willed her eyes to remain dry. She was so tired of crying.
He gripped her shoulder. “Good. I’m glad.” A high-pitched wailing suddenly arced over the background clatter. Dave sighed. “Looks like Jackie’s decided to join the party after all. I should go take care of her.”
Gillian nodded and didn’t watch as Dave walked away. She stared blankly at the towering mounds of Mrs. Flegal’s pasta salad. It had always been her favorite part of any church social but she couldn’t even imagine taking a bite of it today. She didn’t want to ruin it.
The chair across from her creaked shrilly under someone’s weight. She didn’t look up. There wasn’t anyone that she wanted to see right now.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Dewar.” The stranger’s voice was deep, it rumbled through the air between them. Gillian’s head shot up, startled out of despondency. She’d never seen the man on the other side of the table before in her life, she would’ve remembered him. He was large, he dwarfed the cheap fold-out chair. His shoulders slouched under his suit jacket but were still broad enough to seem like they spanned half the table. It was his eyes that caught her, though, dark and piercing. She didn’t like them, couldn’t stand the way they weighed on her, but she couldn’t look away, they wouldn’t let her.
“Thank you,” she replied, her voice hardly a whisper.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a badge. “I’m Detective Thompson, I have a couple of questions about your father’s attack.”
Her mind went completely blank. She gulped and felt the acid burn of bile in the back of her throat. She didn’t want to think about that. She wasn’t going to think about that.
He nodded as if her reaction confirmed something he already suspected and continued without batting an eye. “Our records show that you were present on the scene when the-” he pulled a narrow notebook out of his jacket and flipped it open, “ -large black dog mauled your father.”
She nodded, throat too dry to make a sound.
“Strange how the autopsy disagrees. Your father was mauled by a large animal, no question, but it wasn’t a dog that did it. In fact, there isn’t an animal in a thousand miles that would leave bites like the ones found on your father’s corpse,” The detective leaned forward. “What did you really see out there, Miss Dewar?”
Gillian couldn’t move. His looming presence smothered her, made it hard for her to even breathe. Images flashed unbidden through her mind, an impossibly large shape hunched in dead, brown leaves. White razor teeth flashed and she ran, ran through mud and water, her father’s screams echoing through the skeletal trees.
Her head spun and her blood thinned. Her breath came in short bursts, she didn’t know if she was going to throw up or pass out.
Thompson leaned even closer. She couldn’t escape. “But you already know all of that, don’t you Miss Dewar? You already know what killed your father while you stood there and watched. Did you do to call it? Did you hate your father that much?” His eyes bored into her, judge, jury, and executioner.
An electric surge of anger shot out of her chest, straightening her spine. It burned away the memories that haunted her and unlocked her tongue. “I love my father more than you could possibly even imagine. I didn’t do anything, I would never hurt him, not in a million years.” She could feel the tears welling in her eyes but she wouldn’t let them fall, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “I don’t care what you think or what your evidence looks like. You can just take it all and-”
She stopped abruptly, mouth snapping shut. She wouldn’t say any of the vile things that were slamming against her throat. She didn’t say things like that. She refused to give in.
His eyes narrowed. She could see his temper build, held in check by the stiff clench of his jaw. He took a deep breath and she watched as he visibly reined himself in. His eyes gleamed, suddenly, and her teeth clicked together in response. She tensed for the next volley.
“Maybe it wasn’t your fault,” he growled low, syllables tripping over a depth she couldn’t parse and didn’t care to explore. “Maybe it was a joke. You never thought anything would happen. It’s not your fault, you didn’t know what you were doing.” He smiled at her, but there was nothing kind in it. “But none of that matters, you still did it.”
She stared at him. She didn’t blink. “You’re wrong. I didn’t do anything.” She raised her chin and didn’t break eye contact, her jaw shut tight.
He returned her stare, his dark eyes gleamed with something feral she couldn’t understand, but she didn’t look away. He stood, unfolding until he towered over her. “I think that does it,” voice laced with sarcasm that cut for blood. “Don’t worry, Gillian, you won’t have to keep your secret for much longer.” He smiled suddenly, charm layered over the menace he meant for her to see. He turned and stalked from the room.
Gillian gazed after him and breathed. She hadn’t done anything, even when Dad screamed. She’d only run away.
~~~
Waverly High School
“I don’t know what you mean,” the girl’s, Lauren’s, mouth pursed in confusion. Dean stopped himself from sighing in exasperation, instead he strengthened the rictus of a smile on his face. Patient, he had to be patient. He wasn’t going to get anything from her if he lost it now. Dad would have his balls in a blender if he let whatever info she had slip away from him.
“You know Gillian better than anyone, that’s what everybody says, so was she acting weird before her dad died? You know, was she reading strange books, obsessed with funny rituals, anything like that?” Dean turned the charm up to overdrive. It had gotten him into more cheerleaders’ panties than he could count and it was more than a little frustrating how immune this chick seemed to be. She should’ve been wrapped around his little finger by now.
Lauren blushed and shifted uncomfortably. “No, of course not. I mean, yeah, she’s not acting normal now, but her dad died, so if she doesn’t talk to me and doesn’t want me going to her dad’s funeral then that’s fine. It’s totally okay.” Her eyes couldn’t seem to stay still while she talked, they would meet his for a second and then dart away again, haphazardly skipping around the empty hallway.
He leaned in a little. It was time to press his advantage. She blinked at him for a moment, eyebrows pulled together, before her focus darted away again. Her fingers whooshed nervously over the nylon strap of her backpack. “Are you sure about that?” Dean asked. “Cause I talked to a guy, Mike, in her English class who wouldn’t stop talking about the way she just rattled off whole paragraphs in Latin in some play they were reading. That doesn’t sound too run-of-the-mill to me.”
“Oh,” Lauren grinned suddenly. “That’s not too weird. Our freshman year we sang a whole mass in Latin. Once you learn the sounds everything makes it’s not that hard to pronounce.” She shrugged a little awkwardly. “Gillian told me about reading Faustus, she was just showing off.”
Dean frowned for a second, taken aback. What kind of crazy choir teacher taught people Latin? Didn’t they know how dangerous it was? With his luck some idiot kid was going to inadvertently summon a demon and then it’d be Dean Winchester who had to pull all their fat out of the fryer.
But he didn’t have time to worry about that. Dad always said their first priority was to focus on the case at hand. “So there’s nothing you can think of? Everything’s just been same old, same old with good ol’ Gillian.”
Lauren grimaced, her eyes shifting from one side to the other. Oh yeah, she knew something. Dean moved in to press his advantage. “It’s okay, you know. My dad’s a cop and any little thing could help him figure out what happened to her dad. We’re only trying to help her.”
“It’s, just-” Lauren swallowed and glanced around the empty hallway. She flinched when a cheer erupted from the gym at the far end of the hall but then she looked back at him, her jaw set. Yeap, there it was, she was going to spill her guts. He so rocked. “I called her on Monday night. I don’t remember why, I didn’t know anything about her dad. She picked up the phone and at first she sounded really tired and kind of distant but suddenly she started wheezing. It was kind of like crying but I’ve never heard anything as awful as the noises she was making. Then she started babbling about a monster in the woods and that it was all her fault and she should’ve done something but she didn’t. I kept on asking her what was wrong but it was like she couldn’t even hear me. And then the line went dead. When I tried to call back all I got was a busy signal.”
Lauren’s eyes welled up and she had to take a second to blink the tears away. “We watched the 11 o’clock news that night and found out about how her dad was mauled in the woods. I felt awful and I didn’t expect to see her at school the next day, but she was right there in second hour, sitting in her spot in the soprano section. I tried to talk to her after class but she wouldn’t say anything, just that she was okay and that she had to get to sociology. She’s hardly talked to me since.”
Another cheer erupted from the gym and Lauren jumped. Her eyes darted to the closed double doors to her left. “I have to go. Mrs. Sauter will be really upset if I miss too much rehearsal.” Before Dean could say anything, she’d scooped up her bag and grabbed the doorknob.
She turned back, her eyes bright. “You’ll really be able to help her?”
“Yes we will.” He didn’t have to doctor that up at all because it was true. There wasn’t anything he and his family couldn’t fix.
“Thank you,” she whispered and slipped into the choir room.
The heavy door slammed shut. “You catch all that?” Dean asked, already turning towards the art room, its door angled open just right to catch the entire conversation.
“Yeah.” Sam slumped into the hallway, backpack haphazardly draped over one shoulder.
“So that confirms Dad’s theory,” Dean declared. “If the Dewar chick said it was her fault then she must’ve had something to do with it.”
Sam grimaced and shook his head. He didn’t say anything, though, just got that look that he always had when his freakish super-brain was putting things together. Dean shrugged and started towards the parking lot, Sam’d let him have it once he had all his ducks in a row.
The thunk of their boots moving in tandem echoed off the linoleum floors and cinderblock walls. Sam finally broke his silence just as Dean was pushing the outside door open. “It doesn’t seem the same. Remember when those kids summoned that hellhound down in Ohio? They didn’t act the same. Also there was all that stuff about how they’d been learning about medieval iconography in art class, and how at least three of them confessed the whole thing to the police officer who caught them screwing around in the park. This is just different.”
Dean shook his head. It was freakish how Sam could pull phrases like, ‘medieval iconography’ out of thin air. “You always get so worked up over the details, dude. Everybody’s different. I hate to break it to you, but some people are fucked-up enough to kill their parents in cold-blood. It sucks but it’s true.”
“I know that, Dean,” Sam bitched. “But you know what? I was the one who was stuck stalking her for days, and sometimes she looked just like you do when I ask you about Mom. I don’t think she’s the problem.”
Dean stood for a moment with his hand on the side of the truck as Sam stomped to the other side. He took a few deep breaths in some kind of attempt to get himself under control. He hated when Sam brought Mom up like this, hated remembering even for a second what losing her felt like.
He pulled the door open and swung in. “That might be, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do something stupid without meaning to,” he said before Sam could open his mouth.
“Yeah, I know.” Sam shrugged. He looked right at Dean, eyes big and sincere. “But we could still go by the state library, couldn’t we?”
“Okay, fine, whatever,” Dean grumbled. No matter what he did, he always seemed to end up stuck in the library. He swung the truck back out of its parking place. “But we’re totally stopping by QD on the way for some doughnuts.”
He took the nearly obscene growling from Sam’s stomach as all the agreement he needed.
~~~
September 14, 2007
Hart, MI
“Was there anything strange about Danny’s behavior before he went missing? Was he moody or complaining more than usual?” Sam leaned forward and turned the sympathetic charm up another notch. He used to have latent qualms about manipulating people like this, lying to them and offering them false hope just for some case. Maybe he’d hated it so much because it was so easy to look them in the eye and open them up. It didn’t feel right to lie to people in the name of finding the truth.
Whatever the reasons, it didn’t bother him anymore. They needed answers, and the more desperate people were the easier it was to connive all of their deepest secrets.
And the Owens were truly desperate. Their little boy had been gone for days, and they knew that their chances of getting him back decreased exponentially with every passing hour. Sam could practically see the string they were dangling on and knew that they were willing to cling to whatever slim hope he might give them.
“I’ve been over and over the days before, and I can’t think of anything,” Danny’s mother, Cara, replied in a voice that sounded raspy and thin. “School just started again a couple weeks ago but he only had good things to say about his teacher and his friends. He was happy.” Her bloodshot eyes bored into his, pleading with him to believe her.
Sam saw Matt’s mouth open and close in reaction to his wife’s statement. That combined with the way his eyes hesitantly cut to Cara’s face before resting on Sam, again, declared that he definitely knew something his wife didn’t.
Dean caught it, too. “There anything you want to add, Mr. Owen?” Dean’s voice was heavy and deep with more than a hint of their dad in it. Sam wasn’t surprised to see Matt sit up straight, his eyes suddenly unable to leave Dean’s. It took years to build up a resistance to that tone, and even then it could still get you.
“He woke me up the night before,” spilled out of Matt’s mouth. He cleared his throat and took a steadying breath before continuing. “I mean, I woke up, it must have been somewhere around two in the morning, and Danny was standing by the bed. He was scared, so scared that he was shaking like a leaf. He told me that the trees were singing, that they wanted him to go outside.” He shrugged, his face bleak. “I thought it was just a nightmare. I calmed him down and put him back to bed. He seemed fine the next morning.”
He stared out the window situated behind Sam and Dean’s heads, not willing to meet anyone’s eyes. It had been a long time since Sam had felt surprise over the ability so many people had to deny what they knew was true, to excuse and logic their fears away, and he was running short on pity these days. Sympathy wasn’t going to get the job done and denial only fucked everything up.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Cara whispered, stricken. Her eyes bored into Matt’s cheek until he broke with a half sob and turned to look at her.
“It was just a dream,” he pleaded. Sam wasn’t sure even Matt knew who he was trying to convince.
“Does anyone else know about Danny’s dream?” Sam gently cut through the silent tension that was growing between husband and wife.
“No,” Matt knee-jerked. Then he blinked. “I mean, yes, maybe, I don’t know.” He sighed and shot a quick look at Cara out of the corner of his eyes. “I don’t know if Danny told anyone, but I might have mentioned it to Gillian, our neighbor down the road.”
“You told her?” Cara’s voice broke on the last word with anger and accusation.
Matt held his hands up, in either supplication or defense. “It was right after Danny disappeared. She was asking all of these questions and it just, kind of, came out.” He collapsed under whatever he saw in her gaze, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed.
Sam glanced at Dean and nodded at Dean’s raised eyebrow. This was definitely something.
“We’re going to have to talk to this Gillian,” Dean demanded, flipping open his notebook. “You said she’s your neighbor?”
“Yes,” Cara answered mechanically, her eyes still focused on Matt. “She lives in the cabin south of here, about a mile down. The mailbox says Van Doren.”
“Okay,” Dean drawled, jotting it down. He glanced at Sam, a silent awkward in the set of his mouth.
“Thank you for your help,” Sam said, rising. “We’ll do everything we can to find your son.”
Cara didn’t say anything as she showed them to the door. Sam let out a sigh when the door closed behind them, shutting them out of the storm that was building on its other side.
“Well, that sorry bastard’s sure gonna get it,” Dean quipped as they strode toward the car. “Wonder what about this Gillian chick put such a bee in wifey’s bonnet.”
Sam shrugged as he pulled open his door. The Owens’ marital problems really weren’t his concern.
He hissed when he slid into the car. It was like an oven in there. He started rolling down the window before he could even contemplate closing the door. An entire forest of trees and the Owens’ driveway was still open to the sun.
Dean dropped behind the wheel and smirked at Sam. He’d already thrown his suit coat into the backseat and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. His cheap, polyester tie was still knotted loosely around his neck. “And don’t tell me it’s stress. That was way more than stress. I’d put good money on Matt being a very naughty little boy.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Sam sighed. Dean could be worse than the stereotypical old biddy, sometimes, and it would only encourage him if Sam started conjecturing.
They shut their doors simultaneously and Dean started the car with a flick of his wrist. The air that rushed in the windows as they pulled down the road felt wonderful as it dried the sweat on the back of Sam’s neck. It was just their luck to get stuck working a job during summer’s last gasp, when what should’ve been comfortable working weather was actually obnoxious, hot, and humid enough to drown a man on dry land. Sam didn’t know whether to attribute it to global warming, demons, or some infernal combination of them both.
It hardly took any time to find what they were looking for. Before he knew it they were turning down a rutted track guarded by a rusted old mailbox that may, at one point, have said Van Doren, but now only the letters V, D, and N were legible.
The drive curved and they followed it to a house that was hidden from the road by a dense line of trees. It looked like someone’s neglected summer cottage; the dark green paint was chipped and worn, and last year’s leaves still clogged the gutters. A dusty red Grand Am stood by the door, a stylized green ‘S’ sticker tacked onto the rear window its only identifying feature.
Sam unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeves as he got out of the car, leaving his own suit coat behind. It was shady under the trees, though stuffy. He could hear the branches rustling overhead but none of the breeze made it down to their level. It was strangely still in their pocket of the woods, almost like the trees were holding their breath.
Sam shook his head in an attempt to throw off the sudden, clawing sensation of claustrophobia.
Dean knocked demandingly on the front door. He glanced around while they waited, the fingers of his left hand pounding out some private rhythm against the side of his leg. His eyes surveyed the still, curtained windows, narrowing slightly when he couldn’t get a glimpse of what was inside. Sam felt hyperaware, every nerve on overdrive.
Dean knocked again, this time with even more force. He grumbled under his breath and frowned. Before he even looked over Sam was already squatting down, lock picks nimbly balanced between his fingers.
It wasn’t like they’d ever let closed doors stop them in the past.
~~~
Angela jerked out of sleep. She went from comatose to wide awake in under a second. Her eyes darted around the room, she’d been dreaming about something that she could almost see, a dark forest and the trees had eyes. It was a dream, just a dream.
She sat up and ran her hands through her hair. She grimaced when her elbow impacted with the corner of a book lodged between mattress and bed. It wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t seen it last night, the shock of finding the house empty combined with miles of road and days of worry had done her in. She’d faceplanted into the pillows and immediately dropped into exhausted oblivion.
It was almost peaceful, up there in Gillian’s room. Sunlight streamed through a small, square window set underneath the peak of the roof. Through it she could see green leaves swaying in the wind, and blue sky behind them. If she closed her eyes she could almost forget why she was up here, at all.
Angela’s mouth thinned and she swung her legs off of the bed. She didn’t have time to waste on fantasies. Her sister was still missing and sitting in bed, feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to accomplish anything. All of that stuff downstairs might be a mess, but it was somewhere to start. At the very least they might give her some insight about what could go on in Gillian’s screwed up head.
A thump and a muffled curse from downstairs shocked every thought out of her mind. Her heart sped up and a shot of adrenaline pushed her onto her feet. It was just so typical that Gillian would show up after Angela’d gone through so much. She was going to kill her sister for putting her through this, again.
She froze halfway to the stairs when a deep voice spoke and another, equally as sonorous, answered. Her heart beat in her throat. It wasn’t like Gillian to be quiet.
She ducked down on the right side of the stair-hole. The room downstairs was dim, a mélange of shadow. She couldn’t see the intruders but she could hear their heavy footsteps picking over the junk on the floor. She drew in a quick breath when they began to speak.
“What the hell is all of this?” one of them griped. Angela was just coherent enough to identify it as the voice that had cursed earlier.
There was a grunt, followed by the rustling of paper.
“It looks like notes and printouts.” The sound of shuffling could be heard underneath the words. “There’s info about weather patterns, local history.” This was punctuated by a sharp breath. “Dean, I think she’s a hunter.”
Angela’s head reeled with confusion. She frowned and stood up. That was it, she deserved answers and she was getting them now.
She banged down the ladder-like steps, for once not afraid of falling off of them. All of her fear had been replaced by a rage that burned like acid in her chest.
She ducked to avoid banging her head on the ceiling and when she looked up she was face to face with the interlopers. They were huge, the tallest’s head nearly grazed the ceiling, and solid. Their shoulders were rigid under white shirts and their faces were still and intense, frighteningly so.
Angela knew she should be scared, but when it came to her family some indomitable part of her always took over. In the face of that, nothing else registered.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here? What do you know about my sister?”
“Your sister?” the shorter one repeated, his eyebrows drawn together in consternation.
“Yes, my sister. The woman whose house you just broke into.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the taller one pulled out and flashed a badge. “I’m Agent Green and this is Agent Benson. We came by to ask your sister some questions.” He exchanged an impenetrable look with his companion. “Maybe you can help us.”
“Most FBI agents don’t break into people’s homes,” Angela retorted.
Green gestured towards the door with his right hand, the papers she’d heard him pick up still gripped between his fingers. “The door wasn’t latched. When we saw the mess we thought something might be wrong.”
Angela frowned. She knew that tone, it was the same one she used with her clients at the shelter. It was supposed to reassure her, make her trust him. Instead it set her teeth on edge. Something still didn’t add up.
“Is Gillian here?” The other one, Benson, asked before she could voice her suspicions.
“No, she isn’t,” Angela replied, an automatic reaction to his brusque, authoritarian tone. She mentally kicked herself for giving anything away. She knew this routine and she still fell for it.
“Can you tell us what she was doing?” Green asked softly, his eyes gentle and warm on hers, playing his side of the act to perfection.
She looked back and forth between them, her mouth set in a thin, flat line. She didn’t trust them, didn’t even trust that they were the FBI agents they claimed to be. But all of her doubts weren’t worth a thing if there was the slightest possibility that they might be able to help her.
Damn it, what was Gillian mixed up in this time?
She sighed and deflated. “I don’t know where she is. I got up here last night and found the place like this.” Her hand twitched around the disaster area of a room. “She hasn’t answered her phone in nearly a week. If you know anything, please help me.” She wasn’t above begging to get her family what it needed.
The agents carried on an entire conversation in a series of facial movements. A part of Angela’s mind, the psychologist she couldn’t switch off, even if she wanted to, jotted down notes regarding the depth and intricacy of their interaction for future reference.
Benson was the one who finally answered. “We’re investigating a series of disappearances in the area. We have reason to believe you sister was involved with them. Do you have any idea what she was working on?”
Angela couldn’t help the strangled, desperate laugh that burst out of her. “Gillian never tells me anything about what she does. I know she has a job at the IGA in town, but she never even hints about her real work.”
The agents shared another loaded look. They knew something about her sister that she didn’t, she could tell.
That was it, she was done playing their game. “Look,” she seethed. “If you know anything about my sister you tell me-”
“Is that a phone?” Green interrupted, his head jerking up like a dog scenting the wind.
A dull trilling that Angela had noticed but hadn’t recognized came into sharp focus. She jumped and ran across the room, heedless of the things that crunched and snapped under her feet.
She shoved a pile of paper off of a side table and uncovered the phone and its ancient answering machine counterpart. She got to it just as the answering machine was beeping on.
“Hey Jilly, it’s Andy,” a tinny voice jittered out of the speaker. “One of those guys you were asking about, Hector Garces, just turned up. His family wanted me to make sure that you knew he was back. And let me know if we’re still on for Saturday night. I’m really looking forward to it. Kay, bye.”
Angela was halfway to the door, keys in hand, by the time the machine beeped off.
“Hey,” Benson half-shouted, grabbing her elbow. “Where are you going?”
She shook him off and glared. “They know about Gillian. I have to go.”
Benson stared at her grimly for a long moment and then nodded. “Sam,” he ordered over his shoulder. “You stay here and try to make heads or tails of this mess. Come on,” he said to Angela and together they strode out the door.
~~~
Chapter Four
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing. It’s all Kripke’s and the CW’s and blah blah blah. We all know who the real brain trust is around here.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: General for the series. Takes place in two time periods, one pre-series and the other situated at some point between 3x04 (Sin City) and 3x05 (Bedtime Stories).
Summary: The Winchesters never stay, and when they go they leave more than burned corpses behind them.
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
November 22, 1996
First United Methodist Church
Lansing, MI
The cacophony of dozens of conversations echoed around the draughty community room in the church’s basement. It was a utilitarian room, cinder block walls painted a muted yellow to match the beige and cream speckled linoleum on the floor. Large floor to ceiling windows lined one wall where the hill had been cut away, allowing the good churchgoers a vista of the outside world.
It wasn’t much of a view on a gray November Wednesday, however. The sun had peeked out briefly during the graveside service but had promptly run away again before they’d returned for the reception.
Gillian poked at the food piled high on the plate in front of her. Grandma Dewar had plopped it down with a firm look that clearly communicated that Gillian was expected to clear the entire thing or face stiff consequences. Her grandmother was a formidable woman whose will was law, especially at her only son’s funeral.
“Hey there, kiddo,” Her Uncle Dave sat down in the folding chair to her right. He, too, had a plate brimming with food. “Your aunt sent me over. She said you looked lonely.”
Gillian couldn’t help rolling her eyes. Aunt Paula really was her mother’s daughter.
“Yeah, I know,” Uncle Dave grinned. “Like you need someone looking over your shoulder.”
They sat for a moment in comfortable silence, both picking at their own monstrous piles of victuals. That was the good thing about Uncle Dave, he didn’t push. He just let things be.
“How’s your sister?” He asked quietly.
Gillian glanced over at the table where Angie was surrounded by her friends. Someone said something that made Angie smile. It didn’t have the full-on Angie Effect that looked like it had come straight out of a Crest commercial, but it was something, at least.
She turned back to her uncle. “She’s doing okay, I guess.”
He nodded. “You know, if you or Angie ever need anything, me and your aunt are here for you.”
“I know, Uncle Dave.” She whispered into her potatoes. She blinked and willed her eyes to remain dry. She was so tired of crying.
He gripped her shoulder. “Good. I’m glad.” A high-pitched wailing suddenly arced over the background clatter. Dave sighed. “Looks like Jackie’s decided to join the party after all. I should go take care of her.”
Gillian nodded and didn’t watch as Dave walked away. She stared blankly at the towering mounds of Mrs. Flegal’s pasta salad. It had always been her favorite part of any church social but she couldn’t even imagine taking a bite of it today. She didn’t want to ruin it.
The chair across from her creaked shrilly under someone’s weight. She didn’t look up. There wasn’t anyone that she wanted to see right now.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Dewar.” The stranger’s voice was deep, it rumbled through the air between them. Gillian’s head shot up, startled out of despondency. She’d never seen the man on the other side of the table before in her life, she would’ve remembered him. He was large, he dwarfed the cheap fold-out chair. His shoulders slouched under his suit jacket but were still broad enough to seem like they spanned half the table. It was his eyes that caught her, though, dark and piercing. She didn’t like them, couldn’t stand the way they weighed on her, but she couldn’t look away, they wouldn’t let her.
“Thank you,” she replied, her voice hardly a whisper.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a badge. “I’m Detective Thompson, I have a couple of questions about your father’s attack.”
Her mind went completely blank. She gulped and felt the acid burn of bile in the back of her throat. She didn’t want to think about that. She wasn’t going to think about that.
He nodded as if her reaction confirmed something he already suspected and continued without batting an eye. “Our records show that you were present on the scene when the-” he pulled a narrow notebook out of his jacket and flipped it open, “ -large black dog mauled your father.”
She nodded, throat too dry to make a sound.
“Strange how the autopsy disagrees. Your father was mauled by a large animal, no question, but it wasn’t a dog that did it. In fact, there isn’t an animal in a thousand miles that would leave bites like the ones found on your father’s corpse,” The detective leaned forward. “What did you really see out there, Miss Dewar?”
Gillian couldn’t move. His looming presence smothered her, made it hard for her to even breathe. Images flashed unbidden through her mind, an impossibly large shape hunched in dead, brown leaves. White razor teeth flashed and she ran, ran through mud and water, her father’s screams echoing through the skeletal trees.
Her head spun and her blood thinned. Her breath came in short bursts, she didn’t know if she was going to throw up or pass out.
Thompson leaned even closer. She couldn’t escape. “But you already know all of that, don’t you Miss Dewar? You already know what killed your father while you stood there and watched. Did you do to call it? Did you hate your father that much?” His eyes bored into her, judge, jury, and executioner.
An electric surge of anger shot out of her chest, straightening her spine. It burned away the memories that haunted her and unlocked her tongue. “I love my father more than you could possibly even imagine. I didn’t do anything, I would never hurt him, not in a million years.” She could feel the tears welling in her eyes but she wouldn’t let them fall, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “I don’t care what you think or what your evidence looks like. You can just take it all and-”
She stopped abruptly, mouth snapping shut. She wouldn’t say any of the vile things that were slamming against her throat. She didn’t say things like that. She refused to give in.
His eyes narrowed. She could see his temper build, held in check by the stiff clench of his jaw. He took a deep breath and she watched as he visibly reined himself in. His eyes gleamed, suddenly, and her teeth clicked together in response. She tensed for the next volley.
“Maybe it wasn’t your fault,” he growled low, syllables tripping over a depth she couldn’t parse and didn’t care to explore. “Maybe it was a joke. You never thought anything would happen. It’s not your fault, you didn’t know what you were doing.” He smiled at her, but there was nothing kind in it. “But none of that matters, you still did it.”
She stared at him. She didn’t blink. “You’re wrong. I didn’t do anything.” She raised her chin and didn’t break eye contact, her jaw shut tight.
He returned her stare, his dark eyes gleamed with something feral she couldn’t understand, but she didn’t look away. He stood, unfolding until he towered over her. “I think that does it,” voice laced with sarcasm that cut for blood. “Don’t worry, Gillian, you won’t have to keep your secret for much longer.” He smiled suddenly, charm layered over the menace he meant for her to see. He turned and stalked from the room.
Gillian gazed after him and breathed. She hadn’t done anything, even when Dad screamed. She’d only run away.
~~~
Waverly High School
“I don’t know what you mean,” the girl’s, Lauren’s, mouth pursed in confusion. Dean stopped himself from sighing in exasperation, instead he strengthened the rictus of a smile on his face. Patient, he had to be patient. He wasn’t going to get anything from her if he lost it now. Dad would have his balls in a blender if he let whatever info she had slip away from him.
“You know Gillian better than anyone, that’s what everybody says, so was she acting weird before her dad died? You know, was she reading strange books, obsessed with funny rituals, anything like that?” Dean turned the charm up to overdrive. It had gotten him into more cheerleaders’ panties than he could count and it was more than a little frustrating how immune this chick seemed to be. She should’ve been wrapped around his little finger by now.
Lauren blushed and shifted uncomfortably. “No, of course not. I mean, yeah, she’s not acting normal now, but her dad died, so if she doesn’t talk to me and doesn’t want me going to her dad’s funeral then that’s fine. It’s totally okay.” Her eyes couldn’t seem to stay still while she talked, they would meet his for a second and then dart away again, haphazardly skipping around the empty hallway.
He leaned in a little. It was time to press his advantage. She blinked at him for a moment, eyebrows pulled together, before her focus darted away again. Her fingers whooshed nervously over the nylon strap of her backpack. “Are you sure about that?” Dean asked. “Cause I talked to a guy, Mike, in her English class who wouldn’t stop talking about the way she just rattled off whole paragraphs in Latin in some play they were reading. That doesn’t sound too run-of-the-mill to me.”
“Oh,” Lauren grinned suddenly. “That’s not too weird. Our freshman year we sang a whole mass in Latin. Once you learn the sounds everything makes it’s not that hard to pronounce.” She shrugged a little awkwardly. “Gillian told me about reading Faustus, she was just showing off.”
Dean frowned for a second, taken aback. What kind of crazy choir teacher taught people Latin? Didn’t they know how dangerous it was? With his luck some idiot kid was going to inadvertently summon a demon and then it’d be Dean Winchester who had to pull all their fat out of the fryer.
But he didn’t have time to worry about that. Dad always said their first priority was to focus on the case at hand. “So there’s nothing you can think of? Everything’s just been same old, same old with good ol’ Gillian.”
Lauren grimaced, her eyes shifting from one side to the other. Oh yeah, she knew something. Dean moved in to press his advantage. “It’s okay, you know. My dad’s a cop and any little thing could help him figure out what happened to her dad. We’re only trying to help her.”
“It’s, just-” Lauren swallowed and glanced around the empty hallway. She flinched when a cheer erupted from the gym at the far end of the hall but then she looked back at him, her jaw set. Yeap, there it was, she was going to spill her guts. He so rocked. “I called her on Monday night. I don’t remember why, I didn’t know anything about her dad. She picked up the phone and at first she sounded really tired and kind of distant but suddenly she started wheezing. It was kind of like crying but I’ve never heard anything as awful as the noises she was making. Then she started babbling about a monster in the woods and that it was all her fault and she should’ve done something but she didn’t. I kept on asking her what was wrong but it was like she couldn’t even hear me. And then the line went dead. When I tried to call back all I got was a busy signal.”
Lauren’s eyes welled up and she had to take a second to blink the tears away. “We watched the 11 o’clock news that night and found out about how her dad was mauled in the woods. I felt awful and I didn’t expect to see her at school the next day, but she was right there in second hour, sitting in her spot in the soprano section. I tried to talk to her after class but she wouldn’t say anything, just that she was okay and that she had to get to sociology. She’s hardly talked to me since.”
Another cheer erupted from the gym and Lauren jumped. Her eyes darted to the closed double doors to her left. “I have to go. Mrs. Sauter will be really upset if I miss too much rehearsal.” Before Dean could say anything, she’d scooped up her bag and grabbed the doorknob.
She turned back, her eyes bright. “You’ll really be able to help her?”
“Yes we will.” He didn’t have to doctor that up at all because it was true. There wasn’t anything he and his family couldn’t fix.
“Thank you,” she whispered and slipped into the choir room.
The heavy door slammed shut. “You catch all that?” Dean asked, already turning towards the art room, its door angled open just right to catch the entire conversation.
“Yeah.” Sam slumped into the hallway, backpack haphazardly draped over one shoulder.
“So that confirms Dad’s theory,” Dean declared. “If the Dewar chick said it was her fault then she must’ve had something to do with it.”
Sam grimaced and shook his head. He didn’t say anything, though, just got that look that he always had when his freakish super-brain was putting things together. Dean shrugged and started towards the parking lot, Sam’d let him have it once he had all his ducks in a row.
The thunk of their boots moving in tandem echoed off the linoleum floors and cinderblock walls. Sam finally broke his silence just as Dean was pushing the outside door open. “It doesn’t seem the same. Remember when those kids summoned that hellhound down in Ohio? They didn’t act the same. Also there was all that stuff about how they’d been learning about medieval iconography in art class, and how at least three of them confessed the whole thing to the police officer who caught them screwing around in the park. This is just different.”
Dean shook his head. It was freakish how Sam could pull phrases like, ‘medieval iconography’ out of thin air. “You always get so worked up over the details, dude. Everybody’s different. I hate to break it to you, but some people are fucked-up enough to kill their parents in cold-blood. It sucks but it’s true.”
“I know that, Dean,” Sam bitched. “But you know what? I was the one who was stuck stalking her for days, and sometimes she looked just like you do when I ask you about Mom. I don’t think she’s the problem.”
Dean stood for a moment with his hand on the side of the truck as Sam stomped to the other side. He took a few deep breaths in some kind of attempt to get himself under control. He hated when Sam brought Mom up like this, hated remembering even for a second what losing her felt like.
He pulled the door open and swung in. “That might be, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do something stupid without meaning to,” he said before Sam could open his mouth.
“Yeah, I know.” Sam shrugged. He looked right at Dean, eyes big and sincere. “But we could still go by the state library, couldn’t we?”
“Okay, fine, whatever,” Dean grumbled. No matter what he did, he always seemed to end up stuck in the library. He swung the truck back out of its parking place. “But we’re totally stopping by QD on the way for some doughnuts.”
He took the nearly obscene growling from Sam’s stomach as all the agreement he needed.
~~~
September 14, 2007
Hart, MI
“Was there anything strange about Danny’s behavior before he went missing? Was he moody or complaining more than usual?” Sam leaned forward and turned the sympathetic charm up another notch. He used to have latent qualms about manipulating people like this, lying to them and offering them false hope just for some case. Maybe he’d hated it so much because it was so easy to look them in the eye and open them up. It didn’t feel right to lie to people in the name of finding the truth.
Whatever the reasons, it didn’t bother him anymore. They needed answers, and the more desperate people were the easier it was to connive all of their deepest secrets.
And the Owens were truly desperate. Their little boy had been gone for days, and they knew that their chances of getting him back decreased exponentially with every passing hour. Sam could practically see the string they were dangling on and knew that they were willing to cling to whatever slim hope he might give them.
“I’ve been over and over the days before, and I can’t think of anything,” Danny’s mother, Cara, replied in a voice that sounded raspy and thin. “School just started again a couple weeks ago but he only had good things to say about his teacher and his friends. He was happy.” Her bloodshot eyes bored into his, pleading with him to believe her.
Sam saw Matt’s mouth open and close in reaction to his wife’s statement. That combined with the way his eyes hesitantly cut to Cara’s face before resting on Sam, again, declared that he definitely knew something his wife didn’t.
Dean caught it, too. “There anything you want to add, Mr. Owen?” Dean’s voice was heavy and deep with more than a hint of their dad in it. Sam wasn’t surprised to see Matt sit up straight, his eyes suddenly unable to leave Dean’s. It took years to build up a resistance to that tone, and even then it could still get you.
“He woke me up the night before,” spilled out of Matt’s mouth. He cleared his throat and took a steadying breath before continuing. “I mean, I woke up, it must have been somewhere around two in the morning, and Danny was standing by the bed. He was scared, so scared that he was shaking like a leaf. He told me that the trees were singing, that they wanted him to go outside.” He shrugged, his face bleak. “I thought it was just a nightmare. I calmed him down and put him back to bed. He seemed fine the next morning.”
He stared out the window situated behind Sam and Dean’s heads, not willing to meet anyone’s eyes. It had been a long time since Sam had felt surprise over the ability so many people had to deny what they knew was true, to excuse and logic their fears away, and he was running short on pity these days. Sympathy wasn’t going to get the job done and denial only fucked everything up.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Cara whispered, stricken. Her eyes bored into Matt’s cheek until he broke with a half sob and turned to look at her.
“It was just a dream,” he pleaded. Sam wasn’t sure even Matt knew who he was trying to convince.
“Does anyone else know about Danny’s dream?” Sam gently cut through the silent tension that was growing between husband and wife.
“No,” Matt knee-jerked. Then he blinked. “I mean, yes, maybe, I don’t know.” He sighed and shot a quick look at Cara out of the corner of his eyes. “I don’t know if Danny told anyone, but I might have mentioned it to Gillian, our neighbor down the road.”
“You told her?” Cara’s voice broke on the last word with anger and accusation.
Matt held his hands up, in either supplication or defense. “It was right after Danny disappeared. She was asking all of these questions and it just, kind of, came out.” He collapsed under whatever he saw in her gaze, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed.
Sam glanced at Dean and nodded at Dean’s raised eyebrow. This was definitely something.
“We’re going to have to talk to this Gillian,” Dean demanded, flipping open his notebook. “You said she’s your neighbor?”
“Yes,” Cara answered mechanically, her eyes still focused on Matt. “She lives in the cabin south of here, about a mile down. The mailbox says Van Doren.”
“Okay,” Dean drawled, jotting it down. He glanced at Sam, a silent awkward in the set of his mouth.
“Thank you for your help,” Sam said, rising. “We’ll do everything we can to find your son.”
Cara didn’t say anything as she showed them to the door. Sam let out a sigh when the door closed behind them, shutting them out of the storm that was building on its other side.
“Well, that sorry bastard’s sure gonna get it,” Dean quipped as they strode toward the car. “Wonder what about this Gillian chick put such a bee in wifey’s bonnet.”
Sam shrugged as he pulled open his door. The Owens’ marital problems really weren’t his concern.
He hissed when he slid into the car. It was like an oven in there. He started rolling down the window before he could even contemplate closing the door. An entire forest of trees and the Owens’ driveway was still open to the sun.
Dean dropped behind the wheel and smirked at Sam. He’d already thrown his suit coat into the backseat and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. His cheap, polyester tie was still knotted loosely around his neck. “And don’t tell me it’s stress. That was way more than stress. I’d put good money on Matt being a very naughty little boy.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Sam sighed. Dean could be worse than the stereotypical old biddy, sometimes, and it would only encourage him if Sam started conjecturing.
They shut their doors simultaneously and Dean started the car with a flick of his wrist. The air that rushed in the windows as they pulled down the road felt wonderful as it dried the sweat on the back of Sam’s neck. It was just their luck to get stuck working a job during summer’s last gasp, when what should’ve been comfortable working weather was actually obnoxious, hot, and humid enough to drown a man on dry land. Sam didn’t know whether to attribute it to global warming, demons, or some infernal combination of them both.
It hardly took any time to find what they were looking for. Before he knew it they were turning down a rutted track guarded by a rusted old mailbox that may, at one point, have said Van Doren, but now only the letters V, D, and N were legible.
The drive curved and they followed it to a house that was hidden from the road by a dense line of trees. It looked like someone’s neglected summer cottage; the dark green paint was chipped and worn, and last year’s leaves still clogged the gutters. A dusty red Grand Am stood by the door, a stylized green ‘S’ sticker tacked onto the rear window its only identifying feature.
Sam unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeves as he got out of the car, leaving his own suit coat behind. It was shady under the trees, though stuffy. He could hear the branches rustling overhead but none of the breeze made it down to their level. It was strangely still in their pocket of the woods, almost like the trees were holding their breath.
Sam shook his head in an attempt to throw off the sudden, clawing sensation of claustrophobia.
Dean knocked demandingly on the front door. He glanced around while they waited, the fingers of his left hand pounding out some private rhythm against the side of his leg. His eyes surveyed the still, curtained windows, narrowing slightly when he couldn’t get a glimpse of what was inside. Sam felt hyperaware, every nerve on overdrive.
Dean knocked again, this time with even more force. He grumbled under his breath and frowned. Before he even looked over Sam was already squatting down, lock picks nimbly balanced between his fingers.
It wasn’t like they’d ever let closed doors stop them in the past.
~~~
Angela jerked out of sleep. She went from comatose to wide awake in under a second. Her eyes darted around the room, she’d been dreaming about something that she could almost see, a dark forest and the trees had eyes. It was a dream, just a dream.
She sat up and ran her hands through her hair. She grimaced when her elbow impacted with the corner of a book lodged between mattress and bed. It wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t seen it last night, the shock of finding the house empty combined with miles of road and days of worry had done her in. She’d faceplanted into the pillows and immediately dropped into exhausted oblivion.
It was almost peaceful, up there in Gillian’s room. Sunlight streamed through a small, square window set underneath the peak of the roof. Through it she could see green leaves swaying in the wind, and blue sky behind them. If she closed her eyes she could almost forget why she was up here, at all.
Angela’s mouth thinned and she swung her legs off of the bed. She didn’t have time to waste on fantasies. Her sister was still missing and sitting in bed, feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to accomplish anything. All of that stuff downstairs might be a mess, but it was somewhere to start. At the very least they might give her some insight about what could go on in Gillian’s screwed up head.
A thump and a muffled curse from downstairs shocked every thought out of her mind. Her heart sped up and a shot of adrenaline pushed her onto her feet. It was just so typical that Gillian would show up after Angela’d gone through so much. She was going to kill her sister for putting her through this, again.
She froze halfway to the stairs when a deep voice spoke and another, equally as sonorous, answered. Her heart beat in her throat. It wasn’t like Gillian to be quiet.
She ducked down on the right side of the stair-hole. The room downstairs was dim, a mélange of shadow. She couldn’t see the intruders but she could hear their heavy footsteps picking over the junk on the floor. She drew in a quick breath when they began to speak.
“What the hell is all of this?” one of them griped. Angela was just coherent enough to identify it as the voice that had cursed earlier.
There was a grunt, followed by the rustling of paper.
“It looks like notes and printouts.” The sound of shuffling could be heard underneath the words. “There’s info about weather patterns, local history.” This was punctuated by a sharp breath. “Dean, I think she’s a hunter.”
Angela’s head reeled with confusion. She frowned and stood up. That was it, she deserved answers and she was getting them now.
She banged down the ladder-like steps, for once not afraid of falling off of them. All of her fear had been replaced by a rage that burned like acid in her chest.
She ducked to avoid banging her head on the ceiling and when she looked up she was face to face with the interlopers. They were huge, the tallest’s head nearly grazed the ceiling, and solid. Their shoulders were rigid under white shirts and their faces were still and intense, frighteningly so.
Angela knew she should be scared, but when it came to her family some indomitable part of her always took over. In the face of that, nothing else registered.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here? What do you know about my sister?”
“Your sister?” the shorter one repeated, his eyebrows drawn together in consternation.
“Yes, my sister. The woman whose house you just broke into.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the taller one pulled out and flashed a badge. “I’m Agent Green and this is Agent Benson. We came by to ask your sister some questions.” He exchanged an impenetrable look with his companion. “Maybe you can help us.”
“Most FBI agents don’t break into people’s homes,” Angela retorted.
Green gestured towards the door with his right hand, the papers she’d heard him pick up still gripped between his fingers. “The door wasn’t latched. When we saw the mess we thought something might be wrong.”
Angela frowned. She knew that tone, it was the same one she used with her clients at the shelter. It was supposed to reassure her, make her trust him. Instead it set her teeth on edge. Something still didn’t add up.
“Is Gillian here?” The other one, Benson, asked before she could voice her suspicions.
“No, she isn’t,” Angela replied, an automatic reaction to his brusque, authoritarian tone. She mentally kicked herself for giving anything away. She knew this routine and she still fell for it.
“Can you tell us what she was doing?” Green asked softly, his eyes gentle and warm on hers, playing his side of the act to perfection.
She looked back and forth between them, her mouth set in a thin, flat line. She didn’t trust them, didn’t even trust that they were the FBI agents they claimed to be. But all of her doubts weren’t worth a thing if there was the slightest possibility that they might be able to help her.
Damn it, what was Gillian mixed up in this time?
She sighed and deflated. “I don’t know where she is. I got up here last night and found the place like this.” Her hand twitched around the disaster area of a room. “She hasn’t answered her phone in nearly a week. If you know anything, please help me.” She wasn’t above begging to get her family what it needed.
The agents carried on an entire conversation in a series of facial movements. A part of Angela’s mind, the psychologist she couldn’t switch off, even if she wanted to, jotted down notes regarding the depth and intricacy of their interaction for future reference.
Benson was the one who finally answered. “We’re investigating a series of disappearances in the area. We have reason to believe you sister was involved with them. Do you have any idea what she was working on?”
Angela couldn’t help the strangled, desperate laugh that burst out of her. “Gillian never tells me anything about what she does. I know she has a job at the IGA in town, but she never even hints about her real work.”
The agents shared another loaded look. They knew something about her sister that she didn’t, she could tell.
That was it, she was done playing their game. “Look,” she seethed. “If you know anything about my sister you tell me-”
“Is that a phone?” Green interrupted, his head jerking up like a dog scenting the wind.
A dull trilling that Angela had noticed but hadn’t recognized came into sharp focus. She jumped and ran across the room, heedless of the things that crunched and snapped under her feet.
She shoved a pile of paper off of a side table and uncovered the phone and its ancient answering machine counterpart. She got to it just as the answering machine was beeping on.
“Hey Jilly, it’s Andy,” a tinny voice jittered out of the speaker. “One of those guys you were asking about, Hector Garces, just turned up. His family wanted me to make sure that you knew he was back. And let me know if we’re still on for Saturday night. I’m really looking forward to it. Kay, bye.”
Angela was halfway to the door, keys in hand, by the time the machine beeped off.
“Hey,” Benson half-shouted, grabbing her elbow. “Where are you going?”
She shook him off and glared. “They know about Gillian. I have to go.”
Benson stared at her grimly for a long moment and then nodded. “Sam,” he ordered over his shoulder. “You stay here and try to make heads or tails of this mess. Come on,” he said to Angela and together they strode out the door.
~~~
Chapter Four