Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood, you sure are looking good. You're everything a big bad wolf could want.
I think the first things that really bother me are the man's hands and his eyes. When I first look across this diner in the Middle-of-Nowhere-ville, Oklahoma, just letting my thoughts drift and my vision glaze over, I notice that both of those things are on a young girl in places they probably shouldn't be. He's resting one hand on the bar and the other on the small of her back, fingers dangerously close to going from creepy to downright obscene. The man, probably in his early thirties, looks hungry, and not for cheap roadside food. His gaze will meet her doe eyes for a minute, then drop down to scan the rest of the girl before she'll pause and he'll look back up.
"Dean," My brother looks up from his bacon cheeseburger, and pauses mid-bite.
"What?" I glance over his shoulder and jerk my head in what I'm hoping is an inconspicuous way, because the last thing that needs to happen is for the pervert to know that people are onto him.
"That guy is checking that girl out," I tell him cautiously. Dean turns around and surveys the scene for a good ten seconds before blinking and turning back with a pause. He folds his hands like a therapist and looks me dead in the eye.
"That's ridiculous, Sammy," he muses.
"His hand is hovering over her butt, Dean,"
"Look, relax. You're just wired up from the job. The ones involving kids and possessions are always the ones that mess you up, and this had the best of both worlds. Just calm down and stop seeing things,"
Dean is often right about a lot of things, but he's also often wrong about a lot of things. Situations that involve the human kind of monsters are times when his sharp radar tends to fail, so I get up and decide to casually walk past the couple to catch a snippet of their conversation. I wasn't let down.
"He told her he needed her to make him feel better," I'm trying to keep the "I told you so," out of my voice, but it's not like Dean is convinced anyway.
"That could mean a lot of things. He could be depressed. He could need medication, maybe he's her sick dad,"
"And then he asked her if she's a nasty girl, because he wants to get freaky tonight,"
"Probably not a sick dad," Dean cracks a smile and raises his eyebrows as a thought jumps into his head.
"Or a very sick dad, am I right?"
"Not the time or place, man," My brother sighs and rubs his temple like he's getting a headache.
"So what are we supposed to do about Lolita?" He asks. I turn my attention back to the man. The girl is giving him an innocent look as he brushes off his jeans and walks towards the bathroom, a sick grin on his face.
"We don't waste a second," I stand up and stride over to the young lady and get a good look at her for the first time.
She's tall, probably about five-foot-eight and somewhat pale too. Maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. She has purple bags rest under her eyes, which darken the grassy color in them. The girl is a redhead, and she's clearly trying to hide her weariness by keeping her hair neat. Despite her efforts, her sunken eyes and sallow complexion tell me that she hasn't had a hot shower or a good meal for a few days.
"Excuse me, miss-" I start right into asking if she needs a ride, but a biting look cuts me off.
"Can I help you?" Her high pitched voice makes her sound either very young or stoned out of her mind. I can't tell which. Either way, it's got a biting edge to it and I'm a little taken aback.
"I was just about to ask you the same question," I manage to spit out. Her eyes narrow, then flick over my shoulder and she straightens up.
"Thanks, but no," A drop of honey makes its way into her tone and she shoots me a sugary grin. Something about it puts me off. If I'm not mistaken, it almost looks like she's got something planned, something cruel.
I turn around to see the pedophile standing behind me, eyes cold and body tense.
"Is this man giving you any trouble, Hazel?" His words are neutral enough, but the way he says them makes the sentence drip with ice.
"If you so much as lay a finger on a minor-" I'm cut off again. He takes Hazel's hand and leads her towards the door without giving me another thought. My jaw drops and Dean comes up beside me.
"We've got to follow them. There is no way I'm letting that girl get raped tonight," I begin to go after them, but Dean grabs my arm.
"Sam, I know this is intense but let's think rationally for a second,"
"The rational thing to do would be to call the police, but they're trailing our ass already and we wouldn't be any help to that kid in prison! Come on, we've got to at least make sure she gets away from that guy,"
I'm already in the driver's seat of the car when Dean finally catches up to me, and he motions for me to get out.
"Oh, hell no, you'll probably rear-end that jackass and then where will we be? No, if we're going to stalk them, we're stalking them with me driving. Out," We don't have time to waste bickering, so I begrudgingly climb into shotgun.
It takes us a good fifteen minutes to find their car, a black minivan. I'd laugh at the stereotype if I wasn't so worried. I've got a pretty good idea what he's going to do to Hazel, and I know that it's nothing a young girl like her should go through by force. She's going to be scarred for life, if she even survives. For all we know, she might be tortured or killed by this predator. I've seen a lot of people get killed, people of all ages, and I don't want to see another one tonight.
After another twenty minutes of trailing the van through the woods, the van reaches a gate on a dirt backroad and we pull the car over a good hundred feet behind them. I see a hand reach out the driver's side window of the van and punch in some code that I can't make out. The gate creaks open and the van continues through.
Dean looks over at me and takes a deep breath. "So what, we're just going to barge right in? Is that the plan?"
"Do you have a better idea?"
"No, but I really don't want to walk in on... you know..."
"I'll be honest, Dean, we've worked a lot of nightmarish jobs, but this is the most terrifying situation we've ever landed ourselves in,"
We don't say another word. What is there to say? What can we tell each other to prepare ourselves to do something that involves a different kind of monster than we're used to facing? What are we going to walk in on? Are we going to kill him, call the police, just make a run for it? Neither of us have any answers, so asking the questions would be pointless.
The gate has already closed by the time we drive up, and it's shut with a coded lock. We wasted too much time. Luckily, it's only about five feet tall and made of very climbable chain link.
"We can easily get over this. Leave the car here," I tell my brother.
"Oh, no. We are not leaving the car here. Way too risky," he warns me.
"I can't believe you. That child is probably being raped right now and you're worried about your stupid car?" I'm close to shouting, but I don't care at this point.
"Would you like to get her out of his hands and then have no way to get her somewhere safe? Me neither. Now come on, use that Stanford brainiac voodoo of yours and get this gate open,"
Most passcode locks for gates and garages and the like have little information stickers telling exactly how to reset their codes and render them useless. It's not exactly voodoo, but it isn't easy either. My fingers are trembling, it's pitch black in the middle of the forest, and the security sticker is extremely faded, but after another ten minutes I manage to reset the lock's passcode and open the gate. We get back in the Impala and start down a narrower dirt path. I see a small house's lights up ahead, just through the trees. We've found them.
Pulling up the gravel driveway, our tires crunch and I tense up, positive that the predator can hear us. I draw my gun and Dean does the same. We share a look and I swallow hard, steeling myself for whatever horrible scene we're about to stumble upon. We make our quiet way up the porch of this ramshackle wooden cabin and hear the sounds of a scuffle inside. My stomach drops.
At the front door, Dean glances sideways at me. I nod, and we burst through the front door, running towards the source of the sounds. In the kitchen, we find chaos, but it's not the kind of chaos I expected.
There are chairs and plates smashed everywhere. Ceramic shards cover the floor. A quaint little dining room table has been flipped and I see that some "medical" instruments have fallen off of it. A large bread knife completely soaked in sticky, crimson blood has left a trail on the floor, indicating it was kicked aside. The man from the diner is facing us, his hands in the air and his eyes wide with fear. A puncture wound in his left thigh sends thick rivulets of blood pouring down his leg and bumps and scrapes cover his face, arms, and neck. Behind him is the figure of a girl holding a gun to his head.
She peeks around his chest. It's almost comical, like she's trying to hide. At first Hazel's face seems almost as surprised as ours, but then it gets not scared, not guilty, just very, very irritated.
"You're that guy from the truck stop," she sighs exasperatedly. I can only nod. No words come to mind. I've only been truly awed a handful of times in my career and this has made the top of the list by a landslide. Dean seems just as stunned.
"Hazel, let me just-" The man tries to take a step away but the petite redhead just jams the barrel into the back of his neck.
"I've told you seven times now that my name isn't really Hazel, you idiot,"
"Whoever you are, I wasn't going to rape you!" he shouts. Her face goes blank, then she laughs.
"Oh, that's hilarious. Were we going to play a nice game of Scrabble and maybe drink a cup of coffee, then? Time and place, I'm free whenever," she purrs. He starts to speak again but she interrupts him.
"I will pull this trigger with a smile on my face, Jeffrey,"
Tears have started streaming down his cheeks. He mouths at me "Man, help me, she's a psychopath," The girl, apparently not Hazel, gives him a swift kick behind the knee of his injured leg and the pedophile falls to the ground. She looks at him with contempt and then kicks him in the ribcage. I hear a crack and wince, her boots must have really hard toes.
"Steel tipped," she mutters, as though she were reading my mind. The girl takes a deep breath, raises the gun, and points it directly at the man, Jeffrey's, neck. He's screaming bloody murder now, begging for mercy, but she just squints one eye and pulls the trigger. The screaming is replaced by a sickening gurgle as we watch the man choke to death on his own blood.
I have absolutely no idea what to do. I've lowered my gun in pure shock, and Dean hasn't moved a muscle since he set foot in this kitchen. Before I can say a word, the redhead turns on her heel and sprints out the back door and makes a quick right towards the road. She's as good as gone.