"Supernatural" is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc.

This story is a sequel to my other two "KU AU" stories, "The Fifteenth Secret" and "The Third Bride," but you don't need to read those to know what's going on here. Of course, I hope you'll love this one so much that you'll immediately go read and review the first two.

Grateful thanks to: Robyn at Steven Joseph Small Estate Sales Services in Ontario, California; Sgt. Kristen Channel, Public Relations Officer for the Douglas County, Kansas Sheriff's Office; Wendy at the Douglas County Recorder of Deeds' office (who said, "Are you going to put me in your story?"); Professor Paul Mirecki at the University of Kansas Department of Religious Studies; Myron E. Sildon (who knows all about corporate law); Jeanne P. Mosca, Ph.D.; Keith Manis of the Lawrence, Kansas Visitor Center; Zach from the Apple Store in Leawood, Kansas; Ross Edgar of Sallas Auto Repair in Overland Park, Kansas; and, as always, my mother. And to all the great people at LePeep in Lenexa! Thanks, guys!

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Castiel Novak smiled broadly, seemingly unaware that the triceratops skeleton behind him looked like it was about to gore him. The caption on his Facebook page read, "CAS NOVAK was at the Field Museum in Chicago," and continued, "And you thought I wouldn't have any fun!"

The comments string below began with Dean Winchester's "So on your last day you get to have some fun?"

Cas' reply: "I had an interesting talk yesterday about 12th-century humanistic thinkers with a professor at UChicago."

Dean's reply: "What? Sorry, I dozed off."

Comment by Rachel Novak: "Envy, envy! I've always wanted to see it."

Reply by Cas: "When you do, allow at least a half day. I only allowed two hours, which was laughably too little."

Comment by Pamela Seering: "You look like you're having a great time! Did you get to the aquarium?"

Cas' reply: "Alas, no. Next trip."

.

Since Dean was standing at a luggage carousel in Kansas City International Airport, presumably he was expecting someone, but he looked astonished nonetheless. "What are you guys doing here?"

"Hey, we missed Cas too," Jess said with a huge grin.

"Thought we'd meet up with you guys and take you to dinner," Sam said with a huge grin.

Dean looked back and forth between them. "OK. What's going on?"

"Nothing," in perfect unison, then they looked at each other and laughed.

Suspicion deepened on Dean's face. "OK, what – "

Jess' expression changed suddenly. "I didn't even think about this. Cas has been gone for ten days, you guys probably want some alone time."

"Well – "

"Really, it's OK. Sam and I can just take off, and we could maybe go out tomorrow."

"No, it's fine, we'd both like to hang out with you guys. And I want to know what's going on," Dean said directly to Sam, who grinned back. "You're not planning on coming back to the apartment with us afterward, are you?"

They both laughed heartily, and Dean gave them another suspicious look.

"Oh good, a committee," said a quiet deep voice behind them.

Dean spun, hugged Cas hard for a moment, then quickly released him. "Man, it's good to see you."

Cas put a hand on Dean's arm, smiled into his eyes. "I missed you."

Dean, never the best at public displays of affection, nodded. "Me too."

There was a thud and roar as the luggage carousel started up. "I'm gonna get that," Dean announced. "Just the one bag, right?"

Cas nodded, and Dean charged off.

"How was your flight?" Sam asked.

"The flight was good, but the only lunch I had was some trail mix at Midway. I'm very ready for dinner."

"That's great, we were suggesting that we take you guys to dinner," Sam said.

"Unless you'd rather have dinner by yourselves," Jess added.

"No, I'd enjoy that." Cas was watching Dean help a mother with two small children retrieve her luggage from the carousel. "It'll be my treat, though."

"Really, we want – "

"We'll fight about it later," Sam said. "So – did you make any decisions?"

Cas was quiet, seeming abstracted.

"Cas?"

"I'm sorry, what?" Cas smiled. "I'm tired."

"Understood. I just wondered if you'd made any decisions."

"They all have good points," Cas said, as Dean helped an old man pull a huge rolling suitcase off of the carousel. "The University of Chicago is the closest, of course."

"A major plus," Sam said.

"I saw the Field Museum picture on your Facebook page," Jess said.

"Whether I get my doctorate there or not, I've got to get back to Chicago someday. You can't squeeze the Art Institute and the Field Museum into a half day and do them justice."

Dean pulled Cas' suitcase off the carousel and headed back to them, smiling.

"Do you know where the Capital Grille is?" Cas asked them.

Jess' jaw dropped. "On the Plaza, yeah, but Cas, that's – "

"My treat, my choice. Is Capital Grille OK with you?" he asked Dean.

"Sure. Call from the car and find out if they can get us in, and we'll meet up there. Where are you guys parked?"

"Upper deck," Sam said.

"Me too," and, running one hand quickly across Cas' back, Dean yielded the suitcase to him and they headed out as a group.

There was a silver Toyota Corolla parked two rows in back of Dean's Impala. The driver was running the engine for the air conditioning, but as soon as the four emerged from the elevator and onto the top parking deck, he cut the engine and slid down a little in his seat. He needn't have bothered; he'd chosen his parking place well, and each of the two couples was too focused on each other to bother with noticing parked cars.

"My humidity standards have changed," Cas was saying, not that the driver of the Corolla could hear him. "If you think a city at the intersection of two rivers is humid, try one sitting on a Great Lake."

"So basically, don't even bother with setting my hair?" Jess said.

"Not in July, certainly."

"We're over there," Sam said, pointing to his blue Charger. "We'll talk more at Capital Grille." Jess giggled, for some reason.

"See you there," Dean said, and opened the Impala's trunk. Cas put his suitcase inside and closed it as Dean went to the driver's-side door.

When both Dean and Cas were inside the Impala, the Corolla's engine started up again.

Sam held open the passenger door of the Charger for Jess, and she gave him a kiss as she got in. As he slid into the driver's seat, she said, "I think we should at least go Dutch treat at dinner. That must have been an expensive trip for Cas, four cities in ten days, and Capital Grille isn't exactly McDonald's."

"His dad paid for the trip. Mr. Novak is really enthusiastic about education, and when Cas told him the four places he was considering to get his doctorate, Mr. Novak insisted that Cas fly around, see the places in person, meet some people, then decide where to apply. Cas is probably using some of the leftover funds his dad sent him for the trip to buy us dinner."

"But – if he can do that, why was Cas living in a scholarship hall for three years? You have to be pretty low-income for that, don't you?"

"Sort of. I mean, Dad's not poor, but I got into a scholarship hall because he was operating on one income and had Dean and me in college at the same time."

"And you're brilliant."

Sam laughed, pulling up behind Dean at the parking lot's ticket booth. The silver Corolla pulled up behind Sam's car. "Well, Cas is for sure, of course. His dad had just bought a hunting-supplies store when Cas started college, and his mom was a cashier at a crafts store, so he was paying off a big loan and she wasn't exactly rolling in dough."

"But now they're rich?"

"A lot of that happened while you were away." Sam said it easily, as though Jess had just taken a long vacation, but she blinked, looking down at her hands. "Mr. Novak expanded the business into all kinds of outdoor products. Then he built several branches in the western U.S. Then just recently he helped Mrs. Novak start up a gardening supplies store, that was kind of her dream, and now that's expanding too."

Jess said, "So basically, if you want to grow something, ask the Novaks."

"For sure." Sam pulled forward, paid for the parking, and drove on.

"Well, that explains the trip they're on now. I was thinking that must take some serious money."

Sam smiled. "The first hint I had about this was Cas' graduation, his parents bought him a pair of 18-karat-gold cufflinks."

"Wow." The impressed look on Jess' face turned to bemusement. "I'm sure they're gorgeous, but what the heck does Cas ever do where gold cufflinks make sense?"

"That was what he said to Dean and me afterward. Dean said, 'You can wear 'em when we get married.'"

"There you go!" Then, as they drove down a long ramp to I-29, Jess sobered. "I'm worried about him."

"Dean? Or Cas?"

"Well, both, a little. I mean, I totally understand why Cas wants a doctorate. If you're going to do college-level teaching it's really good to have one, and I understand that KU doesn't offer a doctorate in religious studies. And I totally understand that the plan is for Dean to take over Bobby's business someday, and he doesn't want to just leave town for four years or so. It just seems like it's going to be hard on both of them."

"It will be," Sam said simply.

Then after a moment, "You know, Cas will come back as often as he can, Dean will go there as often as he can. We'll keep Dean busy doing stuff. And four years isn't forever."

"True," Jess said. "You know, it just struck me when I saw him at the airport, I'm going to miss Cas too."

"We all will. But it'll be really good for him, so we'll all deal with it."

Jess gave a sudden mischievous smile. "Maybe they'll get married after Cas gets back."

"Or maybe before he goes," Sam said with an answering smile. "They might be struck with an inspiration from somewhere."

In the Impala, Dean glanced over at Cas. "You seem tired."

"I'm just thinking. I've been doing a lot of that."

"Uh-oh, that's dangerous."

Cas smiled.

"I hope this dinner thing with Sam and Jess is OK. They just showed up at the airport grinning from ear to ear, wanting to go to dinner. Something's goin' on with them."

"Or they're in love."

"Mm," Dean said, glancing at the Charger in his rear-view mirror.

"You're going to have to forgive Jess someday. Sam has, long since."

"Yeah, well, Sam's a better person than I am."

Cas chuckled. "No, he's not."

"She dumped him, Cas. She went off and joined a cult. She slept with the cult leader. And Sam forgave her and took her back. Yeah, he's better than I am."

"I don't think so. I think you resent Sam's being hurt more than Sam does. And I think that's natural. If some jerk hurt Rachel and she took him back, I'd probably hold that grudge for a long time. If I hurt you and you took me back, Sam probably wouldn't speak to me for ages."

With reluctance in his face, Dean gave a half-nod. "Yeah. But you'd never find anyone as hot as me."

"True."

"Unless it was maybe a professor who could discuss 12th-century humanistic thinkers."

Cas smiled at him. "She wasn't really my type."

"A-ha."

"Keep in mind, Sam didn't take Jess back instantly," Cas said. "They had a kind of – tentative friendship for a few months, and then they both decided that some time totally apart would be a good idea. Later they both decided that they were happier together than apart, they dated for a while, and now they've been living together for six months. And Sam seems very happy."

"Yeah. I'm just afraid she'll pull something like that again."

"I don't think she will. I don't think she ever stopped loving Sam. She had some problems, and she felt like she had to cut off part of her life to be honest in the other part. She chose wrong. And she knows that."

"Hope so."

Dean cast another glance at Sam's car in the rear-view mirror. Two lanes over, the silver Corolla drove sometimes parallel to and sometimes slightly behind the Impala and the Charger. None of the four noticed it. There are a lot of cars like that on the road, which was why the Corolla's driver had chosen it.

.

When Sam, Dean, Cas, and Jess emerged from a Plaza parking garage, a man was standing among some five-foot-tall shrubbery in front of an apartment building next to the Capital Grille. Apparently he hadn't expected that they would walk so close to him, and he slipped further back among the bushes as Dean and Sam contended for the honor of door-holding. When the laughing group went inside, the man stood still for a minute, apparently thinking about something. Then he walked to the apartment building's parking lot, where the Corolla was parked, got in and drove away.

Once the waiter had given them menus and taken their drink orders, Dean turned to Sam, who was sitting across from Cas. "OK, spill it."

"Spill what?" Sam asked innocently.

"Whatever you two have been giggling about since I laid eyes on you."

Sam chuckled. Jess was doing something with her purse, which was on the seat next to her.

"Actually, it probably won't be a big shock," Sam said. "But Jess and I were out yesterday, and I just thought, what the heck, I'm going to ask her to marry me."

Jess extended her left hand across the table to Dean. It was adorned with a simple platinum band with a small but brilliant diamond. "And I thought, what the heck, I'm going to say yes."

"Wonderful!" Cas said, as Dean smiled and spent a moment looking at Jess' hand. Then Dean looked over at Sam. "Congratulations, man. Well, congratulations to both of you."

"Let's see the rock, Jess," Cas said, and she showed it to him.

"It's not a rock," Sam said. "I actually wanted to give her something a little bigger, but this is the one she wanted."

"It's a beautiful diamond," Cas said. "You have good taste, Jess. Well, both of you do." He smiled at Sam. "Congratulations."

"Have you told Dad yet?" Dean asked.

"We called the parents first thing. Couldn't get hold of Dad until today, but finally did, and I told him not to tell you until we did."

"Have you set a date?" Cas asked.

"Well – " Sam said.

"The future," Jess laughed.

"I'll be in law school for three years. We're thinking after I've finished two years, or maybe right after graduation, although that seems like a long time. But we sure don't want to wait until I pass the bar exam, it might take me a few tries to do that – "

Jess gave a light, high "Ha!"

"Well, you never know. Not to mention the time it would take job-hunting. So we're not going to wait until I'm an employed lawyer. Two, maybe three years, and until then I'll just be her kept man."

Jess made a face. "You work. You are not kept."

"Yeah, but it makes me sound hot when I say that."

"So you're going to stay at the real estate agency?" Dean asked Jess.

"Yeah. I'd like to finish my degree someday, but I want to make sure it's a field I really want to devote my life to, not just –" she gestured – "something that seems appropriate to my family, or whoever."

Dean nodded.

"Office manager isn't an exciting title, but it's actually interesting work. You deal with a lot of different things, you don't just do the same thing all day. I'm actually enjoying it."

Jess was addressing Dean directly, as if she were trying to persuade him of something. He nodded. "Well, that's good."

"I think you've got a sensible plan," Cas said. "I just wish we had something to make a toast – Perfect timing."

A waiter filled their water glasses, and Cas lifted his. "To Sam and Jess. Congratulations and much happiness in your future together."

"Sam and Jess," Dean said, also lifting his glass, and everyone took a drink of water.

"Anyway, whatever date we pick, you'll have to come back to town for the wedding," Sam told Cas.

"I wouldn't miss it."

"Did you get a chance to do anything but fly and see colleges?"

"Not much," Cas said thoughtfully, "but that was all right. I met some interesting people, got some good – "

His voice drifted off. Sam and Dean exchanged a quick glance.

" – some good advice. Occasionally – "

After a moment he looked up and smiled. "I'm sorry. Something happened yesterday that's making me think."

Dean looked at him keenly. Sam said, "What was it? Do you mind if I ask?"

"Not at all. I was having lunch with a professor at UChicago, she was giving me some guidance, and then we drifted into a discussion of Peter Abelard."

"If I had a dime for every time that happened – " Jess began, and Sam laughed.

"Middle Ages philosopher," Dean said. "He was one of the first guys to bring religious philosophy out of the how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin thing, apply it to real human problems."

Sam outright gaped.

Grinning, Dean pointed at Cas. "You live with the guy, you gotta pick up something."

"He's a very interesting writer," Cas said, "and the professor is one of the nation's most respected scholars on the subject. But I kept being distracted by a lady two tables over. She was sitting by herself, reading a book, eating lunch, and she was crying. She wasn't at all obvious about it. I doubt if anyone else in the restaurant even noticed, except her server. She'd just read her book, wipe off a tear. Take a sip of iced tea, wipe away a tear. I found myself – "

He hesitated, and the other three listened breathlessly.

" – torn between how interesting my discussion was and, and an interest in the lady that was both emotional and intellectual. How does someone feel such obviously powerful emotion and cover it almost completely? What was happening there? If I'd been by myself, I don't know, but I might have gone over to see if – to ask her if – "

"Oh, I know for sure," Dean said. "There's no 'might have' about it. You'd have gone over to talk to her."

"And you'd have helped her a lot," Jess said, speaking from personal experience.

"And then you'd have gotten involved with a lawsuit – " Dean said, and grinned as Cas shot him a reproving look.

"What?" Sam said.

"You remember the big sexual harassment scandal that blew up at Gaillard Publishing a couple months ago?"

"I remember you and Cas talking about it. You know – " Sam looked at Cas – "when you decided to take six months away from classrooms and went to work at a publishing company, I was laying odds with Jess that you'd stay there permanently."

"It was interesting work."

"What exactly happened there? I didn't really keep track," Jess said.

"The company founder – a guy named Dick, appropriately – would hit on young male employees," Dean said. "Sometimes he specifically hired these guys to hit on them."

"How long did that go on?" Jess asked.

"Years," Dean said.

"He would begin by pretending he wanted to be their mentor, saying he thought they were exceptional and special," Cas said. "He'd end up telling them that they'd never work again if they reported him. Keep in mind, things are difficult with print media these days. Jobs are hard to come by, even for people who love the field and want to devote their lives to it. None of them wanted to take the risk."

"But what did you have to do with it?" Sam asked. "I don't remember your mentioning that at all."

"I didn't even know myself," Dean said, "until a guy named Alan showed up at our door one day, shaking like he'd been in a blender, telling Cas he'd just reported the whole thing to a vice president. So guess who Alan had been spilling his guts to for a couple of months, and getting one of the other victims to spill his guts to?"

Sam smiled widely. "You convinced him to report it."

"I did not 'convince' him," Cas said quietly, stubbornly. "I mainly listened to him, asked a question from time to time. He needed self-assurance, but inside he knew what he had to do."

"And he convinced the other guy," Dean said, "and the other guy went to the Kansas City Star, and they found other victims, and the next thing you know, Dick is being forced to resign as president of his own company and a couple of the victims are filing lawsuits. And in all that, guess whose name never gets mentioned once?"

Sam laughed. "I'm amazed. But not surprised."

Cas smiled. "The point is, between the editing, which was quite satisfying, and the experience of talking to Alan, I'm beginning to – "

Again, his audience was breathless. Sam shot a look at Dean's expression.

"I'm beginning to question my devotion to academic life. There's still a great deal that's appealing there, but there's also a great deal of stress, and you have to be absolutely certain – "

He looked up and around. "We should talk about something besides me."

"Chablis for the lady," their server announced, appearing beside them with their drinks. He distributed the others, then asked if they'd had a chance to look at their menus. Fortunately, Cas had a favorite order, so he gave that to the waiter, drawing out the details long enough that everyone else could do a fast menu scan.

"How's Dad doing?" Sam asked Dean when they'd ordered.

"Real busy. Doing OK, but you know how he gets when he's got a heavy-duty case."

Sam grimaced. "So of the three days in Wichita you got like, what, an hour with him?"

"A little more than that. We watched a couple of Royals games on TV, had some pizza at the station. But – yeah." Dean shrugged. "Sometimes you plan things, and then some guy decides to do a home invasion and kill two people, and the plans go out the window. I understood."

"He should have asked you to help out," Jess said, and Dean laughed. "I'm serious. You and Sam caught a serial rapist. And a murderer."

"With your help," Sam said.

"Yeah, and you know what his response to that was," Dean said, grinning. "Very good work, sons. But next time – "

Sam chorused with him, in unison, "Let the police do their jobs!"

"Did they catch the killer?" Cas asked.

Dean shook his head. "Not yet. But they will. Dad's after him."

Cas gave a small smile and nod. Jess said, "Let me know when he does. Scary to think about someone like that running around loose just a couple of hours away."

Sam touched her arm gently. Dean changed the subject, talking about a NAPA class about German cars he was going to be taking in August. "You just took one of those a few months ago, didn't you?" Sam asked.

"That was the VisionKC Expo. They have all kinds of classes, but that one I went to more for the business side – marketing to millennials, things like that."

They were well into their meal, just wrapping up a discussion of current movies, when Jess said to Dean and Cas, "Speaking of this weekend – I was wondering if I could ask a big favor of you two. I've already got Sam roped in, but you know," she batted her eyelashes, "the more big strong men are involved, the faster the work will go."

Cas laughed. Dean said, "Uh-oh."

"You remember my friend Catherine?"

"Older lady," Dean said. "She just died and you're her executor."

"Yes. She was widowed with no children, and – she was a little cranky, but not that bad. For some reason, though, she ended up alone." There was a tear in her eye. "Just a cousin in Fort Hays that she didn't have much contact with."

"And you," Cas said.

Jess smiled. "Anyway, her will stipulates that her cousin should go through the house and take what items of personal property she wanted, and then the rest of the property and the house should be liquidated, the court costs and taxes and lawyer get paid from that. Then I get two percent of the remainder, and the rest of it goes to the KU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. So I hired – well, the estate hired, she had a savings account that I'm paying the expenses from – a woman who does estate sales to go through the house and see if it would be worth it to her to arrange an estate sale. Unfortunately, the cousin arrived on the same day as Cynthia, the estate-sale lady, and went through the house with us. Every time Cynthia would point out a piece of furniture and say, 'That could be a draw, we could get some pretty good money for that – '"

"The cousin said, 'By coincidence, that's one of the things I want,'" Dean said.

"You got it. By the time she was through, all that was left was the kind of thing you can sell at a garage sale for a few bucks each. It wasn't worth Cynthia's time and effort to do the estate sale, but she let me know the best way to present what was left at our own sale. The point is, for all practical purposes, the house is the estate."

"And it's a pit," Sam said.

"Well, the Realtor says it 'has good bones' – you know, it's structurally sound, no leaks. But real vigorous housework and yard work were just too hard for her. She kept her dishes washed and floors swept and toilet scrubbed, she hired a neighborhood kid to keep the yard mowed, but that was pretty much all."

"I'm beginning to see the big favor coming down the tracks," Dean said.

"It's a Victorian house in the Old West Lawrence Historic District," Jess said. "It's not like we won't get plenty of money for it. But we'd get more if the house and yard looked good and clean. Mostly it needs dusting and vacuuming, hardwood floors cleaned, some major scrubbing in the kitchen and bathrooms. Outside there are some bushes that could use pruning and piles of dead leaves from the last couple of winters. And the personal property that we're going to try to sell needs to be cleaned up too. If you guys wouldn't mind putting in a few hours, the estate can pay you."

Cas shook his head, and at the same time Dean said, "Not necessary. Supply us with pizza and beer, we'll call it good. When?"

"I was thinking of this Saturday."

"I've got to work Saturday this week," Dean said. "I'm off Friday, but you have to work then, right?"

Jess tipped her head. "Actually, it'd be a good idea to take a three-day weekend. I could make some real progress, especially if it started with all of us spending a day. And I'm pretty sure I can – yeah, Friday's good. Is that OK for you?" she asked Sam.

"Yeah, I don't go in to work until six, so I'm in."

"And I," Cas said. "I've always wanted to see the inside of one of those places."

"It's interesting in there. Jess can tell you all about it," Sam said. "She's become an expert on Victorian houses."

Jess said ruefully, "Not really an expert, but I've had a crash course. Say nine-thirty, pizza at noon?"

"Sale for the big bucks thereafter," Sam said.

"To Catherine's generosity." Cas raised his glass. "And to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences."

Everyone drank to that. Dean said, "You're just a toasting fool tonight."

"I'm happy to be back."

"To Cas being back!" Sam said cheerfully. As they drank, Dean gave Cas' arm a gentle squeeze. Sam and Jess exchanged a glance.

.

The silver Corolla pulled into a double garage, where it parked next to a black Mini Countryman. The garage door closed as the driver got out.

Once in the house, he went straight through the kitchen to a black drape that hung over the entrance to the next room. He pushed the drapery back behind a chair so that the kitchen light could get in, because every light in the next room was out. Not even street light got through the blackout blinds pulled to full length and duct-taped to the bottom of the window. The floor was covered with sturdy black plastic sheeting.

After a pause for his eyes to adjust, he crossed the room to a floor lamp and turned it on. It had a 200-watt bulb, and as he tipped the shade, harsh light spilled over the room. The he went back to turn off the kitchen light and let the black drapery swing back, covering the kitchen entrance.

Along a wall near the floor lamp, there was a long collapsible table with several 14-by-22-inch pieces of white poster board leaning against one leg. The table bore an iPhone, a decanter and glass, a roll of duct tape and scissors, a yard of black nylon cord, a pair of handcuffs, and what looked like a large black flashlight with a ring of notched metal around one end.

The man poured a drink from the decanter and took a sip. Then he crossed the room, where a heap of black cloth lay on the floor next to the kitchen entry, along with a hammer and nails.

The wall next to the kitchen entry was more than long enough to hang the flag stretched at its full length. He used four nails, then crossed the room to stand by the lamp and take a sip of his drink, looking at the way the white symbols of the ISIS flag against the black ground reflected the harsh light.

Then he left, returning a couple of minutes later with a simple but sturdy chair and a table lamp. He put the lamp on the long table, pushing aside the decanter to do it. The table lamp also had a 200-watt bulb, and he tipped the shade back on that as well, casting more light across the room on the ISIS flag.

He put the chair in the middle of the plastic sheeting, so that anyone sitting in it would be facing the lamps with his back to the flag. He picked up the phone, turned on its video camera, and looked at the chair sitting in the light, with black plastic underneath and the black flag behind.

He nodded, turning off the camera. Then he turned off both lamps, took his drink, and left the room through the swinging hallway door.