Episode 2
Three days later the three of us were sitting in a restaurant, just outside of Boise, Idaho. Dean was seated at the counter, chatting up the waitress while Sam and I scanned the pages of several newspapers we'd purchased, looking for any suspicious deaths while we waited for our breakfast to arrive.
Then I saw it.
"Hey Sam."
"Yeah," he didn't look up.
"Children in Oregon have been going missing and the police have no leads. It says here that…" I squinted at the paper. "The children are all ages ranging from toddlers to teenagers. They all live near the coast and most of them were outside playing in their backyards when they disappeared. So far, there have been no signs of struggle in any of the cases."
Sam set his paper down and contemplated what I had told him. A moment later he said, "Well, Oregon is close so we might as well check it out."
At the counter I heard the waitress laugh and I shook my head.
"Is always such a huge flirt?" I asked Sam.
He smiled. "Always."
Another waitress approached our table and set our plates down in front of us. Both Sam and I hurried to move our newspapers out of the way. If the woman thought it odd that we were reading seven separate newspapers, she didn't comment on it. Instead she just asked Sam if we needed anything else before leaving us the bill.
I pushed my still damp hair behind my shoulders before digging into my waffle and eggs. The restaurant was warm enough that I began to wonder if I should take off my thick, green sweater.
Just before we had left Boseman, Montana, Dean, Sam and I had stopped back at my house where yellow tape was stuck over every entrance to the house. Since the police weren't present at that particular time, we had snuck inside and I grabbed as much money as I could and packed a suitcase full of everything I thought I would need or want. It had been difficult to go inside and Sam had offered to get my stuff for me, but I managed.
On the way out, I took the framed picture of me with my parents that hung just inside the front door.
So now I had plenty of clean clothes, about seven hundred dollars, and my MP3 player. I was all set.
After we were done eating, Sam and I dragged Dean away from the waitress who was staring at him with an expression that made me want to slap some sense into her. I disapproved of Dean at the best of times, but seriously, sometimes I didn't know how he and Sam could possibly share DNA.
"Oh come on Sammy," Dean protested as soon as we were outside. "I was just about to get her number."
"Yeah. And having her phone number is really going to help when we won't be here much longer," I pointed out. He glared at me.
"Did I ask your opinion?"
Before I could retaliate, Sam interjected, "Not that it isn't fun listening to you guys fight, but Dean, Addy found something in a newspaper that I think we should check out."
"Please," Dean scoffed. "She doesn't know anything about finding supernatural stuff."
I was just about to react when my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. It had been ringing on and off for the past few days. Mostly it was my best friend Linda, trying to convince me to come back. The first time she had called, I hadn't answered. I had asked Sam if I should get rid of my phone, but he said it would probably be better to keep it. He had also encouraged me to talk to my friends.
Secretly, I think he's hoping they'll succeed in persuading me to return to Montana. But I don't ever want to go back. Not yet, anyway.
Pulling my phone from my pocket I saw that it was indeed Linda calling. While Sam explained to Dean what it was I had read, I backed away from them, holding my phone to my ear.
"Linda," I sighed. "You can't keep calling me."
"That's the thing, though," my friend said in her high pitched voice. "I think I know what's happened. You've been kidnapped, right? And you can't tell me because they're listening to you with like, a gun to your head. But I have a plan, Addy. If you're in danger, say the word pomegranate."
Perplexed, I asked, "Why pomegranate?"
"So you are in danger!" she said in an ah-hah! sort of tone.
"Linda, I'm not in danger, okay?"
"Fine. But Addy, I just worry about you all the time. The police keep asking us all if we've heard from you and I hate lying to them."
I leaned against the brick wall of the diner and said, "Look. I don't want them to bring me back. I'm only a minor for a couple more weeks, then I'm free to do whatever I want. But until then I just…" my voice cracked. "I can't be there. I can't talk about my parents." And Linda didn't even know the half of it.
Of course there was no way I could tell her about demons or even Sam and Dean. She had told me the first time I'd answered the phone that the police were even considering me as a suspect. At least, until the next day when the fingerprints on the murder weapon – the knife – turned out to not match the ones they had taken off of some of my personal belongings. Since, you know, my fingerprints aren't exactly in the system.
Now, apparently, the police were thinking that it may have been a robbery gone bad. Which was fine with me. They would never find out the truth.
"I'm sorry," Linda told me.
"It's okay." I glanced back at Dean and Sam who were waiting for me in the Impala (I'd asked Dean what kind of car it was in an attempt to lessen the amount of hostility between us. It had only worked for a few moments). Beginning to walk back to them I said into my phone, "Look. I've gotta go, all right? I'll talk to you later."
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