Chapter 2: Critical Error

The single, solitary light that hung from the street lamp above buzzed softly its electric glow. Every once in a while it would flicker and die, leaving the bus stop in a few seconds of darkness. Sam sat on the cold aluminum bench outside of the bus depot watching the empty road for his bus. The man behind the counter at the station had sold him his ticket, promised the bus would be late, but it would be there, and had then promptly closed up shop. Now there was no one around except Sam, a guy in a dirty trench coat picking at his teeth, and the defective street lamp.

Sam thought about what he had said to his father and his brother. He had been so strong in his convictions earlier that night. Now, he had lost the fervor. He blamed Dean for that. If his brother hadn't come after him, if his brother had just let him storm off, then he wouldn't be sitting there regretting every word and beating himself up inside for how much of a jerk he was. Then again, he probably would have eventually. He would have made his meeting, he would have made some living arrangement, and then at some moment when he least expected it, it all would have flooded in on him. The realization that he was alone and he had shut out the only family he had.

Dad called. I think there is something wrong with the Montgomery case. Something we missed.

Dean's words reverberated through his mind and he could not stop them from sparking doubt. Doubt was clawing at the back of his mind. Doubt that he had messed up in his haste to make this case out to be nothing. He had wanted this case to be short and sweet. He had wanted to be done and on his way to California shortly after making his announcement. He had wanted this to be his last hunt.

He opened his backpack and started to look for the case files he had printed up. He knew they were still in there, since he hadn't taken the time to leave them with his dad. He finally pulled out a good sized stack of papers in a manila folder. Opening up to the first report he cast a reverent eye onto the young woman who was laying there in the photograph. Her eyes stared back up at him, dead and frozen wide in horror. Her pale and lifeless face looking back at him. She was Lauren Montgomery.

The Montgomery family had recently lost Lauren in what had perceptibly been a murder. This was apparent in the way her mouth had been open in a silent scream, her arms and legs twisted in all directions as if fighting off an attacker. The investigation had hit a snag however when there were no signs of forced entry into the house. No hair or fingerprints. No trace. Autopsy had revealed blunt force trauma to all major organs in her body. The strange part was that the damage had not been dealt to her externally but internally. The only outer mark was a jagged "S" carved into her shoulder.

The newspapers had immediately printed a story dubbing the attacker the Invisible Man. That was when Dean picked up the morning paper off the front step of their current motel. That was when they had headed off to Colorado. That was when this whole hunt started. The Winchesters knew that headlines involving invisible men were usually something relating to their areas of expertise. Their 'gig' as Dean liked to put it.

After targeting a local cop and getting a few drinks into her, Dean had used the 'gifts' God had given him to grab a few files on the case and a local CSI badge to duplicate. After that it was off to the Montgomery ranch to question the family.

In retrospect, nothing about this case had been starkly different from cases in the past. They had hunts down to an art. Dean poured on the charm. Sam did the research. Dad shot the baddie in the face. Then they were back on the road. It was methodical and border lining on predictable. They were very comfortable in their routine. Maybe that was what had gone wrong. Sam had let it just be routine. Anything that could have turned them away from the quickest path to the end of the hunt he ignored entirely. Sam had let it just be routine because that best served what he wanted to do when he was done. Leave.

Sam flipped open another report and started to review it again. He had skimmed these reports the first time just to make sure there wasn't a glaring link. There had been four unexplained murders prior to Montgomery in the surrounding area within the past few months. Each woman had died in a different way. The common ground was the fact that none of the crime scenes showed forced entry. The invisible assailant was called into question for these deaths as well. So, why had Sam discredited the theory that the murders were related? What he had thought at the time was pure luck. A poltergeist tied directly to Lauren with no connection to the other women. That was why he had stopped researching the others.

Before the interview of the Montgomery family, Sam had originally planned to go interview the families of the other victims. He didn't have to when Mrs. Montgomery, Lauren's mother, revealed an old family secret. Her abusive husband had taken a nasty "fall" off the hay loft one day. Now, while Mrs. Montgomery claimed that the poor man had a little too much to drink that day, she had confided in Sam that he might have had a little help. Naturally this felt like an isolated problem to Sam. He had disregarded the other reports and had started to focus solely on the vengeful spirit of the old woman's sadistic husband.

His name was Steve, which explained the horrible cuts on Lauren's shoulder in an "S" shape. The poltergeist responded to the name Steve. The bastard even threw a lot of stuff around the house like he had when he was a drunk. He had tried to kill Dean with an iron, behead Sam with a coffee pot, and had caused his dad to sprain an ankle by pushing him down the stairs. All previous behaviors that Mrs. Montgomery found all too familiar of her old husband. So there had only been one solution as far as Sam was concerned. Salt. Burn. Rectify.

I think there is something wrong…Something we missed.

Okay. So they might have missed something. Sam didn't know where else to start looking for possible neglect other than the other victims and their cases. He flipped past Lauren's information and started to read into the next woman's file. He had nothing else to do while waiting, and striking up a conversation with the wild eyed, grey haired gentleman-who was still digging for gold between his teeth-didn't seem like the best idea. On top of that Sam could not get rid of Dean's words, and the way he had asked him to come with him.

One last hunt…

Some of the papers shifted on his lap and started to fall out of the stack. He went to grab them before they fell, however, his cell phone rang at that instant and he missed them. He was immediately forced to watch helplessly as they scattered everywhere on the ground. The older man stopped his annoying habit and started to laugh as Sam bent down to scrape up the photos and loose leaf. Sam found nothing funny about the situation at hand and was incensed that the man would not stop laughing.

Sure, laugh it up!

"It's for you," the man chortled the obvious, and pointed to Sam's open bag where the ringing was coming from.

"Yeah," Sam responded sarcastically. "I gathered that."

The ringing stopped and Sam looked back down at the ground and the myriad of papers. As he crouched there with only half the contents of the folder pressed against his chest, he noticed that he was staring at the autopsy photos from the victims. He squinted in the bad lighting to see if he was making out what he thought he was seeing. The light above flickered again and Sam franticly started to spread out the photos before him. Letters. Each woman had a close up of a jagged letter carved into her back, and they were not all the same one.

Something we missed.

The light went out above and Sam's heart stopped as put the pieces of the puzzle together in his head. The link he had missed the first time around was now staring him back in the face. So glaringly palpable that he felt every muscle and nerve go numb at the thought. The letters, "M", "Y", "A", "M"…

The light hummed back to life just as Sam flipped over Lauren's close up photo of the letter "S." In the street lamp's incandescence Sam stared in revulsion at the name spelled out before him: SAMMY.

"Oh, God," Sam breathed. He dropped the stack and stumbled backward, banging his back hard up against the bench.

Shit!

The mind could play tricks. The mind could make something out of nothing. But this was clear as day, and Sam choked back any more outcries as he tried to find the strength to stand. He turned to look at the only other human being around and was unsettled to see the man was just smiling back at him. Unblinking. Staring with a stupid grin. Sam started to shove everything back into his backpack, avoiding looking back over the pictures in order or the man.

His mind was flying through the possibilities of what it all meant. All he could come up with was this thing sure as hell wasn't a poltergeist. Poltergeists didn't leave you a perfectly planned out message over several weeks in several different locations. This "thing" knew him. And right now, his dad and brother were out hunting something they thought was a mere ghost.

Sam dug out his cell phone and started to pace as he dialed up Dean. His fingers were shaking so badly that he had to punch in the number several times before he finally got it right. He cursed himself for not having him on speed dial. The phone rang several times and only to finally dump Sam into a voicemail. He listened through his brother's greeting, wishing that it was really him. Wishing that he hadn't said those things to him.

"Dean," Sam started immediately after the beep. "Look, you were right, okay…we missed something. I missed something. I missed something big. 'It' knows me. There are only a handful of things that can know people and follow them. You need to call me back if you get this. You need to be care…"

He heard the hollow click of a call dropped and quickly pulled away the phone from his ear to look at the screen. One bar was left and even that fluttered on and off in availability. He was about to redial when he noticed there was a voice mail waiting for him. Maybe Dean had tried to call him back. He continued to pace, with cell phone eagerly pressed to his ear as voicemail was dialed up.

"Sammy."

The unrecognizable voice that came through the phone was just barely a whisper. It was raspy and left him feeling cold. Numb. Every hair on the back of his neck stood up and he felt heavy with helplessness.

"Best of luck at school, Sammy," it derided.

Best of luck. It wasn't a well wish. It was a mockery.

The low rumble of a large engine could be heard and Sam saw that the bus had finally arrived. It crawled around the bend and came to a stop before him. The doors labored open and the driver looked down at Sam waiting for him to move.

"Hey, kid, you getting on?"

The man looked weary of the night of traveling he was about to embark on, and Sam was just another body that was slowing him down. He wasn't going to try to hide his impatience. It was written all over his face.

The man in the dirty trench coat laughed as he passed Sam by and ascended the bus stairs. Sam didn't even take notice. He just stood there, his knuckles turning white against the phone he was constricting in his hand.

"Well kid?"

Sam shook his head and backed away from the bus. The driver rolled his eyes and shut the doors. Sam looked down at his watch and then around at the empty parking lot and ghost depot. There wasn't a soul around and he needed a vehicle. He needed to get to his dad and Dean.

Dean gave a passive glance over at his cell phone when he realized it was ringing through the music. He could see Sam's name flash over the caller I.D. and he chose to ignore it. In fact he even turned up the music louder to drown out the ringing.

"What's wrong, Sam?" Dean muttered to himself. "Miss your bus?"

A few hours of sitting around at the bus stop would be good for his brother. At that moment he could care less if it was callous of him to think that way. Sam needed to do what was best for Sam and Dean…well right now Dean was hoping that his father was doing alright by himself.

He came to the entrance of the dirt road that belonged to the Montgomery's farm. The dark silhouettes of the main house, barn, and silos were all he could see from where he was. The property was very poorly lit and none of the lights were on inside the house. Dean parked the Impala close to the end of the road and walked the rest of the way. As he got closer to the gate he could see his father's truck sitting beside it. He jogged up to the truck and could see that it was vacant.

After hopping the fence using one hand, he paused and double checked his sawed off shotgun for salt rounds and his patted his pockets for additional ammo. Satisfied that he had enough with him, he then proceeded up the gravel driveway to the main house. If the bastard wasn't gone from this house, he'd make sure he stayed in his grave this time.

The front door to the house was wide open. Dean remembered that after they had burned the bones and the violent Mr. Montgomery had stopped his assault, the house had been quiet. Mrs. Montgomery had told them she needed to get away. She had needed to mourn her daughter properly. "To many memories," she had said while staring off in the distance. She wasn't staying there anymore to Dean's knowledge. So, who had called his father? How had John Winchester known that something was a miss in the hunt?

The wooden boards of the foyer creaked under his feet and he paused at the bottom of the staircase, listening for any movement in response to his presence. If his father was walking around, the old house would let one of them know the other was there.

Then it hit his nose. It had been nothing but soft wafts of pine and fresh cut hay up until that point, but now he recoiled as the new stench grew stronger.

"Sulfur," Dean named the fragrance quickly. It was a smell he had been trained to detect. "How the hell did we miss sulfur the first time?"

The floor boards groaned up above him and Dean looked up just in time to see a shadow of someone pass over the top stair and move from one room to another.

"Dad?" He called out, moving up the stairs cautiously.

There wasn't a response and all Dean could hear was the beating of his own heart in his chest and the inescapable moaning of the wooden stairs under his weight. He would be lying if he said that at that moment he wasn't afraid. It was his first time hunting alone and that sent the adrenaline coursing through him like a freight train. He paused at the door he had seen the shadow move to. Taking in a few deep breaths he stood back, kicked open the door and raised the shotgun.

Nothing. The room was completely empty.

Dean lowed his weapon and went into the room. He looked around for a few seconds, and then decided to go back downstairs. Before he got a chance, he noticed from the window that the barn light was going on and off. It was starting to become very clear that this thing was messing with him, leading him from spot to spot. The problem was, to find his dad, he had to play along.

Sam crouched down low beside a car outside of the bar next to the motel. He had made his way back there to see if he could "barrow" a set of wheels. His predicament was that all he had was a hanger and Dean's half ass lesson on how to hotwire a car.

Perfect

Sam sat there trying to remember everything that Dean had taught him. He remembered something about looking for the idiots that left their doors unlocked first, but he had already tried a few handles and no one had left their car unlocked. Dean had also told him that if someone had left their window cracked slightly, then by all means, it was a frickin' invitation to be ripped off, and Sam would be doing the guy a favor by teaching him not to be such a dumb ass. None of the windows were open though, and Sam stared down at the hanger in his hands, Dean's lesson coming back to him in brief installments. Sam had never thought he would need the information. That was why he didn't pay that much attention whenever Dean went off about the art of carjacking, card sharking, pool hustling, and a myriad of other "talents" that Dean possessed and Sam was convinced would have his brother in jail before age twenty five.

Make a "J." Okay. He remembered that at least and he started to straighten out the wire hanger and fashion it to its appropriate shape. The door to the bar swung open and Sam ducked down lower. He waited as a drunken couple staggered out and made their way to their car. When Sam was sure they were no where near him, he continued on the car he had chosen.

Slide the hanger into the door, between the window and the weather stripping.

Sam stood up and looked around cautiously, then began to work the wire between the glass and rubber. If only Dean could see him now. He could already see the grin of elation and pride. He would probably crack some joke about rubbing off on Sam and how corruptible Sam was. Yeah, Sam could see it now. His brother would be more excited that Sam had stolen a car than the actual fact that Sam had made it into college. Too bad Sam was eighteen. Getting caught was going to mean doing some time.

The wire slid beautifully into the vehicle and Sam had the door open in no time. Now came the fun part. The hotwiring.

Complete the ignition circuit by locating the ignition wires attached to the ignition switch under the dashboard. Detach them and cross the ends. Complete the starter motor circuit, by detaching the starter motor wire from the ignition wire and touching it to a powered wire on the other side of the ignition switch.

Sam wished that he had more than just his memories of Dean's voice guiding him through this. It was a pain to work through in the dark and without having done it himself in the past. The bar door opened up again, and Sam stopped what he was doing, looking up just in time to see a police officer saunter outside for a smoke.

A/N: I want to thank my editors, November's Guest and Nichole Thompson. I couldn't do this without them. Also, thanks for the amazing responses. I love it when I get reviews. Thanks to all of you guys for your support. Reviews are always welcome and appreciated. Let me know what you think.