Authors' Note – Once again, we own nothing, aside from the crazy notion that a rampant Easter bunny would be a good idea.
Episode One – Part Two
The Egg-straordinary Case of the
Killer Easter Bunny
x-x-x
Exiting their unfortunately shared motel room, Sam closed the door behind him and held up his hand to his sibling by way of warning.
" I don't wanna talk about it." Sam dismissed his brother's attempt at speaking and slipped on a pair of aviators that he produced from his suit pocket.
"Seriously, dude," Dean guffawed, frowning at his brother's apparent issue with them having to share a motel room. Since the roadhouse was not currently making any money and all their pooled resources had gone into the rebuilding project, times were hard and corners had to be cut where possible, "I think Jo and I can control ourselves for the next twenty-four hours. Geez, we're not animals."
Sam shrugged in unwilling agreement, although as Jo emerged from the room mere seconds later he felt his point more than suitably proven. Wearing an identical pair of aviator sunglasses and a no-nonsense business suit, she strode past the two brothers leaving Dean gawking open mouthed in her direction.
"Yeah," Sam nodded, blowing out a grounding breath as he patted his brother on the shoulder and strode off after Jo.
For once, Dean allowed Sam to drive his beloved Impala without first delivering his usual vehement protests. Sam figured that his brother was simply striving to calm the waters following his earlier displeasure at arriving at the motel, and discovering that the three would be cohabiting in the one room. Whilst Sam understood the need for them to veer away from fake credit cards and 'borrowed' cash if they hoped to make a go of the roadhouse business, he wished that on just this one occasion they could make an exception.
The Impala slowed to a crawl along the curb side as they located the Harris house, and Sam brought the car to a standstill in front of a large, white washed colonial - the very epitome of traditional New England architecture.
Jo stared at the house in awe, noting how the entire street had seemed like something from a spread in Good Housekeeping; not that she read Good Housekeeping, but the Norman Rockwell-esque image the street conjured up was not lost on her.
"Wow," she breathed, her eyes sweeping the expanse of the grounds. She sighed quietly at the sight of a child's pink tricycle in the front yard, its handlebars strewn with garishly hued ribbons that she imagined most five year old girls would adore.
"Why do I feel like I'm in an episode of Desperate Housewives?" Sam frowned, watching as blinds and curtains twitched in the windows of neighbouring properties and passing pedestrians eyed the car suspiciously.
Dean snorted derisively as he opened the car door, "Yeah, well it's better than an episode of the Muppet show."
Dean was hoping against hope that their days as professional teddy bear doctors were behind them and, whilst it was a cute story that Jo had enjoyed on the car journey north, it was a case that Dean had no desire to repeat. Personally, he preferred it when the targets of their hunts were fanged, scaly or some other description that could be joined comfortably with the word 'terrifying'.
"Right, you guys go talk to the Mom and I guess I'll go search for signs of Thumper," Dean said, his distress at the very prospect of encountering a giant rabbit evident. Discreetly, he slipped a handgun into a holster that was concealed by his jacket and strode off in the direction of the neighbouring home.
Sam arched an eyebrow in questioning as he felt Jo's eyes upon him, and a quick glance found her staring at him with an amused look playing across her features.
"You watch Desperate Housewives?" she inquired, her head cocked to one side and her arms folded across her white blouse.
Sam wracked his brain, trying to think up an acceptable excuse, but instead decided to deflect her attention to his brother, "Dean watches 'Dr. Sexy MD'."
Jo appeared to think this over momentarily and then a grin settled on her face as she clambered out of the back of the Impala, "I love that show!"
Sam's eyebrows shot up in a strange mixture of surprise and awe. It often amazed him how similar Jo and Dean were, not merely in temperament, but also in their more general likes and dislikes. Sometimes he found it hard to believe that a cupid had not been involved in somehow uniting the pair, yet it was times like these that reminded him how entirely likely it was that they had simply fallen for each other.
"Sam? You coming?" Jo tapped her foot impatiently on the sidewalk and waited for him to join her. She elbowed him playfully as they strolled across the front yard of the house, "I watch Desperate Housewives too. Just don't tell Dean."
She grinned and rolled her eyes at her own embarrassment. Sam could not help but smile at the buoyant energy behind her eyes. He understood why his brother appeared to care for Jo so deeply. Undoubtedly she had been good for Dean, bringing out a softer side that not many were privy to. Sam was at a loss to remember a time when his brother had been happier.
"I'm glad you're hunting with us, Jo," Sam dug his hands in his pockets and stared down at the grass beneath their feet, "and I'm happy Dean's got you. I really am."
A blush rose up her cheeks and she drew to a halt before the steps of the front porch, "Me too." She paused for a moment, appearing to deliberate over her words, "I know how close you and Dean are, and I just want you to know that I'd never try to come between you guys. Whatever Dean and I are or whatever we will be, I know he'll always need his brother around."
Sam smiled in response, before indicating the door with a slight inclination of his head. Jo nodded, taking a deep breath and then replacing her goofy grin with a suitably sober expression; it would not do to greet a grieving parent with a less than sympathetic air. First removing his sunglasses and then slipping them into his breast pocket, Sam rapped gently on the front door. Almost immediately the door was flung open, and a tall, thin woman peered at the strangers on her step with an expression of unmasked hope. Her features suddenly clouded as she failed to recognise either Sam or Jo, but took in their formal attire and professional demeanours nonetheless. Jo noted that the woman's blue eyes were puffy and red, and her entire face had the swollen appearance that comes from too much crying. She felt an immediate pang of sympathy for the woman, who seemed so desolate.
"Mrs. Harris?" Sam inquired, already reaching into his inner pocket for his much used fake ID. At his side, Jo was doing likewise. "My name is Special Agent Tyler, and this is Agent Perry. We're with the FBI. We'd like to ask you a couple of questions about your daughter's disappearance, if we may."
Sam posed his words as more of a statement than a question, giving the impression that there was little room for argument.
"Have you found her?" Mrs. Harris demanded, swinging the front door open wider now and taking a step forwards. Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun, and her clothes had the appearance of ones that had been worn and slept in for a number of days.
"Unfortunately, not yet," Jo said, her voice gentle and soothing. "We'll just take up a few minutes of your time."
The woman nodded, stepping back from the door and ushering them into the house. She led them to the living room and gestured for them to be seated on the couch. She perched on the edge of an armchair and produced a Kleenex from her sleeve, which she began to wring in her hands.
Jo noticed how her hands trembled and she knew that despite all she had experienced as a hunter, this woman's fear was more palpable than anything she had had to deal with.
"Mrs. Harris... I know this is difficult for you," Sam began, unfortunately well-versed in dealing with distraught relatives, "you took your daughter to an Easter egg hunt, is that right?"
He produced a pad from his pocket and began flicking through the pages of hastily scrawled notes.
"Yes," Julia nodded, her gaze flitting between his face and the tissue in her hands, "my neighbour... she's uh, she's one of my closest friends. She organised an Easter egg hunt for the children."
Her composure slipped and she blinked as tears tripped her cheeks, "Emma was really excited." Her smile was faint as she recalled her daughter's glee at attending the event.
Jo plucked a tissue from the box of Kleenex on the table beside her and handed it to the woman, "I know this is hard for you Mrs. Harris, but is there anything unusual you may have noticed lately? A car parked out on the street or a stranger calling at the house? Anything at all that seemed out of the ordinary."
Whilst they were fairly certain the perpetrator was of the supernatural variety, it was also important to rule out crimes of any other nature.
"No, nothing," Julia shook her head, dabbing at her eyes and shooting Jo a brief smile of thanks.
"Do you know of anyone that would take Emma to get back at you or your husband?" Sam pressed, wincing at the apparent insensitivity of his own question but knowing regardless that it had to be asked. Mrs. Harris shook her head vehemently and her gaze drifted to a photograph that sat on the mantle of a blonde haired man cuddling the little girl in his arms. Jo quickly scanned the room whilst the woman's eyes were averted, noting the neutral decor that was interspaced with numerous child's paintings. A doll lay abandoned on the seat of the armchair and Mrs. Harris reached for it wordlessly, clutching the toy to her chest and threading her fingers through its woollen hair.
"Is Emma the type of child that may wander off?" inquired Jo, shooting a significant glance at Sam as she noted several of the pictures hanging from the walls were crayon drawings of a beaming white rabbit.
"No, she knows not to do that, or to talk to strangers," Mrs. Harris replied with firm confidence resonating in her voice. She crumpled a little as she added, "I just don't understand it. One minute she was there, and the next she was gone."
"Did either you or your husband argue with Emma before her disappearance?" Sam continued, drawing a line through each question that Dean had earmarked on the notepad as it was answered.
"Not really," Mrs. Harris shrugged, growing momentarily quiet as she appeared to contemplate something. "There was just one thing. It was silly really. It probably means nothing."
"Go on, Mrs. Harris," Jo encouraged, leaning forwards a little and resting a gentle hand on the woman's knee, "anything no matter how insignificant it may seem could make all the difference."
"She wanted a pet," Mrs. Harries finally offered with a rueful sigh, "a rabbit. She kept talking about this white rabbit that she insisted she played with in the garden. One time she even claimed it came into her room. She wanted to keep it."
"But you never saw a rabbit?" asked Jo, maintaining a neutral expression. Mrs. Harris shook her head and fresh tears sprang to her eyes, brimming over her lids and beginning to trickle down her pale cheeks.
"She wouldn't run away," the woman insisted, her voice emerging as a hoarse whisper, "Emma's never been good at making friends and she hates to be alone. I just keep thinking of her, out there somewhere, terrified..."
"Would it be okay with you if we took a look around Emma's room?" Sam enquired, as he and Jo climbed to their feet and waited for a response.
"Yes, yes of course," Julia nodded, closing her eyes momentarily as her gaze settled on her daughter's photograph and a lump formed in her throat, "second door on the right. I uh... I can't go in there right now, so if you wouldn't mind..."
"Of course, we understand," Jo smiled at her kindly before the two hunters made their way upstairs to the child's bedroom.
Sam opened the door they had been directed to and his eyes immediately widened as he took in the princess themed room, complete with a bubble gum pink canopy over a white four poster bed.
Jo stepped hesitantly over the threshold, taking note of the various toys, games and books scattered around. Yet her gaze became solely focused on the photograph frame sitting on a nearby shelf. The word 'family' was etched into the silver guilt and the picture inside it proudly exhibited a newborn Emma, held carefully between her delighted parents. Other photographs lay dotted about the shelf, mostly of Emma at various ages from infancy until present day.
Jo reached out and picked up a small pink frame, with the words 'my first picture' emblazoned across the top. She narrowed her eyes as she attempted to decipher the sonogram image before quickly returning it to the shelf, suddenly feeling that she were somehow intruding on the family's privacy.
"This is one pampered little girl," Sam remarked, baffled by the amount of stuff one five year old could possibly need. Jo nodded in agreement but her gaze was elsewhere as Sam continued to examine the room for any signs of the supernatural. He produced an EMF metre from his jacket and twiddled the various dials. The metre clicked obligingly but the needle refused to jump even a fraction.
Jo crouched down on the floor and began picking at something that had caught her attention amidst the beige carpet. Frowning, Jo sat back on her heels, holding between her thumb and forefinger a sizeable chunk of snow-white fur.
x-x-x
Dean had entered the yard with ease having found an open gate to oblige him. Hearing voices in the general vicinity of the front of the house, Dean stuck to the cover of the many trees and leafy foliage that surrounded the perimetre of the garden.
His gaze took in the coloured streamers and balloons hanging at intervals, that he surmised were left over from the festivities of the weekend.
In stark contrast to the pastel coloured crepe paper, the crime scene tape remained tattered on the lawn and Dean sighed heavily as he realised that yet another kid's life had been robbed of the innocence of childhood. The cases involving children were always the hardest and he wondered if he would ever feel brave enough to contemplate having children of his own, knowing full well what evils awaited them in the world.
He crouched down to the ground as he spied the shell of a shattered Easter egg and followed a trail of similarly broken, painted eggs to an adjacent flower border.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" With an incredulous groan, he squinted at the large imprint in the dirt and, retrieving his cell phone from his pocket, he placed a pen on the ground beside the animal track and snapped a picture.
The trail ended there, with no other sign of their suspect or thankfully the victim. As he made a hasty exit from the back yard, Dean could not shake the feeling that things were about to become a whole lot more surreal than usual.
x-x-x
"So what have we got?" said Dean, biting into the cheeseburger he clutched in his hand with vehemence. It had been almost two hours since Dean had last eaten and he was famished. Jo wrinkled her nose as a splodge of ketchup dropped onto the evidence that was spread on the table before Dean. Tutting in annoyance, Sam grabbed the photographs and hastily wiped them over with the sleeve of his shirt.
"Two missing kids, a pile of fur, one hell of a footprint, and then nada," Jo recited, running her fingers through her hair and sighing. She hated it when a case appeared to be getting the better of her, and at the moment there was nothing about the current case that she could make a lick of sense out of.
"Sam, we got any common denominators with the kids or the families?" Dean enquired, shooting a glance at Sam who now sat cross-legged on the bed as he hunkered over his laptop. His tongue protruded ever so slightly from the edge of his mouth as he concentrated on the screen, tapping away at the keys without glancing at Dean.
"So far, a couple," he admonished, frowning as he wondered how best to narrow down the list of impossibly long links. "Both female, only children, both born at the same hospital, both A positive, both..."
"Ok, ok, I get the picture," said Dean through a mouthful of chewed burger. Jo reached across the table and deftly snatched a handful of fries, before beginning to gnaw on them thoughtfully. Like Dean, she found that she often thought better on a full stomach.
"And both snatched from Easter egg Hunts, so... what the hell does that leave us with?" Jo frowned, screwing up her nose and shaking her head as Dean offered her a bite of his burger, "the Easter Bunny's gone postal?"
"Don't..." Dean swallowed a mouthful of food and waved his finger at her in warning, "don't even kid about stuff like that."
Jo sniggered at his response and peered with interest at the various boxes and wrappers strewn in front of him. She selected an onion ring and bit into it thoughtfully, "So, what do we do now? We can't just wait for another kid to get grabbed."
Dean shook his head, screwing up the wrapper from his burger and tossing it haphazardly onto the table.
"Well, clearly we're missing something here. Because so far all we got is a couple of missing kids and one big ass rabbit... there's got to be something else."
"You think it's a demon?" Sam frowned, suddenly glancing up from his computer.
Jo stood from her chair and sidled around the table, absently planting her hand on Dean's shoulder as she paused behind him and stared at the photographs.
"Question is what would a demon want with a couple of five year olds?" Jo practically shuddered as she considered the possibilities and quickly tried to dismiss the thought from her head. She accepted another onion ring that Dean passed back to her and perched herself on the edge of the chair beside him, commandeering a sachet of ketchup which she liberally smeared over the food. Sam's eyebrows shot up in surprise and he bit back a smile as he watched them; Dean Winchester sharing food? It had to be love.
"I don't know, this all seems too..." Dean trailed off, unable to think of a suitable adjective to insert into his intended sentence. "I just don't think it's demonic."
Jo shrugged and paused to turn on the television that sat atop one of the rickety looking dressers that decorated the room. The screen flickered to life after a moment or two, and then a grainy picture appeared. Jo began flipping through the channels, not pausing on any one truly long enough to register what was showing.
"We could go on a stake-out?" Sam suggested, glancing up from his laptop suddenly. "There's a whole bunch of Easter egg hunts planned in the surrounding towns right up until next Saturday. Surely this thing has to make an appearance at one of them."
"Right, cos three adults turning up at an Easter egg hunt with guns to watch the kiddies have fun... that's not gonna arouse any suspicions," Jo quipped, rolling her eyes good naturedly at Sam, who grinned in response.
"Yeah, maybe not," Sam chuckled and returned to his research, trying to ignore the mash-up of voices and music that Jo's persistent channel surfing was causing.
Dean winced as his eyes attempted desperately to focus on the screen and he glanced somewhat testily at his girlfriend, "Jo... sweetheart, you're making me a little nauseous here."
Jo sighed and finally settled on a local news station as Dean reached out and pulled her gently into his lap. He folded his arms around her hips and pressed an affectionate kiss to her cheek as she stared engrossed at the two news anchors that appeared to be discussing a fashion show for dogs.
"Now that is scary," Jo remarked, gesturing to the TV and looking back at Dean who nodded in agreement. She frowned at the serious expression on his face and instantly dissolved into laughter as he gently cupped the back of her head and pulled her into a lingering kiss.
Sam glanced up from his laptop and rolled his eyes as he watched them, before diplomatically averting his gaze to the TV screen as the couple brazenly flouted rule number one of Sam's 'room sharing ground rules'.
He suddenly frowned as the anchor began to relay a breaking news item. Sam moved across the room to turn up the volume, "Guys? Uh... guys? We got another one."
Dean and Jo broke away from the clinch in order to focus their attentions on the screen, and Sam was mildly impressed by their ability to remain professional. A picture of a toddler flashed up on the screen and Jo let out a sad sigh.
"Well that rules out one of the common denominators," she noted, her ears straining to pick up the anchorwoman's words.
"Two and a half year old Josh Danforth was abducted from his grandmother's house in Bethlehem at ten thirty this morning. Josh and his three older cousins had been enjoying an Easter egg hunt organised by their grandparents when the toddler wandered from view, and suddenly disappeared. Josh was wearing a red t-shirt and a pair of denim dungarees. Police are appealing to anyone in the area who may have information regarding his whereabouts..."
Jo picked up the television remote and flicked the power button before the station played the video taped plea that Josh's parents had earlier recorded.
"So we got a different age, and different sex now," Dean mused, reaching for the notepad and beginning to scrawl down the details of the new case. "None of which fits the previous pattern."
"Except for the Easter egg hunt part," Jo supplied with a helpful smile.
"I'll run the kids details and see what else comes up," Sam suggested with a heavy sigh, rubbing at his eyes as the words on the laptop screen began to blur and merge together as a result of his fatigue. Hunting was indeed an exhausting job, but Sam could not imagine himself doing anything else now.
Jo hopped down from Dean's knee and picked up her cell phone, mentally reciting her 'I'm a reporter from a local newspaper' speech in preparation for calling the Bethlehem police department.
Dean picked up the map from the table and unfolded a further section. He spread it out across the table, picking up a red pen and marking the site of the most recent abduction with a cross. He stared down at the three seemingly unrelated areas, finding no patterns or central points to draw on.
"You got anything on this new kid yet?" he asked Sam, watching his brother's face as Sam flicked with apparent disinterest through the records he had been able to hack.
Sam shrugged, blowing out a slow breath as he tried to find some key point that tied this child to the other two.
"Okay, well... aside from the obvious differences, he's not an only child, he's got a little sister... adopted eight months ago," Sam relayed, pausing as he finally found a tenuous link, "although it looks like he was born in the same hospital as the other two kids."
"Could be a noteworthy starting point I guess," Dean replied, his expression clearly one of scepticism.
"Why would three kids who lived that far apart all be born in the same hospital?" asked Jo, pausing momentarily in her task of punching a phone number in to her cell. Sam grimaced before searching out the name of the hospital on the Google page before him.
Sam shrugged and tapped at the keys once again, before a pensive expression overtook his features.
"The Hospital of Central Connecticut," Sam read, drumming his fingertips against his knee.
"Do you think it matters?" Jo pondered, clearly undecided as to whether the discovery was significant to the case or not. Dean shrugged and Sam failed to respond at all, lost in the information that filled the screen of the laptop.
"Maybe we should talk to this kid's parents," Dean finally suggested, and both Sam and Jo nodded their agreement. Less than half an hour later, the group were suitably dressed and assembled at the Impala.
x-x-x
"Mrs. Danforth, is there anything you can tell us that might help us locate your son?" Dean pressed, wincing as his question only provoked a further onslaught of tears from the sobbing mother.
"We've already told you Agent... uh..." Adam Danforth faltered, his mind too overcome with concern for his son to have remembered the name of the two FBI agents who had suddenly appeared on their doorstep.
"Grant", Dean supplied, smiling apologetically at the man as he handed his wife a fresh tissue and wrapped his arm around her shoulder.
"Agent Grant, like we told you, we haven't noticed anything unusual, no cars, no strangers..." the man paused, taking a deep breath as he glanced down at the baby girl on his knee, "do you think our son is alive?"
Dean directed a helpless glance at Jo and she shook herself from her own maudlin thoughts and nodded with more confidence than she felt, "We're doing everything we can, Mr. Danforth."
"He was so excited to be a big brother," his wife wept, reaching out and smoothing a shaking hand over the baby's dark hair, "we'd given up hope of having another child of our own and... he was so excited when we brought Megan home."
"It's okay, Laura," Adam hugged his wife closer and directed his gaze to Dean and Jo,
"Agents, is there anything else you need to ask us? I think my wife could use a lie down."
"No, no... I think we're done here," Dean nodded, climbing to his feet and slipping his notebook into his jacket pocket.
Jo frowned and shook her head, "Wait, I'm sorry... Josh isn't adopted?"
"No," Laura shook her head, dabbing at her eyes, "we went through IVF. Why, is that important?"
"Thank you for your time, we'll be in touch real soon," Jo said, offering the Danforths the most reassuring smile in her repertoire before she and Dean left the house, heading back towards the waiting Impala.
"What are you thinking?" Dean pressed, his voice low to save being overheard by the numerous neighbours who had suddenly appeared in their gardens shortly after the 'agents' had arrived. Many were feigning a sudden interest in gardening, whilst one had been leafing through the same pile of mail for ten minutes.
"Not entirely sure myself yet," mused Jo, slipping her sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose and sliding into the front passenger seat of the Impala with some difficulty given the fact that she was currently wearing a skirt. "I think that maybe we should check out the IVF thing though."
"How come?" Dean questioned, slipping into the driver's seat and beginning to loosen his tie with a sigh of relief. Dean hated formal wear with a passion.
"The Hospital of Central Connecticut has one of the largest fertility clinics in the country. Despite the distances they lived from the hospital, all these kids were born there. I think maybe this is our link," Jo said, grinning as the Impala pulled away from the curb and the assembled neighbours began to drift back inside their homes. If her hunch was correct, then they had just stumbled upon their very first lead.
x-x-x
Sam glanced up from the computer screen and sighed irritably at his brother.
"Would you stop that?" he pleaded, gesturing to the knife Dean was tapping on the edge of the table.
"You in?" Dean arched an eyebrow, wondering how long it was going to take for Sam to hack into the couples' various medical files. Time was of the essence and with every second that passed, Dean knew the chances of finding all three children alive and well were dwindling.
"Dean, this is a little more sophisticated than hacking Facebook, okay?" Sam widened his eyes to emphasize his point and nodded over toward Jo who was sitting crossed-legged on the floor, busily trawling through a book of folklore as she tried to identify what kind of creature they might be dealing with.
"Help out Jo with the research or something..." he suggested, anything to stop his brother breathing down his neck.
"Crack a book, pumpkin," Jo smiled, not lifting her gaze from the passage she was reading as she tossed a heavy book on the floor in Dean's direction. He sighed in a very pained manner and reached for the book, sneering and blowing imaginary dust from the front cover as he lifted it into his lap.
"Cos I'm sure we'll find plenty of references to large, child-eating bunnies," Dean griped under his breath, ignoring the pointed glare that Jo directed at him.
"Aha!" Sam cried, his cheeks colouring somewhat as he realised that his cry of triumph had been a little more enthused than he was hoping for. "I cracked it. And from the looks of things here, the Housers, the Harrises and the Danforths were all patients of one Dr. Lilia Torese."
"So we have our link," Dean said, shooting Jo a somewhat impressed glance, which she responded to with a self-assured grin. "Not just a pretty face, Joanna."
"Watch it Winchester," retorted Jo, leaping nimbly to her feet and joining Sam at the laptop.
"This woman has over two hundred patients," Sam said, clearly dismayed. "How the hell are we supposed to tell which one could be next?"
Dean's brow furrowed and Jo adopted a similarly thoughtful stance, the room falling silent as the three hunters contemplated the predicament.
"Well we can discount the, ya know, foetuses," Jo said, being the one to break the silence. Sam and Dean stared at her in unison, and Jo's cheeks flushed bright red.
"I guess we focus on kids within a twenty mile radius of the last abduction between the ages of two and five," Dean suggested, slapping Sam on the shoulder and earning himself an irritated glare.
Sam punched a number of keys and after a few minutes, the list had been narrowed down to approximately thirty potential victims. Dean sighed, Jo rolled her eyes, and Sam groaned.
"Oh, I got it!" Jo bounced on her heels and gestured to the computer screen, "take out anyone who didn't list their religion as Christian, we know they probably won't be going to Easter egg hunts, right?"
Dean and Sam frowned and exchanged dubious glances, but Sam typed in the relevant search criteria and instantly fourteen names disappeared from the list; Jo wore a suitably smug grin.
"Great, just sixteen houses left to stake-out," Dean crossed his arms over his chest and silence once more descended over them.
"Better than thirty," Jo chimed, mirroring his stance as she folded her arms and they all winced comically at the screen.
"Maybe if I search for families with one biological child and take out multiple births?" Sam suggested, clearly not impressed with his own reasoning, but he figured they were now clutching at proverbial straws anyway.
"Knock yourself out, Sammy," Dean shrugged, suddenly blinking in surprise as the computer screen reloaded and rewarded them with a new list of only three names.
"And all conveniently located within a five mile radius," Jo observed, pursing her lips at the screen and nodding her approval. Sam sat back in his chair and frowned, wondering if they really could have gotten so lucky in their search; he sincerely doubted it somehow, and knew that there would be some form of nasty surprise lurking around the corner.
"So which one do we pick?" Dean pressed, reading over the three names in an effort to commit them to memory. "We can't just waltz up to the front door, knock and ask what their holiday plans are."
"That's exactly what we're gonna do, Dean-o," Jo gasped, her eyes gleaming as the bones of a plan began to take shape in her mind. Sam and Dean exchanged dubious glances, but they knew that once Jo Harvelle had gotten started, there was no stopping her.
x-x-x
That same evening, Dean had swung by all three addresses on the list in an effort to see whether their services may be required. Jo's reasoning was that during the holiday period many families took off to visit other relatives and, since the adductions were happening within a certain area, should any of the couples have taken themselves away they could be comfortably ruled out.
The first house had proven to be deserted, and when Dean had knocked on the door of the adjoining home, he had been informed that the Taylors had indeed gone to New York for the holiday period. Dean crossed the family off the proverbial list and moved onto the next house, which was a small two storey colonial belonging to the Lindz family. A 'for sale' sign dominated the front yard, and Dean had maintained a watch for two straight hours until he had been rewarded with a glimpse of a heavily pregnant Mrs. Lindz serving up dinner to her husband and young son in the dining room. That left only one possible victim, and to say that Dean was relieved to have narrowed the search down so significantly was an understatement.