Two years passed…

Riley clasped his hands over Beckett's mouth to hold back the sound of her ragged sobbing breaths lest they draw unwanted attention. The pair huddled against the bathroom wall in darkness while it shuffled in the living room of their shared flat. In the blackness of the room, only Beckett's eyes, wild with fear, reflected the tiny amount of light leaking in from under the door.

The shuffling stopped suddenly. They tensed, ceased breathing.

Slowly, a creak sounded in the hall, just outside the door. Something scraped the wall with enough force that Beckett and Riley could hear the dry wall crackle and flake to the floor where something was destroying it. And that thing was drawing closer and closer to the door.

The scraping stopped. Silence again.

Beckett trembled beneath Riley's hand. She squirmed as the sound of the front door opening reached them. "Jules!" she hissed.

"Hello?" a male voice called. "Becks! Riley! I've got beer, guys! So you'll have to pay for the pizza." A pause. "Guys?"

The thing in the hallway moved audibly down the hall. Riley gritted his teeth as Beckett began crying. He kept his hand tightly over her mouth again lest the thing come back for them. Perhaps it would be satisfied after –

Screams reverberated deafeningly throughout the apartment.

And then an even louder silence.

Aerosmith sang under the rumble of the Impala's engine, competing for attention with the thunder of the storm outside the car. From the passenger seat, Sam watched charcoal clouds darken the midday sky and roll by as they drove along I-45. The familiar hum of the Impala was comforting enough, even amid Dean's classic rock sing-alongs and the clashing clouds outside, that rest was tempting.

They had stopped off in Fort Worth to take care of a minor poltergeist problem, and now they were heading further south into Texas. Apparently a string of suspicious murders plagued some small town just outside the sprawl of Houston, and they were going to see if it was anything supernatural. Sam had done what research he could, so nothing was left for the next three hours of driving but watching the boring, sparsely forested lands in the middle of Texas roll by. Or sleep.

Eventually, he fell into the latter.

Dean glanced over at his younger brother after an hour of steady driving and noticed the even rise and fall of a sleeping man's chest. He smirked, unbothered that Sam could sleep while he couldn't, because he was the one who chose to drive most often; the Impala was his baby after all. Seeing Sam sleeping had become somewhat comforting – an indication he was healthy – even after so much time had passed. While Dean couldn't deny that sleep would be welcomed, he honestly enjoyed the driving. There was something therapeutic in the rumble of Baby's engine, something strangely safe in the mundane danger of driving along the interstate. And now that Sam was asleep, he could turn up the music without hearing protest.

So he did.

Bon Jovi blared when the lightning bolt hit the ground just off of the road with an explosion that had Sam sitting bolt upright, wide awake before he realized he'd even been asleep for the last few hours. Dean, who'd been driving through violent sheets of rain for the past hour with cautious determination, could hardly suppress a chuckle. "Scared of a little storm, Sammy?"

Sam rubbed his eyes and relaxed into a yawning stretch, then turned down the music slightly. He didn't dignify his brother with a direct response; instead, he asked a question of his own, "How far out are we?"

"Twenty minutes."

Not enough time to go back to sleep. Rain pelted the windshield and ran rivers down the sides, and Sam watched it, wishing vaguely that it were coffee.

The motel was the first stop, nearly always was. Sam ran in to book a room and get the keys while Dean parked.

Sirens wailed along the road as Sam jogged back through the lessening rain to meet Dean by the car, room key now in his pocket. "Looks like we got here just in time for some action."

Dean gave a wry smile.

Without needing to talk about it, they slipped into the room and into officious suits. Then back into the Impala, which they parked across the street from an apartment building where several police cars crowded a cramped parking lot. The rain let up into a light mist.

The coroners had already taken care of the body when the boys arrived, false FBI identification ready to flash at any quizzical faces. They would talk to the police, but there were two people – clearly witnesses – whom they really wanted to talk to. In a well-coordinated, well-practiced dance, they moved through various officers to pick up pieces of the story before moving along.

The tears streamed unrelenting down her face, evident now that the rain no longer hid them. With a stony expression, Riley watched his roommate as she sobbed inconsolably into his chest, his arm loosely draped around her shoulders. He knew he should be upset as well, but he didn't feel anything, didn't believe what he'd experienced enough to be able to feel its effects yet.

They'd told all they could to the police. Well, he had tried to explain what had happened. Beckett hadn't been able to get two words out without breaking down into a puddle of unintelligible tears, so the police were leaving her alone for the moment. And they didn't believe Riley's story.

Until the feds showed up.

Riley watched them walk up: two men in suits. One absurdly tall, the other smug. Once across the police line with flashed badges, they very nearly made a b-line for where he and Beckett sat on the hood of a police car. Apprehension rose in Riley's stomach. Why would anyone other than the police be here?

They kept a respectable distance from the pair to remain unobtrusive – Riley gave them credit for that much – and each pulled out his badge to flash at them before putting it away again inside their jacket pockets. Seemed legit.

"Hello, I'm agent Walsh, and this is my partner, Agent Steinhardt," the tall one said, face open, eyebrows arching upward in slightly more than professional concern.

For no reason he would be able to explain, it annoyed Riley when Beckett calmed down enough to turn and weakly shake Agent Walsh's hand. She looked up into his friendly puppy eyes and stopped crying. "B-Beckett Williams," she stuttered. Steinhardt shook her hand gingerly when Walsh stepped back again.

"Riley Fallon," Riley said, shaking their hands as well, though far less amiably

"We're sorry for your loss," Walsh said.

"Real sorry. Mind if we ask a few questions, Mr. Fallon?" Steinhardt asked.

Riley frowned as Beckett sniffled, still not fully composed. "We've already talked to the police. What does the FBI want?"

Walsh licked his lips and shook shaggy-for-a-fed hair away from his face uncomfortably, but Steinhardt shrugged and produced a winning smile. "Investigating the recent murders in the area. We'd like to hear what you have to say. Just standard procedure."

Riley blinked. Had he winked at Beckett? Completely inappropriate. Not much to do about it, though. He didn't have claim over Beckett, nor did he want any. She was like a sister, and he intended to protect her the best he could, especially now that physical danger was actual a possibility. The idea of some federal agent hitting on her just after one of her closest friends had been murdered seemed wrong. Even in quietly fuming about that, he realized he would be the one to answer most of the questions. Beckett was too upset to be terribly coherent.

"Becks and I are roommates," he began, still unsure how to even attempt to explain what he wished he hadn't seen or heard. "We were going to have pizza with our friend Julian, but something broke in through the window and attacked us. We were hiding in the bathroom when Julian came in…" He broke off and restarted. "When we found him, he was... But the thing that killed him was gone." Beckett snuffled but held it together, wiping her puffy eyes while Riley absently stroked her shoulder.

"Hold on, are you Irish?" Steinhardt couldn't resist an amused grin. Walsh saved Riley the need for response by elbowing his partner roughly in the ribs. At least one of them had a shred of sensibility.

The taller fed changed the subject. "Mr. Fallon, you said something attacked you. What do you mean by that?"

"Couldn't have been human," Riley murmured.

"Please," Beckett suddenly broke out, distracting Walsh and Steinhardt from Riley's answer. "Jules was our friend. You have to stop what killed him before it hurts someone else." She pulled away from Riley enough to grasp Agent Walsh's hand again, this time with both of her hands, revealing several deep gashes along her left arm that made the fed wince sympathetically. "Please. The police won't believe us."

"I don't believe us," Riley muttered, averting his eyes.

The feds gave him a glance that he could only call a mixture of incredulity and concern. "Young lady, you can tell us what you saw," Steinhardt said. "It's our job to deal with the sort of things the police don't know how to handle." A passing officer glared balefully, but Steinhardt paid no heed.

"Why don't you come back later when everything's settled down, Agent," Riley said gruffly. He needed time to piece together what had happened, and he needed to be on the same page as Beckett. "We're in shock. And someone still needs to look at her arm."

Self-consciously, Beckett withdrew her injured limb and huddled back toward her Irish friend.

"Of course," Agent Walsh replied sharply. He pulled a card out of his coat pocket and handed it to Riley. "We'll be back later to debrief and make sure you're alright. Call if you need anything, in the meantime. We're here to help."

After talking to the police for several minutes and thoroughly exploring the crime scene, they left. Riley didn't bother following them into the flat when they went up to look around. If they were truly feds, it they were unlikely to tear it up any more than the attacker or the police already had. He hugged Beckett tightly; she'd started crying again.

As they strode back towards the Impala, Dean resisted the urge to glance back at the victim's so-called friends. "Is it just me or did that guy seem a little defensive?"

Sam pursed his lips, opening the passenger door once they had reached the car. "Well, his friend was just murdered in his apartment. Maybe… I guess we'll find out when we talk to him. And the girl – Beckett?"

"Yeah, she was cute." Dean smiled retrospectively. "Too bad she's shacked up with a leprechaun." Ignoring his brother's knack for inappropriate timing, Sam shrugged. "Hey, what do you think attacked them, anyway?"

"I don't know, Dean. I mean, something about the crime scene didn't seem right to me. Too…"

"Normal. Any psychopath could have killed someone like that." Dean finished Sam's thought. He opened the car door and leaned against the frame while talking.

The body had been taken away, so they would have to go take a look at it in the morgue the next day, but the blood splattered around the room and reports from the police painted a reasonably clear picture. The victim had been brutally cut up near the entrance to the apartment. There were signs of a struggle, which meant it hadn't necessarily been an easy kill, and the weapon – a kitchen knife – had been left at the scene, still in the victim's stomach... though outside the body. Bloody shoe prints had been left though the room and then simply disappeared again at the door. No EVP, sulfur or other obvious signs of supernatural activity. The killer could have easily just taken off his shoes before leaving the apartment to avoid continuing the blood trail.

"Think it's our kind of thing, though?" Sam asked, sinking into his familiar seat and pulling the door shut, unconsciously synchronized with his brother's movements. While the murders left a bitter taste in his mouth –

"I think there have been an awful lot of murders for a small town and that it's worth checking out." Dean said. He didn't want to back down from a possible case just because everything seemed to check out as normal at first. They had been wrong before.

Sam nodded. "Right." He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes in thought at Dean. "But where do we start? They don't want to talk until later."

The engine roared to life. "We can check out the other murders and see if there's any relation, right? This many, there has to be something we didn't find online."

But there wasn't. All of the other murders seemed self-contained and neatly solved, each with a single vic and a clear killer with circumstantial evidence enough for a clean conviction. None of them had been left hanging. No signs of anything other than human-on-human violence.

"This is weird," Sam said after hours of alternatively sifting through police reports and interviewing people who had been involved in the other incidents over the past ten years.

"You're telling me," Dean agreed. Something definitely wasn't right about it. He could feel it in his gut in the same way he knew something was off about that Riley guy.

"Nothing links them. They don't have any of the same friends. None of them were related. Completely random vics."

"It's a pattern anyway, Sam," Dean said, suddenly flicking through the last report they had been looking at. "We know that there will be a clear murderer." He paused then smirked mordantly. "How much do you want to bet it'll be Lucky the Leprechaun."

"We don't know that," Sam countered. He was suspicious too, but he wanted to know more before he started doling out blame, unless Dean was getting at something else.

"That's what the police think, Sammy. You heard them." He shrugged one shoulder. "I'm not too fond of the guy either, but I'm not going to call him a murderer yet. We need to talk to him before he's arrested or it's going to be more complicated."

"That girl, though. Beckett. She says that they were together the whole time and that it was something else that killed their friend." He shook his head in shrug. "Nothing left to do but find out what it was they think attacked them."

"Any guesses?" Dean raised an eyebrow. "Cause I'm thinking shape-shifter."

Sam nodded. "Takes the form of someone close to the vic, someone with motive."

"Ganks 'em and leaves enough evidence to get convicted."

"Happened before," Sam agreed. He treaded carefully around the subject. They'd had more than their fair share of unfortunate run-ins with the law, more than once because of a shape-shifter. If this was another one framing murders on innocent people, then the Winchesters had to be cautious about handling it. Sam could sense his older brother's wariness. Dean would come up all bravado and swashbuckling charm, but Sam knew him well enough to know that he was nervous about shifters. "Think it's been long enough?" he asked.

"Better have been. Let's go."

Sam touched his shoulder lightly to stay him. "Hold on," he said, glancing across the street. "You go check out the bar. I'm not sure Riley is your biggest fan, and besides, it's a good resource. Maybe someone knew the vic or the witnesses."

"Hey, you don't have to tell me twice." Grinning crookedly, Dean patted his brother on the arm. "You go talk to Lucky, dude. I'll drink a beer for you."

"Thanks, man," Sam said, feigning disappointment for his brother's benefit. Anything to keep Dean relaxed. He'd been through a lot. Sam had, too, of course. But Dean had a way of completely ignoring his problems until they built up like pressurized steam, and then he broke. It made sense to ease that pressure wherever possible. Besides, sometimes-alcoholic that he was, Dean was probably dying for a beer anyway. "See you later, Dean."