Not Your Kind of Trouble

Chapter 2

Sam Winchester stood outside the coffee house with a girl's jacket in his outstretched hand.

The girl it belonged to was running full tilt down the sidewalk. Sam thought he would be able to catch her, but the street was crowded and he wouldn't have time to do much if he did get her. Considering he didn't even know if she was the culprit or the victim, he decided now would not be the best time to run her down and gank her.

He checked the pockets of the jacket. He found tissues, and a couple of large magnets, which Sam transferred to his own pockets. There was no I.D., and nothing of a supernatural nature. He shook glass out of his hair and walked back inside. The Barista was staring at him, so Sam slapped on a sheepish smile and brought the jacket to her.

"That was weird," Sam said. "I guess she might come back for it."

"I'll put it in the lost-and-found," the Barista said.

Sam returned to his seat, doing his best to appear confused and uninvolved. Dean gave him a look, which Sam interpreted as let's-go-before-the-cops-come, but he shook his head and Dean didn't argue, or get up and walk out, forcing Sam to follow. The brothers did their best to appear normal. They talked about some stupid horror movie Dean had made them watch, which Sam argued was misogynistic, but Dean said it couldn't be, because the only one to escape was a chick.

Sam heard the Barista talking on her phone to her manager, but unless she triggered some kind of silent alarm, she hadn't called the police. After a few minutes of making excuses in a high nervous voice she hung up, and came around the counter with a broom, dustpan, and tape. Dean got up and offered her a hand, so he could double check for evidence before it was swept up.

Sam pulled his laptop out of its bag and turned it on. Despite the sticker advertising it in the coffee shop window, his computer couldn't find any wireless network in range. Sam wasn't exactly surprised. A creature that could blow-up whole computer labs would probably have no trouble with a finicky internet connection.

It would also explain Dean's static-filled, barely audible phone call telling Sam where to meet him. Of course that could have been due to Dean's reluctant to say he was going into the Java Bean Boutique. Dean sat down at their table a few minutes later, with the free coffee the Barista had given him "for being so helpful".

"No sulfur," Dean said in low voice, while looking past Sam at the Barista. His brother kept flashing crooked smiles at the girl, and Sam had a very mundane premonition about spending the night locked out of their hotel room. "And she didn't react to 'Cristo'," Dean continued. "Whatever she is I don't think she's possessed by a demon."

"A poltergeist maybe, or a ghost that hates technology?" Sam said.

"She said she was Amish," Dean said. "Maybe she's being haunted by an Amish ghost."

"That would be a first for us," Sam said.

"Yeah," Dean said, "And we don't even get to wear those hats and punch a tourist in the nose."

Sam tried to imagine Dean interacting with the Amish and his head nearly exploded.

"So why'd you follow her in the first place?" Sam asked.

"She walked by me while I was checking out the campus, set off the e.m.f. detector like nothing I've ever seen," Dean said. "And you saw what happened when she freaked out."

Dean set the walkman/e.m.f. detector on the table. The smell of burned plastic momentarily over-powered the smell of coffee.

"Are you sure the flickering lights weren't what caused her to freak out?" Sam asked, as Dean popped open the walkman casing and used his pocket knife to pick out a few melted components. "It could have been an apparition behind us or something else we just didn't see."

"Don't think so. No cold spots," Dean said. "She was setting off the e.m.f. detector when I sat down next to her, and nothing much happened when I tried to get her talking, but there was a big spike in e.m.f. when I mentioned the computer lab that blew up. It was going off the scale when you came towards us, and it blew out completely the same time the neon light above the door did. Whatever this is either she's doing it, or something tied to her is doing it."

As he spoke Dean took a small bag of spare parts from his pocket and started repairs. Though he often played dumb, Dean probably could've gotten at least a Masters in electrical engineering. Not that their father would have let Dean pursue higher education. He'd had all three of their lives planned out, all the way to the end apparently.

Dean snapped the casing closed and looked up at Sam with a grin. The grin vanished when he saw Sam's expression. Sam did his best to shake off that train of thought. Even though their father had been dead for a few months, thinking about him still left Sam's gut twisting. But it wouldn't do anyone any good to get angry about it now.

Sam took out the magnets and set them on the table. "These were in her jacket. Are they setting off the e.m.f. detector?"

Dean waved his walkman over it. "Not much," Dean said. "Definitely not what I was hearing from her."

"Alright, I'll head for the library and hack student records-"

Sam cut himself off as Dean's eyes shot to the entrance. Sam turned just enough to see the door.

A guy in a suit walked in. He had one of those fancy secret-service ear-pieces, with the cord snaking down into the collar of his jacket. He also kept his sunglasses on as he approached the Barista. He could not have been more obvious if he had FED stamped on his back.

The Suit asked the Barista something in a low voice and showed her a piece of paper. She pointed him towards Sam and Dean. Dean's right hand disappeared under the table. Sam did his best to check the exits without giving himself away. The Suit did not look worried, so Sam guessed that paper was not one of their wanted posters.

"You were speaking with this girl?" the Suit asked, holding up a picture.

It was a blown up photo copy of either a drivers license or a student I.D.. It was a little grainy but it was clearly the girl who had run from the coffee shop not ten minutes earlier.

"The cashier said she was sitting at that table, and that you spoke to her," he said. "What was the nature of your conversation?"

"How about you show us some I.D.?" Dean said.

The other patrons and the Barista were all watching now. The Suit took out an I.D. and flashed it too quickly to read.

"Sorry, forgot to put my contacts in this morning," Dean said. "Let's see that again in slow motion."

The Suit curled his lip in annoyance, but he brought the I.D. out again. Sam half expected it to say "Bikini Inspector" as some of the Winchesters fake I.D.s did. Instead it said "Department of Homeland Security, Special Agent Ernest Carson".

"Ernest?" Dean said with a smirk. "You don't look like an Ernest. Did your mom consider Steve or maybe Francis?"

Sam struggled to control the urge to kick Dean under the table. He still had trouble understanding how his brother's mind worked. The Winchesters were wanted for murder in one state and murder and armed robbery in another. They weren't guilty of either crime of course, but the police weren't big fans of the-shape-shifters-framed-me defense. And Dean still felt it necessary to antagonize everyone with a badge.

"What was the nature of your conversation?" Ernest the Suit repeated.

"Why do you want to know?" Sam asked. "Is she in some kind of trouble?"

"She's wanted for questioning relation to a computer security breach," the Suit said.

"She's a hacker?" Dean asked.

"That's classified," the Suit said. "What was the nature of your conversation with her?"

"I hit on her, she said she had a boyfriend, and she left. She must've had a bus to catch," Dean said.

The Suit turned to Sam.

"I didn't really talk to her," Sam said. "I came in as she was leaving."

The Suit stood there staring at them for a moment. Dean looked back with a smirk. Realizing he wasn't going to scare any details out of them, the Suit turned and marched out. They saw him talking into his sleeve as he marched away down the sidewalk. He wasn't going the way the girl had gone, but nobody felt like correcting him.

"Weird," Sam said.

Dean just nodded.

Sam now wished he had chased the girl while he had the chance. If the girl was already on some kind of government watch list it would make their job a thousand times harder. And if she knew she was being followed, any address listed in student records would probably be abandoned. A grid search of the campus and town with e.m.f detectors was probably their best shot now. Sam ran the plan by Dean, who nodded agreeably and got up.

"I'll meet you at the car," Dean said, brushing past him with a cocky grin on his face.

Sam was going to ask Dean if tracking down their lead wasn't a little more important than flirting, but Dean was already back at the counter, muttering something in the Barista's ear. She was blushing and giggling. Sam huffed and headed for the exit.

He barely avoided running into a teenage boy charging in the door. The kid's feet skidded on the floor, and Sam was forced the throw his arms up and sort of hula around the kid to avoid a collision. The kid didn't quite avoid Sam's feet though and ended up tripping. He managed to regain his balance after a few hopping steps, finally stopping when he caught the edge of the counter. A few patrons in the coffee shop clapped.

"Sorry," Sam and the kid said at the same time, thought the kid had a lot more trouble gasping it out.

Sam guessed the kid was maybe fifteen or sixteen. Acne stood out on his chin and forehead and a little bit was visible through his close cropped light colored hair. His clothing was a little too big for him, like he was hoping to grow into it any day now. Not only were the kid's clothes too big, they were more than a little geeky. He wore a Wormhole eXtreme t-shirt, under an oversized olive jacket with a Bob's Bait-and-Tackle logo on the pocket.

The kid was sweating and he had a backpack on that must have weighed at least half as much as he did. The way the bag clanked led Sam to believe it wasn't just school books in there. The kid looked around him, eyes scanning every face in the coffee shop almost professionally. Apparently not finding who he was looking for he turned to the Barista, fishing a photo out of his jacket pocket.

"Have you seen this girl in here today?" the kid asked.

Sam and Dean both got a look at it. The boy and the e.m.f girl stood on either side of a petite smiling middle-aged woman. The two younger people were wearing garish-crocheted Christmas sweaters, and trying to look enthusiastic about them.

"She ran out maybe twenty minutes ago," the Barista said. "The cops were in here looking for her too."

The kid's mouth formed a thin line and his eyes got just a little bit scary.

"Was it a uniformed police officer or just a guy with a badge?" the kid asked, stuffing the picture back in his pocket. Sam saw there was something penciled on the back of the picture, but it was gone too quick for him to read it. He thought Dean might've seen it from his angle though.

"The guy had an earpiece, a suit, and a badge that said Homeland Security," Dean said. "He looked official, but didn't act it. He was a tool and everything, but he didn't even ask which way she went."

"Which way did she go?" the kid demanded.

"Why do you want to know?" Dean asked, smirking a little.

"She's my friend and her life is in danger," the kid said. "And I don't have time to screw around, so tell me."

Sam watched the kid and his brother glare at each other. He didn't know how Dean was going to react. Dean didn't respond well to orders, or to bitchy teenagers. A combination of the two might set off a pissing contest of epic proportions.

"She went east, up the street," Sam said. "She left her jacket behind."

"Is there a note or anything like that in it?" the kid asked.

The Barista checked the pockets and shook her head. The kid took a piece of paper out of his pocket and scribbled a few lines on it. Sam couldn't see what he wrote, but Dean once again, was in a position to see it. The kid handed the Barista the note.

"Can you put that in the jacket in case she comes back for it," the kid said. His words were a request, but his tone made it an order. "And if someone else comes in with a badge, you might want to call up the local P.D. and ask for the interagency liaison. They can tell you if the guy waving the badge is a real cop or just someone with photo-shop skills."

"What's going on?" the Barista asked.

"Beats the hell out of me," the kid said, before turning and heading for the door.

Dean shot Sam a look. Sam nodded.

This time they were following.

Author's Note: Blarg!