The pipes next door roared to life after a painful moment of rattling and groaning, the shower head finally bursting with hot water. Rachel took the sound of Lucas's shower as her cue to pack for the day. She opened a faded two-tone gray canvas messenger bag that already contained her Smith & Wesson 9mm, tucked into a liner pocket within easy reach. She slid in her laptop, an EMF detector, a lightweight tactical hunting knife, and her journal; a black, soft-bound 8x10 book that she was already ten months of research and hunts deep into. It included an entry on Lucas, a rarity as she deftly avoided hunters and found few, if any, worth noting. She had sketched Lucas's face in profile, looking into the distance as he had watched the trees for signs of an attack the day she had first met him. At the top of the page she had written his name, Lucas Barr, in crisp script, and down the side a handful of notes and observations she had made during their initial meeting, including his description, the vintage motorcycle he seemed to become one with when he rode, and his purported affinity for ghosts. Today she added that he was from Wisconsin, and simply wrote Ink? while she wondered if he harbored any tattoos under that black leather jacket of his, the one with a bullet hole through the heart. She left ample space on the creamy, off-white page for more notes about this boy who pulled at her curiosity like the moon at the tide as she got to know him better. If she got the chance to know him better.

She found it odd, though, that he had mentioned the Winchesters. She would look more into John later, though she had heard some outrageous tales about his sons – reckless, dangerous men - during her less than formal education through the sordid network of hunters and their associates she had once been a part of. Not that they were the worst of the hunters. She had heard stories of some who had gone so far off the rails they had become more vicious and bloodthirsty than the monsters they hunted. She knew of a few who had to be put down like rabid dogs. She had seen it herself. That hunting monsters, choosing a destiny of slogging through the unending torrent of blood and guts and loss could so easily forge good men into monsters was one of many lessons learned during those formative years, but the one that really hit home was the revelation that she was here, now, living a shadow life as a casualty of the Winchester brothers' selfish actions.

Lucas dried off with a clean but worn, threadbare motel towel, thankful to be full, rested, and clean. He pulled on dark blue jeans, a black V-neck shirt, and his road-dusty boots. He sent a quick text to Corey, letting him know he had arrived safely and requesting background info on Billy Breaker, before tucking his phone away in his front jeans pocket. He pulled on his leather jacket and slung his bag over his shoulder as he stepped out the door and walked right into Rachel. His reflexes were quick and he caught her before she stumbled. She instinctively gripped his upper arms and offered a patient giggle.

"Nice running into you," she said, her balance recovered. "So, your ride or mine?"

Lucas blinked. He was looking into her golden eyes, his hands still carefully gripping her waist as her hands remained firmly on his arms, his heart unsure if it should be beating in his chest or in his throat.

Rachel quickly glanced away and released him. She wore a state college sweatshirt, very short jean shorts, and a pair of black Converse, her hair still in its messy bun with a golden halo of loose, wavy strands.

"We can take my car," she offered. "Unless you have an extra helmet?"

Lucas stammered and dropped his hands, clearing his throat. "Uh, your car is fine." He never carried an extra helmet. Although the well of attractive women who oohed and aahed over his bike never seemed to run dry, he had no one in his life that he cared to ride with. It required a closeness, a sense of trust, to ride with someone. He had done it in his high school days, offering rides to the girls he wanted to impress, hoping the sheer coolness of the bad boy biker image he fumbled so awkwardly with would overshadow the stigma he had grown up with. It never felt quite right. He learned instead to welcome the freedom of riding alone, embracing the wind as his thoughts and memories were drowned out by the roar of the motor. He found peace over endless miles of blacktop. He watched Rachel slide in beside him, easing back into the black leather bucket seat and stretching her long legs out. Her eyes lit up with a passionate fire as she turned the key and the Challenger roared to life. She reversed out of the parking spot and spun around with expert precision, offering Lucas a quick, playful wink before peeling out. The acceleration out on the highway pressed Lucas back in his seat, which he didn't mind at all, the wind battering his hair through the open window. He made a mental note to buy an extra helmet when he got home.

"Mrs. Lafayette, I'm Rachel Cairn. It's nice to meet you in person."

Rachel introduced herself with such a gentle charm and sunny smile that Lucas found it hard to believe this was the same woman who had burst out of nowhere in the dark, blindsided and disarmed him.

"This is Lucas, he's my partner on this assignment. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today."

Lucas shook Mrs. Lafayette's hand. She was a petite woman, fit in her mid seventies, with well-maintained silvery blond hair and a comfortably Bohemian wardrobe. She invited them in graciously, a little confused as to why anyone would want to bring up the grisly Breaker case after so many years, yet flattered to have been remembered as the lead on the story as it broke. As a retired journalist she was quite prepared to be interviewed, and to assist a young journalism student. She had refreshments ready on a rustic wooden tray on the glass coffee table, which was decorated with well organized piles of relevant papers that had survived the decades in the back of a modest filing cabinet. A pile of newspaper clippings sat neatly atop the two or three copies of the Baldwin Post that ran the story on the front page, a stack of 8x10 black and white photographs of the crime scene – Breaker's property – the torture room, the shallow graves and crushed cars, the barely recognizable remains of his victims. In another stack she had placed her hand-written notes and drafts, along with a cheap, faded business card for John Smith, Parapsychologist, with a South Dakota telephone number. On the back side the telephone number for a long-since closed motel and Room #10 was printed neatly in pencil.

Mrs. Lafayette handed Rachel a large envelope. "I made copies of everything for you, to help with your story."

"Thank you so much," Rachel said, tucking the envelope into her bag. She took out her notebook and pen, turning to the page of questions she had written.

Lucas sifted through the photos. They were gruesome, despite the lack of red, the play of light and shadow telling a dark tale of pain and terror. He had no doubt that some of these women had found themselves trapped even after death, like rabid animals in cages, tethered to their corpses and left to cry out for eternity. He felt himself drawn in, pulled inexplicably to some images more than others. Where the camera had only captured stale decomposition, Lucas watched as three of the women's faces drifted into view, as if rising from deep water, filling out the ruined features of their shattered skulls, their lifeless eyes snapping open, their wounded lips moving. He listened to the whisper of voices, the hushed tones of distant panic. The hair on the back of his neck rose, his mouth went dry, and his blood ran cold. The whispers spun slowly around his head, an urgency to their indistinguishable words, pulling him away from himself. His body grew cooler, numb and adrift, as he tried to focus on the mumbled dialogue of the dead.

Lucas…

"Lucas."

Lucas gasped, almost inaudibly, as he snapped out of his trance. Rachel nudged his leg with hers again, her brow furrowing as she offered a subtle nod. He returned the nod, letting her know he was ok. He wondered for a moment why the spirits those three women had not been released when their murders were solved, why they still crouched in their shallow, empty graves, screaming.

Rachel watched him for a moment longer. His eyes had looked hollow just then, as if he had been cut loose from his mooring and was adrift in a far away void. Her gaze was intense, penetrating, a gaze little could hide from. She knew from the recovering distance in his eyes that something was very wrong, but he nodded again, more curtly this time, and she was not in a position to interrupt the interview to question him. She shifted her eyes back toward Mrs. Lafayette, who was still detailing the origins of the case.

"And of course by then we all knew something was going on, we knew it was an unsafe time for ladies out and about alone. But, honestly, we all thought it was something bad happening in the city. Not here. Not in our own backyards," Mrs. Lafayette said softly, her voice strained by regret. "I made that drive a dozen times, to Bismark and back. I will never forget, one night on my way back – I must have run over something because my tire blew out – and I managed to limp to the old Texaco station. It was closed by then, being so late in the evening, but the canopy lights were always on and it had a payphone. It was Billy I called." She exhaled slowly, averting her gaze from Rachel for a moment, gathering herself before she could continue.

Rachel instinctively reached out, placer her hand reassuringly on Mrs. Lafayette's, giving it a gentle, patient squeeze. "That must have been very frightening for you, under the circumstances."

Lucas set the photos back down on the coffee table. They were bent at the edges where he had gripped them too tightly. He leaned forward, bringing himself fully into the conversation, resting his forearms on his knees, observing Rachel as she worked.

"Billy towed me home that night," Mrs. Lafayette finally resumed, her composure regained, though her voice retained a shaky undertone. "He never laid a hand on me. He seemed so normal. We went to school together. I don't think anyone was more shocked than me when the body was found. And of course, as you know, I had to maintain a professional distance and keep cool."

"Can you tell me how the first body was found?" Rachel asked, returning to her notes.

Mrs. Lafayette sighed and offered a self conscious smile. "As you may be aware, there are a lot of… stories about this area, dating back to the earliest settlers, and the Native Americans who lived here for generations before them. Every paranormal investigation show on TV has filmed an episode here. We have ghost sightings, we have foxfire, magnetic anomalies, unexplained disappearances," she spoke with the melodramatic meter of a well-rehearsed monologue. "It is strongly believed by many that most of Burleigh County is built on haunted ground."

Rachel nodded. "Yes, I grew up hearing that. It's our claim to fame, right?" Rachel shared an insider laugh with Mrs. Lafayette. Blending seamlessly into her surroundings was just one of Rachel's highly developed skills. This was her first time in North Dakota.

Lucas admired how well Rachel played her part, as she cherry-picked Mrs. Lafayette's regional dialect and subtle mannerisms, making them her own and mirroring them back, constructing in real time a character the elderly woman might feel more comfortable with, especially concerning such a disturbing subject. Lucas found himself in awe of Rachel. He knew by her natural speaking pattern, as well as her Arizona license plates, that she was nowhere near a native to this part of the country. Though his head still ached from his earlier episode, he observed with fascination.

"You know," Mrs. Lafayette continued, "Back in the 80's the parapsychology thing was huge. Well educated professionals were running around making documentaries with special cameras and equipment, recording voices from beyond with their E—something machines."

"EVP. Electronic voice phenomena," Lucas offered.

"Yes, that's it," she chuckled. There had been stories for about a decade about a ghostly lady appearing out on the old highway, scaring the bejesus out of people driving late at night. In 1989 a parapsychologist named John Smith came to town, looking into the story and wanting to investigate what he referred to as the apparitional experience. He stood out from the others," she sighed with a twinkling glance at Rachel, who nodded knowingly in return. "I mean, he was a handsome man. Rolled into town in his shiny black car, with his leather jacket and five o'clock shadow… Ah, he definitely did not have the professor look, that's for sure. Oh, and he had two gorgeous little boys with him. No mom to be found. I didn't think it was right, dragging those two little ones all over the country for his studies, so for the week or so they were here I let the boys stay with me and I spoiled the hell out of them."

"How did you meet John?" Rachel inquired, taking meticulous notes.

"My late husband was a deputy back then and had taken several of the reports from people claiming to see the highway ghost. He was also an investigator on some of the local disappearances. He was one of the people John interviewed for background information. He came to the house and while they talked I baked cookies with his boys." Mrs. Lafayette paused for a moment, a bit shaken as the memories came flooding back. "One of the other people he wanted to interview was Billy."

Mrs. Lafayette sifted through her old notes, not trusting the details of an event thirty years earlier to the clarity of her aging memory. "John went out to Billy's place unannounced, and Billy was on a call. John said he was walking through the wrecking yard, stretching his legs, when he smelled smoke. He followed it and found what he described as recently unearthed, shallow grave, with smoldering human remains in it. He then ran into the garage and called the police with Billy's own telephone. John told me afterward that the woman in the grave was the one haunting the highway but she was at rest now."

"What happened when the police arrived?" Rachel inquired gently. She kept her desire for more in depth information tightly reined in. The more details she had, the better her chances of figuring out how to find, trap, and put Billy Breaker down. She had to know what he was, what she was dealing with.

"They found more bodies right away. The dogs were going crazy. Billy came home from a tire change call to a circus of police from multiple agencies. Local, county, state, all of them. The FBI was en route. He knew. He knew right away what was happening. He knew he was caught. But the bastard spun that big ol' tow truck around and tried to run. Deputies cut him off at the end of the driveway. He pulled out a sawed-off shot gun, and just as they radioed in a standoff he shoved it in his mouth and pulled the trigger." She sighed deeply. "My husband never really got over that day. Seeing all those bodies, those mangled women, murdered right under our noses. Then seeing a man he'd known since grade school blow his own brains out like that. It haunted him for the rest of his life."

"What happened to you back there?" Rachel asked, not taking her eyes off the long, black stretch of highway as they cruised in the direction of Bismark.

Lucas stared out his window, his jaw silently grinding, his gut rolling as her question broke the steady white noise of the road. He cringed inwardly, furious at himself for having slipped and fallen into what Corey so bluntly called a ghost fugue without warning, and deeply ashamed he had done so in front of Rachel. This place was haunted ground, he could feel it all around them, a pulsing chill, an unsettling sensation, and he believed they were close to the epicenter. He sighed, finally answering in a soft, though short, tone, "I get migraines sometimes. It's nothing."

"That wasn't a migraine. Believe me when I say I've seen some dissociation, I know that look, and you were gone somewhere far away."

Rachel rolled her gaze toward Lucas and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His head really was beginning to pound with a tension headache. He wasn't sure anyone other than his mother and Corey had ever seen him slip into that state, at least not since he was very, very young, and that momentary loss of self control felt devastating. He did not want to her to look at him and see a freak.

"You don't have to talk to me, Lucas," she said gently, returning to her scan of the highway shoulder, watching for any sign of an apparition. "But if you want to, you can. I've seen… some crazy shit."

They rode in silence until they crossed out of the darkness into the orange urban haze of streetlights in Bismark. Rachel took the first exit, following surface streets in a gradual U-turn to get back onto the old highway, returning to Baldwin. The sudden immersion into the busy city streets was surreal. The intense glow of streetlights, the strobe of traffic lights, the muffled pulse of music rumbling from bars and vehicles, the laughter and shouts of people out walking. The night felt exciting here, and safe, the assault of contrived light warding off the surrounding darkness and what lurked within it.

Lucas reached into his backpack as Rachel pulled back out onto the highway. It was time to stop trying to impress her with his coolness and get to work. He pulled out a set of mala beads, the discoloration and patina of the beads a testament to their antiquity. A large, smoky crystal hung at the center. Lucas put it around his neck with reverent care. Rachel glanced over at him.

"The beads help me focus my mind. The crystal channels spiritual energy. It's very old, like centuries old, and came from some small European country that no longer exists. It… helps me talk to ghosts. We haven't seen Valorie yet, or whoever it is. This can help."

Rachel nodded. She had never heard of anything like it. "Can I take a closer look later?"

Lucas tensed in his seat, his hands cupping the heavy crystal.

"I won't touch it," she said quickly, not meaning to have made him uncomfortable. "I'm sure it's closely tuned into you. I would just like to see it better. Maybe you could tell me more about it." She paused. "Maybe over breakfast."

Lucas nodded in agreement. He smiled a little. Rachel's reaction was not what he had expected. She was full of surprises.

Rachel and Lucas rode on in comfortable silence, vigilant in their hunt, though it proved fruitless. They returned to the motel and their respective rooms without a glimpse of the ghost of Valorie McLoughlin.