A/N: -Firstly, lemme apologize for the super long delay. I lost my jump drive with the final few chapters on it and had a time of it trying to convince myself to rewrite them.
-I rearranged the previous chapters, nothing changed in them, just smashed them together, so fewer, longer chapters instead of all those short ones. I'm going to pretend this has nothing to do with wanting to end up with 5 chapters (a nice, even, whole number) instead of 7.
-It might get a little angsty here. I've written myself into a pretty serious spot.
-The CRS stands for Catholic Relief Services.
-Thanks to anyone that's still interested and still reading my goofy ramblings. Please mind the plot holes. ;)

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Men of Faith, Chapter 4

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From the driver's seat, Dean watches as Sam's tall form disappears into St. Aldhem's. It's early evening, and the setting sun creates deep shadows in the alley where they've parked.

In the dark car, Henry's translucent features glow filmy white.

Dean taps his fingers on his thigh, glancing between the rearview mirror and Henry and the church door Sam had gone in. He reaches over to mess with the radio, turning the knob one way and then back in the other direction, eventually settling on the station they'd been listening to all along.

"Idle hands," Henry comments with a slow smile.

Dean scarcely acknowledges him with a frown, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel now. After another few minutes, he opens his mouth wide and yawns. "Man, I'm thirsty."

"You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink," Henry says.

Dean pauses in his fidgeting and frowns at Henry in the rearview mirror. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"There's a mini-mart next door. I go…I went there quite often. Good slushies," the priest remarks quietly.

Dean has to smile at this. "Thanks, but I think I'll wait for Sam. Kid gets cranky if he misses out on the slushies."

Henry nods knowingly. "I'd be careful, though. Especially this time of night. That place has been held up more times than I can recall. It's a terrible thing. Just last week, in fact, I was…" He stops.

The car is quiet for a moment before Dean turns. "Henry?"

The ghost's filmy eyes move to meet Dean's. His mouth opens and closes. "Just last week…"

Dean frowns, waiting for him to finish.

"I…I was there." Henry nods stiffly, eyes growing wide. "I was there. He shot the attendant and I saw it. I saw them."

Dean swallows thickly, glancing past Henry for a moment and out the back window, into the dark alleyway. "That's why," he says quietly, not quite a question.

"I was in this alley," Henry goes on as if not hearing him, growing more agitated. "That's when…I don't know. He must've hit me over the head. I woke up in the trunk and…I…I don't know. I don't know."

"You were poisoned," Dean tells him softly. "Probably cyanide or something similar."

Henry's eyes are wide and startled. He looks to be even whiter, or maybe thinner, more transparent. "A glass of water," he whispers, harsh in the stillness of the car. "Just a glass of water."

Dean turns away from him, swallowing thickly and moving to open the door. "I've got to get Sam."

"Wait." Henry reaches out for him. "What does this mean? Why would they…I don't…I don't understand." His eyes are angry and pleading, expecting Dean to explain this, the injustices of the world and the crimes of those people in it.

Dean looks away. "I'll be right back," he says and shoves his door open.

The tide of events has just turned against them. Now that Henry knows how he died, he isn't a floating, happy, new spirit anymore. He's just hit the ground and the fallout isn't usually pretty. Vengeance, anger, and violence, all things Dean would rather not deal with, especially not from someone he now knows. Angry spirits are bad enough, worse yet when you know them…or are related to them.

It was time to get Sam out of the church, give up their little whodunit act and just exorcise Henry from the car, consequences be damned, before things got ugly.

Dean closes the car door on Henry's protests and escalating angry words and starts down the alley for the church door. It's eerily quiet for this time of early evening. He can hear a few people talking out on the street, laughing.

The shuffle of Dean's own footsteps echoes off the narrow alley walls. But, just as he nears the door, a second and then a third, much faster shuffling of steps can be heard, coming up fast behind him.

Dean turns quickly and is barely able to take in two figures in black ski masks, before pure, defensive instinct kicks in and he swings at the nearest one, knocking him down.

He turns to the second man, but before he can make a move, the masked man shoves a can of pepper spray in his face, blinding and choking him, every ounce of capsaicin burning on his skin, like the bite of a million fire ants.

Dean stumbles away, hands going for his face, coughing and groping for the church door. "SAM!" he yells as loudly as he can. It's last ditch, it's desperate…and it doesn't work.

A gloved hand grabs at his shoulder. Something heavy and hard collides with the back of his head and in the midst of a splintering pain; everything goes dark.

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When Dean wakes, he has to blink a few times just to be sure his eyes are truly open. It's pitch, midnight black and there's a strange, muffled rumbling from somewhere off behind him.

He's hesitant to move, lying still and curled on his side. His head throbs and his eyes and throat tingle and burn with the residue of the pepper spray. It's dark and it's warm, but there doesn't seem to be anyone around. No use just lying there, so after a deep breath, Dean does move, slowly, slowly stretching his legs out and rolling onto his back.

His feet hit something solid before he's moved much, the resulting thud oddly familiar. He's still halfway scrunched up; legs now folded awkwardly to the side.

The rumbling behind him grows louder yet, almost like a dull purr, almost like…

With shaking hands, Dean reaches out to the darkness in front of him. His fingers brush over cool metal, not a foot from his face, rough indentations and bare circuitry, because, he realizes, there's no headliner.

No headliner in the trunk.

No headliner in the trunk of the Impala.

"Aw, HELL no."

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Big thoughts. Really big thoughts. Wide open prairie. Football fields. Mountains. Endless desert. Empty highway. Cars. Trunks. Coffins.

"Shit." Dean breathes. There's no distracting himself from this. Bad enough those guys got the jump on him, bad enough they shoved him in the trunk of a car, but, no, they had to go and put him in the trunk of his own car. It was enough to hurt a guy's pride.

And now who knows where, or more importantly, who was driving.

He'd already run through all of his options. No cell phone. The Impala was too dang old to have one of those safety escape latches and he was lying on top of every tool he could possibly use to pick the lid open. There would never be enough space or leverage to get the false bottom open, no matter how he contorted himself.

Which left him with lying and waiting and counting on the one person that could possibly get him out of this.

Sam.

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"Hi." Sam grins and sticks his hand out for the priest to shake. "I'm from the CIA."

The old priest raises an eyebrow. "The CIA?"

"CRS. I meant the CRS," Sam says quickly and laughs, trying to cover his flub. "I just…um…a little joke there. Sorry."

"Right." The priest nods skeptically and returns Sam's handshake loosely. "Funny."

"Yeah, um…anyway." Sam presses his lips together. "We just wanted to drop by and offer our condolences on the loss of Father Henry."

"Thank you." The priest moves away a few steps and sinks down onto a pew, gesturing for Sam to join him. "It's been quite a mess around here."

"I can imagine. No one informed us of the details. How exactly did he pass?"

The priest sighs and closes his eyes. "Murder."

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Dean taps his fingers on his stomach, swallowing hard and focusing on trying not to cough. They, whoever is driving, would be able to hear and he'd rather not deal with that. They could just go on thinking he was still out of it.

His throat itches and burns though and he's certain it must be swollen. It doesn't help that he was already dying of thirst before he even got out of the car. Who knows how long ago that was. He would kill for a glass of water, or soda, or Lord coffee, right about now.

He takes another careful breath, but it catches somewhere between his throat and his heart and he chokes. The string of hacking gasps that erupts from his mouth is uncontrollable, and loud, not even muffled by the fist he presses to his lips.

The air in the trunk, or lack thereof, is claustrophobically warm as he tries to steady himself without success. Somewhere outside of his struggles, he is aware of the downshifting rumble of the engine and then the moment when it ceases altogether.

The doors open, that familiar creak like a nail being pulled from wood. There are heavy footsteps on gravel, and then the hollow sound of the key sliding into the lock on the trunk.

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"So the police don't have any leads?"

"No." The old priest shakes his head. "Such a strange thing. The robbery and the murder of the attendant next door, Henry disappears and then shows up days later, dead in his own home. The things people do these days…just don't make much sense."

"I guess not," Sam agrees.

"Why would anyone do that and then return him to us?" The priest asks forlornly.

"I…don't know. Like you said, it doesn't make much sense."

"I suppose the only thing we can do is wait and forgive."

"That's very good advice."

"It's my job to give advice," the priest remarks quietly. "I can only hope that it's good." He looks over at Sam. "Will you be attending the service tomorrow?"

"I'm not sure how long I'll be in town, but I'll try to stop by." Sam stands, shifting toward the door. "Thank you. It was good to meet you."

"Good to meet you, too. Good of the CRS to send someone."

Sam nods, waving and heading quickly for the door.

The priest was helpful. Henry really was the upstanding gentleman he appeared to be, the victim of a crime that he was completely uninvolved in..

Shaking his head, Sam pushes open the side door and steps out into the alley. He turns right, towards where he thought Dean had parked, but the car isn't there. Frowning, he turns around, expecting the car to be there, Dean sitting in the driver's seat laughing at him. But the alleyway is empty and dark.

Sam turns around again. "Dean?"

"Sam?"

Sam turns again, startled. Behind him, there in the dim light of the streetlamp stands a lone, ghostly figure.

"Henry."

The priest stands there, alone and frowning, very much without the Impala, and very much without Dean.

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When the trunk lid pops open, Dean isn't ready for it. He can hardly breathe and the sudden light burns his bloodshot eyes. He blinks and coughs and props himself up, waiting for his vision to clear.

The two figures that stand there are the same men from the church alley, he guesses. Black ski masks still in place. One holds the can of pepper spray, ready to use it again if necessary, while the other holds a duffel bag and a gun, apparently ready to use that as well.

Dean resists the urge to rub his eyes, instead, sitting up slowly and holding his hands out calmly. "Hey, you know guys," he rasps. "If you really wanted a test drive all you had to do was ask."
"Funny man," one of them remarks, though Dean can't quite tell which. Their voices are too low and their mouths are entirely covered by the masks.

"I like to think so." Dean smiles and coughs.

They don't laugh or move, eyes eerily empty and stony in the low light.

"I seen you," one of them finally says, as if that should explain all.

"I see you too, pal."

The man with the pepper spray shoves it forward threateningly and Dean leans back, bumping his head on the trunk lid and raising his hands in front of his face, but the spray doesn't come.

"I seen you," the man says again. "You and your partner. In Indiana, you took my car." There's a smile in his voice as he continues and gestures to the Impala. "Now, I took yours."

"Not exactly a fair trade."

The man who spoke snorts and glances at his partner, gestures to Dean with the gun. "This guy don't know when to shut up."

"Yeah, well, what can I say?" Dean smiles. "It's a curse."

And sometimes, he thinks, it really does feel that way. Especially now, as both the gun and pepper spray are leveled in his direction. And he's got to say, if he really had to choose…

"Where's the car?"

"Indiana," Dean answers smoothly.

"What'd you do with the body?"

"Oh? You mean Henry?" Dean waves his hand flippantly. "He's in the backseat."

The men exchange a glance.

"Maybe you aren't hearing right," the other says. "We seen you take the car. We seen you take the body. And we seen you leave the body at that church. Now, just give us a reason not to put a bullet in your head."

Dean watches them carefully. He could always try telling the truth, but they'd probably think he was kidding around again. He doubted their ability to actually kill someone in cold blood, they'd gone to the trouble of poisoning Henry just to avoid it, but then again, people do surprise you sometimes. Either way, all they really want to hear is that no one knows who they are or what they've done. And Dean can do that.

He opens his mouth and takes a breath, ready to spin a great story about how very little he knows, but his breath catches again and he gags, coughing and choking, trying to swallow past his paralyzed larynx.

The men exchange another look.

One shrugs and the other nods.

The man with the bag reaches inside it, fishing around and eventually pulling out a full bottle of clear liquid. He holds it out, the fluid sparkling like cut glass under the streetlight.

"Want some water?"

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tbc...