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"Of the 23 cars that left the diner," Rick announces loudly, waking Sam up with a jolt. "Exactly one was stolen. A blue 2000 Blazer, reported missing by Maurice Brown of 431 DuPont Boulevard, New Orleans, Louisiana, August 27th of this year."

"When did it leave the diner again?" Sam asks blearily, scrubbing a hand over his face and checking his watch. He's only been asleep for a few hours, but it feels like it's been days.

"According to your disturbingly detailed notes, it turned left outta the diner at eleven forty-five," Rick reads from Sam's notepad. "That gel with when your brother left the place?"

"Just about," Sam concedes. "It turn up anywhere yet?"

"Called a trooper buddy of mine while you were sawin' logs. A blue blazer was reported abandoned on I-12, 'bout half an hour out of Covington a few days ago. No plates that anyone could see, but it would be a hell of a coincidence if it weren't the same one. 'Course, they've been powerful busy with hurricane clean up, those parts, haven't gotten out to tow it yet,"

Rick grins. "How's that for a couple hours work?"

"Not bad," Sam sighs, giving the man a halfhearted grin in return. He's happy with the progress, however small, and grateful for the help, but what does it say about his hunting skills that the most progress that's been made on Dean's case in days happened while he was dead asleep? And he was, too. Sam doesn't know what's harder to swallow, that he completely missed following a lead like this, or that he really did need sleep as bad as Rick said he did.

Both revelations sting, but Sam has to admit that a car stolen from New Orleans area leaving the diner at the same time as Dean should have is, at the very least, worth checking out. More so now that it's been found abandoned so close to Covington.

It was taken too early for it to be Dean behind the wheel, but it wouldn't be the first time something sinister had followed them home on a job...

"You want backup on this one?" Rick asks quietly, leaning against the desk.

Sam swallows. Maybe he should be numb to readying himself to find Dean's body by now, but he isn't. Each time it hurts, filling him with awful, agonizing images of what could have happened to his brother, of what he couldn't get to him in time to stop.

Sam wonders which, of the dozens of scenarios he's had to imagine in the past three days, will be the one he has to carry to his grave.

"I got it," he rasps at Rick, "Can you- can you get me those directions?"

"Sure thing, kid," Rick replies, looking like he want to say more, do more.

He doesn't, and Sam is grateful. He's not sure how much more quiet pity he can take, not when they don't even have concrete proof that Dean is...

Well, there's a time for quiet pity. There's a time for understanding glances and quiet commiseration and empathetic words and this sure as hell isn't it. As far as Sam is concerned, this is still a hunt, and right now, at this moment, he's got a lead to follow.

The directions Rick gives him lead Sam west to an isolated stretch of interstate outside of Robert, Louisiana.

He spots the Blazer easily as he rounds a curve in the highway, the dull blue SUV hard to miss, pulled off like it is onto the shoulder of the lonely length of highway.

In a heartbeat, Sam's got the Impala pulled up behind the SUV and his lock picks in hand, circling the vehicle with long strides.

Everything looks perfectly innocuous. Of course, it would have to have sat unmolested on the road for over a week. Sam hopes, as he works on the lock to the driver's door, that the inside isn't as pristine, that it gives him something to go on as to who has Dean.

The door pops open with relatively little trouble. Sam peers inside, noting that the plain, grey interior is clean. Very clean.

Suspiciously clean, even.

Sam has spent the better portion of his life on the road, in and out of cars. He knows firsthand that even the most-loved, best cared for cars accumulate a little clutter. A service receipt here, a spare pen there, a Tic-Tac that you just couldn't find when it dropped beneath the seats. Even floor models have spec sheets and user manuals lying around, tucked away discreetly somewhere. No matter what the car is or who the owner may be, life accumulates.

The Blazer, though, is spotless. Completely devoid of the detritus that accumulates in the course of use. Checking the glove compartment, the console compartments, under the seats, even the sun visors, Sam finds nothing. Not so much as a pen cap or a stray stick of gum.

Stymied thus far, Sam pops the rear hatch and stalks around the SUV to examine the rear storage space, not even surprised to find it pristine. Even pulling up the carpeting to check the well compartments yields nothing but a dusty jack and aging spare tire.

The whole vehicle has been scrupulously picked clean of any little bit of evidence as to who had it or where they've gone, with a care and attention to detail that speaks of someone much smarter than your average car thieves. Normal boosters, hell even Sam, when the occasion demanded he steal a car, would just wipe their prints and be done with it. Take anything you brought into the car, sure, but get rid of anything and everything not bolted to the chassis?

Whoever took the Blazer was careful, very careful. And it's pissing Sam off.

As he makes a final sweep over the SUV, Sam wracks his brain for the next step. He could call Rick back, have him check for carjackings or other vehicles stolen from the area, but how likely is it that the driver of the Blazer, so incredibly careful up to this point, would do something so risky, so easy to trace?

No, Sam thinks, they ditched the Blazer here, spent so much time and energy erasing every trace of their presence from the car... This was planned.

Whoever did this thought it through, didn't leave loose ends. The meticulous personality that scrubbed the Blazer of any shred of evidence wouldn't have risked getting pinched on the side of the highway in the wake of a backwoods carjacking, wouldn't have gotten rid of the SUV in such a deserted area if he needed another car.

Unless there was one waiting…

In an instant, Sam is backtracking, circling the stretch of shoulder the Blazer is parked on, looking for signs of another vehicle coming or going. The Blazer's tire tracks are still visible, the path where the thick tread of the SUV's wheels has dug into the soft, marshy ground of the Louisiana lowlands still traced into the dying October grass.

Sam is so intent on finding tire tracks in the sparse grass that he almost misses it, lets his eyes run over it once, twice, again before he realizes what exactly he's looking at.

There, on the ground, almost lost in the grass and dirt, is a little bundle of red flannel.

It's dirty, worn and crumpled after over a week on the side of a Louisiana highway, but still recognizable. Still a dead ringer for the bundle in Sam's pocket, for the gris-gris bag Nicey Carter made for Dean.

Protection from evil magic, and maybe, Sam thinks, a little bit of luck.

Sam doesn't even try to stop the grin that rushes over his face as he picks up the tattered charm bag, because Dean was here and Sam finally, god, finally has proof he's on the right track. He's got the first real, concrete lead in days that he's not chasing suspicion or ghosts, conjured by his own stubborn paranoia, but Dean, Dean who was here, in this spot, just a few days ago.

The rush of relief and triumph almost leave Sam dizzy, have him momentarily forget what he's meant to be checking the ground for, caught up in the bright, blinding gratitude that if the driver of the Blazer had to miss anything, it was this, this one, tiny, irrefutable link to his brother. It's small, but powerful, powerful enough to have Sam setting back to his task with renewed fervor.

He's so close now, so much closer than he was a moment ago, but there's something that's bothering him.

If they were as careful as Sam thinks, why this stretch of road? Why abandon the Blazer somewhere it was found so easily, where it's path was so easy to trace? Why not plow it into a ditch or into the swamp? Somewhere it might never be found? It's not like there's a shortage of them around here. Hell, Sam must have passed half a dozen dips in the wooded borders of the Interstate big enough to hide an SUV in, and at least twice that amount of swampland.

The only answer Sam can come up with is that there is something special about this span of highway, something that set it apart, but he just can't put his finger on it.

He scans the shoulder of the highway for fifty yards in either direction, crosses the interstate to check the opposite shoulder, even backs the Impala up at a snail's pace to check under her long, black body for something he might have missed, but finds nothing.

"Fine, so, no second driver," Sam mumbles to himself, getting frustrated, mentally backtracking to try and figure out his next move.

The driver of the Blazer has Dean, bound or unconscious. His brother had to be incapacitated somehow. There's no way he went with whoever it was willingly without checking in with Dad to let him know the voodoo case hadn't gone south first. So, they have either a tied up and angry or a knocked out and heavy Dean Winchester to get from point Blazer to point… where?

Sam scans the surrounding woods in the afternoon light. There's nothing he can see, anywhere. The last exit was ten miles back, the next one not for another five. Nothing lines the highway that Sam can see but scrubby, marshy woods.

He casts his gaze higher, looking across the tree line for something, anything, but there's nothing. Nothing but more trees, rising slightly to surround the shallow depression in the land that cradles the highway. It's not until Sam looks around a second time that he realizes the trees on his side of the highway don't match the ones opposite them.

The opposing stretch of highway is bordered by trees that rise in a more or less even expanse of forest. On Sam's side, though, the side where the Blazer had been abandoned?

There's a long, uneven break in the trees, a gap almost, where Sam can see the treetops silhouetted against the canopy of the forest beyond. As if there, in the woods, there's a clearing. A long, thin clearing running through the trees.

Like a road, running parallel to the highway.


Sam is struck by the desire to throw himself into the woods, to tear blindly through the scrub and out the other side, forcing the stretch of trees and undergrowth to cast Dean up from wherever the hell they're concealing him.

Another part of him, a calmer, more rational voice that has grown far easier to listen to now that Sam has at least a little rest under his belt, wants to press on, to mark the Blazer's coordinates on the GPS, take the upcoming exit, and approach the road in the woods from a position of strength; in the Impala with a half dozen cover identities in the glovebox and an arsenal in the trunk to back him, rather than tried, dirty, and frantic after spending untold hours tearing through the swamp. Again.

Rational wins out, narrowly, and Sam guns the Impala back onto the highway, the engine purring approvingly as he pushes her up, up, up, past sixty, then seventy, and on, towards the next exit.

Towards Dean.


The turnoff dumps Sam on the outskirts of Robert, Louisiana, a town that apparently consists of a single stoplight, a gas station, and the Scrub n' Grub, a combination laundromat and roadhouse, the latter of which is closed.

As Sam eases the Impala onto the cracked stretch of Louisiana blacktop that must pass for Robert's Main Street, he realizes that he can see a sign in the distance, identical to the one he just passed welcoming him to Robert, that announces the reader is leaving Robert, making this either the smallest or the narrowest town Sam has ever been in.

Luckily, Robert being the antithesis of a bustling metropolis means that it's not hard for Sam to find a county road that runs parallel to the Interstate. In what seems to Sam like no time at all, he's backtracking along the deserted two lane blacktop, heading closer and closer to the Blazer's coordinates.

Sam keeps careful track of what he finds on the road. Mostly it's just forest and marshy scrub, but Sam isn't taking any chances. There are a couple of houses, and a tiny country church, not much more than a sanctuary keeping watch over a few, listing headstones. The rest is woodland or fields, most with crops, but some home to a few groups of fat, sullen cows, staring morosely out at him from behind rusted fencing.

But closest to the Blazer's coordinates, where Sam goes from alert to hyper-aware, there are three houses, spaced apart in a long, wooded row along the highway.

They're certainly nothing big, just more of the same busted up, broken down cinderblock and worn, warping wood that seems to make up the rest of Robert. Each is separated from the other by wide, dense stretches of woods on either side, the places that manage to be free of wood and underbrush cluttered up by broken down cars or junked appliances, half-wild vegetable gardens or doghouses half obscured by dirt and weeds.

Of the three houses, the first is clearly occupied, with cars in the crooked, winding dirt driveway and battered toys littering the wide, uneven expanse of acreage that's too large for Sam to comfortably call a yard.

The second house seems neglected, but occupied. The driveway is empty and the lights off, but that's not too surprising for a weekday afternoon. The neatly hanging curtains on the window and trashcans lined squarely against the side of the house seem a little at odds with the overgrown, debris-strewn lot and weedy shrubs out front, but not too much.

The third house is the one that catches Sam's attention.

It's set further back from the road than the other two, with a dingy, listing "For Sale" sign in the badly overgrown yard. The roof is sagging and most of the paint on the warped wooden porch has flaked off onto the wildly tangled bushes attempting to overtake the broken railing. While the second house smacks of neglect, this one reeks of out and out abandonment.

It's perfect.

Sam pulls past the third house, parking the Impala a discreet distance away. If there's someone in the place, he doesn't want the rumble of the Impala's engine to tip them off.

Before he goes back to the house, Sam unlocks the trunk, flipping open the weapons cache and firmly jamming the shotgun in place to keep it open. His eyes scan across the varied array of guns, knives, and assorted killing miscellany that Dean's collected over the years, trying to decide what he needs to take.

It's tricky, because though he has no idea what's in this house, he can't just grab every lethal thing he sees and storm into the place guns blazing. That's a terrible plan that would almost certainly get everyone killed. And there's no way he can carry that many weapons without a bag or duffle, neither of which he can find at the moment.

In lieu of an arsenal, Sam grabs a sawed off shotgun and enough iron and silver rounds to chew through a wall. That, combined with the knife and gun he's already got on him should do the trick. As he's about to let the hatch fall shut, he eyes a machete consideringly. It would be hard to conceal, but the intimidation factor alone...

In the end, Sam decides against it, letting the trunk fall shut with a familiar thunk. If whatever's in that house isn't intimidated by a shotgun, a .45, and Sam's meanest hunting knife, a machete isn't going to bother it one bit.


Sam starts from the back door, picking the rusted lock with a little difficulty, but not too much trouble. He works his way through the kitchen, then the back hall cautiously at first, searching for signs of habitation, of who or whatever had Dean in that Blazer, but after he hits the second bedroom and still finds nothing, his stomach starts to sink.

The inside of the house is empty, devoid of not only people, but even the ugliest and most unwanted of furniture. There's only the awkward, forgotten things that Sam knows get left behind in a house when it's owners move on. A mop leaning against the wall of the garage. A few hangers in a closet. A busted TV on the floor of a back room, dusty VHS's still stacked on top.

It's pretty clear that no one has been here for a long time. Certainly longer than Dean has been missing. Sam has seen his fair share of crime scenes and has cleaned up more than his fair share of hunts. He can tell the difference between a room that's been scrubbed of someone's presence and one that just hasn't seen people in it.

The dust is a dead giveaway.

It lies thick on every surface Sam can see in the house, settling on and in-between everything left out in the open, rising to sift through the air as Sam pads quietly through the house, choking his breath and giving the light a muted, filtered haze.

Every hunting trick Sam has ever been taught, everything he's managed to pick up along the way in a lifetime of running, telling how to erase your tracks or clean a crime scene, to hide the fact that you were ever somewhere you didn't want people to know you'd been, all that knowhow, lodged in his brain, sleeping for the past four years but wide awake in the aftermath of Dean's disappearance, and none of it covers how to fake the thick, silent dust of abandonment. It's not something you can counterfeit, that kind of lonely desertion. The thorough absence of human presence the house betrays is honest. Honest and inescapable.

Dean isn't here.

No one is. And from what Sam can see, that's been true for a long time.

He tries to keep the disappointment, raining cold and all too real over the hot lick of hope finding the Blazer and gris-gris had sparked, from killing him.

The late October sun is just starting to sink below the tree line as Sam pokes his head out of the back door of the abandoned house.

He looks over, to the woods lining the lot of the empty home, and thinks of the next house over, of the still, empty darkness of the place, even in the light of day.

He remembers another house like that, back in New Orleans. The Bernard's shotgun home had no light in the windows, no car in the drive, no sound or movement or signs of life at all. But that house hadn't been empty; far from it, in fact.

Sam checks his weapons and starts towards the tree line.

He works his way around the house from the cover of the woods, trying to get a bead on the place. If it's actually as empty as it looks, getting in to look for Dean without attracting attention should be as easy as picking the cheap lock on the backdoor, but if it's like the house back in New Orleans, a full building projecting empty with the help of voodoo, then Sam's got to be a whole hell of a lot subtler than just breaking open the back door.

The problem he keeps running into is the damn curtains. They're thick and long and on every window, hung to carefully conceal every detail of the room within from the casual observer, so Sam has no idea if the rooms of the house are empty or full, safe or bursting with whatever the hell took Dean from that damn Blazer.

Just as he's about to say to hell with subtlety and march up to the front door with his Marshal's badge, Sam spots it. It's small, and half concealed by the trash cans lined up along the side of the house, but there is definitely a basement window, just big enough for him to slip through.

Luckily, the latch on the basement window is as worn as the rest of the house, the wood of the frame swelled and warped into unreliability. All it takes is a few careful turns with Sam's knife and the window is creaking open, leaving just enough room for Sam to quietly lower himself into the gloom of the basement.

The sudden transition from late afternoon sunshine to the dim gloom of the basement has him blinded for a moment, but then his eyes begin to adjust.

It seems normal at first. Metal shelving units, half-forgotten bits of hardware, cleaning supplies, and then Sam turns and looks around.

And sees the cage.