A/N: Yes, I know it's been too long of a time since updating this story but I am hoping to rectify that now. Please forgive me for my slow updates, life just seems to get in the way entirely too much lately!!
Chapter 29
"Whadya mean 'the farmhouse'? Ignoring the little fact that he can barely walk for the moment, how's that dipshit planning on getting there anyway?" The surprise was evident not only on the older hunter's face but in his voice as he pressed his foot against the gas pedal with more than a little extra bit of weight, the surge of fuel into the engine causing the tires to spin slightly on the pavement and garnering a dirty look but thankfully nothing more from the less-than-friendly looking officer of the law sitting next to them waiting for the red light they were both currently sitting at to turn green.
"Well… more than likely in the Impala," was the only logical answer Sam could come up with, which is the one that he gave him. "I did leave the keys there, not like that would have stopped him though."
"And how, exactly, does he know where the hell the damn place is? It took us all morning to find it and we'd still be looking if it weren't for the Dewey Decimal queen back there telling us where to go," he stated rather dumbfounded. "And how does he even know he's going to the right farmhouse? There are hundreds of them around here, after all. And what's so damn important that he couldn't just wait for us to get back anyway?"
"One question at a time Bobby," Sam begged the man to slow down his barrage of inquiries to give him an opportunity to supply him with what few answers he could from the sketchy information he actually did have. "He said Trish told him."
"Well, isn't that just the best news I've heard all day," he emphatically expressed his displeasure as sarcastically as he possibly could at the first answer Sam provided. Bobby knew what the ghostly woman's presence meant to Dean even if Sam did not. Dean had let that minor detail slip out to him during their heart to heart after his botched suicide attempt. If Trish had come to Dean, Dean had to be in some kind of physical distress and he was beginning to wonder if he should have put a little more credence into Sam's instinctive worrying earlier that morning. "He better have a damn good reason for leaving that hospital and going out there alone in the condition he's in."
"He said Trent came back… and that he's got Julia," Sam dropped the bomb and Bobby nearly lost control of the truck from the shock of the announcement.
"I guess that's as good a reason as any," the man behind the wheel muttered before stepping on the gas a little harder once they were finally out of town and onto the open country road that would take them where they needed to go.
"What the hell is he thinking Bobby?" The quiet that had settled in the truck was a little too unnerving for him and Sam decided to express the anger that was creeping up inside him when the older, more sensible man just remained quiet. Bobby's words repeated themselves in his head and he couldn't help but dwell on the simple fact that he was absolutely correct; Dean had no business going after Trent on his own. "He's in no condition to be confronting a girl scout selling cookies let alone a crazed serial killer holding on to a potential victim… and a crazed serial killer that probably wants him dead at that. Damn it, doesn't he ever think before he does?"
"He's never done it before, what makes you think he'd start now? Especially when Trent's got another victim all lined up already and one Dean has gotten to know over the last couple days to boot. It's different this time because the bastard just made it personal." Bobby tried making some sense out of Dean's senseless actions and Sam had to admit that the man was right again. Shaking his head in disbelief at how idiotic his brother was at times, both men said nothing more as the pickup sped down the highway.
The low rumble was the only sound that could be heard when Bobby turned the truck towards the house that, albeit timeworn and weathered, looked almost exactly the way it did in the picture except for the added addition of an attached, three car garage. The hunters rolled up the gravel drive in practically no time, but that's how it tends to play out when the man behind the wheel drives the barely twenty miles between their start and their finish at speeds exceeding eighty as his passenger mumbled irritated nonsense under his breath nearly the entire trip. As the ground beneath the tires crackled under the weight of the wheels, Sam expelled the breath he had been holding since Bobby had put the truck in gear and pulled away from the library when he saw no sign of the Impala or Dean.
"Thank god we beat him here," Sam let out a slight sigh of relief as he wrapped a hand around the door handle and pulled before Bobby could even put the truck into park where he'd finally brought it to a halt just outside one of the three individual garage doors. He'd had a gnawing sense of dread in the pit of his stomach that had waned somewhat when he saw no other vehicles in the driveway or any signs of human life aside from Bobby but the calm didn't last long when his mind started running away with itself. Glancing at his watch, he couldn't help but bellow back into the cab of the truck through the still open door he had just exited from when he noticed what time it actually was. "Shit! Dean left that message nearly an hour ago. He should be here already. You don't think something happened to him, do you?"
"No I don't and would you calm yourself down a minute for Christ's sake? Just because Dean's not here yet doesn't mean Trent's not and if ya' keep hollering your head off I think he's gonna know he ain't alone anymore," Bobby warned and Sam very thankfully came to his senses almost in the blink of the old man's eye and he instantly heeded. Climbing back inside, he scowled as he sat on the seat and stewed, still wondering to himself how they had beaten his normally lead-footed brother there. Bobby wasn't psychic but he could clearly tell that the younger sibling was thinking the worst about the older one and now that Sam had regained a modicum of control over himself, he decided to finish what he had started saying. "Stop worrying that your idiotic, pigheaded brother isn't here yet. Just because he left that message damn near an hour ago doesn't mean he took off an hour ago. Hell, it could have taken him an hour just to get out of the damn bed and down to the car, assuming he even made it to the car. For all you, he may have gotten caught on his way out and was sent right back to his room after they confiscated your phone and…"
"Ok, I get the point," Sam cut the man off, knowing full well that for as many reasons as he could come up with to fear that some terrible fate had befallen Dean, Bobby could come up with just as many excuses to explain his absence as of yet. "So, what now? Do we sit and wait here for Dean to show or do we check out the house without him?"
"Son, I am not waitin' for your invalid brother to come limping along before we head in when that rat bastard may already know we're here," Bobby stated without hesitation as he started rummaging through the glove box for the heavy .45 he had stowed away in it only the day before and turned to give Sam a slight frown as he cocked it and palmed the weapon in his nervously sweaty hand. "I love Dean like he was one of my own, but even you have to admit that right now, all he will be is a liability. We go in without him and check out that house from top to bottom and if we don't find anything, we wait for him to show us exactly what it is he thinks he knows. If we're lucky, we can take care of this little mess before he even gets here because I'm doubtin' he's gonna be in any condition to help us much."
Not waiting for a response, Bobby threw his door open and jumped from the cab with his eyes fixed on the house and its surroundings. Sam had to once again agree with his seemingly genius logic and he followed the more experienced man's lead. Grasping his brother's favorite, ivory handled pistol he'd been carrying around with him for weeks in his own hand, he shifted his mindset from worried little brother to skilled hunter in the blink of an eye and traced Bobby's steps up to the house. Both men crept up the stairs onto the porch and after Sam made short work of the lock on the door, they silently slipped inside without making so much as a sound.
The exterior of the old home gave no indication as to the interior. Time had taken somewhat of a toll on the furnishings, but everything had remained beautifully intact and both Sam and Bobby were amazed at how easily it would be for someone to move right in and have all of the comforts of home already at their disposal. A thick layer of dust dulled the vibrant reds and greens of the furniture and carpets throughout but the house still had an air of wealth to it. Footprints and fingerprints were scarcely spaced but everything had obviously gone undisturbed for the last twenty years, just as the librarian had said.
Tapping the butt of his gun against his chest, Sam motioned up when he got Bobby's attention and the older hunter shook his head in acknowledgement. Pointing to his own person before waving his hand in a circular pattern, he indicated to Sam that he would check out the ground floor while Sam investigated the upstairs. He watched Sam climb the stairs that would take him to the upper level and was amazed that as tall and awkwardly gangly as he was, he moved with an incredible amount of stealth, never once making any sound as he took the steps slowly and carefully.
Leaving Sam to his task, Bobby continued his exploration of the overly spacious manor. 'Farmhouse my ass,' he thought as he went from room to room, never seeming to find an end to how many he had to look into only to find nothing. Finally making his way to the kitchen, he got his first red light that something was amiss in the old place. The lightly colored, ceramic tiled floor that had accumulated a two decade layer of dust currently settled benignly atop it was no longer as smooth and unmarred as freshly fallen snow. Numerous footprints were strewn between a door just to his right and a door at the far end of the room with an occasional thick drag line thrown in for good measure. Relatively sure the footprints ended at what was the door leading directly into the basement, Bobby left the kitchen and retraced his steps back to the front room just as Sam was coming down the stairs apparently empty handed.
"You find anything up there?"
"Just more of what's down here," he reported as he took the last of the stairs two at a time. "What about you?"
"Kitchen's this way and by the looks of it, someone's been through it recently," he informed Sam as he led the way to the back of the house. Stopping just inside the entryway and pointing to the floor, he knew Sam was thinking exactly what he was thinking. Pretty sure one door led to the basement, they needed to see what may be behind the other one before they made any attempt at heading down into an area they could very well get trapped in. "You stand by door number one while I check out what's behind door number two."
Nodding silently at Bobby while the elder man left his own set of bootprints behind in the dust as he crept cautiously towards the closed door on the other side of the kitchen, Sam couldn't help but notice the vaguely familiar, small, circular patterns spaced every couple of feet apart in the remaining layers of grit along with all the other tell-tale signs that someone or something had been there recently and racked his brain trying to figure out what the hell could have made them. He didn't have a whole lot of time to ponder the discovery though when the sounds of Bobby taking a heavy foot to the locked door commanded Sam's straying attention and the younger hunter immediately took a shooting stance, ready to take down anything that may come through the now open entryway and directly at either one of them.
Bobby had turned quickly away from the now open entrance when he felt the door give under the sharp blow of his foot and pressed his back firmly against the wall next to it in anticipation of meeting up with something that was sure to be of the unfriendly variety but as both he and Sam stood starkly still in the oddly calm quiet, he relaxed his stance when it was clear that nothing was coming through. Turning to face the darkened room beyond the kitchen's boundaries, Bobby took a few tentative steps inside and groped for a light switch as Sam came up behind him, the chirping of the older man's phone in Sam's back pocket shattering the oppressive silence that had fallen between them and making both men jump in their skins. Fumbling about for the wailing cell in his pocket, Sam finally found it and sighed when he saw the caller ID displaying his own name. Forcing it open to answer as Bobby at long last found a light switch to flip that would illuminate whatever was on the other side of the now busted door; Sam couldn't help but express his irritation with his wayward brother.
"Where the hell are you Dean?" He barked rather harshly into the mouthpiece, not even bothering to answer the call in the traditional manner. When all he heard from the other end was a heavy sigh, Sam felt the need to elaborate. "You should have been here a long time ago man. What is taking you so long?"
When what Sam thought to be one harsh sigh after another echoed through the receiver with no words being spoken in-between, he was starting to fear that something was seriously wrong on Dean's end of the call. The more carefully he listened, the more Sam realized that it wasn't sighs he heard coming from his brother but hard and heavy breathing that sounded more and more strained with each attempt at sucking in air. With his irritation quickly turning into panic, Sam put all the effort he could gather into remaining calm, knowing he had to find a way to get his brother to speak through those strained breaths.
"Dean, are you alright?" He asked the typically first question he always asked with a bit of hesitation, hoping he would get some sort of verbal answer.
"No," the one and only word that came out was barely audible but Sam heard it loud and clear as if it had been screeched by a banshee and for some reason, he suddenly felt sick.
"Can you tell me where you are," Sam nearly begged the question as he listened to the unusual breathing pattern coming from his brother. He could clearly hear Dean try to take in a deep breath then hold it longer then he probably should have before expelling it and forcing in another, almost as if breathing was the last thing he wanted to be doing at the moment.
"Sam… help," two words this time, both said with a little more force than the first but followed by an incredibly anguished groan that made Sam's skin crawl.
"Oh god Dean, where the hell are you?" Sam was having a hard time hiding how terrified he was becoming with each second that his brother said nothing to him passed. "Dean, please… I can't help you if I can't find you. Where are you, can you at least tell me that?"
"He's here Sam," Bobby's words hit him like a kick in the groin and for a minute he thought he'd just imagined what the older man had just said.
"What?" Sam's astonishment was painfully apparent and Bobby had no intentions of repeating himself. Grabbing the young hunter by the arm not attached to the phone plastered against his ear, he dragged Sam through the door he had just busted open into what was the three car garage. Of the two spots that were taken, Sam's stomach lurched up into his throat as he watched Bobby pull back the heavy tarp that had been thrown over the car in the space farthest from the door, the normally gleaming black that was now covered in dust and gravel showing Sam exactly what Bobby had meant. Sitting right there before his very eyes was his brother's beloved car, telling him that his brother had to be here somewhere.
"We're already here Dean, just tell me where in the house you are," Sam tried spitting out now that his throat has seemingly seized up at the sight of the Impala nicely hidden away, the fear that Trent had done something to Dean quickly becoming a harsh reality.
"Base…" the one, lowly word was barely spoken and Sam knew it hadn't been a complete word that came out before Dean had fallen deathly silent on the other end of the call with even the sounds of his breathing now quiet. Giving Bobby a quick glance, Sam cocked his brother's gun and marched towards the other door that still hung on its hinges in the kitchen, ready to kill whatever might get in his way.