A/N: I know it's not much but most of these chapters are short. That was kind of done on purpose just because the format of the story is a little different than most. With this being a series of phone calls and voice mail messages, well, the chapters just don't wind up long at all. Thanks for hanging in there and reading this though. I appreciate it!
Sam had felt his phone vibrate in his pocket while he and Dean questioned the wife of a man that had gone missing 48 hours ago. They had checked out another lead earlier and after grabbing something to eat, they headed to talk to this woman about her husband. They were in town investigating a string of demonic attacks and it seemed the demon must have caught wind of Sam and Dean being in town. By the time Sam and Dean arrived to exorcise it, the demon was ready to 'jump ship'. They tracked it here and figured it took the first warm body it could find at the time, which happened to belong to this poor woman's husband.
Sam had wanted to pick up the phone while it was ringing but leaving Dean with a near hysterical woman didn't seem like the best idea. She had started sobbing when they asked about her husband and it seemed like every other sentence led her to break down more. Not the kind of thing that Sam thought Dean could handle on his own. He hated leaving the phone ring though since it might be Emerson or some important bit of information from Bobby but he couldn't risk leaving Dean alone. So he sat through the interview with Dean, trying to pick out any useful bits of information that seemed to sneak into the conversation between sobs and figured on checking his messages once they left.
After saying good-bye and promising to do everything they could to find her husband, the boys left. Dean looked a little drained from the conversation since the woman had been tough to talk to but Sam seemed to walk twice as fast as usual to get to the car so they could get moving again. Once in the Impala, he pulled out his cell phone. One missed call, one voice mail message.
Sam glanced over at Dean as his brother got into the car. He called his voice mail, already somehow knowing that the message would be from Emerson. He didn't know how he knew it but he did. He'd never checked to see who called but still felt like he knew who it was without even checking.
"Is it from her?" Dean asked.
Sam answered the prompts from his voice mail to retrieve his messages, nodding. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was her," he said.
Dean started up the car, turning down the radio right away and glancing at his brother for a moment. It wasn't often that he was nice about turning down his music for Sam but he was concerned about Emerson as well. Having the music blasting would mean that it would be hard for Sam to hear any voice mail messages so he turned it down. If she had called, Dean wanted to know what it was about. He was trying to read Sam's face for a moment before his attention returned to driving, heading for their motel room so they could regroup.
Sam listened to the message and sighed heavily before hanging up, looking over at Dean. "It was her," he said, his voice soft. It seemed to almost break a bit as he said those three words, like it was that hard to say that Emerson had called him.
Dean glanced over at his brother as they stopped at a red light. That tone to Sam's voice seemed to immediately set off warning bells in his head. "Yeah? And?" he asked, sounding anxious and worried all at once. "What did she want? What did she say?"
"She sounded scared. I guess she and her mom are close to figuring this out," Sam said with a shrug, as if he was trying to act like none of this mattered. His voice was on the softer side but it didn't seem to crack as he spoke now. He cleared his throat though to be safe and shook his head a little as he stared out the windshield as Dean started to drive once the light turned green. Sam didn't want to give his brother too much to worry about right now. "She sounded really scared, Dean. I'm worried about her."
Dean stoically stared straight ahead, watching where he was driving instead of glancing at his brother to see how Sam might be doing right now. He was afraid that if he looked over and saw his brother looking at all sad or scared or worried that he might break too and right now Dean felt like he had to be strong for Sam so Sam could let himself worry about Emerson like this. "Yeah, Sammy, me too."