She pulled her dark hair into a French twist and swept her long bangs across her face, tucking them behind her ear. Checking her appearance in the mirror, she adjusted her navy blazer so the lacey top of her cream camisole peeked out. Sexy, yet professional. Perfect.
Emerging from the tiny bathroom, she was greeted with wide-eyed stares and dropped jaws from the three men in the hotel room. Maybe a little too sexy, she laughed. The male hunters fumbled for words awkwardly. They didn't look too shabby themselves: dressed in dark suits, the hunters looked as if they were James Bond… if he was a police detective.
"Uh, wow Riley," Kale managed to find his voice. "You look good." Sam and Dean nodded their heads in agreement.
"Thanks, Kale. You don't look so bad yourself. I think I did a fine job with that hair cut of yours."
"I thought he was missing some hair this morning. What happened?" Dean inquired.
"Kale wouldn't let me have the bed even though it was my turn," Riley taunted as she grabbed her cell phone off the nightstand.
"She put gum in my hair when I asked if I could sleep in the bed last night," he explained.
"It wasn't your turn yet. I still have one more night to sleep in the bed."
"But I was the one on the bike for six hours!"
"Whoa! Calm down there, kids." Dean stepped in between the debate that was quickly becoming heated. "You two are worse than me and Sam. Next thing you know, you guys will be throwing punches."
"Or gum," Sam laughed.
Riley ignored the guys' comments. "You ready?" she asked Sam.
"Yeah." He opened the motel door for her and the three men watched the sway of her hips in the form-fitting pencil skirt as she passed by.
"You coming, Sam?" she called to him. His face flushed red as he followed her out the door, closing it behind him.
- - - - -
The young couple walked down the dimly lit hallway. The sound of Riley's heels echoed off the stark white walls. They had gotten into the hospital easily enough. Most of the cops were off getting their morning cup of coffee. Riley hadn't even needed to use her talents to get them in. They'd merely had to show their badges to the nurse behind the desk and she'd pointed them down the long eerie hall.
The fluorescent lights flickered, adding to the creepy ambiance of the corridor. Sam opened the swinging door marked "Morgue" and cringed at its loud creaking. So much for a subtle entrance.
They entered a room filled with metallic tables, the back wall lined with small square doors. A pungent smell hung in the air. A man in his mid-fifties stood locking one of the small doors, his back to the hunters.
"Dr. Mackenzie?" Riley called. The man jumped around, his back pressed flat against the cold metal. "We didn't mean to frighten you. I'm Detective Lane and this is Detective Parker. We're from the Las Vegas Police Department; we need to ask you a few questions." Sam and Riley flashed their fake badges.
"Oh, don't worry dear. It's not your fault; this place gives me the creeps." He laughed uneasily. "I've been in this business for thirty years and I still can't be down here when it's quiet like this." He smoothed the front of his lab coat, composing himself. "Now what was it you needed to ask me?"
"In the past two weeks, a handful of people have died of a myocardial infarction without any prior heart conditions," Sam explained.
"Ah, you're here about the 'fear cases.'" Dr. Mackenzie smiled and turned into the small office adjacent to the wall of cubbies. "I was wondering when LVPD would find something odd about those deaths." He opened the file cabinet just inside the door and began to shuffle through various folders.
"What do you mean, fear cases?" Riley asked, peering inside the messy office.
"That's what they died of. At least, that's my theory anyway." The doctor pulled out a file folder, affixing the spectacles hanging from his neck onto his face. "Here we are." He returned to the locked doors that shielded the corpses, clicking his tongue as he searched. Sam and Riley exchanged curious glances. When he found the one he was looking for, he dug a large key ring out of the front pocket of his lab coat and undid the latch. "This is Robert Johansen. 68 years old and in perfect health, aside from the fact that he died of a heart attack thirteen days ago."
A white sheet covered a human form on the cold metal. The doctor pulled back the sheet to reveal a bald man with a pale blue complexion. Dr. Mackenzie handed the files to Riley over the lifeless body.
"So, why do you call them the fear cases?" Sam made a point to keep his eyes fixed on the kind doctor's face, avoiding the contorted expression etched on the face of the corpse.
"Aside from the looks of terror on all their faces?"
Sam nodded.
"In cases of extreme fear, it is possible to overload the heart. It's rare, but it can happen. A person with a pristine heart can suddenly drop dead if they're scared enough."
"You're saying that all four people were scared to death?" Sam confirmed as Dr. Mackenzie searched for the door that contained the next victim.
Riley took advantage of Sam's distractions to further examine the case files. Using her cell phone, she took pictures of the deceased's addresses. She went through the forms of each of the four victims: Robert Johansen, 68; Carl Stevens, 52; Marissa Elliot, 30; and Luther Casey, 75, whom Kale had informed them of the previous afternoon. As she was closing the file she came across a fifth form.
"Four?" Mackenzie shook his head in response to Sam's inquiry. He now abandoned the door he had been in the process of opening and moved back to the one he had locked when they'd arrived. "I guess you haven't heard. There are five now. It seems these deaths are escalating. Whatever their cause, the victims are coming in closer to one another now. We got the last two in just yesterday, a Mr. Casey and the boy."
Riley forwarded the addresses of all five victims to Kale and joined Sam in front of another figure covered in a thick, white sheet. This time, the figure beneath the sheet was smaller.
"Benjamin O'Shea, ten years old." Dr. Mackenzie's voice was full of sadness as he pulled the sheet back from the young face. "He was brought in last night around 8, just hours after Mr. Casey. Apparently he was skateboarding in the street when the he collapsed. He was dead before the car hit him.
"I've never seen a child look so scared."
A shiver traveled down Riley's spine as she gazed upon the scratched and horror stricken face of the boy.
- - - - -
"El Dorado. Not really the kind of neighborhood you picture when you think of Las Vegas," Dean commented as he pulled into the entrance of the cookie-cutter neighborhood.
"Yeah, it's a little too perfect if you ask me; it's kinda disturbing," Kale mumbled. "There it is, up on the right." He pointed to the single story house he'd been at the day before; the large crowd that had accumulated outside was long gone. Dean pulled in front of the house and cut the engine.
"Looks kinda deserted. You think the family's here?" Dean asked as he visually scoped out the place. The shades on the windows were pulled shut and there were no cars in the driveway.
"Well, even if they aren't, we might be able to find some evidence of what happened." Kale unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed out of the passenger's seat.
Dean knocked on the cherry-stained door and peered through the glass at its center. No movement came from inside.
"Maybe they're at the hospital or out making arrangements," Kale suggested as he tried to see in between the slats of the blinds in the front window. Dean turned the knob, expecting it to be locked. Instead, the door creaked open. Dean gave Kale a sideways glance as he pulled his gun from the back of his slacks.
"Hello?" he called as he stepped into the foyer. "Mrs. Casey? LVPD, we need to ask you some questions." Kale followed him in, covering Dean as he moved deeper into the entryway. Dean mimicked his partner, cautiously raising his gun as Kale moved into the decadent living room.
"I don't think she's gonna be able to answer any questions, Dean."
"Why's that?"
"She's dead." Kale approached the body from behind the couch. Her face was frozen in the same expression her husband had worn as the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance. "Man, whatever got Luther got to his wife too. We should have come back earlier."
"We couldn't have. This place was crawling with cops asking questions. We never could have gotten inside." Dean pulled out his phone and dialed 911. "Hi, I'd like to report a body at 2121 Evergreen Rd…Yeah, my name is…" Dean hung up on the dispatcher. "They always want your name… Hey Kale, we better go, we got company coming," Dean called into the other room as he pocketed his phone and wiped his prints from the front door handle.
"Riley just texted me the addresses of the other victims. You're never gonna believe this; they're all in this neighborhood."
- - - - -
The Impala parked across the street from a large two-story house. This particular residence looked just like every other one in the neighborhood, aside from its weed-infested lawn. A U-Haul sat in the driveway, boxes were stacked up in the garage, and two men were carrying a large couch through the front door. A "For Sale" sign stuck out above the forest of weeds.
"Excuse me, Miss?" Dean called to the middle-aged woman bent over in the lawn. She held a handful of weeds in one hand and was in the process of pulling more knee-high vegetation out of the ground with the other.
"Can I help you?" she straightened up and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.
"I'm Detective Wayne and this is Detective Kent. We're with the LVPD." Dean flipped his badge out for her to see. "We've got some questions about Robert Johansen, the former owner." She cringed at Dean's description.
"I'm Lauren Mitchell, the former owner's daughter." There was bitterness laced in her tone. "I've already spoken with the police. What other questions could there be?" She bent over, grasped a large weed and pulled. Strands of her thick blonde hair fell out of the ponytail and into her face.
"Mrs. Mitchell, we're sorry for your loss," Kale stepped in. "We have new information regarding the circumstances of your father's death. We'll only take a minute of your time."
Mrs. Mitchell eyed the two men. "Alright, come on in." They followed her through the foyer and into the nearly empty kitchen. A suckering sound filled the air as Mrs. Mitchell opened the refrigerator door and offered a lemonade pitcher to the boys.
"Did your father act strangely before he died?" Dean took a sip of the lemonade and tried unsuccessfully to hide the pucker of his lips in response to its sour taste.
"He told me he wasn't sleeping well. He was having bad dreams and they were waking him up at night."
"Any health problems at all?"
"No. I'd just taken him to the doctor the week before. They said he was as healthy as a horse. They must have gotten something wrong for him to have a heart attack so soon." She focused on the kitchen tile as her brown eyes filled with tears. "We would have at least had some warning then. Maybe we could have prevented it somehow."
- - - - -
"We should have gotten here sooner," Riley reprimanded herself as she and Sam stepped out into the sunny Las Vegas morning.
"There's no way we would have known he would be the next victim," Sam said consolingly, trying to comfort the distraught brunette, though he couldn't help but feel the same guilt pull on his own conscience. The pair stepped into the parking lot and headed back to the Chevelle. As they passed the large fountain in front of the hospital's main entrance, an odd feeling came over Riley. Something's not right, she thought. Her chest tightened. It was as if a cold hand had reached into her chest and grabbed her heart, and was now circulating ice-cold blood through her body.
"Sam!" she called out. He stopped and turned towards her, the guilt on his face fading into confusion.
"What's wrong?"
She searched their surroundings, examining every face until she found it: the dark blue minivan, gaining speed, heading straight for them. "Run."
The van jumped the curb, the driver haphazardly offering no attention to the poor pedestrians leaping out of the way.
Meanwhile, drivers swarmed the busy parking lot with their cars, ignorant to the danger Sam and Riley faced, thinking only of navigating their way into an open spot.
The hunters were trapped.
A menacing roar escaped the van as it annihilated the final two cars in its path, closing the distance to Sam and Riley.
Sam instinctively pulled Riley over the walls of the fountain just as the van crashed into the spot they had occupied moments earlier.
The pair peered over the wall of the fountain, water dripping from their hair. The van was lodged into the side of the fountain; water rushed out around it. The driver of the minivan lifted her head from the steering wheel. Blood dripped from the fresh cut on her forehead. Round black eyes peered out as she sneered at her would-be victims through the cracked windshield.
Suddenly, the woman's head snapped up and black smoke exploded from her mouth, leaking out the open window, leaving the woman's body slumped over the steering wheel.
Before the crowd of onlookers could grow, Sam and Riley moved towards the opposite edge of the fountain. Sam helped Riley over the low wall and the two quickly raced to the Chevelle.
"I think we have an idea of what we're dealing with now." Sam ducked into the front passenger seat, water squirting out of his clothes and shoes.
"Yeah, and they know we're onto them." Riley tossed her wet heels into the backseat and fired up the ignition. The engine purred as the Chevelle weaved out of the parking lot.
- - - - -
Kale rang the doorbell of the O'Shea residence. He eyed Dean, who was still mentally beating himself up over the death of a child on their watch.
"Dean, we need to get through this without disturbing the family. We'll find whatever did this and then we'll make it pay."
A woman with long blonde hair answered the door. Her eyes were red and puffy, as if she'd been crying all night. She probably has, Kale thought before giving her his alias of the day. Convinced, she invited them inside to the living room.
"Did Benjamin act strange at all before he died?" Kale leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands, fighting back the emotions that would blow their cover.
"He was having trouble sleeping. He had nightmares about a monster in his closet and refused to go to sleep alone. But what would his behavior have to do with anything? I thought…I thought he was hit by a car." Her voice broke and her eyes began to tear. Dean handed her a tissue from the side table. Kale caught his gaze as Mrs. O'Shea wiped her eyes. She doesn't know yet.
"Mrs. O'Shea –"
"Oh please Detective Wayne, call me Donna."
"Donna, it's true your son was hit by a car, but-" Dean cleared his throat as he tried to find the right words. I wish Sam were here. He's so good at this; he'd know exactly what to say. "He was dead before the car hit him. The autopsy showed that he died of a heart attack."
"Wh- what?" The color drained from her face. "But he's too young. He couldn't have had a heart attack. He was ten!"
"It's possible, if he were scared enough at the time…" Kale let his explanation drop off. She doesn't need to hear any more.
She picked up the photo of her son off the coffee table and stroked his face, "Scared? Oh, Benji. My poor baby." A tear fell down her cheek and landed on the glass.
"Mommy?" a voice called from the stairway.
"Yes, Kaylee. I'm down here, honey." Donna quickly dried her eyes with the tissue.
"Mommy, where's Benji?" A young girl of about four came down the stairs, peering through the railing at her mother as she descended. Her strawberry blond hair was in tangles and there was a red spot on her cheek from where her head had rested on a pillow.
"He's not here, sweetheart." The grieving mother swallowed, doing her best to keep her composure in front of her daughter.
"Did the bad man get him?" she whispered.