"Freaking ridiculous." Sam groaned under her breath leaning her head back against the wall behind her as she struggled once more to get her growing frustration at the lack of actual investigating being done after that not-so-delightful phone call.
"Easy, Sammy." Her father attempts to calm "this isn't some movie. Real police work takes time, you know that." He reminds as Sam takes a few attempted calming breaths through her nose.
"It's Sam, right?"
The woman in question was immediately on edge at the asking as the asker himself side down the wall opposite her to mirror her seated place on the police station floor. Though he does seem to shift a little way away in obvious mistrust of the vending machine he would have been leaning against should he have wanted to. "I don't really like anything electrical." He says noticing her interest in his actions. "Had a bad experience one time." He snickered gesturing towards a few more visible scars littering his face.
Sam rolls her eyes at the halfhearted explanation "Yeah, I'm Sam." She confirms despite her mistrust of the newcomer her fingers sliding that much deeper into Riley's scruff as borrowed service dog shifts from simply lying beside her with his muzzle resting against her thigh to bluntly laying across the woman's legs. Mistrust radiates off the animal in spades as Sam does her best to reassure him despite her own misgivings about the seemingly familiar face appraising her from across the small walkway.
"I was hoping I'd run into you." The man says rubbing a scared and trimmer suffering hand along his equally scared face. "See I've waited a real, real long time to meet you, Sam." he says in a low voice. The sharpened glare of Sam's gaze only earned an even broader smile from the unnamed man at his word choice. "Cause you're a survivor obviously. Face down Ghost Face and everything. Faced him down with no fear. No fear and you beat him, didn't you? You beat him just like Sydney did." He praises "the Sydney of a new era I'd say."
Something about the way he was looking at her as if willing her to recognize him somehow had more than a few warning bells sounding in Sam's head the longer the two held gazes.
"Son of a gun."
Sam's gaze drifts towards the phantom figure towering however transparently over the still-seated man now. Her narrowing eyes were now more puzzlement rather than anger or unease at the apparent recognition on her ghostly father's face.
"Well considering that our tie-in family member was sliced and diced in his own horror movie sequel sorry if getting mixed up in this one rubs me wrong."
At this Sam smiles despite herself as she gets to her feet at the still being had argument floating down the station hallway the same time Mindy and Chad themselves follow their bickering voices around the last curve into the hallway Sam had hidden in.
"What was that you said yesterday about putting up a united front?" Mindy fires back in the lead of the Meeks- Martian twins hurrying footfalls. Across from her, the still-yet-to-identify-himself man also climbs far more unstably to his feet too. His left arm seemed to be hanging all but uselessly at his side as he moved.
"I'll see you around Sam." He says just loud enough for Sam herself to catch before departing just as puzzling as he'd appeared before Sam finds herself engulfed in one of Mindy's greeting hugs. If it wasn't for the very real figure of his retreating back as the Meeks- Martian twins swerve around him coming in the opposite direction along the hallway Sam would have sworn the man had just been a figment of her tired imagination.
"Oh, trust me, Sammy, he's no imagination." Her father argues "How the hell he pulled it off well you'll just have to ask next time but somehow that damned son of a bi—"
"How you hold'en up Carpenter?"
Sam lets out the breath she hadn't been realizing she'd been holding at the question. More than a little grateful it had cut off her father's ramblings inside her head. "Just wish something would happen. You know? All this waiting around is starting to get to me." She confessed with a sigh.
"Ghostface giving you a call on an unlisted number is enough to shake anyone. Even you, Sammy."
Sam's smile was more genuine this time as she sidestepped Mindy to pull the new speaker in for a much-needed hug. "Hey, Kirbs." The legacy daughter greets after pulling out of the embrace.
"Holy camo."
"You're Kirby Reed."
"Syd put us in touch a few months back." Kirby explains noting the twin's probing gazes. "Better than a therapist in a way. Talking with someone who's gone through it all before. Living a horror movie." she defends with a shrug of her shoulders.
"Can I have your autograph?"
Kirby chuckles at the question whilst Mindy hurriedly pads down her pockets for a nonexistent notepad or pen.
A sudden flurry of activity draws all eyes toward the now-active police pit.
"Another drop." One officer calls a phone wedged against his shoulder as he warns them. "The janitor guy from earlier, the one we just had in for questioning?" he goes on pulling the receiver back to his ear. "Says he just got back to the theater and found her….."
Sam was moving before the words were even out of the man's mouth.
Quicker than a flash she'd stormed into the offices snatching away the phone with an out-of-breath question of her own. "Describe her. This woman you found. What does she look like?"
"Sam?"
"What's going on?"
"Oh, boy."
The others were now cluttering around her, yet Riley was making a good job of keeping any from actually touching her as the dog wound wrath like around Sam's shaking legs as more and more familiar details were whispered to her. The phone was soon falling from Sam's shaking hand as the description was relayed. A broken "No." coming in a sob before the thing had even dropped back onto the paper-cluttered desk.
"Come on Sam. Don't be stupid. We both know that can't really be her." Her father was attempting to soothe her from the glare of the closed department window.
Sam's hand lashes out flinging the once again snatched-up phone receiver towards the blurred reflection clouding her mind with a cursed "Shut the hell up." From the ghostly man's daughter.
Kirby's arms lock once again around the shaking taller woman's shoulders as Sam crumples into the offered embrace. Shaking hands fisting tightly against the back of the leather jacket clade woman's back as Sam dips her head to hide a fresh wave of tears against the shorter woman's shoulder.
"Easy, Sam. Just take it slow." Kirby repeats as more officers hurry out of the office at this new break in the case.
"It's not her Sammy. It can't be her." Her father's voice adds in despite Sam's best attempts to block it out.
"We're going. I-I have to know." Sam decides once it seemed her tears had stopped for the moment.
None of the small group thought to argue with her as she lead the way back out into the hall.
"That's my girl." Her father smiles on the hazy glass of the precinct door before Sam shoves the thing hard out of her way to get to the station parking lot.