Sam paced the floor by the bed as Bobby finally slept. Ruby had been gone for hours and Sam was getting more worried by the minute. If Ruby didn't come back, he really didn't have a chance in hell of finding Dean. The more time that passed without Dean being found, the less likely it was that he'd ever see his brother alive again.
He bit nervously at the end of his thumb nail, a habit he'd never really done before, but for some reason, had picked up in Dean's absence. He thought about Dean and what might be happening to him, and the fear that trickled down his spine left Sam feeling cold. He crossed the room and cranked up the thermostat another few degrees, even though before he'd finally passed out, Bobby had been complaining about being hot in the room. Sam resumed his pacing, unsure of what else to do.
Sam had just about reached the point of stealing Bobby's car to go to the crossroads himself to find Ruby when finally there came a knock at the door. He bolted across the room and jerked open the door. Relief flooding his entire being when he saw her standing on the other side of the door. She didn't look any worse for wear as she walked past him into the room, but her eyes held a new haunted look that Sam couldn't remember seeing before in her.
Ruby walked in slowly, not stopping until she reached the unoccupied bed on the far side of the room. She sat down facing the wall, with her back to Bobby, and she bent forward, cuping the back of her neck with her hands.
"Ruby, what happened?" Sam asked quietly as he crouched down before her. His hands wrapped around her arms as he tried to get her to sit up and look at him. "Ruby?"
After what felt like a long time, Ruby did finally sit up, but she couldn't look Sam in the eye. Whatever she'd seen out there, it had her freaked, and that was a fact that left Sam feeling even more uneasy than he had before.
"I think I know how to find Sadie," she said quietly. She didn't say any more than that, though. Sam didn't need to know the truth of what she'd seen and learned tonight. The truth would come out soon enough. Right now, they needed to find Sadie. It was the only way to save Dean - and saving Dean was quite possibly the only way to stop what was coming.
She finally looked at Sam, trying to force the haunted look from her eyes. She stood up and walked over to the desk, opening his laptop and punching the power button. She sat down in the chair to wait for it to power up.
"Ruby. Aren't you going to tell me anything about what happened out there?"
Ruby shook her head slowly as she stared at the screen. "No," she said definitively as she waited for the computer to boot up.
"Ruby!" Sam snapped from beside her.
Ruby looked up at Sam, a flash of anger covering the rest of the emotions reflected in her dark eyes. "No, Sam! I'm not telling you anything more than you need to know. Period. So drop it!"
Sam was taken aback at first by her anger, but he realized quickly that it was her way of dealing with it. Whatever had happened out there, she wasn't ready to share it yet. He wasn't sure why that surprised him, but it did. Ruby - the demon herself - was scared. The thought intrigued him, but he wouldn't push her on it. He decided instead to sit quietly beside her and watch over her shoulder as she began punching keys and pulling up web pages and hacking into secret systems that even he hadn't known existed.
Two hours later, she was still clicking away at keys while Sam now once again paced the floor behind her. She wasn't much closer to finding Sadie than she'd been when they'd started, but she was determined not to give up. She knew that Sadie was behind the cryptic emails the boys had been getting, and Ruby was using every corner of her brain she possibly could to try to trace the origin of the emails.
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"Sam. Sam! Wake up!" Ruby shook Sam's shoulders as she tried to rouse him from the sleep held slipped into hours ago.
Sam at first didn't budge, then suddenly sat straight up on the bed. He looked around the room quickly and tried to blink the sleep from his eyes. Bobby was still asleep on the other bed and Ruby sat on the bed beside Sam, and expectant look on her face.
"I found her," she said without preamble.
Okay, Sam was awake now. He stood up quickly and followed Ruby over to the table where papers covered most of the surface and almost every one had long lines of scribbled notes. Most were in English, but a few were in languages and even symbols that he didn't recognize. He looked at the screen over her shoulder as she looked up at him.
"You won't believe this, but if this is right, she's really only about 45 miles from here. She covered her tracks better than well, and it took a long time to get through all of the shadows and server jumps. I can tell you for sure that she did NOT want you to find her."
Sam looked at the map on the screen and sure enough, the town that had a small graphic of a push pin stuck in it was no more than 45 miles from them. "But you're sure this is her? I mean, I don't want to burst through the door and find some 8 year old kid playing chess online."
Ruby looked back at the screen and nodded her head. "Unless I took a wrong turn in Albuquerque," she started, quoting her favorite line from countless episodes of Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes, "Sadie is right there." Ruby handed him a small piece of paper with an address scribbled on it.
Sam looked down at the paper in his hands and felt his heart start to race a little. It was finally happening. It had been almost a week since he'd switched places with Dean, and finally, they had a lead on some answers. "Let's go!" Sam said quickly as he reached for his jacket and the keys to the Impala.
Ruby was slightly surprised by that. "You want me to come with you?" she asked wearily.
Sam stopped and looked back at her. "Yeah, I do. I don't know what I might be up against with her, and it would probably be good to have you there."
Ruby stared at Sam for a long time before finally nodding her head and reaching for her own jacket. Sam smiled slightly at her, grateful that she was coming with him. He quickly scribbled a note to Bobby and left it on the table beside Bobby's head. Ruby and Sam headed out together, the two of them silent as Sam stopped for gas and then hit the highway leading to the town on the map.