Three days ago...
"So a hunter named Lou who sometimes worked with Angie took over. Got a job at the school working as a janitor…" Dean paused to shuffle through the notes Garth had collected. "I don't get it. The guy checked it out, couldn't find anything. He figured if there was a Leviathan, it moved on after it took out Angie."
"Except Lou is missing now, too." Sam's face was lit by the glow from his laptop as he researched. It was after midnight and Garth had staggered next door to his own motel room to sleep off the single beer he'd indulged in. "Some friend of his tipped off Garth."
"How well does Garth know any of the hunters involved?" Dean stifled a yawn. "Because this whole job sounds sketchy to me."
"Maybe…" Sam's fingers tapped loudly as he typed rapidly on his keyboard.
"What have you got, Sammy?" Dean hopped off the bed, leaving a file of papers scattered in his wake, and peered over his brother's shoulder.
"Chaplins Corners is a typical small town. Everybody knows everybody's business, people look out for each other," Sam said.
"Yeah. Monster moves in, starts eating people, you'd think folks would notice."
"Unless the monster only fed on transients."
Dean frowned. "What transients? You just said it's a tight-knit community."
"There's an Army base about sixty miles away. There's apparently a few military families every year that are willing to make the commute from Chaplins Corners. Idyllic small town setting, good school system... The kind of place parents are willing to make sacrifices for, I guess." Sam tapped another command into his computer. "Here's a list of a dozen 'Army brats' enrolled in the elementary school last year. Seven of them moved away before school started up again last month."
"Yeah, well, military families move around a lot."
"Except I hacked into the DoD personnel records for the base, and at least three of those soldiers are listed as AWOL." Sam leaned back in his chair, tilting his head to frown up at Dean quizzically.
"That doesn't make any sense. Why would married guys with kids go AWOL? Mid-life crisis?" Dean hazarded.
"One guy, maybe, but three? And what guy in the throes of a mid-life crisis takes his wife and kids along with him?"
"Yeah, that's weird," Dean had to agree.
"There's one more thing. I checked out cheap motels in Chaplins Corners," Sam began.
"Can't be any cheaper than this quality establishment," Dean quipped, glancing around at the peeling wallpaper and grunge-colored carpet.
"That's just it. The town has a fleabag motel, and last year a family with two kids enrolled in the school listed it as their place of residence...And as far as I can tell, those kids are missing now, too."
"Transient kids, just like us when Dad was dragging us all over the country on hunts." Dean's eyes narrowed.
"Not really. There's plenty of perfectly normal, non-supernatural reasons a family might be living out of a motel, Dean."
"I'm not saying they were a hunter's kids, Sammy. I'm saying they were outsiders. Kids nobody would think twice about. Kids nobody would miss after they were gone." Dean's voice had dropped to a low growl. Suddenly, the haphazard, second-hand collection of flimsy evidence had become a real hunt. And as far as Dean was concerned, it was personal.
"So we're taking the job?" Sam asked, already knowing the answer.
"Oh yeah. We're going to gank that son of a bitch."
"We can't take this job," Sam said.
The three hunters had met at a diner for breakfast. Dean shoveled scrambled eggs and bacon into his mouth while Garth took a break from doing the same with pancakes topped with a diabetic coma's worth of syrup, strawberries, and whipped cream.
"Why not?"
"Garth, Dick Roman put out an APB on us. Every single one of the Leviathans knows about me and Sam," Dean explained. "We'd tip the thing off. Then there'd be nothing to stop it from just moving on, finding a new school full of little kids to snack on."
"It's not just us, either," Sam said. "The Leviathan knew about Angie because of her cousin's memories. It knew about the next hunter, Lou, from Angie's memories. If this thing really is a Levi, it will know all about you, Garth."
"Nope." The eccentric hunter looked pleased with himself. "I got the information about this job from a friend of a friend. I never met Angie, or Lou either."
Sam considered this. "Okay, so of the three of us, you're the only one who can take on this hunt without immediately tipping off the Big Mouth. Why'd you call us? It's not like we can just go charging in there with borax bombs."
"Although that idea does have a certain appeal," Dean mused.
"No way. It would be chaos. Kids would get freaked out, maybe hurt, and there's a damn good chance the Leviathan would just get away in the confusion. "
Garth gestured with his fork. "The way I see it, the only way to catch this thing is to enroll as a student."
"Yeah, and you could totally pass as a grade school student," Dean said sarcastically. "We'll just claim you have some weird pituitary gland disorder."
Sam snorted at the mental image of Garth trying to pass as a fourth-grader. "He's right, though. The only way to draw out this Levi would be to send a kid in as bait." The brothers exchanged a look, already in unspoken agreement that there was no way they'd ever put a child at risk like that.
"But what if you guys could pass as students?" Garth asked with a grin.
Dean was immediately suspicious. "You're talking magic," he accused.
The lanky hunter smiled brightly, the picture of innocence. "I might just know somebody that knows an age-regression spell."
"You had this planned all along." Sam scowled, affronted by Garth's duplicity.
"You said it yourself," Garth reminded him. "We need a kid for bait. Or I should say, kids."
"It's the only way," Sam said slowly, reluctant, but he had to agree.
"Witchcraft," Dean groaned. "I hate witches."
Author's note: Whew, a lot of exposition in this chapter. Please bear with me, chapter four is full of fluffy Wee!chester goodness, plus a mystery blast from Sam's soulless past.
Thank you, CommChatter, for the review! You rock.