Author: Mirrordance

Title: Less Traveled By

Summary: High school is hard enough without an absentee father, restless spirits, haunted cars, a missing classmate and a sexual predator on the loose. Then again, the Winchesters never did anything the easy way. Dean is 17 and Sam is 13.

Hi guys,

First off, thanks to all who read, alert-ed, favorited and ESPECIALLY all who reviewed the last installment of Less Traveled By. More specific responses to certain querries and comments should be making their way into your respective inboxes in the next few hours and days, but I thought I'd get this new chapter out; I am trying to be very disciplined with regard to the timing because it's a complex case fic so I'd hate for you to forget the details by the time I update. In short: I'm working as fast as I can and I am trying my hardest not to make you wait too long, haha :) Your comments & constructive criticism (c & c's) certainly go a long way toward steering me in the right direction so MASSIVE THANKS for all those who take the time to let me know if I'm more or less on the right track :)

Anyway, as always, I look forward to your c&c's so please let me know what you think if you have time. Without further ado, Chapter 5 of Less Traveled By:

Less Traveled By

5: A Job for Us

1997

"We interrupt this program for breaking news."

She was a pretty reporter, one of Sam's favorites from the ones covering the Annie Huntington case. She tended to ask intelligent questions, he thought, and the curly blond hair did her no harm either. She stood ramrod straight and poised in her sharp suit in a snappy studio, before the scene cut to a montage of Annie Huntington's yearbook picture and a couple other photographs, and stock footage of the exterior of their high school.

"A couple of days ago, sixteen-year-old Annie Huntington was drugged and taken from outside her school by an unknown perpetrator, who stuffed her inside the trunk of his car with another girl, who is - for now - only known by her first name, "Linda." During the course of this torturous drive, Annie broke the taillights of the car and wiggled her fingers out the hole to alert drivers on the road that she was trapped inside the trunk. Brothers Sam and Dean Winchester-"

Sam groaned inwardly as his and Dean's yearbook photos came on; these weren't ones from their current school and was a couple months, maybe a year old, but apparently, some overeager intern or network researcher was a sharp tool over there and managed to get hold of them. The Winchesters seldom stayed long enough anywhere to get their photos in the yearbooks, one of the few positives in their nomadic lives, in Sam's eye.

"-spotted her fingers as they drove down Daffy-Ashland Way. They called 911 and went in pursuit of the vehicle. Their relentless effort to help the kidnapped teenager resulted in an accident that ultimately saved Annie Huntington but left both boys hurt, and the unknown perpetrator still at-large with Linda still in his clutches.

"Just a little over an hour ago, testimony from the Winchester brothers led to the arrest of 28-year-old Marcus Tenet, who is the registered owner of the car that had been Annie Huntington's temporary prison."

Tenet was a gangly, freckled guy who looked far younger than the claimed twenty-eight years. He had thick glasses and unruly, curly brown hair, and he looked shock-scared and pale as he was dragged between Detectives Vaughn and Diamond into the police station.

"I didn't do nothin'!" he yelled at anyone who would listen, "I haven't seen that goddamn goddamn car in weeks! It ain't mine no more, I-!"

"The vehicle was not found in his home," the reporter went on, "And no trace of the missing Linda could be found in the premises at this time. We will bring you more information as they become available."

Dean had been wheeled back to their room unconscious about an hour before the news broke, trailed by their weary-looking father. Sam looked away from the television screen and glanced at him now, and John Winchester didn't look triumphant or anything, he just looked really tired as he stared up at the TV.

"You okay dad?" he found himself asking.

John shook his head in disbelief, "The things you boys get into."

Sam sighed heavily, jutted his chin out at Dean's sleeping form, "When's he gonna wake up?"

"Couple of hours if we're lucky and he stays under to rest a little longer," John reported. His jaw tightened, looking down at his older son, "Humans, huh, Sammy?"

Sam pursed his lips, turned back to the news, "They're saying they couldn't find the other girl in Marcus' house. No body, no trace, nothing. They couldn't even find the car."

"They just apprehended him, Sam," John told him mildly, "They're working on it, and you can expect more information to keep trickling in during the next few hours, the next few days. This is just the start, Sammy, but it's the end of your part. You and Dean... you boys did good out there. I'd rather you boys didn't do anything at all, truth be told, but you did good out there. I'm proud of you."

Sam wished Dean was awake to hear all that. Praises from their father were few and far between. He played with a frayed end of his blanket, "Well there are... human monsters too, right? And it's not... it's not any less to be working on them instead of the ones we hunt, right?"

His father gave him a sidelong stare, trying to get a read of some sort out of him and apparently not getting anything because he just agreed. "It's not any less, no. But that's not our job."

Sam didn't mean anything other than what he said, so he just sat back, thinking about his brother and wishing he was already awake.

"Sam...?"

Sam groaned at the intrusive sound of his brother's voice breaking into the warm, comfortable clutches of a deep, restful sleep.

"Sam, you awake?"

Sam wasn't and they both knew it, but it was Dean waking Sam up for some need or other and at the same time trying to convey that he wasn't. He could be kind of complex like that sometimes...

"No," Sam growled at him, "What do you think?"

"Geez," the breathy, quiet voice murmured, "You're all prickly."

Sam sighed heavily and opened his eyes, saw the white ceilings and the white walls, and then shot up awake to a sitting position in realization, suddenly freeing himself from sleep and disorientation.

"Ow, crap!" he moaned, pressing a palm to his head and sinking back to bed; the doctors said he was mostly healed, but the vertigo was going to be a recurring problem for a few more days.

"Sam, you okay?" Dean asked, alarmed, also shifting to sit up.

"Stay still, damn it," Sam snapped at him, "Just... gimme a sec, all right?" he caught his breath, felt his older brother's worried eyes leveled unwavering on him, "I'm sorry, Dean, I was asleep and I forgot and... and I'm just happy you're awake now."

"Where's dad?" Dean asked.

"Probably stepped out for food or coffee or something," Sam wrinkled his nose, "I hope it was for a shower and a change of clothes."

Dean smiled a little at that, giving his eyes some light for the first time in days. "Got any news for me, squirt?"

"You ah..." Sam hesitated, "You know why we're here?"

"White car, taillights, fingers, blah blah blah," Dean snapped, "Stop testing, I'm fine, we're over the memory thing. News?"

"They got the guy who owns the car," Sam reported, "His name is Marcus Tenet. He's just twenty-eight years old. He doesn't have a criminal record or anything like a history of doing what he did with Annie and Linda, and he says he hasn't seen the car since he sold it a couple of weeks ago. The car wasn't in his house, and there's no trace of this Linda girl either."

"He sold the car?" Dean asked, frowning, "Then why's it still under his name?"

"I don't think it was very formal," Sam said with a shrug, "He said he needed the money and wasn't attached to the car so he put it up for sale and this guy – somebody named Duane Viner - just plucked it up a couple of weeks ago and said he'd take care of the paperwork. I guess he didn't. The cops started looking at existing records on 'Duane Viner' and didn't get anything. So either it's a burner name or... well, you know how Occam's Razor goes; the simplest explanation is the likely explanation, and maybe Marcus Tenet was just making him up to try and get out of this. He probably just got rid of the car." Sam bit at his lip, "And... and the other girl too, I... I guess..."

"About that," Dean hesitated, licking his lips in thought, "I uh... I need to pick at this brain of yours, Sammy."

"Yeah...?"

Dean's eyes clouded again, and Sam felt deprived of that light. The glazed loneliness made Dean look so, so tired.

"When we went down that road," he said softly, the blankets twisting in his curling fingers, "I remembered everything. What you said, what I said, what I saw..."

"You did good, man," Sam assured him quickly, feeling out of his depth with an older brother who seemed so suddenly and uncharacteristically hesitant.

"When the trunk popped open," Dean said, shaking his head slightly like he was seeing the scene in his mind again, "And Annie was on the road, the trunk behind her... I couldn't be wrong about it, Sammy, the headlights were right on it, lighting it up and... and I guess what I'm saying is... from what I saw, there wasn't anyone else inside the trunk."

Sam's eyes widened, "What do you mean there-"

"There wasn't anyone else inside!" Dean barked at him in frustration, but not at Sam, not really, and his younger brother understood it completely, "Once Annie spilled out on the road, there wasn't anyone else left in there. I think she was alone in the trunk, Sam."

Sam bit his lower lip in thought, "So... so what? Maybe Annie was dreaming up another girl in there with the drugs she was on, or maybe her mind conjured up like, an imaginary person there as a survival mechanism... or... or are you saying this has turned into a job for us?"

Us like the Winchesters as hunters. Us. As opposed to 'them' which was everyone else.

"Maybe this Linda was a previous victim from god knows when," Dean said, "Haunting the trunk."

"Annie was saying she felt really cold in there," Sam said. The thought made his skin crawl, "And you know what else Annie said? When Linda was talking to her, Linda told her that she couldn't remember anything aside from stepping out her house in the morning. But there were no missing girls named Linda reported the morning that Annie was kidnapped. The cops just said maybe she lost track of time in there, but if Linda's a ghost... it could have been some other morning days, weeks, months or even years ago."

"So you said this Marcus Tenet guy has no priors?" Dean asked.

"No," Sam replied, "But it could also mean that Linda was a victim from a long time ago and he just never got caught."

Dean bit his lip in thought, "B-but what if I'm wrong, Sam, what if I remembered wrong?"

"You got the plates and everything else right, didn't you?" Sam pointed out.

"But what if I'm wrong, Sam?" Dean asked again, "What if the coppers stop looking for this Linda chick based on what I tell them, and I'm wrong? I don't want to tell them that I didn't see anyone, 'cos I don't want them to stop looking. Because I can be wrong, I mean, this head is categorically you know... fucked up right now. If they stop looking and she's really out there..."

"I understand that," Sam told him after a moment of thought, "But if you don't tell them exactly what you know to be the truth, what if they are looking in all the wrong places? You tell them what you know, Dean, and then let them sort out what's what."

Dean pursed his lips in thought, "I don't know, Sam... d'you think... maybe what we can do is like, research. Look up if Annie has a history of psych issues and shit, and check missing Linda's from other years and other places who can possibly be the ghost in the trunk. Only when we're absolutely sure Annie wasn't in the trunk with an actual person, then I can tell the cops what I didn't see so they can stop looking or they can look somewhere else."

Sam narrowed his eyes at Dean in calculation. It was actually a fair plan. The cops would keep looking just in case there really was a girl who had been with Annie, and once the Winchesters know for sure that it was just a ghost, then they can tell the cops what Dean saw. "Me and dad, we'll research. You take it easy and rest."

"But it's just sitting around and-"

"And reading," Sam finished for him, "Your vision is so screwed right now Dean, I can see your eyes are all wonky from here. Just get better, and we'll figure this out."

Dean opened his mouth to argue, but he could barely even glare at his brother or lift his head without feeling nauseous, so he just leaned back, groaned and closed his eyes. "Fine," he spat out, "But you're still a bossy bitch."

They told their father about Dean not seeing anyone inside the trunk with Annie after he returned from a coffee run. He had looked at Dean and Sam pensively, but generally received the information without doubt, which was a huge reassurance for Dean. Sam even noted how his older brother's stiff, lowered cautious shoulders had relaxed after their father said, "Okay. We can work with that."

Dean exhaled in relief, nodded before wincing in pain and regretting the movement. He was tiring again, and anyway it was roundabouts of the middle of the night. Their father told them to go back to sleep and said that he was going to be back in the morning. This irked Sam a little.

"Where are you going?" he asked his father pointedly.

"Out," John snapped at him, not appreciating the tone, "I'll be back."

"Where are you going, dad?" Sam asked again, this time more careful, more mild, adding the last word to show his father he understood his place here, "I thought you said you were going to stick around...?"

"You're safe with the guard outside for now," John assured him, "I'll start looking into this Linda situation, especially since this could very well be our job now. And then I'll go check us out of that motel we were staying in before I left-"

"You really don't have to," Dean said, a little nervously.

"We're losing money and no one's staying there," John pointed out.

"I checked us out of that motel days ago and moved me and Sammy somewhere else," Dean said, squirming a little, "It's cheaper so it's a bit further out. Unless I missed more days than I think I did in here, the sublet on the studio's good for a week yet. You don't have to worry about that, dad."

"Where's this place?" John asked, "I guess I can use a shower, settle some of the stuff from the truck down, get you some of your own things-"

"I'd rather you didn't go there yet," Dean said quickly, becoming more alert, "It'll be a mess. I mean it's an okay place generally but I wasn't expecting you back so soon and I haven't really had any chance to cl-"

"I'm sure it's fine, Dean," his father assured him, "You boys are good here on your own for a couple hours?"

"Like it matters," Sam said under his breath.

John turned to his younger son angrily, "Sam, I got no idea what had crawled its way up your-"

"You know where my clothes are?" Dean cut him off, voice suddenly over-loud.

"What...?" their father's face was scrunched up, and he looked like he was trying to figure out if he was dealing with a mutiny and if he should start shooting people before it got out of hand.

"The keys, dad," Dean clarified, "The keys to the studio are in the jacket I was wearing in the accident."

It distracted his father enough such that John had left Sam's muttering alone. He took his sons' clothes from a clear bag the hospital personnel had put in one of the closets in the room. They were grimy and bloodied, which was a heck of a way to distract him again, and he murmured something about also doing the laundry before leaving his sons alone for the night.

The moment the door closed behind him, Dean glanced at his younger brother curiously, "You all right?"

"Yeah," Sam shrugged.

"Did I miss anything while I was out?"

"No," Sam mumbled, noncommittally.

"What were you saying," Dean pressed, "About dad saying he was gonna stick around?"

"He told me nothing could get to us without getting through him first," Sam finally replied, "I told him, sure, when he's around, which he almost never is. Like now. See? The moment he gets a whiff of this being a job and not just some normal accident he leaves us behind. But I guess I hit a sore spot."

Dean groaned, "Sam, you think? Leave the guy alone, man, he's gotta do what he's gotta do."

"Yeah," Sam sighed, "I guess. Whatever."

Later that night, after securing documents from the usual sources (and / or the usual suspects), John drove to where his children have been living for the last few days to to sit down and get more work done and maybe some rest afterwards.

The closer he got to the apartment, though, the deeper his heart sank into his stomach. When he finally parked in front of the dated structure, his heart could have already gone six feet down below his feet.

'Dingy' was a generous term for the dilapidated building and the area around it. The building stood alone for the most part, what with being outside the city and the city not having been very cosmopolitan on its own to begin with. There were lonely street lamps too far apart lining an empty, pockmarked road. It looked like a dying street.

John got off the car, and for a moment he let himself have the luxury of being irritated with Dean. Why would he move them to a dump like this, why would he shut his trap if they needed the money, why would he endanger himself and his kid brother by moving somewhere this shady-

John walked into the building and walked up to the sixth floor studio that his sons have been calling home in his absence. The lights in the public spaces flickered, and they had far less to do with the presence of spirits and more to do with simple neglect. The carpet was stained and ratty, thinned out by decades of treading feet.

His anger morphed into one against himself, especially after he noticed that while the place was falling apart, the residents seemed to be comprised of old people and simple families borderline of destitute. Dean would not be moving into anywhere that dangerous people lived, where Sam could be in danger. He just needed a roof for him and his brother.

John let himself inside the tiny apartment, and it was actually fairly neat; he supposed Dean was just discouraging him from coming in to see the place in general. John knew that if the living quarters were this shabby, there was probably nothing in the refrigerator and the pantry in terms of food and general provisions but he looked anyway, just to be perverse, just to punish himself a little. He wanted to remember this place, let it sink its teeth in.

No wonder Sam was pissed at him, he thought miserably. He sank on the sofa, rubbed his hands over his face and ached for Mary.

John did not get any work done in the dingy studio, and just decided to bring all the raw material he had with him to the hospital. He'd also done a quick laundry stop and brought his kids fresh clothes for when they checked out. When he walked into their room, Sam was eating breakfast and Dean's bed was empty.

"Where's your brother?" John asked. It couldn't have been anything, but the sight of the bed made his heart speed up a little.

"He had to go for a scan," Sam said as he chewed, "Doctor said there's no problem, it's just routine and they want to make sure he's on track. He also said I could get out of here today."

John gaged the youngest Winchester's mood a little, and Sam seems to have cooled off from the previous night's animosity.

"That's good, Sammy," John said, "I got some work done. You up for helping your old man out?"

"Sure," Sam said. He seemed more chipper today, likely due to the prospect of being released from the hospital and the good prognosis on his older brother.

"I'll get a better idea of your timelines after I talk to your doc," John told him as he handed some sheafs of paper to Sam, "Then I can talk to your teachers and get you your homework or whatever else you missed."

"I am getting kinda bored," Sam conceded, "What am I looking at?"

"A hell of a lot of missing Linda's; I got missing persons records from the time the car was out in the market to the day Annie was kidnapped," John told him, "In there you've got Marcus Tenet's bio, and Annie Huntington's too. There's also a couple notes in there on the effects of the drug she was given; maybe it was a hallucinogenic. Either way, see if anything pops out, I got other stuff with me too." John settled down on the cot and started reading.

"Nothing wrong with Annie," Sam murmured, minutes into looking at his stack of papers. He was scanning the sheets and organizing them into separate piles (for some logic that was as of now unknown to John); this made John smile a little. Sam on the hunt was something to behold too, after all.

"And the drugs found in her system have displayed hallucinogenic effects on some people," Sam concluded, "Nothing statistically significant. If Annie is one of those types of people though... why conjure up someone like 'Linda?' Usually, hallucinations have some basis in reality, right?"

"Yeah," John conceded, "Figures in real life that push into the hallucination. In this case, this 'Linda' girl was someone Annie was helping, or someone who was keeping her focused on surviving. We should be looking at Annie's bio if there's a 'Linda' who was a comforting or strengthening presence in her life."

"None that I could see," Sam said, looking at his father seriously, "So... you think Annie was really in there with a ghost, don't you dad?"

"Seems that way," John grunted, as he looked through his own papers.

Sam put aside one pile, neatly. "Well, I think so."

He went on to other things. "Marcus Tenet got the car when he was in high school," Sam said, "He got it brand new, and has had it ever since. That should narrow things down; at least we wouldn't have to look at previous owners' bios or something."

"This is an excellent start, kiddo," John told him, as he leafed through the documents. He paused, as a particularly striking piece caught his attention, "Well I'll be damned."

"What?" Sam asked him, as his eyes rove through the information, "Dad, what?"

It was at that time that the door to the room opened and Doctor Bradley brought an exhausted Dean back. He assured the family that he should be able to release the older teen in a couple of days. Sam, however, was free to leave in the next few hours. When the doctor left, Sam – hot on the trail of the case – pressed his father for the information again.

"Dad, what did you find?"

Dean was slumped in bed, but perked at the smell of the hunt, "You found something?"

"Annie's not a psycho who made 'Linda' up in her head," Sam summarized in a breath, "The drugs couldn't have been responsible either, so the likelihood is we're really dealing with a ghost. The car had always belonged to Marcus Tenet. We were looking at missing persons records from the time the car went on the market to a few days ago, when dad found something."

Both boys looked at their father expectantly.

John separated the piece of paper he had found from the rest of the documentation and held it up, "One of Marcus Tenet's classmates went missing when he was in high school in the late 80's: a girl named Linda Carin. No one ever knew what had happened to her."

Dean didn't like Sam out of his sight for extended periods of time, so he was glowering all through the morning as his father and brother worked, and it was why he was glaring at the nurse who disconnected Sam from his IVs and at their father for signing the discharge forms later that afternoon.

"You'll be following him in a couple of days, Dean," their father told him knowingly, not even looking up from the papers he was scanning through.

"But I'm fine now!" Dean retorted.

John peered up at him from the forms in censure.

"You've been at this all day," John told him flatly, "Drop it."

Dean bit his tongue, but kept up the petulance up by pouting and crossing his arms over his chest. The silence lasted all of three seconds.

"How sure are Vaughn and Diamond that this Marcus Tenet sicko has no accomplices?" he asked, "Sam will be safer here with me."

"He'll be with me," John said, "You got a problem with that?"

Dean frowned, but said, "No sir."

"Tenet's profile fits the loner mode," John explained more patiently, "So no, they don't think he has any accomplices. The cops are even pulling the guard at your door."

"You're just gonna miss me," Sam told Dean cheekily. He was bouncing a little, feeling better and eager to be released from the hospital.

"Shut up, Sam," Dean growled.

"Stop pouting, Dean," John told him as he handed the forms to the nurse, "You look like you're eight. Come to think of it... you were probably doing this whenever Sam had to go somewhere you couldn't follow way back then too."

Dean ignored that and chose a different tack, "But I'll be so bored here, or they're gonna saddle me with a really annoying roommate or something."

"Deal with it," John told him lightly, "We'll be by early tomorrow, Dean." His eyes darkened slightly, as it had after Sam and Dean told him about what Dean remembered of the car accident and about the non-existent Linda earlier, "I'll probably have somethings to update you on by then too. Things should move much faster now."

Dean pressed his lips together. "Just... just be careful out there, dad."

Out there was anywhere he wasn't in and could not follow.

"Don't break out, Dean," John said, making him smile a little.

Sam got up from his bed, hopped experimentally from foot to foot. He still looked pale in Dean's eye, but he was steady on his feet. His eyes were glassy but bright, determined.

"Sammy: behave."

Sam waved the advice away like it was just a puff of smoke. He walked over to Dean's side, "You gonna be okay alone here?"

"I already told you I wasn't."

Sam's dimples winked at him, but he insisted, "Seriously, Dean."

"Yeah," Dean assured him, "See you tomorrow, bitch."

A few hours after Sam and his dad left, Annie Huntington knocked on his door before she let herself inside. She still looked bruised, but she was in her own clothes and flanked by her parents.

"Hey, Dean," she said hesitantly, before she came into some resolution that was quiet and known only to herself, and she shot forward and gave him a bear hug.

"Woah!" he said, and caught aback by the force and openness of her affection, he patted her back hesitantly, "We should probably have dinner first or something, sugar."

She pulled back, her face beet-red. "My parents are here, you idiot!"

"It was a joke," he said, chagrined, as he looked past her to her folks, "Hello Mr. and Mrs. Huntington. I knew you were there. It was a joke."

"Hello, Dean," the mother greeted him, before Annie's dad moved past her and embraced Dean even more affectionately than his daughter had.

The hug pushed the air out of Dean's lungs in a surprised "Oof!" and made the world spin a little, but he was shyly pleased about receiving the open appreciation.

"Try not to kill him, Jed," Margie admonished her husband, "He's all skin and bones and he's still hurt."

"He can hack it, Margie," Jed said confidently, "Dean's a hero."

This made Dean's cheeks feel flushed and hot. He cleared his throat and turned to Annie, "You're checking out, huh? Everyone's being set free but me."

"Aw, we just missed Sam!" Jed exclaimed, noticing the empty bed beside Dean's and looking genuinely saddened.

"You're looking much better, Dean," Margie assured him, "From the last time we saw you. It will only be upwards from here. Oh! And once you are out and feeling better, I have a bit of fete in mind in you and your brother's honor, and as a celebration for the safe return of our daughter."

A what? His eyes crossed in confusion.

"It will be nice and intimate," Margie went on, "Some of you and Annie's friends, a couple of Annie's aunts and uncles-"

"Gramma will be there," Jed added, "She saw your picture on TV, and said you and your brother are very fine-looking boys."

"Your grandma," Dean said to Annie numbly, trying to catch up, "That's nice."

"No," Jed corrected him, "My gramma."

"Oh," Dean said, wondering how in the world someone can live that long and if he should bring a shotgun and salt rounds along.

"The senator will be in town soon so scheduling it around that time will be nice so he can drop by," Jed added, "The mayor, certainly, will make an appearance. A couple of our friends from the community and local industry, some friends from the press... it will be fun, Dean, and good for a young man such as yourself, especially at this point when you're beginning to apply for college. It will be an excellent time to network."

Dean's brows furrowed, "I wasn't really planning on going to college, sir."

Margie blinked at him, "Oh but Dean, you must, a young man with your talents and force of personality." She patted his leg knowingly, "At any rate, we will see about changing your mind by then. Your father will certainly approve."

Dad would be as enthusiastic about sending me to college as he is about paying for me to get a cheap suit to go to this goddamn party, Dean thought miserably, but that was another day's problem. Today, he was getting a headache from all this optimistic enthusiasm. Happy people. Bleh.

"We'll let you rest for now," Annie told him, and motioned for someone from just outside his door. It was a man in a sharp suit bringing along a fancy basket of goodies to his night table. The package was all done up in fancy wrapping, and it was so large Dean's eyes widened.

"Thank you, Daniel," Mrs. Huntington said to the man as he exited before turning to Dean, "Just a small 'thank you' Dean. We weren't sure what you'd like."

"So you brought me the supermarket?" he asked her with an appreciative smirk as his eyes roved over the treats. It was food enough to tide the Winchesters over for a week, at least, maybe two if he stretched it the way he's learned how...

"There's some books and magazines in there too," Annie rambled, "Comics, what have you. I don't think though that your doctor would be too happy about you reading yet. Maybe I should pull those out... but we thought you'd like that better than get-well teddy bears. Anyway like I said, we weren't really sure-"

"It looks great, Annie," he assured her, and turning to her parents said sincerely, "Thank you."

"No, Dean," Jed said, eyes watering a little, and it was disconcerting on the burly man, "Thank you."

Annie and Margie left him with a wave. Jed lingered a little, and when he shook Dean's hand, he had left a sheet of paper in there before making a hasty exit.

Dean glanced at it: a small envelope, and inside were two personal checks. One was made payable to Mr. Samuel Winchester for a mind-boggling Five thousand dollars, and the other was made out to Mr. Dean Winchester for the same amount.

"Mr Huntington-!" he called out, but they were long gone.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Thanks for reading and 'til the next post!