Chapter 7

It had been a few hours since they got back to the cheap little motel room. Sam spent most of his time on his laptop while Dean was currently cleaning his gun. Neither of them had really said much, it was starting to get late in the night. Dean had checked the clock and it was 12:30 AM he wasn't even close to being tired. He looked over to Sam who seemed to be closing up for the night.

" We need to figure out how to tell her. You and I both know we can't just blurt it out."

" We'll talk about it in the morning Sam."

He left no room for discussion. Dean didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to tell Janie that they were lying. She trusted him and he didn't want to ruin it. Telling her would change everything it could even put her life at risk. He stood up and headed for the door.

" Where are you going?" He didn't even look at Sam he just left. Not even sure he knew where he was going, he just took off.

He ended up at her house, not really understanding why he had chosen to go there but choosing to stay regardless. It took him awhile before he got out of the car, but it was something moving around outside that pushed him to get out.

" Who's there?"

It wasn't so much a question as a dare to who or whatever was up there to show their face. Then he heard an odd sound coming from what seemed like the backyard. He made his way around the side of the house quietly. Trying to open the gate was useless it was locked, which had made him wonder how something could get back there in the first place. It was a rather high fence to try and jump, it didn't really have much to grip onto to pull oneself over it either, so he brought the impala up closer. He used the hood so that he could get over the fence. He remained very quiet once over, but he had barely taken five steps before it was obvious what both the movement and sound was. The question was how did it get there. The noise had stopped but he still couldn't see it, the next thing he knew he could hear what sounded like running coming his way. There was a low guttural sound not long after.

" Gus" the dog seemed happy to see him. 'He must have a secret way in'. The dog was pressed against Dean's leg with its tail wagging.

" You been here awhile?" He asked the dog, in response Gus looked at him expectantly. " Hungry Gus?" If the dog had been out here since Janie had been in the hospital it was likely he hadn't had any food, with that Dean decided to employ his lock picking skills on the back door to get them both inside.

The backdoor wasn't the most complicated lock he had ever encountered so it wasn't long before he had had Gus fed and he was wandering around the main floor of Janie's house. There were times when he wished that he and Sam had grown up in a house like this and not going place to place, motel to motel the way that they had all their lives following work, leads, the family business. It was a home, and looking around he could see why she wanted her sister and niece back. The place felt empty when you were alone, with all the photos on the walls you always felt surrounded by the ghosts of those in the frames. There were a lot of pictures of Janie's family from when she was young but as the years went on there were less, there were so many photos of Jeannie, Beth, and Zachary. Then they suddenly stopped. It seemed to Dean that Janie's parents must have taken their son's death badly, that they just didn't want to take family photos when there would always be one of the missing. He wanted to go upstairs, wanted to see what else he could find out but Gus was following him like he was glued to him all the while whimpering.

" You miss her, boy?" The dog looked up at him and then started to look around the room like crazy.

" She'll be home tomorrow, don't worry." It was like that dog understood everything you told him because once Deane had told him Janie would be home soon Gus walked over to the couch and jumped on it, then went to sleep. He needed to sleep too. Dean locked to the back door from the inside then left the same way that he'd come, through the yard. He didn't leave right away he sat in the impala once more just waiting. He had spent a lot of time waiting around over the past few days, it was an odd thing for him.

It was almost 3:00 AM when Dean got back and Sam was sound asleep when he crawled into his own bed. Before long both brothers were woken up by the alarm that they'd set the night before.

" Where'd you go last night?" Sam didn't get an answer. He was going to be in for an interesting day that was for sure.

" Fine, don't tell me. But we do have to get going Janie's being discharged at 10:00 AM and we need the time to get there." The brothers left and got to the hospital just in the nick of time.

" Alright, Ms. Morrison I'll just need you to sign these papers and then you're good to go." She wasn't really paying attention to the nurse who had been talking, on the one hand she desperately wanted to go home, to be away from the hospital, but on the other hand she also didn't want to jeopardize her safety. Things had been quiet here and she had been able to sleep without feeling like she needed to keep one eye open the whole night. Just as she was signing the discharge form she saw Eric walk into her room.

" You ready to go home? Gus misses you." Her dog. He made it back? He was OK?

" What?" She looked and Eric accusingly.

" I went to your place yesterday, to uh check things out and he was in your yard." She looked pensive for a moment as though she was trying to figure out how her dog could possibly have made it into the yard with the gate being locked, then it dawned on her.

" The false panel. My dad installed that thing years ago when we had our first dog, I almost forgot it was there."

"He's a smart dog." This time it was Paul's reply not Eric. Paul had always seemed to sneak into the room as though he was invisible almost always catching her off guard. He then reached past Eric and offered to wheel her out of the hospital as she wasn't supposed to be walking yet. When they'd reached the car Eric looked over at Paul and said " You're riding in the back -"

"But -"

" No buts, it'll be too much of a hassle for her to get back there and she'll probably get hurt getting in." The taller of the two gave a very clearly un-amused look, but he wasn't about to argue. It wasn't easy getting in the back of an old car, especially when you couldn't use one side of your whole body.

Once Janie was settled in the car Dean set off to her house. The drive was quiet. They arrived at her house rather quickly, and had settled her in and no sooner Gus was licking her and tripping both Sam and Dean due to a sheer clumsy joy to have his owner back home.

" Eric, you've been really quiet since we left the hospital, is everything alright?" Janie looked genuinely concerned for the hunter.

" It's been a long couple of days and to be honest I know it'll keep going until you're safe and that thing is dead." He wanted to say more but he still wasn't quite sure how.

" Eric, I want to ask you something, I had a lot of time to myself at the hospital and I got a lot of thinking done too." This, this was not something Dean had wanted to hear, and he could see Sam visibly tense up behind him. They both had a good idea of what might come out of Janie's mouth.

" Janie you can ask me anything." She stopped petting Gus and looked Dean dead in the eye while he noticed her hand move to the couch cushions.

" Who are you two?"

"Not real reporters that's for sure." Sam answered.

" I know, you think I didn't look you two up the first chance I got, the names you guys chose kind of gave you away from the get go."

" Then why did you go along with everything?"

" Because you two seem to know something about all this," she gestured around her. "And you seem to genuinely want to get my sister and niece back home safe." Dean was not prepared for this conversation and if he was honest with himself just a little bit frightened and what Janie might have in the seat cushions where her hand had yet to come out of, and yet he had finally found his voice.

" We're hunters. We go after supernatural cases and try to help people when we can. It's a business, it's our family business. Giangantor over here" he pointed at Sam "Is my brother. His name is Sam, and I'm Dean, and we're the Winchester's."

" Can I trust you? I want my family back." She said in a tone that made both brothers understand she did not want to be fucked with.

" That's why we're here. We drove all the way down from Maine to help you get them back. You can trust us." Sam was usually pretty convincing when he tried, but with the look on Janie's face Dean wasn't sure. She then looked right at Dean as if she had already chosen to trust Sam a long time ago. It was as though she was silently asking Dean if she could trust him with more than the case, if she could trust him with her. All of her. He moved in closer towards her, which caused her to finally pull her left hand out of the couch and point a gun at him yet again. He kept moving in until he was kneeling down right in front of her, his abdomen pressed to her knees, her gun pressed to his chest. His hands at either side of her hips. Dean who have yet to break eye contact since he had started his move towards her softened his gaze only slightly to be sure that it was caring and not intimidating.

"You can trust me."