Dean plopped his fake credit card in front of the motel manager and requested, "One room please."

He lifted it from the guest book and read the name. Glancing up at the three of them, he asked, "You guys having a reunion or something?"

"What do you mean?" replied Sam.

"That other guy, Bert Aframian. He came in and bought out a room for the whole month."

Dean and Sam glanced at each other with renewed hope from the new lead. After getting their own room, the brothers asked where "Bert" was staying, and immediately walked down the rows of doors until they found their father's. Sam picked the lock and Dean was look out, with Lynn watching them the whole time. Once the door was open, Sam walked inside. He turned to see Lynn gingerly step in, but Dean was still standing out there. He grabbed the back of Dean's jacket collar, dirt puffing into the air, and harshly yanked him into the room.

The door shut behind them and all three stared at the room in disarray. A suitcase was open and half empty on the unmade bed with books and notepads spread out all over the chairs and desk. Every wall was covered with maps, pictures, post its, and pages of info with red tape connecting the trail of clues together. Dean went over to the table lamp and turned it on, revealing a half-eaten burger left exposed in the wrapping. He picked it up, sniffing it, and groaned, "I don't think he's been here for a couple days at least."

Sam and Lynn stepped over a barrier of salt. He bent down and picked up the white grains, rubbing them between his fingers. Looking up at Dean, he said, "Salt, cat's-eye shells. He was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in."

Dean walked along the wall of the victim's profiles, trying to piece together what their father was hunting. "What do you got here?" Sam asked as he joined him.

"Centennial Highway victims. I don't get it. I mean, different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities…" Dean pondered.

Sam turned to see Lynn walking along the other walls and stopping in front of one specific page taped in the corner. Frowning, Sam followed and looked over her shoulder. It was a note hanging over the same article they found of Constance Welch. Woman in White.

"There's always a connection, right?" Dean went on. "What do these guys have in common?"

"They're all unfaithful," answered Lynn.

"What?"

Sam leaned around her to turn on another lamp and illuminated the wall. "She's right. Dad figured it out. Found the same article we did on Constance Welch. She's a Woman in White."

"Ha! Look at you," chuckled Dean, giving Lynn a sly smile. "Little Miss Hunter-in-Training. Nice work."

Lynn sheepishly shrugged and replied, "It was on the wall."

"Yeah, but you found it and know the legend."

"How do you know the legend?" asked Sam.

"I-I like folklore and mythology," Lynn did her best not to stammer or slip up and tell them the whole truth. "So I like to read about a lot of different ones."

Sam slightly smiled, intrigued, and nodded saying, "That's definitely helpful in this line of work."

"All right, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would've found the corpse and destroyed it." Dean said.

"She might have another weakness."

"No, Dad would want to make sure. He'd dig her up." Dean strode over to the wall and glanced at the article, asking, "Does it say where she's buried?"

"No, not that I can tell," replied Sam. "If I were Dad, though, I'd go ask her husband. If he's still alive."

"All right, why don't you see if you and Lynn can find an address? I'm gonna get cleaned up."

Lynn stepped off to the side and found herself in front of the mirror. She stilled, staring at herself fully and clearly, and wondered if her own reflection would stop startling her. She was just so young. Not that she considered herself being among the elderly at 34 – hell she was actually in better shape than she was as a teenager – but it was one thing to look at a picture of yourself with an old friend on a high school graduation road trip and something completely different to be aged back into your 19-year-old body.

"Hey, Dean, what I said earlier about Mom and Dad…" Sam earnestly said, snapping Lynn back into her new reality. "I'm sorry."

Dean held up his hand and replied, "No chick-flick moments."

Sam scoffed out a laugh and playfully responded, "All right, jerk."

"Bitch."

Sam continued to lightly laugh as Dean went into the bathroom to take a shower. Lynn was biting down on her lips to keep from openly smiling like a total fangirl, but then something caught her eye. It was a picture of the boys and their father on the hood of the Impala. Lynn gently took it in her hands and studied it in awe. John was sitting in the middle with a young Sammy on his leg and a pre-teen Dean against his opposite shoulder, all in hats and flannel, but what made Lynn's eyes brighten with wonder was the fact that it was really Sam and Dean as kids. Child actors weren't chosen to pose in this picture because it was real. It was truly young Sam and Dean with their father.

Lynn felt Sam step up behind her to look at the picture she held. "I remember this," he whispered, reaching around to take it from her. "Dad was on a hunt and left us with a family friend, uh, Bobby Singer, and when he came back, we…" Sam trailed off as he stared at the picture, seeing the memory in his mind. "We all went fishing for the day. They caught so many and I only caught one, but my dad he – he gave me this smile and, uh… Bobby took this on our way back to grill 'em up for dinner."

At Sam's small smile, Lynn sweetly said, "Sounds like a wonderful day."

"Yeah," Sam's voice softly broke. "One of the best."

"You should keep it."

Sam glanced at her and sighed, "Yeah. Yeah, I think I will." He put it in his inside jacket pocket and finished, "I can give it back to him when we find him."

"Hey, it's me. It's about 10:20 Saturday night –" Sam listened to Jessica's voicemail as Dean emerged cleaned and dressed from his shower.

"Hey, man. I'm starving. I'm gonna grab a little something to eat at the diner down the street. You want anything?"

"No."

"Lynn?"

"If they have a chicken club sandwich with avocado and no tomato, I wouldn't say no."

Dean clicked his tongue as he pointed a finger gun at her and said, "Chicken club with avocado and no tomato. Got it! Sprite?"

Lynn's smile shone up at him as she replied, "Good memory. Thanks!"

"You're very welcome. Sure you don't want anything, Sammy?"

He shook his head and Dean shrugged as he went out the door. Lynn went back to flipping through the phone book (phone book!) to find Joseph Welch. She barely got through half a page when her head shot up and eyes darted to the door.

"Damn it!" she shouted, making Sam jump in his seat on the bed. Lynn ran for the door and right as she opened it, she saw Dean turn around and meet her eyes. Mouth agape, she stood in the doorway, frozen, as he cocked his head to signal her to get back inside. Lynn caught sight of the officers starting to walk over as Dean got on his phone to call Sam.

"What?" she heard Sam say behind her.

"Dude, five-0. Take off," Dean said as he stared directly at Lynn, desperately wanting her to close the door.

"What about you?" asked Sam, walking over to the window as Lynn finally shut the door and joined him at the curtains.

"Uh, they kinda spotted me. Go find Dad."

They watched Dean hang up the moment he turned around to face the officers.

"Where's your partner?"

"Partner? What – What partner?"

When the forefront deputy signaled his own to check out the room, Sam instantly grabbed Lynn's arm to pull her away from the window to get them out of there. Dean watched, trying not to worry, as the local cop inquired, "So fake U.S. Marshal, fake credit cards, and a fake ride-along… You got anything that's real?"

"My boobs."

Dean's sarcastic smile was not wiped from his face when the second deputy locked his arms behind his back and slammed him down on the hood of the car. It wasn't until the first was done reading him his rights and being pushed into the backseat that the smirk disappeared.

"So tell me, that girl you had in the back of your car. Who is she? Sheriff said she seemed scared, like she didn't know what to say when asked why she was there. She a friend? Hitchhiker?" He tilted his head and spat out the word, "Kidnappee?"

Dean's eyes grew dark and he growled, "You think I kidnapped her? I'm helping her."

"Sure you are."

They shoved him into the car and drove off as Sam and Lynn snuck their way to the Impala and drove off themselves.

"So stupid!" Lynn seethed to herself.

"This isn't your fault, Lynn."

"Yes, it is! I got randomly distracted and somehow forgot that Dean got arrested. I mean, come on it's –" Lynn instantly shut up when she saw Sam stare at her with a confused brow out of the corner of her eye and realized what she just blurted out.

Shit.

"What'd you mean, "forgot?" How could you've have known?"

"Uh, I just mean that…" Lynn mumbled as she picked her cuticles. "I saw the cops outside when I last looked out the window, so I should've said something." Taking a breath, she rolled with the lie that she did her best to formulate from truth. "I mean, after what happened on the bridge and the manager's comment about the name on the credit cards, I figured Dean crossing paths with the cops again would go wrong. I should've said something. I should've remembered."

Sam sympathetically sighed from the wheel and said, "It's ok, Lynn. This isn't on you. Besides, we – erm – we know how to deal with this kinda thing. Don't worry."

"So you want to give us your real name?" The sheriff asked, entering the room with a box full of evidence found at the motel.

"I told you. It's Nugent, Ted Nugent."

He placed the box down on the table across from Dean and replied, "I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in here."

"We talkin' like misdemeanor kind of trouble or – uh – "squeal like a pig" trouble?"

"You got the faces of 10 missing persons taped to your wall, along with a whole lot of satanic mumbo jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect."

Dean rolled his eyes and scoffed, "That makes sense 'cause when the first one went missing in '82, I was three."

"I know you got partners. One of them's an older guy. Maybe he started the whole thing and you decided to branch out into kidnapping young women."

"Seriously? You think I kidnapped her because, what? She was a bit nervous in talkin' to you? Ever think you just don't have a good cop-side manner?"

"I've been doing this a long time. I know what someone doesn't want to talk because they're scared they might say the wrong thing."

Dean shook his head and said, "You don't know what you're talkin' about."

"I don't?" the sheriff challenged. "Then tell me who she is to you."

"A friend."

"Friend? And if I looked up this friend of yours, would her face be in the missing persons database?"

Dean raised an eyebrow and sarcastically replied, "Maybe in Connecticut."

"You think that's funny?" the sheriff barked.

"Yes! Because she's not a missing person! I didn't kidnap her!" Dean leaned back in the chair and begrudgingly said, "I was giving her a ride into town and dropped her off at the motel. That's it."

"If that's it, then tell me her name."

"Lynn."

"Lynn, what?"

Dean shrugged. "Don't know her last name. Don't know much about her at all, really."

"Because she doesn't matter? Just a ride-along, as you want me to believe?" The sheriff's frustrated chuckle sounded like he had gravel in his throat. "No. I think you got a lot to share about this, boy. About that girl, these missing people, your partners. So tell me, Dean…" Dean glared up at the sheriff as he tossed his father's prized journal in front of him. "Is this his? The older man's?" He walked around the table to sit on the edge and look Dean in his stunned eyes and opened the cover to flip through the pages. "I thought that might be your name. See, I leafed through this, what little I could make out. I mean, it's nine kinds of crazy, but I found this too."

Dean leaned forward to see the message his father left him. Large numbers written in bolded ink under his name. 35-111.

"Now, you're staying right here till you tell me exactly what the hell that means."

Sam and Lynn walked up to the door and knocked, waiting for Joseph Welch to open it. Lynn felt very uneasy. This was obviously a very important part of the hunt, but the pain it put the person through… she could already feel its sting. He opened the door and looked up at Sam, who greeted, "Hi, uh, are you Joseph Welch?"

"Yeah."

"I was hoping we could ask you a few questions. Have you seen this man?" Sam said as he handed him the picture and pointed to his father.

"Yeah, he was older, but that's him." Joseph answered, giving the photo back to Sam. "He came by three or four days ago; said he was a reporter."

"That's right. We're working on a story together."

Joseph looked up at him as they walked and said, "Well, I don't know what the hell kind of story you're working on… The questions he asked me."

"About your late wife, Constance."

"He asked me where she was buried."

Lynn quickened her pace to come around the other side of Joseph and kindly inquired, "I apologize if the questions were perceived as harsh or strange. It's an unconventional article covering possible sources for local legends, so the personal inquires can potentially hit some nerves." They all slowed to a stop, Sam staring at her, mesmerized, as she held Joseph's attention. "It's not our intention at all, but unfortunately, we do need to ask again where your wife was laid to rest. For fact checking purposes. If you wouldn't mind, sir."

Joseph nodded and after taking a shaky breath, he answered, "In a plot behind my old place over on Breckenridge."

"Thank you and I'm so sorry for your loss, Mr. Welch." Lynn said, her tone soft and compassionate. "I can understand why you would want her to rest there, even if you couldn't stay."

"Yeah, I – uh – I couldn't live in the house where my children died."

Sam nodded and gently pried, "Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?"

"No way. Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known."

"So you had a happy marriage?"

Joseph hesitated, weight of the past dimming his eyes, before saying, "Definitely. Why do you ask? Is it part of the – uh – what'd you say this article was about?"

Lynn blinked when he directed the question at her. She took a moment to ready her answer and replied, "It's about the local legend. Of the woman who hitchhikes? With all the missing people recently, our paper wanted to do a piece on it and we have to find potential sources."

"And you think that, what, my wife is a potential source?"

At the anger in his tone and pain threatening to crack his voice, Lynn took a small step toward him and calmly said, "With the timing and location of her death, yes, she fits two out of the three criteria that we researched for what folklore tale fits your town's local legend. So if you don't mind my asking, if you've ever heard of a woman in white?"

"Or sometimes weeping woman?" added Sam.

Joseph shook his head. "No. What the hell does that have to do with Constance?"

"It's a ghost story," Sam explained. "Well, it's more of a phenomenon, really, um, they're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places in Hawaii and Mexico. Lately in Arizona, Indiana. All these are different women, you understand, but all have the same story."

"And this is what you're writing about? About what you think of my wife? Boy, I don't care much for nonsense."

"We mean no offense, Mr. Welch." Lynn cut Sam off from speaking again and kept her voice as compassionate as possible. "And we're not trying to fit your wife into this story. In fact, quite the opposite." She saw Joseph relax a bit, while Sam was growing a bit tense at where she was going with it. "I would prefer the truth over fictionalizing a tragic death into a ghost story, which is what our editor wants. What our co-writer wanted."

Joseph nodded, so Lynn continued, "The story shared by every woman in white is that when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them and upon realizing this, they suffered from temporary insanity and murdered their children. Coming out if it and not being able to cope with what they've done; they took their own lives. It's how they become cursed spirits and are doomed to walk backroads, waterways, searching for unfaithful men to kill. And the ones they find are never seen again."

"You think… This is the article?"

At the pain in Joseph's voice, Lynn said, "The unconventional article, yes, but like I said: I'd rather make it about the truth than about a local ghost story. Don't you agree?"

"Damn right. I mean, maybe I made some mistakes, but no matter what I did, Constance never would have killed her own children. So don't you dare let that be printed. You promise me."

"Sir, I give you my word that if I have any say about it, the article won't even be written at all. But if it is, I won't allow it to exploit your wife's tragic death for the local ghost story angle."

Joseph nodded, his eyes and breath holding back tears, and he took her hand to say, "Thank you."

"No, thank you, Mr. Welch. For letting us interview you, both times."

As he turned and walked back to his home, Sam and Lynn got back in the Impala and drove off to find the old Welch house. Lynn released a deep sigh and hung her head back on the bench seat. Catching Sam glancing at her out of the corner of her eye again, she asked, "What?"

"Are you a real reporter or something? Journalist, column or freelance writer? Because that was amazing."

With an awkward laugh, Lynn replied, "Not at all. I – uh – manage a privately owned bookstore."

"Really?"

"Yeah, the Shelf Indulgence Bookshop. I started as a bookseller and didn't plan on being there more than a year because I – well, I don't exactly live a life with roots either, but I liked it there so much that within a year I was promoted to a shift lead and a few months after that, I was the store manager because the owner decided to half-retire." Lynn smiled at the memory and finished, "She actually told me a while ago that she was gonna sign over ownership to me in the next couple of years when she retired for real."

"Wow, that's –" Sam tried to find the words. "I mean, earning your way up to becoming a business owner at your age is… unusual."

Lynn looked over at him with a little smirk and asked, "And by unusual you mean…"

Coughing out a laugh, Sam explained, "I mean, like your basically my age, right? I thought you'd be in college, figuring out what you want to do, not already doing it. It's impressive."

Yeah, that would've been a lot more impressive than what I was actually doing at 19. Lynn tilted her head and gazed out the window as the sun dipped below the horizon. "Thanks."

"Can I – erm – Can I ask how old you are?"

Lynn had to stifle a chuckle. Because that answer's not complicated. "I'm 19."

"What? Really?" Sam sharply turned his head to stare at her before returning his eyes to the road. "I didn't think you were – uh – I mean, I thought that…" He caught her eyes again to see her thoroughly enjoying him stammer and decided to laugh it off. "Sorry, I just didn't think you were that much younger than us."

"It's only a few years, Sam. You're 22 and Dean's 26," Lynn quickly remembered to end her statement as a question.

"Yeah. Good guess."

"Three- and seven-years difference isn't that much, so you're not wrong. I'm basically your age." Plus 15 extra years lived I get to keep inside my head.

"Yeah, well, I stand by what I said. You're a very impressive person, Lynn."

She smiled over at him, feeling her cheeks flush at the compliment, and said, "That's really sweet of you to say, but I'm really not that special. You and Dean, you're the impressive ones." She could tell Sam was about to respond, so she asked, "Speaking of, how're we gonna help him get out of jail? We can't do this without him."

"Don't worry. I got a plan."

"Fake 911 phone call, Sammy?" Dean said approvingly into the payphone after escaping his handcuffs and sneaking out of the sheriff's station. "I don't know, that's pretty illegal."

"You're welcome."

"Listen, we gotta talk."

"Tell me about it. Thanks to Lynn, the husband admitted to being unfaithful. We are dealing with a woman in white and she's buried behind her old house, so that should've been Dad's next stop –"

"Sammy, would you shut up for a second?"

"I just can't figure out why he hasn't destroyed the corpse yet."

"Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho."

"What?" Sam's eyes shot to Lynn and asked Dean, "How do you know Dad left?"

"I've got his journal."

"His journal? He doesn't go anywhere without that thing."

"Yeah, well, he did this time."

"What's it say?"

Dean looked down at the note he left and replied, "Same old ex-marine crap when he wants to let us know where he's going."

"Coordinates. Where to?"

"I'm not sure yet."

Lynn focused her sight on the shrouded road, knowing what was coming next and felt the adrenaline flood her veins.

"Dean, what the hell is going on?"

"Look out!" she screamed, and Sam pressed his entire body weight onto the brakes when he saw the ghost of Constance standing in the middle of the road. Tires screeched to a halt and Sam gripped the wheel so tightly that his knuckles almost turned white. Lynn could hear Dean calling out to his brother from the phone's speakers underneath her heartbeat pounding in her ears. Sam breathed heavily, trying to ease his own heartrate, and looked over to her.

"You ok?"

"Yeah. You?"

Sam nodded, but jumped when he saw Constance in the rearview mirror. She was in the backseat. Sam stilled, trying not to set her off, while Lynn felt a sharp chill scrape over her skin and seep into her bones. Constance flickered closer, dark eyes invasive and unnerved as she stared at Lynn. She shivered at the closeness. It's what she imagined dying from hypothermia would feel like, if she were a small animal ensnared in the dead of night during winter. But there was more to how Constance was ensnaring her. Something kindred that Lynn didn't understand. She slowly twisted her neck and her own dark eyes connected with the woman in white.

"Take me home."