A/N- Takes place during The Usual Suspects. As always, please read and review!

There was barely a sound outside their motel room before the battering ram broke down the door. They didn't have any time to hide anything or respond but Sam did step out, pushing Mae behind him, as much as he could. As the weapons aimed at them however, they both stopped and put their hands up.

A woman advanced on them, her gun forward. "Going somewhere, Sam?"

Sam's eyes flicked down momentarily to Mae but it only served to enhance the apprehension on his face. They said nothing to each other or the police. There wasn't anything that would have aided to their situation until the found out why this was happening. The pair were handcuffed, without any resistance, and read their rights. They were placed two separate police cars.

At the Baltimore police station, Sam and Mae were processed and led to two separate interrogation rooms. Mae kept her face neutral, knowing at any point she could be under observation as she sat in the interrogation room. Because she had no idea what they might have had on her, she couldn't give anything away. There was no way of knowing what they got pinched for, although there were any number of guesses. SWAT wasn't a good sign though. It was hard to argue that they weren't armed and dangerous. But what brought them there? It was overkill for the breaking and entering or anything else the boys might have done.

Right then however, she was more worried for the boys.. Sam and Dean took precautions, to an extent, but they were more fly by the seat of their pants and they tended to dismiss law enforcement in general. She didn't. Since they'd been in the city, there was little she had done to draw police attention. Mae was pretty sure her safety net would catch her but this was the first time it had been tested like this.

She almost laughed. It would certainly be rich revenge if her father-in-law had convinced her that he had set up the most search proof alternative identify for her that he could, only to get arrested here and all her fake identities to unravel. She supposed she couldn't blame him if he had set her up. She did kill his son after all. That he believed her, that he went along with her plan to go after the demon, and aid in any number of the crimes she had committed made less sense than the long game of letting her think she was safe until she got caught.

There was no statute of limitations on murder. As careful as she thought she was, there was probably more out there than she wanted to admit that could be pinned on her. Oddly enough, the thought had never occurred to her that she was being set up by Cal before now. She trusted him. She supposed she would know soon enough if that as a good choice or not.

While Mae sat alone and pondered her situation, the officer who had arrested them joined Sam in his interrogation room. Sam stopped pacing as he watched her place a cup on the table. "Thought you might be thirsty."

"Okay, so you're the good cop. Where's the bad cop?"

"Oh, he's with your brother." She told Sam

That wasn't great. It meant they had all three of them. On what and how much did they actually know, Sam wondered. "Okay. And you're holding us why?"

"Well, he's being held on suspicion of murder. And you, we'll see."

Sam leaned forward, placing his hands on the table, shaking his head. Of all the things any cop might be able to pin on him or Dean murder wasn't one of them. "Murder?!"

Her eyes were sharp as she studied the young man. "You sound genuinely surprised." Her tone turned almost playful, "Or are you that good of an actor?"

"Who was he supposed to have murdered?!" Sam asked.

"We'll get around to that."

Disbelieving now, he pushed away from the table. "Well, you can't just hold us here without formal charges!"

"Well actually, we can," she said, "for forty-eight hours, but you being a pre-law student, would know that."

His jaw twitched, knowing she was right but also knowing that they could find out quite a lot about him, Dean, and Mae in two days. And their vengeful spirit would still be out there taking more people out.

"I know all about you, Sam." She read from her file now. "You're twenty-three years old, no job, no home address. Your mother died when you were a baby, your father's whereabouts are unknown."

Sam listened to her before turning away. He knew he shouldn't have been surprised the cops could find that much information on him. That alone wasn't indicative of anything but she clearly wasn't opening with the major things yet.

"And then there's the case of your brother Dean." She continued, "Whose demise was, well, just a little bit exaggerated. Feel free to jump in whenever you like."

Sam didn't respond, he only leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Shy? No problem. I'll keep going. Your family moved around a lot when you were a kid. Despite that, you were a straight-A student. Got into Stanford with a full ride." Sam fidgeted and looked away as she closed the file. "Then about a year ago there was a fire in your apartment. One fatality. Jessica Moore, your girlfriend. After she died, you fell off the grid. Left behind everything."

"I needed some time off." His voice was low and steady but still laced with an emotion he wished he could keep out. "To deal. So I'm taking a road trip with my brother."

"How's that going for you?"

"Great. I mean... we saw the second largest ball of twine in the continental US. Awesome." He said with mock excitement before he pulled a chair up to the table and straddled it.

"We ran Dean's fingerprints through AFIS" she mentioned.

"Okay."

"Got over a dozen possible hits."

"Possible hits. Which makes them worthless." Sam said.

"But it makes you wonder. What are we gonna find when we run your prints?"

"Yeah, well." He chuckled then pounded his fist on the table sarcastically, "You be sure to let me know, all right." He pointed at the cup. "May I?"

"Please."

"Great." He examined it a moment and sniffed the cup before taking a sip.

The detective leaned over him, intently. "Sam, you seem like a good kid. It's not your fault Dean's your brother. We can't pick our family. Right now detectives in St. Louis are exhuming a corpse. They're trying to figure out how your brother faked his own death. After torturing all those young women. Dean's a bad guy. His life is over. Yours doesn't have to be. "

Sam gave her an incredulous look. "You want me to turn against my own brother?"

"No. We already caught him cold. Red-handed at the Karen Giles murder scene. We just need you to fill in some missing pieces."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I can talk to the DA. Make a deal for you. You can get on with your life. Dean's as good as gone."

Sam thought for a moment, a distraught look on his face. "My dad and Tony Giles were old friends. They were in the service together. We've known him since we were kids, you know? So we came as soon as we heard about his death."

"Your parents actually named you Mable West."

Mae's eyebrow twitched for a moment, only because she wasn't sure what background they'd pick up when they run her prints. She didn't even know if it would work but was glad for Cal's early intervention in covering her identity. Although the name could have used a little more thought. For the time being, it was going to keep the cops of her trail. It didn't do anything to help the Sam and even though these police officers didn't know her real identify, Mae knew would have to think quickly to explain why she was in the motel room with Sam.

The man who entered the room wasn't familiar. She was pretty sure he wasn't one of the cops who arrested her and Sam. She had to assume they were holding Sam elsewhere. Dean was still a question. He might have been in the wind, still checking on Karen or maybe he had returned to the motel. He would have found the door broken down and possibly whatever they had left in the room missing. It was impossible to know what he'd do next but would likely call a few times before moving to plan b and regrouping at a safer motel. Then he'd come looking for them.

Theoretically, she and Sam were in a slightly safer position because Sam likely had no record and the identity these cops pulled on her was fake. Unless they figured out who she really was, Mae thought she was pretty save. There was nothing tying her and Sam together aside from circumstance. If they question him about her, he wouldn't be able to provide them any details because while he could connect the fairly obvious dots, he genuinely didn't know Mable West. But Dean was still the big question. Well, she thought, the second big question. The first was what exactly brought SWAT to their door.

She examined her nails for a moment before looking back up at the man. "I suppose. I didn't get a chance to weigh in."

"Ma'am, you realized this is a serious situation, don't you?" the detective sat down across from her.

"How could I? A bunch of armed dudes busted in on me and put me in cuffs. I have no idea why I'm here.

The detective leaned back in his chair, setting a folder on the table in front of her. Mae knew whatever he had in there now was fake but he was trying to imply that he had something more on her. She kept her eyes on his, waiting for him to say or do more. Finally, he asked, "How do you know Sam Winchester?"

"Who?" She asked, hoping her face conveyed annoyance and confusion.

"The man who you were found in a motel room with."

"Ah." She gave him a knowing look, spreading her hand in front of herself. "Well, we didn't exactly exchange a lot of personal details, if you know what I mean."

"You're a prostitute."

She frowned. "Do I look like a prostitute?"

Her question was met with a judgmental sweep of his eyes over her tall frame. "I met him at a bar, okay? The guy was tall, good looking, and seemed nice enough. So I went back to his motel. Is that a crime now?"

"How do you know Dean Winchester?"

"I have no idea who you're talking about. Why exactly are you holding me here?"

He stood and Mae wasn't certain what he was planning but knew her options to react were incredibly limited. He leaned forward, grabbing the folder back. He then turned from her and headed towards the door. "Because you're an accessory to murder."

~Then~

Mae and Dean sat at a table at a cafe as he finished reading his paper, folding it down, pen loosely resting between his lips. Her legs were propped in his lap as she looked over something in one of her notebooks. It was oddly intimate and easy-going. They could have been almost any couple on a casual morning, aside from the fact that they were looking for a new job and Dean seemed to have found one.

Sam joined them, setting down two coffees he had carried over and unstacked them for Mae and Dean. "Here you go."

"Anthony Giles." Dean announced after taking the pen from his mouth and handing the newspaper over to Sam.

"Who's Anthony Giles?" Sam asked.

"He's a Baltimore lawyer. Working late in his office, check it out." He took the lid off his black coffee and took a healthy drink.

Sam read the paper his brother handed him. "Uh... throat was slit, room was clean. Huh. No DNA, no prints."

"Keep reading, it gets better." Dean said after he took another sip of coffee, his eyes wandering over to Mae. She set down her notebook and took her coffee. Her soft blue eyes drifted over to him too as Dean nonchalantly rubbed her knee.

"Security cameras failed to capture footage of the assailant." That piqued his interest.

"So I'm thinking either somebody tampered with the tapes -"

"Or it's an invisible killer."

Dean smirked. "My favorite kind. "

"You get stoked about the weirdest things Dean," Mae said, teasing.

He didn't let her deter him and turned back to his brother. "What do you think, Scully? You wanna check it out?"

Mae swung her legs off Dean's lap before they all stood. Sam frowned at his brother.

"I'm not Scully, you're Scully."

"No, I'm Mulder. You're a red-headed woman.",

"Okay, first of all, I'm Scully and second, you sure you wanna use 'red-headed woman' as an insult, mister?" she said to Dean, her tone teetering between teasing and threatening before she turn to Sam, "But yeah, Dean's Mulder, if only based on the porn thing."

Sam chuckled. Dean gave Mae and exaggerated pout but his eye flickered with barely restrained lust. "I'm weirdly turned on by the way you said mister." Dean said, smacking her ass lightly. He leaned in then to whisper against her ear, "why don't you show me later what you do to a man who insults your sexy red hair? But call me mister, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. Let's go find our invisible killer." Mae said, a bright laugh in her voice.

~Now~

As Sam related a version of the story about learning of Anthony Giles' death, he left out some key details including theories about what could have really killed the man and Mae's involvement. The detective hadn't indicated anything about her role and, aside from being arrested together, he wasn't going to incriminate her further.

"Woulda been kinda hard for Dean to kill Tony, considering we weren't in town at the time."

"So tell me what happened next." the detective instructed.

"Okay, uh, that's when we went to see Karen. She was barely holding it together. We just wanted to be there for her. You know?"

Again, Sam shared a safe for cops version of their visit to Karen Giles, leaving out impersonating people from the insurance company, the red-eyed woman, and that Mae had gone to the public library to compile a list of other deaths involving a slit throat and public records of cases Tony Giles had worked on that might have caused a vengeful spirit to attach itself to him.

"So, he continued, "I gave Karen a hug, told her to call me if she needed anything... and that was it. End of story."

After listening to him as she drummed her fingers on the table, the detective straightened in the chair and leaned forward. "Sam, I am trying to help you here. But you have got to be honest with me." She stood and pinned him with intense eyes and firm tone. "Now we have an eyewitness. Someone who saw two men fitting your and your brother's description breaking into Giles' office."

"Okay, look, Karen called us later, said that there was some stuff that she wanted from Tony's office, but the police weren't letting her in - like, a picture of the two of them in Paris, and some other stuff. Look, it was wrong to enter a crime scene, but she gave us the key!" Sam lied.

~Then~

Outside of Tony Giles' office, Sam picked the locks before the hunters ducked under the police tape. They swept the room with his flashlight once they were inside, landing on the pool of blood on the floor.

"Hey. Anthony Giles' body was found right about here." Sam said, shining the light on the paper he held and read from. "Throat slit so deep part of his spinal cord was visible."

Dean gave an impressed whistle. "What do you think? Vengeful spirit? Underlining vengeful?"

"Yeah, maybe. I mean he did see that woman at the foot of his bed."

Dean picked up a sheet of paper from the desk, reading it but not recognizing it or understanding why someone would print a paper with the same words on it over and over. "Take a look at this."

Sam read over the small print repeated over and over on the page. "Dana Shulps. A name?"

Dean picked up another piece of paper. "I dunno, but it's everywhere. Well, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Dean chuckled, largely to himself at his impression. Sam just ignored him.

Seated at the desk, Sam shone the light down on the glass on the glass table in front of him, noting something odd with the clear surface. He paused a moment before leaning down to breath across the surface, revealing the same letters scribed on it. "Wow. I'd say we've officially crossed over into weird."

"Maybe Giles knew her."

"Or maybe it's the name of our pale red-eyed mystery girl. "

"Well. Let's see what we can see."

What they found was very little after a search through the papers and files in the office. Sam was trying to see if he could gain access to the files on the computer. Perhaps Dana Shulps was somewhere in there. Dean was visibly frustrated as he found nothing pointing towards anything useful. "There's not a single mention of a Dana Shulps anywhere. There's not a D. Shulps. Or any other kind of friggin' Shulps."

"Great."

"What have you got?" Dean asked, leaning against the door frame.

"Nothing. No Dana Shulps has ever lived or died in Baltimore in the last fifty years at least. "

"So what now?"

Sam was just bordering on annoyed with his brother. "Well, I think I'm pretty close to cracking Giles' password. Maybe there's something in his personal files, you know?"

"By close you mean..."

"Thirty minutes, maybe?"

Dean glanced at his watch. "Awesome. So I guess I just get to, uh, hang out." he muttered. "That's awesome."

Sam continued to type, concentrated on his task. Dean sat down, bored, and rather annoyed. He decided to entertain himself, first by clicking his tongue and then by making fart sounds.

"Dude, seriously. Are you like this because your girlfriend finds it cute or she finds you so annoying that you can only do this when she's not around?"

"All right, I'm gonna go talk to Karen again, see if she knows anything about this Dana Shulps, huh?"

"Great.

Dean pointed his flashlight at his brother, waggling it back and forth in his face. "Keep going, Sparky."

Outside of Giles' office, Dean pulled out his phone and called Mae as he walked towards his car. "Hey Red."

"Hey. Find anything good yet?" She asked.

He smiled to himself a bit. He could tell she was reading, although she didn't seem particularly interested in it. His first thought was of the inviting way her lips would be pursed and how much he wanted to feel them against his skin. His next thought was that he missed her and how odd it was, given that they hadn't been apart all that long. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to feel like that being away from her after only a few hours or feeling so relieved just hearing her voice. "Not much. Could be a vengeful spirit. Any leads on your end?"

"Ha. Too many, man. He was a defense lawyer in Baltimore. He got criminals off and yeah maybe some were actually innocent but not all and the ones he didn't get off...I mean, honestly, it's weirder we don't have more of them on our hands but I'm not finding much that signals a connection to our dead guy."

"You wanna come talk to the wife Karen with me?"

She shook her head. "No. I'm headed back to the motel and see if I can dig anything up through some of my other channels."

"It's kinda late. Are you sure you wanna walk back? I could come get you."

"I'll get a cab. Don't worry."

Dean frowned. "Oh hey, can you see if you can find anything on Dana Shulps somewhere."

"Who's Dana Shulps?"

"Not a clue but her name was written all over a bunch of papers in Giles' office. Even the desk. It's gotta be something."

She made a non-committal 'hmm'. "Yeah, that is weird. I'll see what I can find."

Dean could have hung up but didn't "You know, we could always go back to the motel and fool around."

Mae rolled her eyes, even as his dilated and darkened with the idea and she gave a small, short chuckle. "That's not gonna get this job over with."

"Somethin' wrong Red?"

"Aside from the obvious? No." She sighed a little, "I just have a bad feeling I guess."

"Spooky lady vision bad feeling or something else?"

"I don't know. It's probably nothing. Don't worry about it, okay?"

"Okay. Well... let me know when you get back to the motel. I'm gonna head over to see what more I can get outta the wife."

"Don't get into too much trouble, handsome."

"How can I get into trouble? You already said you didn't wanna mess around, Trouble."

That finally made her laugh. "You can get into trouble when we're finally outta Baltimore."

"I'll hold you to that. Love you, Maes."

"Love you too."

~Now~

"Then Dean went back to Karen's place to check up on her. I mean, you know, she had been pretty upset earlier."

"So why didn't you go with him?"

"I just went back to the motel." Sam said.

"And you just happened to pick up a hooker on the way?"

"What?!" His confusion was genuine until he realized she must have meant Mae. Sam wasn't sure if that's what Mae had shared or she simply didn't dispel them of the idea but it wasn't the worst explanation they could have gone with.

"The redhead we found you with."

He shook his head. If they had shared as little information with her as they had with him, and presumably Dean, she wouldn't have given them more. "Met her at a bar earlier. Told her where I was staying and she came by. Guess she was lonely, I don't know. How'd you know I was there, by the way?"

He was pretty sure now that it was just happenstance that they'd arrested Mae. They didn't know she was there and, at least on this job, she hadn't been involved in the shadier aspects of the job. So far, she'd strictly been researcher. With any luck, they'd let her go and she could keep looking for their vengeful spirit.

"We found the motel matchbook on your brother when we arrested him." She held up the evidence bag with the matchbook. Her tone turned slightly more aggressive now. "Let's quit fooling around. Now you were with your brother the whole time you were in Baltimore. Why separate now? Because your brother left you. To go murder Karen."

"He didn't kill anyone."

She hit the table. "I heard the 9-1-1 call! Karen was terrified. She said someone was in the house."

The detective left Sam alone in the room again and joined her partner who had been interrogating Dean in the observation area on the other side of the one-way glass. Inside the interrogation room, Dean sat, handcuffed to the table.

"You getting anywhere with him?" She asked.

"No. Just a lot of wise-ass remarks. You?" He took a slip of his coffee.

"Sam's story matches Dean's to the last detail."

"Hmm." the man stood and grabbed his suit coat. "Yeah, well, these guys are good. I'll give 'em that."

He opened the door and the pair walked out in to the hall. "If we don't get Sam to flip we have nothing but a lot of circumstantial evidence. What about the woman?" She asked.

"I'm not convinced she's not a working girl but we've never seen her before. There's nothing tying her to this. Or them, aside from her being at the motel." he said, "I actually believe her when she says she doesn't know who they are. Dean said her description didn't ring a bell."

"Sam says he doesn't really know her either, met at a bar. She genuinely might have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

He nodded. "She seems like small potatoes. Hey. We've got Dean at the crime scene with blood on his hands. Juries have convicted for less."

"Yeah, but, I mean, where's the murder weapon? What's the motive? You talk about reasonable doubt."

"Diana." He touched her arm a moment before taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger. "Do you have reasonable doubt?" His eyes flicked up as a uniformed officer walked past them and his hand dropped away from her. "We keep leaning on these guys, one of them will tumble. And don't forget about St. Louis. I'm telling you. This Dean guy is our guy."

He put a hand on his partners back, guiding her forward as they began walking again.

"I know Tony Giles was a friend of yours."

"Yeah. He was, he was a good friend."

"Look, and I know you want to clean this mess up quick. But come on, Tony knew a lot of criminal types, I mean, maybe we're just..."

"Criminal types? He was a defense lawyer, for god sakes, of course he knew criminal types." He pointed out.

"All right, let's get back at 'em."

"No, you know what? Let 'em stew in their juices for a bit. But let's stop wasting our time on the girl. Cut the redhead loose though." They paused at a vending machine and with cautious glances to ensure they were alone, his tone moved away from business. "Come here." He said before he leaned in.

The woman smiled and they kissed quickly. When they parted, she put a hand to his check before turning to get back to the case.

A uniformed officer Mae hadn't seen before came back to her interview room after the original detective had left her. Mae wasn't certain how long he had been gone but this new officer let her know she was free to go. Clearly, the gruff detective had overstated just how much of an accessory they thought she was. She was missing too many details to know exactly what was going down and it was better for all of them if she didn't do more to prolong her time at the PD. After she collected her belongings, she headed out of the station. The detective hadn't revealed a lot about what had happened or why the boys were in their crosshairs but it was worse than she assumed. All she had was a vague accusation of being an accessory to murder. And a prostitute. But since they charged her with neither crime, everything seemed circumstantial. Except who were they supposed to have killed? And how did the cops come to the conclusion that Sam and Dean were involved?

As worried as she was about her boys, she knew they still had a vengeful spirit to deal with. Dana Shulps. She hadn't been able to find a Dana Shulps anywhere in Baltimore, living or dead, let alone killed in a way that could result in a vengeful spirit. Could be a nickname or a married name or an alias, she thought. Maybe they were looking for something else or someone else.

For the time being, she was the only one able to work the case. Then she could worry about how to get the boys out of jail, if that were possible. She didn't know the exact charged but at least one of them was being held in connection to a murder. She sighed, she couldn't focus on that right now because the only reason she was on the outside right now was she hadn't been provably tied to the boys.

"Dana Shulps. Dana Shulps. Dana Shulps." She muttered to herself as she started to walk. The library wasn't far from the station and was the best bet for a phone book and, in case, she was being followed, she wanted to leave a slightly harder to follow trail rather than go straight to a motel again.

Back at the public library, Mae sat at a table, with a cluster of privacy cubbies at each of the six seats. She had asked the front desk for a pen, paper, and a local phone book. The first thing she did was copy down the name and address of the first motel listed. When-if- the boys were cut loose any time soon, that's where they would regroup. She flipped the paper over and wrote out Dana Shulps. While she had already done one search, she double checked listings in the phone book. Maybe there wasn't a Dana Shulps but there might have been other Shulps'. She could do further investigation at the motel, since the police didn't keep her laptop. Unfortunately, she didn't have any other gear. With any luck, she'd be able to find the connection to the vengeful spirit, locate a grave, then salt and burn it. She could pull together those supplies easy. But she needed to figure out where to go first.

Maybe it wasn't Dana Shulps. If this was a spirit trying to make its presence known, things might have gotten mixed up as it communicated that out. And, she thought, sharing its name over and over might suggest that no one knew them when they were alive. Or they were never properly laid to rest. That opened some possibilities but also potentially made the search for a body harder. Rather than worry about that right now, she started writing out possible re-combinations of the letters to try to make sense of the word. She looked up every one that seemed close to being a name and found two addresses and phone numbers she could start with.

After an hour and a half, she felt she wasn't going to make more progress and because it wasn't safe to call Sam or Dean, she wanted to see if they had been able to implement their plan when they were separated yet. Mae walked passed the front desk on the way out but paused. She walked up to the librarian seated there. "Hey, hi. Do you have a second to look at something for me?"

The woman nodded and stood up. Mae took out her piece of paper. "Do any of these names look familiar? I'm, um, new to town and I'm just wondering maybe if there's any local history or infamous events around any of these."

"Well," the woman looked down at the list through her reading glasses, "nothing looks familiar but...well, Ashland might be something. It's a street."

"Hmmm...Ashland street? Any clue on SUP?"

"No. Maybe initials of someone who lived there." The kindly librarian looked up at Mae with a confused smile. "Are you doing some kind of silly scavenger hunt with your college friends?"

"Yeah, something like that. Thank you ma'am. I appreciate your time."

A/N-As you may know, at the time of posting this chapter (Dec 2023), stats have been down for several months. If you've read and kept up with this work so far, I'd really appreciate if you follow or leave a review. In the absence of that, I don't have a sense of interest and will likely shift to some other projects. Besides, it's nice to know people are reading. Thanks! ~Nyxie~