A/N: Here we go, the penultimate chapter of this appendix.

Appendix D

Section L

Alex, Age 18

Hidden in the Darkness

Turning down the gravel road had piqued Alex's anxiety, but by the time they pulled up in front of the dilapidated farmhouse on the barren postage stamp, her stomach had twisted itself into knots and she had become nauseous. She hadn't laid eyes on the place since the day she found the Triplets all dead and decaying.

The Winchesters exited the Impala. Straightening, Alex stood squarely facing the house, staring it down like something she was about to fight, something formidable. Dean stopped on his way around the back of the vehicle to pull a few shotguns out of the trunk. He handed them out to his brother and daughter.

"You ready?" he asked her.

She had to be honest. Without taking her eyes off the house, she quirked her head to the side in a single shake (a motion that sharply reminded Sam of his brother), and said, "No." Then she trudged across the front lawn.

Sam and Dean exchanged a look, then set their jaws and followed.

On her way to the porch, Alex felt her anxiety reach a fever pitch, then suddenly begin to fade to nothing. It was as if she had reached the tipping point, something she had felt before in fights. That moment when the adrenaline took over and all that existed was the heightened precision and strength needed to react the way she needed to react. The calm to weather the storm. So she mounted the stairs without a single shake in her legs.

The door was already open, since they couldn't lock it on their way out yesterday. They entered the living room. Alex noted the same changes Sam and Dean had: nothing on the walls, boxes everywhere, toys on the floor. The image made an impact, but her hyper-calm made her reaction feel distant and vague.

"All right," said Dean. "Let's see if anyone stuck around."

He made his way over to the loose wood panel. Sam and Alex took up defensive positions behind him, Alex pulling out her EMF reader. Only a light or two flickered at the top of the device. Dean cast one last look around the empty room… then pulled the panel open.

All remained silent.

Sam released his pent up breath, allowing his gun to drop to his side. "Good."

They all turned to the new opening in the wall. Behind the paneling stood a plain wood door… with a keypad lock on it, and the trace of shoeprints in the middle of the dented grain.

"Jesus Christ, what's down there?" Dean said. "That's a lot of effort to keep something hidden."

"I think it looks worse than it is," Sam said. "All they added was the lock and the panel. The rest is just the original door."

"Obviously that they didn't have to replace," said Alex. "Pretty sturdy; looks like the killer found it and tried to kick it in and failed." She gestured to the smudged mark of treads on the door. "They even tried quite a few times."

"I dunno," Dean said. "Doesn't look any more solid than your average. I think whoever was trying to get in there just didn't know how to kick down a door. Or was too panicked to do it right.

"Well, guess there's nothing for it."

Dean set his feet. Alex took a step back to avoid the splinters, but Sam stepped in, putting a hand on Dean's sternum to stop his momentum before it even built.

"Dude," he said. "Don't kick down the door."

"What? Why not?" Dean questioned.

"One," Sam ticked off a finger, "You're going to bust your stitches. How many times do we have to tell you to take it easy? You got shot yesterday."

"I fight hurt all the time!" Dean complained.

"We're not in a fight, Dean!" Sam came back. "It's not necessary.

"And two; how are we going to explain to the cops why the super secret hidden door is in pieces? Whatever's down there is motive for a triple homicide; it's going to lead to the perpetrator, so we're going to have to call the Sherriff and get him to look into it so he can lock up that asshole for good."

"Okay, fine," Dean relented. "Then how do you plan to get that thing open? We need to solve this so we can convince Logan to move on."

At that moment, there was a beep and the latch clicked. Sam and Dean looked around. While they had been bickering, Alex had stepped over and punched in her guess at the lock's code, which had been accurate. She glanced over her shoulder to see their looks of surprise.

"Logan's birthday," she explained. "Easy to remember. Oh-nine-oh-nine-oh-nine."

She turned the handle and opened the door. A slight chill breeze escaped the entrance, carrying with it a faint musty odor. The concrete steps were rough and worn, vanishing into the darkness.

Sam pulled out a flashlight and led the way down, having to duck the low ceiling that was the stairway directly above.

At the base of the steps was a light switch, which ignited four exposed bulbs in the ceiling. These illuminated a dirt-floor basement with a limestone block foundation. There were no windows, and the ceiling showed bare wires and pipes snaking and ducking around warped floor joists. The utilities were a cluster of awkward shapes and sharp edges set on an old chunk of concrete, located near the middle of the basement to the side of the steps. Just beyond the water heater sat a lone, oak cabinet.

It was too conspicuous a piece of furniture to ignore. They all knew this was the most likely location of whatever Jane and Don had been hiding. Sam went up to it and opened one of the doors.

Inside, the shelves were filled with orange prescription bottles.

"Oh, come on," said Dean.

Alex sighed. "Don was a pharmacist."

Sam reached in and took out a bottle. "Vicodin." He set it back and inspected the others. "Oxy. Ritalin. Valium. Oh God, fentanyl."

"Don was dealing prescription drugs," said Dean.

"I can't picture Don walking around dealing narcotics," said Alex, rubbing at her forehead with a hand. "He wasn't exactly personable, but he wasn't a freaking creep."

"Maybe he wasn't a dealer," Sam suggested. "Maybe he was supplying a dealer."

"If that's the case, then it's probably the dealer who came after them," said Dean. "People get wrapped up in criminal activity like this, then show up dead, it's usually the person they're breaking the law with who killed them. That's probably who Nick was; Don's dealer."

"But why would the dealer suddenly decide to kill his supplier?" asked Alex. "That doesn't make sense. It's biting the hand that feeds you."

"Maybe the hand stopped feeding," said Sam. "Something could have happened and Don cut him off."

"What would cause Don to… oh." Alex released a breath, shaking her head. "Just before the murders, there was an overdose at the high school. A fifteen-year-old ODed on codeine."

"Oh no," Sam said, closing his eyes.

"'It's so dangerous, what have I done'," Dean quietly echoed Don's words. "And Jane kept screaming 'you can't have it'. They grew a conscience and stopped supplying to some bastard selling narcotics to a bunch of kids."

"And Nick comes to steal whatever he can get his hands on, and the Triplets get in the way," said Sam.

"Even in death, they were trying to keep the drugs hidden, so they wouldn't go to the wrong people," said Alex. "And the guilt wouldn't let them cross over."

"But what about Logan?" asked Dean. "Why go after him?"

"Logan's the witness to it all," Sam answered. "He said he came down near the end of the fight. Nick probably didn't even know he was there until after Jane and Don were dead."

"Which would explain why he was upstairs," Dean said. "He wasn't in the fight, he just saw it, so when Nick discovered him, Logan ran, and Nick chased him to his room.

"Man, that pisses me off."

"Join the club," replied Sam.

The younger of the brothers turned back to the cabinet and closed the door solemnly.

"Well," he sighed, "I guess that solves that mystery."

"You know what this means?" said Dean. "Wherever Nick is, when they catch him, they can also bust him for dealing drugs and manslaughter."

"He's going away for a long damn time," said Sam.

"Good riddance," said Dean, turning to leave with his brother in tow.

Alex lingered where she stood, staring down the cabinet. It was so unassuming, a plain, run-of-the-mill cabinet, just sitting in a basement. And it contained such tiny things, miniscule things, so small you could stick them in your pocket or lose them in your purse. But the miniature contents of this boring cabinet had cost four people their lives. She wanted to take an axe to the thing, break it into pieces, burn it to ash, and bury the remnants of the drugs and their plastic bottles, never to hurt anyone ever again.

But she knew it had to remain untouched, to sit as if frozen in space and time, a monument to the atrocities it had brought about. She hated to think it would be spared for the sake of justice, but at the same time she knew the destruction of the man who had driven this whole nightmare would be a lot more satisfying than the destruction of an inanimate object. The cabinet didn't feel pain, didn't desire freedom, didn't experience fear or regret or sadness… but Nick would.

She still wanted to beat the shit out of it.

"Hey."

She felt a tug on the shoulder of her leather jacket. She looked over to see her father had come back to fetch her, her uncle watching from the foot of the stairs.

"Come on," Dean said gently.

Without another word or a single look back, she followed. None of them cared to say more on the subject anyway. They all left the dingy basement behind, heading back upstairs in silence.

A/N: Well, there're your answers! I hope you found it to be as much of a shock as I did when I finally thought it up. Honestly, though; it took me forever to think of a good reason for the Triplets to be murdered mundanely rather than something supernatural. I was writing along and once in a while I would stop and think, "What am I going to have happen? Did I write myself into a corner?" And finally one night I just paused myself and sat and just thought hard about it, and out of nowhere it came, and I had this almost visceral reaction. It was crazy. And from there it just started rolling.

It's a weird thing, with writing; sometimes you just have to let something stew for a week or so, and all of a sudden the answer will just appear and from there it will flow. So there's a little peek behind the creative process curtain!

From here, dear readers, brace yourselves… because here comes the big finale….

(…for this arc…)