A New Legacy (Book One of New Legacy SPN Series)

Right Is Not Always Right

"I'll take a forty eight hour straight drive over another night like that," Sam said in between drinks of his coffee. He'd lost track of how many cups he'd had. The brothers had gotten less than two hours of sleep, the rest of the time had been spent trying to settle down Spunky, as they'd dubbed her for now. Sam had pointed out half way through the night that they couldn't just keep calling her kid. As she'd gotten more food into her system and her energy level increased she'd more than lived up to the nickname throughout the night.  

Dean was stretched out on the bed, one hand over his eyes and the other holding a mug of coffee, "Dude that was nothing compared to when you got sick as a kid, she wan't puking every hour like you did that one time. Call Jodi, she should be up by now. At least she's asleep, finally." 

"For now," Sam pointed out. Dean had shown him how to carry and feed her along with changing diapers so he could try to catch some shut eye over the night, which failed because as soon as she would start to fuss or cry both of them were up anyway. Once Sam got over his fear of hurting such a small person and got more comfortable with carrying her around he'd found it oddly comforting to be caring for her. She was barely long enough to reach halfway up his arm and he could balance her in one hand but when he looked into her brown eyes and she smiled at him the oddest feeling came over him and he didn't want to put her back down. He had to keep repeating over and over in his mind that she wasn't theirs and it was entirely possible someone out there was frantically looking for her. He dug his cell phone out and called Jodi. 

"Morning Sam," she said, "Early morning monster call?" 

He laughed, then stopped as Dean glared at him and looked at the drawer where Spunky was sleeping and back at him. He mouthed "Sorry" to his brother and lowered his voice. "Not really. We need your help. This is a little out of our usual field of experience. We have a baby." 

"Um, congratulations?" She quipped.

"Thanks," Sam replied, his tone flat, "No, we found a baby and we need to find her remaining family." 

Jodi paused, "Remaining?" Her voice instantly became professional and completely serious, "Start at the beginning Sam." 

Sam related the entire story to her and waited as she processed it. "You're halfway across the country from me. Are you thinking of driving her all the way here or are we meeting somewhere in the middle?" 

"Hold on," Sam answered, "Dean? Are we taking her to Jodi or should we have her meet us at home? We can..." he paused since Jodi didn't know about Cas but Dean would understand what he was suggesting.

"We'll take her home, she can meet us there. It's not that long of a drive," Dean said but he gave Sam a look that he wasn't thinking of driving her there which confused Sam but he'd push for answers after he got off the phone with Jodi.

"Right. Okay, Jodi, when can you come down?" 

"I'm off shift for the next three days. Where do I need to get to? I didn't think you guys had a home per se." 

"We do, we're not there a lot but it's where we keep our stuff. It's in Lebanon, KS. If you want to fly one of us will pick you up. Just text us your flight information when you get it," Sam offered. 

"Sounds good," Jodi stated, "Can you send me photos? How old do you think she is?"

Sam looked helplessly at Dean, "How old do we think she is?" He asked. 

"Less than six months probably," Dean guessed, "Hard to tell because she's small." 

Sam relayed his guess to Jodi. "Well that will narrow it down,"Jodi informed them, "Guys, you know technically you should be taking her to the nearest police department and reporting her as a lost child right?

"You're not the nearest but you are a cop, so that counts doesn't it?" Sam negotiated. 

"Sam..." Jodi's tone let him know she wasn't buying it. Dean stuck his hand out for the phone. 

"Hold on," Sam told her, "Dean wants to talk to you." He handed the phone to his brother. 

Dean took the phone, sat up and walked over to check on Spunky as he spoke, "Jodi, look, I trust you. I don't trust anyone else. You can access all the same information the cops out here can. We're not kidnapping her, we just want to make sure it gets done right and she doesn't end up in the system in the meantime. If her family is here, we'll bring her back after we make sure they want her. My word." 

"Dean, I know you're not kidnapping her," Jodi assured him, "It's just if she's not reported as missing yet she won't be in any databases. If that was her mother you killed she may not be in any system as missing. I can try to track down a father but it won't be easy. If he wasn't listed on the birth certificate or a host of other possible scenarios we won't be able to find him either." 

Dean hadn't thought all those angles through, "Well, we can give you the names of the four women we killed. You can run them through the system and see if any of them had kids recently. We had to be pretty exacting on this job for various reasons. When we pulled them up on the web we didn't see anything about newborns listed so my guess is whoever the mom is didn't want people to know. We can search some more but you'll probably get answers faster.

"All right. Send me what you have and a photo of the baby and I will see what I can do before I leave." 

"Thanks, we owe you." 

"You're trying to get a kid home," she pointed out, "no thanks needed. I'll send you my flight information later. Stay safe."

"Plan to," Dean stated, "See you soon." He hung up and handed the phone back to Sam. 

"You're going to have Cas take you and her back home," Sam said.

"Yeah. I could have him take us to Jodi but...

"But what?" 

Dean stared past Sam, into the distance for several moments before he spoke, "Jodi's great, I trust her, but she's still a cop and would probably push us to leave Spunky here with the authorities while they try to find her family."

"Which is the right thing to do isn't it?" Sam asked.

Dean looked down at the peaceful baby girl fast asleep on one of Sam's shirts. She had a small tuft of dark hair on her head that was almost the same color as her deep brown eyes. He brushed his fingers gently across it and looked back at Sam, "Legally required maybe, but that's not the same as right." 

"Dean..we..." 

"I know Sam, I know. Tell you what, take some time, research the foster care system and infants, then tell me what you think is the right thing to do. As far as having Cas take her and I to the Bunker, it will just be easier than trying to do all this in hotels. You can drive back, by the time you get there she should be settled in and on some sort of routine. Hopefully." 

"You sure you can handle all of this on your own till I get there?" Sam was a bit surprised at Dean's plan. 

Dean grinned, "Be a nice change of pace, plus if she gets too out of hand I'll just have Cas stick around as a nanny. Heh, the Angelic Nanny, sounds like the title of a sitcom." 

For some reason an image of Cas in an apron, holding Spunky and trying to feed her with an exhausted look on his face crossed Sam's mind and he had to fight busting out laughing so as not to wake Spunky. "Yeah, I'll need pics of that." 

"Promise." 

Sam giggled, grabbed his phone and took a few pics of Spunky and texted them along with her eye color and the names of the women to Jodi and he and Dean decided to take advantage of the fact that she was asleep to get some shut eye of their own.