Dean watches the teenager closely as she stares at her milkshake. "Why are you looking at me like that?" Katherine asks, blue eyes never having have shifted from her beloved styrofoam cup.
"Trying to figure you out."
She snorts, turning to look at the older man to her left. "Like I'm such a puzzle. Eyes on the road, before you kill us both." Katherine's tongue pushes her straw into her mouth. She barely tastes strawberry before she looks to Dean again, this time in curiosity. "What's there to figure out?"
"Maybe not so much you as me," he hums.
Katherine's eyes narrow a bit in pondering. Then she looks to the watch face on her left wrist for a brief moment. "If you haven't spoken to your brother in a few years, how do you know where he lives?" A brief silence hangs as she recalls Dean tracked her down after ten years of zero contact. "Forget I asked." Dean smiles, looking away from her. Katherine gnaws on the edge of her straw, gazing out at Tuolumne River. "But why would you come find me first, if your dad's missing? And why me specifically?"
Dean lets out a dramatic, exasperated sigh. "Man you ask a lot of questions."
"And you don't answer enough of them."
"It's what my Dad told me to do," Dean tells her. "And you said it yourself—your Dad's been off the rez. Who else would I go to?"
Katherine's eyes narrow. "The last I spoke to my dad, he was with yours. With John. Were you with them?" After a moment, Dean shakes his head.
"No, they...went on another hunt." Katherine sits back in her seat, staring out at the blacktop with a slightly ajar mouth.
"So you don't know where he is either," she quietly remarks. Then she wets her lips, sitting up a little. "Did your dad say anything—"
"No." Dean glances to her. "I called him—a lot. His number's disconnected."
Katherine is silent for a few minutes. "What's your favorite color?" She inquires. Dean glances over to her, a bit perplexed. It was an innocent enough question, and her voice seems genuinely curious.
He wonders if it's her way of keeping a cap on whatever pent up frustrations she may or may not be feeling. He takes a moment to consider. Was she testing him, earlier in her apartment, when she spoke about her dad? If she knows Clay was hunting with them...did he just get caught in a lie?
"I guess blue's all right."
Her smile seems to fill the silence. And after beat, "Dean?"
"Yeah."
"It's your turn to ask."
He frowns, glancing over to Katherine. "I didn't agree to Twenty Questions."
"Well I might as well know you a little bit beyond your exclusive cassette collection," Katherine taunts, nudging the box with the toe of her boot. Dean glowers. "Hey," she defends. "I happen to enjoy your music."
Dean relaxes. "Okay, so med school. That comes after the first four years, right?" Katherine nods. "Did you go to Yale for that?"
"No, I went to USF for two years. Did you go to college?"
"Nope." Dean leans against the door. "Favorite food."
"Impossible to answer," Katherine scoffs. "If you could relive one day of your life, what would it be?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Dean says. Katherine shifts her eyes to him, perplexed. "Too deep too soon."
She smiles and bites her lip, turning away from him. "I hate small talk," she explains.
"Well, we start with favorite colors, then foods, and then we progress up the chain. I've shared a space with you for forty-six hours."
Her grin is playful. "And that isn't qualification enough?"
"Absolutely not." Dean shifts in his seat. "All right, fine. If you could relive a day of your life, what would it be?"
"Hey, hey, hey," she says, holding a hand up. "Too deep too soon. I'm not spilling my guts to you if you aren't gonna spill yours. Plus, you can't steal my question."
"You're so aggravating."
"Well you're...ridiculously stubborn." Katherine stares out at the dark road. A few minutes of silence elapse, and Katherine starts singing quietly with Ronnie Van Zant.
Soon enough, the two are pulling up to a house in Palo Alto just a few minutes outside campus. Earlier, Katherine protested—barging in on Sam in the middle of the night? But if Dean didn't have the courtesy of waiting until morning to bother a stranger, he certainly wouldn't have it for his own brother.
So Dean went up to Sam's apartment and told Katherine to stay in the car, which she did, sucking down her milkshake and staring down the stairwell Dean disappeared into.
Fifteen minutes pass before two tall, dark figures cross the street to the Impala. Katherine pushes herself across the bench seat and gawks at the tallest figure from the driver's window..
Holy hell, is that Sam?
"What is he, running around as Bigfoot at night?" She murmurs.
The young man peers curiously into the Impala. Going off of body language, Katherine guesses Dean is on some sort of tirade, arms swinging around as his younger brother follows him. Katherine throws the door to the car open and swings her long legs out, still holding her milkshake.
"--some normal, apple pie life?"
"Not normal," Sam disagrees. "Safe."
"And that's why you ran away."
"I was just going to college. It was Dad who said if I was gonna go, I should stay gone. That's what I'm doing." Sam's eyes flit to the teenager.
Katherine rocks onto her toes and Dean sighs, glancing to the girl. She looks innocent in a way that isn't, her big blue eyes trained curiously on Sam, one arm crossed over her torso and supporting the elbow of her other arm. She wants to be obvious and leering. Dean feels a brief flare of frustration aimed at the girl. She's too polite to interrupt and too...her to butt out for a sec, so he's got to introduce her so Sam doesn't go all Sam and clam up.
"Sam, this is Katherine Louise Donovan," he drones monotonously.
"Donovan?" Sam's brow twitches as he gazes at the blonde. "You grew up."
Katherine smiles a little, blue eyes looking him up and down. "Pot, meet kettle."
Sam chuckles a bit. "Wait...why is she here?"
"Dad's in trouble," Dean says. "If he's not dead already--I can feel it. Look, I can't do this alone."
"Yes you can," Sam disagrees. Then he gestures to Katherine on the other side of the vehicle.
"Well I don't want to," Dean says. Katherine's gaze shifts between the two brothers.
"What was he hunting?"
Katherine's gaze turns expectant as she looks to Dean, brows raised. He has yet to answer many of her questions about his father. Dean opens the trunk and lifts the compartment, mumbling. "Where the hell did I put that thing?"
"And why didn't you go with him?" Sam continues.
"Kat, you know where the file went?" Dean asks. Katherine reaches into the front seat and plucks the folder from the front seat and tosses it to him. "I was working my own gig," Dean says to Sam. "This voodoo thing down in New Orleans."
Sam looks to Katherine and she nods. "That's about all I've got out of him," she says to the younger Winchester.
"Dad let you go on a hunting trip by yourself?"
Dean looks to Sam with a furrowed brow. "I'm twenty-six, dude."
Katherine points to Dean. "Your father was hunting...?" She moves her hand in a circle, gesturing for him to continue.
"About a month ago, this guy..." Dean hands Sam a sheet of paper. Katherine sighs and rounds the back of the Impala, making a point of nudging Dean's back with her shoulder. He glares at the back of the smaller girl's head. "They found his car, but he'd vanished. Jericho."
"Maybe he was kidnapped," Katherine muses, staring down at the article with Sam. "Dragged from the car by a bear? Bears are nasty, especially if you wake them up from a nap." Katherine nods, ignoring Dean's glare. She stops sucking her milkshake down and stares at the papers with an expression of epiphany. "Maybe I'm a bear."
"There's this from April," Dean says, sliding another article from a stack of papers he's holding. "December '04, '03, '98, '92..." Dean looks to Katherine. "Still thinking bears?"
Katherine shrugs, turning her big blue eyes to Dean. "Maybe it's a line of really stupid people and really pissed off bears."
"Ten men over the past twenty years, all on the same five-mile stretch of road," Dean says. "Will you please take this seriously before I send your ass back to Yale?"
"Yale?" Sam questions, staring at the teenager in awe.
She turns to Dean, leaning against the side of the car. "You asked for my help. You're not sending me anywhere." Dean frowns as she reaches across him to read an article. "So it started happening again and your old man went to go dig around, right?" Dean nods.
"That was about three weeks ago. I haven't heard from him since, which is bad enough. Then I get this voicemail just a day before I grabbed you," Dean says, looking to Katherine. She watches, curious, as Dean picks up an old tape recorder—the answer to one of her questions.
He did say John told him to find her...
"Dean," a man's voice says, distorted and full of wails that makes the hair on the back of Katherine's neck rise. "Something's happening. I think it's serious. I need to try to figure out what's going on." Katherine frowns as John Winchester's voice turns to a garbled mess, with only a few distinct sentences. She closes her eyes, as if that would somehow help clarify anything he's saying. "Katherine Donovan—she can help. But be very careful. We're all in danger."
The Winchesters look to Katherine. She rocks back onto her heels, brows raised. "Well, I'm flattered." She gestures to the recorder. "There's EVP on that." Sam nods in agreement.
"Not bad, kid," Dean says, smiling. Katherine flashes him a sickly sweet grin and socks him in the kidney. "Right," he grunts, shaking his head. "I slowed the message down and ran it through GoldWave, took out the hiss, and this is what I got." Dean presses another button and a different message plays. A female's voice, soft and eerie. Ghost voices terrorized her as a child. Even now, hearing it makes her skin crawl, makes her want to push her back up against a wall in fear. I can never go home is what she says.
Katherine shudders and Dean shuts the recorder off. "Sound like a bear to you?" He asks.
Katherine shrugs after a moment, quickly regaining her bravado. "If a sexy lady bear learned English." Dean glares at her, obviously unamused. Katherine releases a drawn-out sigh, raising her fingers from her styrofoam cup in surrender. "Fine, it's not a bear." Dean shuts the trunk and looks to Sam.
"You know, in almost two years, never bothered you, never asked you for a thing." Katherine looks at Sam, gnawing on her straw, as he lets out a heavy sigh. He glances to Katherine and back to Dean.
"All right," he says. "I'll go. I'll help you find him, but I have to get back first thing Monday." He points to Katherine. "And you're leaving her alone. Just...wait here."
Katherine grins coyly, turning to Dean. "Told you you're a perv."
Dean ignores her for the moment. "What's first thing Monday?" He calls to Sam.
"I have an interview," Sam replies.
"What, a job interview?" He shrugs, making a face. "Skip it."
"It's a law school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate," Sam says, starting back for the stairwell.
Dean releases a huff through his nose before turning his pointed gaze to the young woman beside him. She's harmlessly inspecting her nails, mindlessly chewing the straw between her teeth.
"What did you mean earlier?"
"About what?" She hums.
"The perv comment. I didn't do anything."
Katherine's tongue smacks quietly against the roof of her mouth twice, in quick succession. "I dunno, the way your brother said it." Katherine shrugs. "Your volunteered history with women plus the 'leave her alone' comment, I put two and two together. You are already technically a stalker."
Dean rolls his eyes and plants his palms on either side of the girl, leaning close to her. Katherine's brow raises as she sucks at her milkshake, looking positively unaffected. She doesn't lean back, she doesn't lean forward. She only seems amused. "Don't flatter yourself," he says.
Katherine grins, flashing the older man an endearing crooked smile. She slides underneath his arm and slips into the backseat of the Impala.
Sam returns a few minutes later, happily taking the front seat. He quickly turns around to chat to Katherine, an expression of curiosity commandeering his features.
"You're at Yale," he states.
"You're at Stanford," Katherine returns, slurping up the remains of her milkshake. She sighs upon bearing witness to Dean's icy glare in the rear view mirror and gives up on the last bit of ice cream at the bottom of her cup. "Go...pine trees?"
Sam laughs. "Redwood," he says. "And it's not our official mascot. We kind of haven't had once since the 70s."
"A University without a mascot is a University without purpose," Katherine protests.
"Well what are you studying?"'
"Oh, I'm a recently graduated Med student." Katherine reaches forward, offering her hand to Sam. "Doctor Katherine Donovan. Kinda."
"Kinda," Dean repeats in amusement. "I don't know if I'd trust you with my life."
"Well I can definitely end it," Katherine chirps.
Sam looks to Dean. "Is she serious?"
"Well she's a hunter, so I would hope she knows how to kill a—"
"I meant about Med school," Sam presses.
"Oh, as a heart attack," Katherine says, nodding. "Which, as it turns out, is not entirely preventable."
"She's running on a few hours of sleep and a couple of burgers," Dean says. "She's been annoying me for two days."
"You know, I just got off of the on-call rotation, so I'm entitled to my sleep deprivation, all right? And it was your idea to break into my apartment, so..." She sinks down in the seat and rests on her side. "How long do I have until Jericho?"
"Little under four hours. We'll get a room, wait until morning."
Katherine nods once. Sam faces forward, still stunned silent. Med school graduate? At nineteen?
"Wicked, right?" Dean asks. Sam barely nods.
Katherine was so exhausted when they pulled into the motel, she stumbled into the room and flopped face-down onto the first bed without changing her clothes or taking her shoes off. The hunters got on the road a few hours after sunrise.
"What the hell is all of this?" Sam mumbles, tossing a cassette tape aside; he's currently critiquing Dean's "extensive" collection. It's actually quite a singular taste—classic rock. Not that Katherine minds at all. She enjoys the older stuff.
"Yo!" Dean hollers. Katherine leans forward, out of the back window. He holds up both of his hands. "Want breakfast?" A variety of candy dangles from his fingers.
"I'll pass," Sam scoffs, turning back to the box of Dean's cassettes.
"Gimme those Lifesavers," Katherine says, holding her hand out. Then she frowns, pulling it back as Dean leans forward. "Are they hard?"
"Yeah."
"Never mind." She sighs and sits back in the car. "Why would you ever get the hard kind? You probably also chew Juicy Fruit." The last bit was under her breath.
"How'd you pay for that stuff?" Sam asks. "You and Dad still running credit card scams?"
"Yeah, well, hunting ain't exactly a pro ball career," Dean defends, pulling the gas pump from the tank at the back of the Impala. "Besides, all we do is apply. It's not our fault they send us the cards." Katherine snorts, shaking her head, and the oldest Winchester rounds to the driver's seat.
"And what names did you write on the application this time?" Sam asks.
"Uh...Bert Aframian," Dean answers, shutting the door behind him with a smirk. "And his son, Hector." Katherine lets out a quiet giggle, shaking her head. "Scored two cards out of the deal."
"Sounds about right." Sam drops another plastic case into the box in frustration. "I swear to God, man, you have got to update your cassette tape collection."
"Why?" Katherine and Dean squawk in unison.
"Well for starters, they're cassette tapes. Two, Black Sabbath? Motörhead? Metallica?"
"Hey!" Katherine cries. "Leave Hetfield alone."
"Leave Hetfield alone," Dean echoes with a nod.
"It's 'The Greatest Hits of Mullet Rock'," Sam retorts. Katherine barks out a laugh and Dean glares at her.
She smiles, leaning forward. "What? It was funny."
Dean plucks a cassette from Sam's fingers. "House rules, Sammy," he says.
"Oh, God," Katherine mutters, shaking her head.
"Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole," Dean finishes.
"Sammy is a chubby twelve year old," Sam says as an unfamiliar song starts to play over the speakers. His soft voice is a bit lost in the drums. "It's Sam."
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you," Dean says. "The music's too loud." Katherine grins, closing her eyes as she shakes her head some more.
"How far to Jericho?" She asks, crossing her arms over her chest. It's a bit warm, the sun beating down on her in the backseat; she wears a gray ribbed racerback, blue jeans, and sneakers. Her long blonde hair has been left down today, still damp from her shower earlier in the morning.
"Little under an hour," Dean answers. She nods once, though he can't see, and sinks down the seat with tightly crossed arms. A few minutes into the drive, Sam turns around with a smile to further investigate the enigma in the backseat—but the enigma has already, magically, fallen asleep. He supposes that's a good thing—hunters need to get as much sleep as they can, when they can. If he wasn't well-rested, someone might as well be.
Closer to town, Sam calls around the local hospitals and morgues to ensure no man fitting the description of his and Dean's father has been admitted or deceased—good news, there was none.
Dean's eyes are still on the road, analyzing a potential situation at the bridge up ahead. A few police cars and some yellow tape. "Check it out," he says, and Sam turns his gaze to the road. The moment Dean pulls the Impala onto the shoulder, on uneven ground, Katherine sits awake, blue eyes stinging red.
A light sleeper for sure.
"What's that?" She asks, frowning, and searches for her backpack and a piece of gum.
"Dunno yet," Dean answers, carefully glancing over the situation. Then he reaches into the glove box, fishing around for proper—fake—identification. "You got fakes?"
"I have fakes for my fakes," Katherine scoffs, fishing around for the envelope in her backpack. Sam gapes at the two, speechless. "Who are we today?" Dean grabs the envelope and sifts through her badges before handing one back to her. She glances at the I.D. and grins, climbing out of the car in synchronization with Dean, and the older brother leans into the car to beckon Sam with them. Katherine grabs her tan utility jacket, shrugs it on over her singlet, and falls in step with Dean.
"Let me do the talking," Dean says. Katherine makes a face at him as he turns around.
The officers at the blocked-off vehicle are engaging in discussion about the car—no sign of struggle, no footprints or fingerprints. A phrase that should set off alarms, "It's almost too clean," is spoken by one of the deputies. More often than not, too-clean crime scenes are a hunter's type of case, and Katherine has worked many on her own.
"So this kid, Troy," the other officer begins, still looking at the other man. "He's dating your daughter, isn't he? How's Amy doing?" Katherine nudges Dean and he nods.
"She's putting up missing posters downtown," the first answers.
"You had another one like this last month, didn't you?" Dean asks, and both officers turn to look at the three as if noticing them for the first time.
The second man stands up, putting his hands on his hips. "And who are you?" his name plate reads 'Jaffe.'
"Federal Marshalls," Dean answers, letting the bottom of the fold-out fall. He flashes the badge and ID just long enough so the sheriff can see, but not inspect, and folds the badge back up before tucking it away into his utility jacket.
The officer skeptically analyzes the trio's faces instead. "You're a little young to be Marshalls, aren't you?"
Then Katherine does something funny.
She smiles. Grins, rather. But the act of smiling isn't strange—it's the way she did it, the way the sheriff responded. The dimpled, crooked grin somehow disarmed him, loosened up his shoulders and slackened his face. Sam swore he saw the man's dark eyes glaze over for a brief moment.
How in the hell did she do that?
"That's awfully kind of you," she says in a voice she's never used around the boys. It's still hers, of course, but it's flirty—flirtier than the tone she used tauntingly with Dean as they crossed the country in the old Impala. She turns to the car in question. "You did have another one like this, correct?" The teenager asks.
"Yeah, that's right," Officer Jaffe says. "About a mile up the road. There have been others before that."
"You knew the vic?"
The man nods. "In a town like this, everybody knows everybody."
"Any connection between them?" Dean asks, circling the car with Katherine. "Besides the fact they're all men?"
"No. Not so far as we can tell."
"So what's the theory?" Sam questions.
"Honestly? We have no idea. Serial murderer, kidnapping ring..."
"Well, that is exactly the type of crap police work I'd expect out of you guys." Katherine throws her elbow into Dean's ribs and he glares at her. Her glacial gaze is somehow worse than his fiercest glare, and in a brief flicker of panic, he reminds himself to never piss the not-so-little blonde off.
"Thanks for your time," Katherine and Sam chorus. Katherine starts away and Sam shoves his brother forward, the two Winchesters quickly falling into step with the teenager. Dean flicks Katherine's neck right where it's most sensitive, and she yelps, turning on him with blazing blue eyes as she cups her neck. He takes a cautious step to the side, jaw set. "What the hell?" She asks.
"Why'd you have to hit my ribs?"
"Why'd you talk to a policeman like that?!" She retorts.
"Oh, come on!" Dean groans, stepping in front of Katherine. Her jaw clenches. "They don't really know what's going on!"
"So you insult them," she nods, putting her hands on her hips. Sam clears his throat and her eyes shift to the space beside Dean's shoulder—a group of men approaching, and one seems to be the sheriff.
He could be a younger Sheriff Coltrane. "Can I help you?" He asks.
"No, sir," Katherine says, smiling at him in the same manner she did Officer Jaffe. "We were just on our way."
"Agent Mulder, Agent Scully," Dean says, nodding as two FBI agents pass by. Katherine pinches the bridge of her nose in exasperation and starts forward. The three hunters are well aware of the sheriff's gaze on them, even behind the dark aviators.
Katherine frowns, gazing into the rearview mirror at the red welt on her neck. "Why do you have to flick so hard?" She asks, thumb gently grazing over the patch of red skin.
"I also told you to let me do the talking."
She leans forward, crossing her arms along the top of the bench seat. Then her eyebrow raises.
Dean has already nicknamed it The Bitch Brow.
"You dragged me into this," she seethes. "You let me work how I work, you don't boss me around, and I won't have to elbow you." Dean rolls his eyes.