memento vivere - supernatural & criminal minds

chapter 9

Chapter 9
Centennial Highway

“I’m not taking your money.” They’d stopped at a gas station to refuel and get breakfast.

“I’m a federal agent, I don’t wanna be associated with your credit card scams.” Jude tried again to shove her card at Dean, but he dodged her hand like it was holding a poisonous snake. 

“What, you don’t want your name attached to the honorable and definitely real…” Sam leaned back from the gas pump to read the name on the card, “Hector Aframian?” After several more jabs and a significant amount of guilt-tripping, Dean took Jude’s card. “Don’t just get crap!” Sam called after him.

“He’s gonna get crap,” Jude sighed, stretching out across the backseat to read the last text that she’d gotten from Penelope - there had been about twenty of them in the five hours since they’d left Stanford. After the obligatory thoughts and prayers for her imaginary grandmother, most of them had been about postponing their movie marathon. This one was, ironically, an apology for how many texts she’d sent. Jude knew the only reason she hadn’t gotten the same deluge of texts from Spencer was his aversion to technology. He’d left her a fifteen-minute rambling voicemail instead.

“This music sucks.” Jude looked up to see Sam in the passenger seat digging through Dean’s cassette collection.

“Don’t let your brother hear you say that,” Jude warned, fishing her headphones out of her bag. She’d also had enough of Dean’s metal and rock collection.

“You put up with this crap for two days?”

Dean appeared next to Jude’s open window with two plastic bags in hand. “I let her change the tape a few times. Under threat of violence, but I did it.” He shoved her credit card and one of the bags through the window and slid into the driver’s seat. “Not very federal agent of you, by the way, Judy.”

“You can’t blame her though, man,” Sam shook his head. “You’ve gotta update your cassette tape collection.”

“Why?” Dean asked, affronted.

“Well, for one, they’re cassette tapes. And two,” he sifted through the little black cassettes with album titles scrawled across them, “Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica?” Dean snatched the Metallica tape back as if it were an ancient relic that Sam was contaminating with his touch. “It’s the greatest hits of mullet rock.”

“House rules, Sammy.” Dean popped the tape into the player. “Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.” 

“So Jude’s immune to this rule and I’m not?” Sam objected over the music as they peeled out of the gas station.

“She could have me arrested, Sammy. You can’t,” Dean shot back. He wasn’t wrong, but Jude would never risk getting a Winchester locked in a government building. They’d never let him out again.

The brothers bickered to the halfway point on Centennial Highway until they finally fell into a petty silence. Sam began chattering on the phone, and though Jude could hardly hear him through her headphones, she knew what the calls were for. He was doing what she called the mortal remains checklist, or contacting every hospital and morgue in the area to look for missing persons. He shook his head at her in the rearview - no one matching John’s description had been found. This was either a good sign or a sinister one.

Jude pulled off her headphones as they approached a bridge. The road was blocked off and police cars swarmed the area. The officers - including the sheriff and deputy, going by their badges - were crowded around an abandoned blue car in the middle of the road. There were a few men on the shoreline below the bridge that appeared to be sifting through the mud for clues.