Y/n's been here three days already. Long enough to memorize the water stain on the ceiling, the way the toilet runs if you don't jiggle the handle just right, and the exact distance between her bed and the door if she ever needs to move fast. Which she always does.

She's got the case file spread across the motel desk—missing persons reports, a few grainy photos, some local legend she'd dug up from the town's historical society. Four people gone in the last six weeks. All locals. All vanished without a trace. And every single one of them had been out in those woods when it happened.

The rain picks up for a second, drumming harder against the glass. And then—

A sound cuts through it. Low and familiar. An engine, rumbling like a heartbeat.

Y/n knows that sound. She's heard it a hundred times before, pulling up beside her in some dusty parking lot or dive bar, kicking up gravel and attitude.

She sets down the pen she's been holding and looks out the window, through the gap in the curtains.

The black '67 Impala rolls into the parking lot like it owns the place. Headlights sweep across the wet asphalt, catching the spray of rain. It glides to a stop two spaces down from her own car—a classic '68 Mustang, dark as pitch, sitting quiet and unassuming in the dark.

The engine cuts. For a moment, nothing moves. Then the driver's door opens, and a pair of worn leather boots hit the pavement.

Dean Winchester stands up, shakes the rain out of his hair, and looks around the lot like he's sizing the place up. A few beats later, the passenger side opens too—Sam unfolds himself from the Impala like he's been folded up too long, stretching his neck side to side.

Neither of them have noticed her car yet.

Dean pulls his jacket tighter against the damp and tilts his head toward the motel office.