Right then folks, here we go for the third time! This idea has been sitting in my head for years, tracking through various characters and settings but never actually making it into word form. But it seemed to fit so perfectly for this format it finally had to be written out!

The first story was them coming back together, the second was Dean being targeted and this is a proper procedural affair with lots of twists and turns and brotherhood, of course!

Hope you enjoy this opening chapter, remember to let me know what you think!

Chapter titles courtesy of the iconic ELO!

First Movement

For the most part the boss lady visited the warehouse whenever she had a new case to offload, blustering in without any hint of a warning except for the ominous click click of her heels and usually holding a file tucked beneath her elbow bulging with sheets or crime scene photos and notes and a launching off statement that she knew would grab hold of them and so was usually primed to turn their weary heads.

Missing drugs boat.

Mass stabbing in the Nexus.

The only time they ever got called into her office was when there was some serious shit going down, like when traffickers were trying to sell off internal organs or when she was hoping to reunite her three favourite cops. In fact if Dean had thought about it further then he probably would have realized that their summons for the reunion had been the very last time they had stepped foot through the door but was still the reason he groaned so loudly as he cast his eyes over the text message flashing on his phone.

"Ah crap, that can't be good."

Roman looked up sharply from where he was chasing a thick piece of bacon around the egg yolk on his plate and then followed the glance by narrowing his brows in instinctive concern,

"Everything alright?"

"Boss wants to see us."

Seth blew out a grumble and then stabbed reluctantly at his omelette with a fork having chosen the healthiest breakfast that was possible in the grease covered diner they had ducked into on the hoof.

"Yeah you're right that is never good man, so what does she say?"

Dean brushed off his hands, shunning the napkin that had been placed beside his pancakes and instead swiping them right the down the side of his pants, but somehow still managing to smear maple syrup on the phone screen in a big sticky trail.

Fuck and triple fuck.

Putting them into his mouth he sucked on them and then garbled out the transcript of the message past his tongue, which made the words come out a little bit spitty but which his long suffering teammates didn't mind much.

"Uh, she just says to get our asses down there."

Roman sighed heavily,

"Must be serious."

"Always is, I mean it ain't like we pull cats from trees for a livin' here."

"Good because those suckers will scratch your eyes out uce."

Roman finished his sentence with a grin of amusement for no other reason than to make his brothers laugh and in response to it Dean tried his best to bite a smile down but failed in an instant,

"You big fuckin' goof."

Seth grunted suddenly from his seat by the window and it sounded a little like he was groaning back at them, but then swiftly fell away into something more serious that didn't quite fit.

"Aww shit boys, this looks bad."

In terms of their grouping and who the biggest kids were, the two eldest men took the prize every time and so the fact that their younger sibling had ignored their cat banter was by no means a big or cataclysmic surprise. Instead the surprise was his out of the blue swearing and the sudden finger point he levelled towards the television screen, which was hanging from a bracket in the corner of the diner but tilted down precariously so that it faced towards them.

Dean blinked,

"What's up man?"

"That."

Dean frowned and then pivoted, turning to rest his hand along the back of the leather booth, which like the rest of the eatery looked haggard and ripped and badly stained and in need of some love.

Either that or a salvage yard.

Behind it up on the monitor however was a slowly scrolling news feed with a reporter stood above. Police tape was billowing in the background of the setup but was occasionally blurred by the familiar khaki of the cops, who were moving about with purpose beyond the cordon and trying to push the large media scrum back.

Roman blinked,

"The hell is going on out there?"

Dean squinted, being the closest of the three of them to the screen and then read the small by-line blitzing through on the ticker before suddenly freezing in alarm.

"Holy shit."

Seth barked at him,

"Well, what does it say man?"

"It says that another woman has been killed,"

In response to the statement his two teammates fell silent because they each knew what he was talking about and the poor girl found only a week earlier in the bushes who had been asphyxiated and then horribly unfeelingly dumped but which they hadn't been given the nod to look into since it fell beneath the bracket of regular police work.

Roman shook his head,

"Serial killings? Well that would definitely make it more our gig."

Dean snorted back,

"You ain't wrong there big guy an' that ain't the half of it – they think the strangler is on the loose."

"Fuck."

It was Seth who proved the eloquent speaker and his nasally sounding bellow brought a slew of haughty looks and not least of all from the mother of three sat beside them with tattoos across her breastbone and carrying at least three hundred pounds.

Dean watched her fists curl up in indignation and then opened his mouth,

"Seth – ,"

"Fuck man, this is bad, like really fucking bad."

It was about to get much worse too or at the very least would have in the next few seconds had Roman not pulled his wallet out and tossed down a bill, tucking it beneath his near licked clean breakfast plate before blowing out a sigh and climbing to his feet,

"Better see what the boss can tell us about this."

"Good idea big guy."

Dean snatched his jacket up and then shrugged himself into the thing one handed as he pulled loose some cash from the back pocket of his pants, before stepping in to flank his still irate younger brother who had no earthly concept of the behemoth he was pissing off.

"Anyone else think it's way too early to be dealing with this kind of totally messed up shit?"

Roid Mom slammed down her cutlery in fury and then turned to try and haul her bulk onto her feet. Dean pushed his teammate out roughly through the swing doors then hustled him along the kerbside to where their car was parked up, but not quickly enough to stop a voice from ringing out at them, carried in the tones of the woman's four year old and so well pronounced it was like he often said it or was thinking about saying it more.

"Fuck momma, fuck fuck."

Hella good role models the three of their asses were.

But it was still kind of funny in a really warped way and luckily by the time the hellbent parental unit had prized her ass up out of her seat, their team was belted and buckled and moving, meaning that his cop badge and holster were safe for another day.

Roman flipped on the radio,

"So, what can you tell us?"

"Not a whole lot at this point I'm afraid, naturally the police aren't giving much away yet."

"What about the link to the strangler?"

Dean blinked and then let a shiver run over his body in some weird sort of suspenseful nervousness type shit, because the name they were saying on repeat had resonance and not least for those of them who were still on the force or could remember back twenty five years to the summer when their city had been gripped by the icy claw of dread and eleven unsuspecting woman had been kidnapped and then each and every one of them throttled to death.

Eleven women.

How had that happened and how had the bastard never been caught?

It was possibly the one case in the history of their metropolis that every last cadet and officer in training had been taught about and in detail too in preparation for their test papers, since the powers that be had been totally adamant that never would they let the same thing happen again.

Largely they had even succeeded in that mission –

But then suddenly there they were again out rallying the troops and firing on all cylinders with the city in a panic and fuelled like always by the hysterical sounding press.

"Police say the victim was another young woman reported as missing some days before – ,"

Roman leaned over and turned the news off again and the car fell into silence around him at once. Nobody spoke but then again nobody wanted to, since there wasn't a whole bunch they could helpfully say and in the end a grand total of three and a half minutes passed them by quietly.

Seth predictably broke the still,

"We know it's not him right? I mean, it can't be."

"Why not?" Roman asked as he steered them through the rush and the legions of people running kids towards classrooms and living their lives and out doing normal stuff.

"Because, come on it's been twenty five years man, the guy would have to be fifty years old or more."

"Plenty of killers are thereabouts or older."

"Then why the hell has he come back, why now?"

Dean shrugged vaguely in response to the question, the gesture showing up in the rear view in front but his tone staying neutral to offset his spinning brainstem and the policeman thinking going on inside his head.

"Maybe it's a copycat killin'?"

"Maybe."

Roman however didn't sound quite so sure and as the swirling speculation grew then burst quickly, Seth let out a groan,

"Ugh, I guess we're gonna have to wait and let the boss tell us what's going down here."

"Unless she's going to send us to rescue a cat?"

Dean grinned broadly and his older brother chuckled while the youngest of their trio rolled long suffering eyes and then slumped back closer and further into the fabric while tapping his fingers impatiently on the belt.

It took them another twelve minutes of traffic to get across town to where her offices were, perched high above the greenery and splendour of Hornswoggle Park and covered in the type of expensive picture windows that looked black from the outside to reflect back the light. Stephanie's assistant let them in without knocking and then ushered them past her towards the long dark wood desk and the brown haired woman sitting behind it looked up coolly and then dropped down her pen, her pitched tone snippy and clipped,

"Gentlemen, I'm glad you could finally make it."

Passive aggression was never a good start and in response to it Seth blew an aggrieved sounding breath out and sat himself down heavily in one of the waiting leather chairs.

"It's rush hour and we were on the other side of town,"

"I called you eighteen minutes ago."

"Then maybe we should have blue lights to stick on our asses?" Dean threw in cheerfully to cut through the tension that his boss and little brother seemed to pull out of thin air in a way that made them seem like overgrown children only far worse.

Kids would at least have kissed and made up.

Stephanie blinked up at him from under raised eyebrows and with a look that would have turned a lesser man to stone, but which made the copper blonde smile back at her smugly like a chimp at the zoo that had learnt to throw its own turds.

"No blue lights, we've had this conversation."

"Red lights then?"

She gestured to the seats,

"Dean sit down."

Roman stepped past to take up his own chair and caught his brother's sleeve in a placid little tug that cautioned against pissing their boss off too dramatically when they were less than one and a half minutes in through the door. Dean threw his eyes to the heavens in resentfulness but then followed the bigger man and slumped down before the desk, promptly almost sliding right off the leather cushions and flailing a little before righting himself.

Stephanie blinked back at him,

"When you're quite ready."

He made a circle with his thumb and forefinger,

"A-okay."

Mostly his kookiness tended to amuse her but in the ongoing climate it fell pretty flat and instead their boss merely pulled out a folder and flapped back the cover before drawing a photo out. She paused for a second to drink in the image and then turned it and pushed it across the polished desk top, where it skittered to a halt less than an inch from their noses and sobered them in an instant.

Seth groaned,

"Oh crap."

He wasn't wrong on that one either.

Looking back at them was the image of a woman lying face down on a hard concrete floor, her body had been laid out to seem like she was sleeping but her cold open eyes made it clear she was dead. Her head was turned and her hair was pushed back far enough that the three men could see red twine around her neck which had been wrapped several times and then pulled tightly.

Dean sucked a breath in.

Fuck.

"Is she the first one?"

Stephanie began rooting through the file again, her plum painted nails leafing swiftly through the papers before coming to the one she wanted and pulling it out. Her tone was heavy with worry and tension but she also sounded hugely angry as well and as she shunted the sheet towards them to join the photo, it became fast apparent exactly why that was.

"Her name was Alexa Bliss and she was a twenty two year old student studying medicine."

In other words then just a kid.

Before them the new sheet of paper made that plainer, since it contained basic a breakdown of knowledge about her life and was accompanied by what was obviously her student card photo since it showed her happy and smiling straight into the lens. She had blonde hair that hung straight down past her shoulders and a cluster of freckles that offset deep blue eyes. In essence she was like any other hopeful student or had been.

Roman let out a growl by his side.

"What about the girl from this morning? Any connection?"

Stephanie nodded,

"Information is still coming in, but based on the circumstances and signatures then I would say yes."

"Signatures?"

It was a word they had all noted instantly but in the end it was down to their youngest man to ask. Seth looked up from the photo with his brows drawn and a hint of low caution beginning to creep in.

Dean took over,

"What kind of signatures? You mean like the kind a serial killer might use?"

For a second their boss said nothing and did nothing, simply continuing to stare over the desk, but then eventually she licked her lips and pulled out more photos, but a bunch of them that time and mostly taken in black and white. She pushed them across the woodwork and then fanned them, so that each of the polaroid shots was on view and while it was clear that they were totally different images, at first glance they all seemed one and the same.

"These are the crime scenes from twenty five years ago – ,"

Seth frowned,

"From the strangler case? You think it's him then?"

Stephanie ignored him and kept on fanning, pressing her finger down on each one in turn and highlighting the snaps that had shots of the walls on and where a darkly painted message was repeatedly daubed.

Sin is crouching at the door.

It seemed to be the thing that linked every case, notwithstanding the use of the red twine to do the killing which they already knew about and which had been reported in the press. The dripping scrawl on the walls was new to them however and a feature of the cases they had neither studied nor ever seen and Roman blinked up in measures of confusion at their stern faced employer.

"He left messages?"

"Every time."

"So then why is this the first time we're seeing them?"

"We wanted to establish a line to the killer – in case he called – it was something only he knew."

Despite her use of the word we in the sentence, when the initial murders had been happening she had still been in school or else was being grown in the lab by scientists or however the hell she had truly been formed. Either way the one thing she hadn't been at that point was one of the leading lights on the case but naturally in line with her general disposition and swaggering bloodline she liked to act as if she had.

Seth sat forward,

"Did he call?"

"Never."

"So what was the point of even putting the message up?"

Dean shrugged back,

"He wanted to taunt 'em, make 'em think like he was goin' to get in contact but never was."

If he had been a murderous serial killer, then screwing with the police force would have been totally his thing and so it therefore stood to reason that any smug asshole being hunted by the city would have had a mocking side.

Stephanie nodded back at him,

"Possibly – ,"

"Oh for sure boss."

She carried on succinctly,

"But now the messages are back, they were found at the crime scenes last week and this morning."

Seth swallowed a lump down,

"So he is back? I mean, nobody else ever knew about the messages? Not the press or anyone?"

"Only the task force."

"Shit."

It wasn't exhaled as a bark of frustration but instead more of a sigh as the thoughts rattled around his head and which the younger man's brothers could fully attest to since the very real facts had knocked all three of them for six. Roman cleared his throat and then sat forward, pushing the bloody looking photos away and then fixing brown eyes in over the desk top as he moved into police mode.

"Any ideas on why now?"

"No but there is something of interest – ,"

Manicured hands scrabbled at the mound of papers once more, which were fast beginning to get a little shuffled which she would probably regret later when she couldn't find anything but in the tension of the moment hadn't obviously occurred to her since she pulled loose another one and upset several more.

Dean blinked,

"What's that?"

It was placed down in front of them and then spun so they could see the detailed writing for themselves, which revealed the new sheet was in fact an autopsy but short of reading the whole thing it gave little away. Luckily however their boss filled in the blanks for them, pointing to the relevant lines as she did and tapping her nails with a little click click sound that seemed like an homage to her ever noisy heels.

"Alexa Bliss wasn't strangled."

Dean rocked his head back,

"What?"

"She was smothered and drugged."

His brothers too seemed equally baffled and slowly three sets of eyes swung towards the snaps and the one in particular of her poor cold body laid out on the ground with the cord around her neck. Seth even jabbed it roughly with his finger,

"Then why is it there?"

"It was added post mortem and from what I'm hearing it's the same for the victim they found today as well."

"So what, the guy is switching up his method?"

But that explanation didn't sit so well, because murdering folk was not the same as picking carpet or looking at varying colors and styles. Killers liked to stick to certain routines and structures and therefore rarely if ever ventured off from those too far.

Roman scrubbed a hand across his face fluff thoughtfully,

"Well twenty five years is a pretty long time, maybe he doesn't have the same strength he used to."

"But the original victims were all strangled, right?" Seth bit out, still rooting through the photos like he couldn't break away from their weirdly morbid draw, but more than likely looking for clues or information that had potentially been overlooked.

Stephanie nodded,

"Every single one."

"And you're sure no one outside knows about the messages, right?"

Her head bobbed again firmly as she looked up and fixed her gaze, barely even flinching for a solitary second as she answered with an assured sounding syllable.

"Yes."

"So I guess now you're askin' our non-blue-light-wearin' asses to fix this shit?" Dean threw out with a breath, reaching across to pick up a coaster that was attempting to keep watery rings from the desk, then beginning to spin it on its axis in an absent little gesture to free up his tapping hands.

His boss raised a brow,

"Why else would I invite you?"

"Sparklin' conversation?"

"With you Ambrose? That's a stretch."

Beside him his elder brother nodded resolutely, ignoring the sniped teasing with long practised ease but accepting the case on behalf of their grouping like they actually had a damn choice in the thing.

"We'll see what we can do."

"Good," Stephanie snapped briskly before suddenly sitting forward to tap the buzzer on her desk, then bending towards it as her assistant crackled back at her to be answered by four words, "Send him in now."

Dean blinked,

"Huh? Send the hell who in?"

He wasn't too happy at the look that flashed back, because their no-nonsense boss was actually grinning at him, like some sort of monstrous big cat who'd got the cream and even worse than that was her steepling her fingers in a measure of smugness which was never fucking good.

Stephanie tipped her head,

"In light of the situation I thought you might benefit from the help of someone who knows the case."

"We know the case."

"But not as well as this man – ,"

Behind them the big black doors to her office clicked out loudly and then a figure strode in, his height alone making him appear like a giant and his glower contributing to the intensity that he was wearing like a cape. Dean had never seen the guy in his life before but based on their reactions his brothers clearly had, since both of them gaped like they'd seen an apparition and Seth even spluttered eloquently,

"Holy crap."

Stephanie raised a hand up and pointed it towards the new man,

"Mark Calaway, former lead officer on the case and the only person I trust to see us through this."

In response the man mountain minutely inclined his head and then forced on an expression that Dean figured was a smile, or maybe would have been if the glower hadn't precluded it and turned it into something more vicious than warm.

Dean blinked blue eyes in return then scowled.

"We don't need help Steph."

She ignored him with ease and continued to beam up at the shaven haired goliath with a look of total reverence.

"Mark, welcome to the team."

Yep, finally got The Undertaker into a story, I promised I would! Next chapter, Dean is in a bad mood to put it mildly! Anyone want our boy snappy and snarky?! I hope so!