CRIMINAL MINDS: END GAME
Flashing lights. Traumatized teens. FBI agents. Police officers.
The Game was over. Damn, he was furious!
"My brother!" the kid shouted as they hauled him, handcuffed, toward the waiting police car. "Where's my brother?! What did you do to him?!"
The police officer spun him around and pointed. A gurney with a body bag—body inside—was emerging from the abandoned paper mill entrance. The kid stared, suddenly calm. "He's dead."
The officer turned him again and headed him to the car.
"I won the game," the boy breathed, a pleased smirk settling on his features as he climbed into the back seat.
JJ caught her breath. Very little could shake her after all these years—but this stopped her in her tracks. She stared at him, disbelieving. He met her gaze through the car window, and there was actual triumph in his eyes.
"My God," she whispered. What had made the boy's virtual victory more significant for him than the death of his brother? The brother he'd depended on, who had depended on him. They had bonded through the cyber-world of online gaming. And become addicted, unable to re-connect with reality. They had recreated the game in this abandoned mill. Now four people were dead. One 17-year-old girl would have to live with having killed a classmate. A dozen teens had endured 10 terrifying hours.
JJ raised a hand to her mouth. She would never, never allow Henry to play computer games, she swore, knowing full well it was an impossible vow to keep. She shivered as a primal fear crept into her bones—the fear of a parent for her child.
A hand touched her arm. She turned to face Hotch, whose eyes reflected her own horror.