Author's Note: This plot bunny wouldn't leave me be all day, so here's the resulting story! I hope you all enjoy it! Please review!
That morning, they could all tell that something wasn't right.
It was more than a feeling- it was a terrible knowing.
As members of the BAU filed in, each found an envelope on their desks.
Inside were pictures of the person they loved most tied to a chair.
Jack Hotchner, Henry LaMontagne, Sean McCallister, Carolyn Rossi, Diana Reid, and Penelope Garcia were all taken.
The BAU gathered around the conference room table, each visibly shaken. They all knew that with an attack this personal to each of them, they wouldn't be able to be unbiased. However, at the same time, because of the personal nature of the case, that they would be even more motivated to solve it.
They called in Kevin Lynch to be their analyst while Garcia was away. When he came down to the conference room, he brought with him a CD left in Garcia's office. He put it into the CD-ROM on his laptop and watched as it started playing on the screen.
The darkness on the screen was alleviated to reveal all seven hostages sitting in a line of chairs. Each had their hands and feet tied to the arms and legs while the chair itself was bolted to the floor. When their faces could at last be seen, it jarred the heart to see the weary expressions of the adults and the frightened looks of the children. Each member of the team had their eyes locked on their stolen family member or friend, wondering who would have the knowledge to destroy each of them so irreparably. Suddenly, a voice masked by a cloaking device began to speak.
"Hello, agents. As you can see, I have a little something that belongs to each of you. This would never have happened if you hadn't provoked me. You took away what was precious to me, and now I have taken what's most precious to you. If you ever want to see them alive again, you have to find them within the next forty eight hours- or else it's curtains for them all. Tick tock, agents, time is running out."
The screen was filled with snow.
All of them were quiet for a minute, trying to absorb the impact of the words. It was Hotch, though, who was the quickest to recover.
"I know this is extremely difficult but we have to put our connections aside and treat this like we would any other case."
They all nodded.
"This has something to do with all of us as a unit. The nature of this crime was exceedingly personal, so it's likely that this wasn't a case we were called in on by somebody else. Whoever did this is blaming us directly, so we have to assume that we were at fault for whatever happened to this person."
"They had to be someone trustworthy. From what I could see, none of the hostages had defensive wounds on them, which means they went with them voluntarily." Reid added.
"Okay. So who would kids and adults both trust enough to leave with?" Prentiss questioned.
"It's more than that." Rossi interjected. "They would have had to have had the credentials to get Garcia to go with them, to get Your Mom from the sanitarium," he said, gesturing to Reid, "and to get both of your kids from their caregivers." He finished, looking at Hotch and JJ. "Who would have that kind of power?"
"Nobody except..." JJ's eyes widened. "Except one of our own."
Silence blanketed the room as they all caught up with her meaning.
"Kevin, can you get me a list of agents who were recently fired?" Asked Hotch.
"No problem." He said, and started typing furiously. Hotch turned to the rest of the team.
"Rossi, you and Morgan go to Bennington Sanitarium and see if they caught the unsub on camera. Reid, you and JJ start working on a geographical profile. Prentiss, look over the video again for any identifying details about the location. I'll start conducting interviews with the caregivers who last saw the children. Wheels up in thirty."
Hotch decided to start by talking with his sister-in-law about who could have come to the door to get Jack. When he got to the house, however, no one answered the door. He burst inside to find the house empty. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he traveled to JJ's house to find the same thing- no one there.
As Hotch traveled back to the BAU, JJ was desperately trying to contact Will- and failing miserably. She tried to push the worry aside to help Reid build the profile, but couldn't push the fear away completely. Spencer, meanwhile, was completely engrossed in his work. Although he was determined to find his mother before she got hurt, his mind had room to both focus on the case and fear for his mother's safety. After narrowing the geographical profile down to a thirty mile radius, he compared it with the names Kevin Lynch had found on the computer. None of them matched.
Kevin decided to try a different tact and looked at why the employees were fired. There were some who had several minor infractions that eventually led to their termination, and then there were others with one large offense that guaranteed their job loss. He started with the ones who had one large offense and dug into their backgrounds first. Nothing telling came up. On the list of employees with smaller misconduct charges, only one seemed to fit the bill. He got everyone on the line and started talking.
"Raymond Clifford Lee was fired a month ago after the BAU proved that he was misusing his credentials to get into places for free. Before that he had a string of minor offenses- yelling at a coworker, a few run ins with HR, but nothing that screamed "fire me". When his superiors found out he was fired on the spot. I have a home address and I sent it to all of your phones now."
Hotch picked up Prentiss before taking off for the Lee residence.
Twenty minutes later, they burst into Lee's home to find that he was long gone. Upon further examination of his home, they found Jessica Brooks, William LaMontagne, and Henry's Nanny all tied up in the basement. All of them had been blitz attacked from behind and hadn't seen their attacker's face. The three of them were rushed to the hospital while Hotch and Prentiss searched the house for clues to where the hostages were being held. Unfortunately they came up empty. Having worked for the FBI gave him the exact knowledge of how to cover his tracks.
After that, those still in Virginia regrouped at Quantico.
Meanwhile in Las Vegas, Rossi and Morgan were knee deep in security footage as they tried to find the unsub on camera. Although there was no sound on the camera, it was fairly easy to guess what played out. The unsub kept his face from the camera and wore a baseball cap to be sure his identity was concealed. He came up to Diana and spoke to her for a few moments. From the look on her face and the way she leaped out of her chair, it was clear that he had told her something about Spencer. He kept his head down and away from the cameras as he walked her away from the sanitarium and to his car.
Once they called back and said they came up with nothing, they flew back to Virginia on the jet.
When Diana awoke from a long sleep, she looked around at the other hostages. Penelope was very quiet at her right side. Carolyn was rigid on her left. Sean remained stone faced next to Carolyn, and both children were fidgeting next to him.
"Where are we?" She asked, somewhat disoriented.
"A soundproof room." Said Sean. Although they had been there for hours, they were only just now beginning to feel comfortable talking to one another, as any previous attempts were thwarted by their faceless attacker, who watched them and came in to taunt them every few minutes. Now, it had been at least a half hour since they were last looked in on.
"How can you tell?" Asked Penelope.
"The walls are covered with egg cartons, which are used to soundproof rooms. They've just been painted over to give a look of normalcy to the room."
They nodded.
"What do you think he'll do to us?" Asked Carolyn.
Sean shrugged. "It depends on what we're all here for. If we're valuable to him or not. If we are, we'll stay alive. If we aren't..."
No one needed to finish the sentence.
"I want to go home." Whined Henry, trying to get out of his restraints. Jack imitated him as Penelope strained to look at her Godson.
"Don't worry, Henry. Your Mommy is looking for you. So is your Daddy, Jack. I know it." It was the only condolence she could give. He tried to smile at her, but failed.
The door flew open, and the children jumped in their seats. He turned on the tiny camera that sat on it's tripod.
"Well, well, well. It looks like we have some naughty boys here." He took off his belt and hit the floor with it. Both boys cowered notably from it, eyes wide with fear. Their attacker grinned.
"WAIT!" Diana shrieked, just before he went to hit Henry. The man in the black ski mask looked at her.
"Take me instead." She said, quietly. Penelope looked at her, stunned. That was as brave as anything she'd ever seen any of the team do. "Please," Diana pleaded. "They're just babies." The words "Just like my baby was" remained unspoken.
She could see her captor's eyes light up as he smiled.
"Alright. They won't get hurt if you can take the pain. If you can't, they'll get beaten. Just like your precious son will once I get my hands on him."
Every eye was on Diana. It took her a half second to process his words before her expression darkened and she looked at him with the most deadly look any of them had ever seen. In the most eerily calm and serious fashion, she started speaking to him, although she was shaking furiously in her chair.
"If you lay one hand on my baby I will gouge your eyes from your sockets. I will rip out your organs one by one until there's nothing left. I will watch you die of blood loss and I will happily dance on your grave." She spat in his face, accentuating the point.
No one moved. No one breathed.
He only smiled. "Very well. Let the pain begin!"
It happened when Rossi and Morgan got back from Vegas- roughly fourteen hours into the investigation. The screens in the room lit up as the footage began streaming to them. They all watched in awe at Diana's act of heroism, and were stunned to see her rather violent reply to her captor. When he hit her with the belt and she cried out, Spencer bolted from the room to throw up in the toilet. To see someone do that to his mother was the worst kind of evil he had ever witnessed in his profiling career. When he returned to his friends he was shaking and pale, but more than ready to catch the unsub and watch him get justice.
As the footage streamed, Kevin was trying to trace the footage back to it's source, but only narrowed it to a five mile radius before the footage stopped streaming. He pulled up several areal shots of the area onto the screen. It was mostly suburban neighborhoods with middle class families living there.
"Is there anyone living there who is a known associate of Lee's?" Asked Rossi.
Kevin typed furiously. "Yes! There's a Trevor Axelrod who lives at 1573 North Cottage Grove Drive."
"Let's go." Ordered Hotch.
Diana sagged in her chair, exhausted from her beating. She knew that the hallucination was coming on quickly, and barely had time to warn the others before the delusion began.
The room itself hadn't changed around her, but for one thing. There was a mirror in front of her. Not a mirror, but a glass. She squinted (her eyes weren't what they used to be) and felt the most primal kind of fear run down her spine. Spencer was sitting there, mouth duct taped shut, struggling against his restraints.
"Spencer!" She screamed, but he didn't respond. The man in the mask stepped forward and grinned at her maliciously. She struggled against her restraints. She was forced to watch as the man tormented him. Every slap and punch made her heart shrivel up inside of her chest. Seeing her little boy being abused was crippling. There came a point when she couldn't take it anymore and started to cry.
"My baby... my poor, poor, baby... I'm so sorry... I wish I could take the pain away..."
The rest of them watched her with pity.
When she came to an hour later, she felt relief. It was all just a hallucination. Thank God. Now, all there was to do was wait.
The BAU pulled up to Trevor Axelrod's home. Hotch and JJ were entering from the front, and Rossi and Prentiss from the back.
The front door was kicked open. "Clear!"
Then the back. "Clear!"
Reid and Morgan followed them inside. Every room in the house was clear- but there was one room left to check- the basement.
Together, they all made their way down the stairs. At first glance, it was a semi furnished basement that seemed totally normal. There was a couch, TV, half bathroom, and bookshelf. Upon closer inspection, however, the bookshelf was covering up a hole in the wall that led to a tunnel. They all crawled down the tunnel for a short distance until they came to a lit, cavernous-looking area. After getting everyone into the room, they noticed two doors. One on one side of the room, and the other on the opposite side.
Hotch, Reid, and Morgan took the one on the left, while Prentiss Rossi, and JJ took the one on the right.
Hotch busted the door down to find Raymond sitting in a chair watching TV in a narrow room.
"Raymond Lee, you're under arrest for seven counts of kidnapping."
Opening the other door, Prentiss and JJ found all seven hostages. JJ ran to Henry and set about untying him immediately.
"Mommy!" He cried joyously. She smiled and pulled him into her arms the second he was untied. The second he was in her arms, she was at peace. "Are you alright?" She asked, scared. He nodded.
Prentiss started untying Sean and Rossi untied Carolyn. Both were fine, but their conversations were less invested then the others.
Hotch was quick to get Raymond out of the room and into the hands of the police so that he could untie his son. The relief from seeing him wiped out all of the fear inside of him.
"Are you okay, buddy?" He asked. Jack nodded and clung to his father. He nodded. "Okay. Okay."
Spencer ran toward his Mother and untied her. "Mom, are you okay?" He asked, trying to hide his fear. She could hear it clear as day, and the second she was released, she nodded and hugged her son. "Baby." She said, finally able to breathe as her son was in her arms at last. "Oh my sweet baby boy." She could feel the tears streaming down her face. "I love you so much."
"I love you too." She gently kissed his forehead.
She paused when she saw her captor unmasked, and went over to him. At that second, all communication in the room went silent.
"Can I have a second?" She asked, politely.
The cops who apprehended him nodded. Her face grew incredibly serious.
"If you even so much as breathe in the same direction as my son again, there will be no place on this earth you can run to where I won't find you."
She smiled at the police. "Thank you." They nodded before taking him away, and Diana returned to her son.
Although she was the last to be freed, Penelope did not feel neglected as Morgan untied her. Actually, she was glad. She got to see several happy reunions which lifted her spirits immensely.
"You okay, baby girl?"
"Of course, my prince." She said, smiling and giving him a hug. She couldn't help but look at Diana, who was busy fiddling with her son's hair as she explained to him that she knew something like this would happen, that she was right about the government and everything she'd told him before. Spencer seemed unfazed by it. In this instance, she was right, and he had to give her that moment.
JJ came up to Diana holding her son's hand. Hotch came holding Jack's.
JJ spoke first. "Thank you so much for saving my baby." She said, hugging her. Hotch shook her hand. "Thank you." He said, nodding. She smiled at them.
"If someone had my baby I would have wanted someone to do the same." She put a hand on her son's shoulder. There was brilliant clarity in her eyes as she said it.
"Mom, are you hurt anywhere?" Spencer asked.
"No, Baby. I'm fine." She said, smiling at him. Spencer pursed his lips, unconvinced.
That evening, Trevor Axelrod was arrested as an accomplice of Raymond.
As things calmed down, they each finally went home, and were able to relax again. Spencer flew with his mother back to the sanitarium and stayed the night with her, and Rossi drove Carolyn back home. Prentiss had Sean call when he got home, and Morgan made sure Garcia was safe. Both Hotch and JJ slept with their children that night.
If there was one thing that they had learned from today, they all appreciated what they had a lot more.