It had been a long time since Emily had seen this much snow. Looking out her side of the vehicle at the white blanket consuming the wooded area, she couldn't help but think of her time spent in Russia. The roadways were worse than treacherous when it snowed there, and this was comparable. The sky was still sputtering a flurry, but only just enough to be annoying. It was the snow that had already fallen that was troublesome. It had drifted over the path considerably, no doubt making it difficult for Derek to drive.
She took a glance at her partner, glad that it was him behind the wheel and not her. As if on cue, he spoke. "What are you thinking about?"
Her eyebrows rose in way of initial response. Leave it to him to profile her without even peering in her direction. "Traveling," she answered both truthfully and allusively. He smirked before turning slightly to look at her, if only for an instant. She returned the gesture, but chided herself internally for not being more open.
They were on their way to interview a relative of their current suspect, the third one they'd had in as many days. They were still a good hour and a half out, and they didn't have an exact location. Garcia had only been able to find a grandfathered deed that suggested the man lived in a cabin on the outskirts of Yellowstone.
"I was thinking about home," he shared, and it caught her off guard. She thought that she had gotten away with brushing off his question. She knew it was strategic though, a calculated social risk. "Chicago is a lot more populated than western Wyoming, but this weather is reminiscent of the blizzard in '99." He bobbed his head. "I bet that was a rough time to be a uniform."
She turned to face the windshield. "My Mother and I moved to a villa outside of the Embassy in Russia when I was ten, and we lived there for a couple of years." Her teeth grazed her lower lip as she let her eyes flick to the left to see an arrogant smile. "This is a light dusting compared to that. I saw motorists driving on top of at least a foot of snow. Someone would lose control and have a Good Samaritan stop to pull them out of the ditch only to have both cars end up in the same predicament."
He chuckled at her description. "I hear the driving is pretty crazy over there on a good day."
"I don't know that I'd say 'crazy'." She pursed her lips in mock contemplation. "Homicidal? Maybe." They both laughed until the G.P.S. unit grabbed their attention. The route Garcia had programmed began to rapidly alter, leaving the simulated voice stuttering for the correct words. "Guess we're on our own," Emily shrugged, and then reached over and turned the device off.
"Check your phone?" Derek asked, and if she wasn't mistaken, there was a little bit of a nervous quiver in his voice.
She did as he asked, without question. "No service." His response was to clinch his jaw and take a look through his own window. "What's the problem? It's not the first time we've been to B.F.E."
He audibly cleared his throat. "It's just the weather."
"Try them again." Hotch dragged his hand down his face in frustration. It had only been an hour since Morgan and Prentiss had left, and he was already regretting his decision to let them chance being caught in a winter storm. They had both assured him that they'd seen worse, but that was of little comfort now.
The weather had taken a turn for the worse shortly after their departure, and it didn't look like it was going to get better anytime soon. He glared at the television as he vaguely heard Garcia telling him that her call had gone straight to voicemail for the umpteenth time. He was genuinely worried now. The storm had been officially upgraded to a blizzard, with winds expected to be between forty and sixty miles per hour. It didn't matter what experience they may have had, they were ill prepared for the situation they were in.
"What do we do?" J.J. looked at him uncertainly. They all knew that their friends were in serious trouble.
He didn't have an answer though. He was supposed to, he was the leader after all, but he didn't know what to do. Part of him wanted to charge out into the storm and bring his people home, risks be damned. But he knew that was illogical. He couldn't put the rest of his team at risk. "We wait," he decided on. "We work the case until the roads are passable. We'll go out as soon as we can and look for them."
"And in the meantime?" J.J. retorted, clearly not happy with his decision.
He turned around to face her before answering. "They both have ample experience in cold weather climates, we have to assume that they'll take the proper precautions."
Reid's brow furrowed. "They don't even have adequate equipment. At best they have their winter coats, an emergency blanket and maybe a first aid kit in the trunk. How are they going to survive if the temperature drops to twenty below like they have forecasted?" he asked, pointing to the television.
Garcia gasped audibly over the speakerphone, but Dave cut in before she could say anything. "They could be on their way back right now, for all we know. Or they could be stopped on the side of the road, waiting for it to clear up enough to safely drive back."
"But what if they're not?" Reid posited. "What if they're in trouble?"
"Then they have each other," Hotch stated firmly.
The snowfall had picked up tenfold. What was once a minor annoyance, now making it nearly impossible to see more than five meters in any direction. The S.U.V. was still crawling along the road though. Morgan couldn't figure out if it was stubbornness or determination, but he did not want to turn back. Retreating to the station to tell Hotch that he had failed to do an interview was the last thing he wanted to do. If his passenger had been anyone else, he was sure that they would have removed the decision from his hands. Any other member of the team would have vehemently suggested that they make the return trip, but not Emily. She was just as stubborn as him.
Shortly after the G.P.S. had gone out, she'd freed a map from the glove compartment. Reid's over preparedness had turned out to be a good thing this time, as it had many times in the past. Of course, it hadn't stopped both Derek and Emily from picking on him as soon as he'd offered them a hard copy of their route. It was a skit that they'd done only a few times, but it was one of their favorites. Derek had accepted the map in his left hand, and held up his right. He'd had his index, middle and ring fingers straight up with his pinky folded neatly under his thumb. He knew that Emily had had her back to him. She had been perusing a file at the table behind him, but he'd immediately heard her sound off, 'On my honor I will do my best, to do my duty…' only for her to get interrupted by a very unimpressed Spencer as he left the room.
A puff of air escaped his lips as he silently laughed. "What?" He took a quick peek at Emily, and his laughter intensified as he saw her studying the map. "Oh," she joined in. "You know?" she asked through her own laughter. "That never gets old for me." There was a long moment of silence before she spoke again. "You tired? Need me to take over?"
"Nah, I'm good." He felt her eyes on him again. "I'm fine, really. I've driven in worse."
She folded the map, and set it down on her lap. "I just want to make sure you're not trying to be a macho man. You don't have to impress little old me." Derek felt his brow scrunch together. He glanced at her again, and she was idly playing with the edges of the paper. "I already know you're a big sissy, so don't waste the effort." The megawatt smile she gave him lessened the blow a bit. Seriousness was a rarity between them, and she seemed to be a little bit better at making fun of him than he'd like to admit.
"Don't worry," he played along now. "I'm not tryin' to impress you, sweetheart. I just have the good sense to not let a woman drive."
The shocked look on her face was a good indication that he'd won this round. The map smacking into the side of his head a second later was a solid clue as well. "You do realize that there's a Glock on my hip, right?"
"Believe me, I'm painfully aware." He nodded to the map between them. "How far out do you think we are, navigator?"
"Uh," she began rather uncertainly. "It looked like about thirty minutes, but that's only if the cabin is anywhere near where it's actually supposed to be. Then you have to factor in our speed, or lack thereof." He sighed, knowing that they were a lot farther away than he wanted to be. "If I had a pencil and paper," she paused, and he looked over to see her counting fingers. "And my middle school math teacher leaning over my shoulder, I could probably do that." He chuckled as she deadpanned, an attribute of hers that he was very fond of.
"Right," he shook his head dejectedly. "And what are the chances of this place being where we think it is?"
"Exactly," she responded just as glumly.
They settled back into the silently nerve-racking drive for a few minutes, going slow enough to hear the snow crunching under the tires. He reached for the thermostat, only to feel his hand swatted away. "What?" he protested. "It's getting hot in here."
"Maybe for you," she argued. "You're working up a sweat over there, all I have to do is sit here and look pretty." She removed her left hand from its coat pocket and placed it, not so gently, against his neck.
"Damn, woman!" he was surprised to feel how cold she was. He reached for the knob again, turning it the other way. He then tilted the vents in her direction, grabbing her free hand to place it as close to them as he could. "Get your other hand up here," he ordered.
She complied with an uncharacteristic snigger. "It is so hard to take you seriously sometimes," she said as she shook her head from side to side. He frowned, but she was quick to explain. "Don't worry. It's definitely a good thing, Morgan."
He smiled at her, a smile that was full of warmth. She always had such kind things to say about him. He caught her eye for only a brief moment before his smile twisted into a look of sheer panic. Looking past her, through her window, he saw the front end of a vehicle barreling toward them.
The bed was stiff, and Emily was hard-pressed to remember a mattress as uncomfortable as this one. That was saying something for a woman who had spent a great deal of her life traveling and staying at various hotels. The bitter cold was what struck her as odd though. Had this particular bed and breakfast forgotten to pay the heating bill? Unpleased with her current state, she tried to sit up. That wasn't right. No, something was restraining her. She hadn't realized it before, but she was having difficulty breathing as well. She paused for a moment to focus on breathing as calmly as possible. After struggling to open her eyes, they were met with a biting wind. She squeezed them shut again, hoping to subdue the sting from the dry winter air. That's when she heard it.
It wasn't an overly familiar sound, but it was one that she knew. It was a sound that she had heard many times before. Her eyes shot open again, scanning her surroundings to the best of her ability. She was still in the S.U.V., but it had flipped on its side and all she could see was snow. The seatbelt was awkwardly constricting her lungs, and she could not find the source of the noise. It was a slow and steady crunching, just barely discernable over the wind. She began to panic. The safety belt clasp was lodged, and she was unable to gain access to her pocketknife. Her only option was to defend herself in the vulnerable position she was currently in, but her weapon was securely wedged between her body and the door.
She looked up to her left to find her partner hanging limp in his own seat, a nasty gash on the left side of his forehead. She fleetingly noticed that his window was gone, and quickly drew the conclusion that his head had busted through it at some point during the wreck. That was definitely enough to knock someone out cold.
"Derek," she whimpered, willing him to hear her. "Morgan, wake up." There was a hint of desperation to her tone, but she couldn't decide if it was from fear or the lack of oxygen.
A break in the white landscape before them tore her attention away from Derek. It was a man, their suspect, stood about eight meters away, a somewhat exhausted smile in place and a rifle in his hands. He was just staring at her, and she back at him.
He took a step forward and she reacted, using everything she had to reach up for Morgan's holster. She got as far as unbuckling the safety strap before she heard the deafening crack of thunder. She wasn't cold anymore. Her chest was searing, painfully so. She had dropped back down, her gaze now fixed on the man that was again walking toward them. She tried to maintain the restricted deep breaths, the only thing she could do to lessen the growing discomfort. She watched as he slowly pulled the bolt back, and then pushed it into place and forced a fresh round into the chamber. "What a shame," he uttered almost apologetically. That certainly wasn't what she had been expecting to hear. She hadn't been expecting anything really. She found herself squirming, trying in vain to escape her binds. If she could just get to her Glock… "I was looking forward to playing with you," he taunted.
He squatted down in front of her, his head tilting as if he were examining her. "It's not every day I come across a couple of Feds." He released a disappointed sigh, returning to his full height. "I guess your partner will just have to suffice," he nodded to Derek. Then he took aim, the barrel of his weapon pointed directly at her head.
A/N: I had this idea the other day, and decided to run with it. Oh, and reviews make me unnaturally happy.
