All right people, i have gotten pink eye, i have had to put on a luncheon for 70 people, i have gotten a cold, i have had to entertain my 5 yr. old nephew, i have gotten pink eye again, i have had to do construction all week and then my internet goes out. i have suffered through all that just so i could bring yo the next instalment of Scars, so i expect some reviews. Oh, chapters 1-3 are in here again i just added more to them so if you don't wan't re-read than skip to where i've put New Material Starts Here.
Comming Home with the FBI:
Quantico:
A young girl, about twenty-one, walks in the front doors of the BAU. She is wearing baggy, camo- cargo pants, a tight black t-shirt and black boots. She is listening to an I-pod nano blaring 'Too Bad' by Nickelback. She stops at the security desk, turns off her I-pod and steps up.
"Hey, my name is Jen Castillo. I'm looking for," she looks down at a scrap of paper she has in her hand, "Uh… Agent Spencer Reid."
"O-Kay. I'll need a form of I.D. so if I could have your drivers license." the security woman said reaching out her hand. The girl reached into her bottom right pocket and pulled out a small black wallet with I M BORED written on it in white out. She looked through it and said, "Is my college I.D. all right? It's all I have."
"Sure." the security guard scanned the card and gave the freshly printed badge and the I.D. back to her. "Lets see… Agent Reid is on the… third floor." she said looking down at a packet of papers with names of agents written on it, "Elevators are right over there." she continued pointing to the right.
"Thanks." Jen said as she walked towards the two silver elevator doors putting her wallet back into her pocket. She stood there waiting for the elevator to come back down to the ground floor nodding her head to the beat of the music. The elevator doors opened and she stepped inside, opened Elantris by Brandon Sanderson and started to read. The doors closed and started to go up, they stopped a couple of seconds later and opened again. She stepped out again and asked a blond woman where agent Reid's desk was and she glanced up for a second and then pointed to the back of the room and went back to typing. Jen walked to the back and saw a desk with a nameplate on it that said Spencer Reid. She sat down in the comfy chair, put her feet on the desk and started to read again. About five minutes later the elevator opened again and Reid came out talking with Morgan.
"I'm just saying, you don't always have to..." Morgan stopped talking and pointed to Reid's desk, "Who's the girl?"
"I-I don't know." Reid said as he walked up to his desk and asked, "Excuse me, who are you?"
Jen looked up from her book, slowly coming out of a daze, "Um, I'm Jen. You Spencer Reid?"
"Yes."
"Dude, you were supposed to call to say everything was still on."
"I'm sorry?"
"You're supposed to be mentoring me this week."
"That starts today! I'm so sorry!"
"It's fine, don't go all Tohru on me."
"Tohru?"
"Tohru Honda, live with Shigure, Yuki and Kyo Sohma. Best friends: Arisa Uotani and Saki Hanajima. She stars in the manga Fruits Basket, more commonly known among its fans as Furuba, written by Natsuki Takaya. She commonly freaks out about the smallest things in life and cares more about her friends than she does herself."
"O-Kay. So I'm Spencer Reid and… this is actually my first mentor job so what do I do?"
"Got me." I replied to his question. Suddenly Hotch walked past.
"Come on. We have a new case." he said. Reid and Jen got up and walked into the conference room. JJ started the briefing, "O-Kay, four victims have shown up in a small town in Cortland, New York." she said as she hung up four different pictures of the victims on the whiteboard. There were all women and, previously, very beautiful. "All the bodies were mangled and had many scars. It looked as if they… I'm sorry, who are you?" she stopped finally noticing me, everyone turned and looked at me.
"Hey, I'm Jen. I'm studying to be an FBI agent, Reid's my mentor." I said pointing at him, now standing.
"Oh, sorry I forgot to mention that." Reid said to the team. "Well, I guess that I should introduce you to everyone. This is…"
"I already know who everyone is." I said and everyone (accept Hotch and Rossi) gave me a confused look. "You think I don't do my homework? I Goggled all of you." suddenly a worried look came on their faces.
"What did you find?" Hotch asked cautiously.
"Well, lets see." I said closing my eyes, I saw the paper that I had printed and read earlier this morning and began to recite it. "Spencer Reid, graduated high school at the age of twelve. Father left when he was a child causing him to take care of his mentally ill mother and to care for their house alone. When he was eighteen had was forced to send his mother to a mental institution because 'the way they were living wasn't healthy'. He was later kidnapped by a serial killer and was drugged for many days." I said and I could feel a wave of relief wash over the room. "Agent Aaron Hotchner. Formally assigned in Seattle, Washington he is currently the head of this team. Has a son, Jack. After being suspended for two weeks he filed for transfer but then declined." I paused then went on to Rossi, "David Rossi, was in an early retirement to do lectures and book tours until he voluntarily returned to 'settle unfinished business'. Derek Morgan, African-American father, Caucasian mother he has two sisters. Has a black-belt in judo and teaches a self-defense class for the FBI. Father died when he was ten and he later acquired a juvenile record for fighting. He obtained a collage scholarship for football. Emily Prentiss, daughter of an ambassador, she replaced agent Elle Greenaway. She's a graduate of Yale and has been working for the FBI around ten years and is fluent in Arabic. She quit the FBI but somehow the files didn't get through until she reconsidered." I said opening my eyes to cast an accusing glance at the team then closed my eyes again and continued, "Jennifer Jareau, more commonly called JJ she acts as the teams liaison between the team and the annoying media. Graduated from East Allegheny high school, where she was captain of the varsity soccer team. She earned a scholarship to University of Pennsylvania. Finally Penelope Garcia, who isn't here, serves as the teams audio/ visual technician. Parents died in a car accident when she was eighteen and has helped council families of victims of auto accidents in her free time. When her parents died she dropped out of CalTech and went 'underground' where she continued to teach herself computer codes. Was on one of the FBI's hacker lists and they recruited her, hence how she got this job. She was shot by a man but survived because the bullet, which was aimed at her heart, ricocheted into her stomach." When I opened my eyes they were all stock- still. I knew that they were relieved that I hadn't said some other things about them and I knew what they were. That Spencer had had a drug problem and the videos of when he had been kidnapped had been posted on YouTube and other various sites on the internet. Aaron's wife had asked him for a divorce, Rossi was still secretly working on one of his first cases that has gone unsolved, Morgan had been sexually abused as a child by his 'adopted' father. Prentiss's parents had been accused of pulling some strings to get her this position and the only reason that she had wanted to quit was because she helped in the almost removal of Hotch. JJ had been attacked by vicious dogs the night that Reid had been kidnapped and had suffered from emotionally and finally that Garcia's shooter had been with her on a date that night.
"You have an eidetic memory don't you?" JJ asked.
"How'd you know?"
"Reid does too."
"Sweet." I said and after a couple more silent seconds we continued the briefing, a little awkwardly to say the least.
"Alright all bodies were found out in the open, one on a main street sidewalk, another on the steps of the court house, the third was found on the high school baseball field. The last, the middle of the street. All within a five mile radius." she said hanging up some more pictures, "There are no known connections with any one of them. One was twenty-two, another seventeen, the others fourteen and thirty. All taken at different times of the day, there's no similarity between any one of them."
"Excuse me." I said and everyone looked at me, "I'm sorry, but, I couldn't help noticing that there all exceptionally beautiful women. Just a hunch but, maybe it's a angry spouse mad about being dumped."
"It wouldn't be the first time someone has acted out due to being cheated on or broken up with." Reid said, "And the cuts and bruises show as if they wanted to make them look ugly and then he put them in the open as if to humiliate them."
"Exactly." I said.
Jet:
"Hi." Reid said as he sat next to me on the plane. "Sorry but, I couldn't help noticing that you seemed very depressed since the briefing ended. I was wondering if something was wrong?"
"No…well, it's just that… Cortland's my hometown. I lived there since last year when I went to college. I lived there for eighteen years, I knew everyone in Homer. Hey… what were the victims names?"
"We don't know them yet."
"Oh." I said disappointed, "so, you have anything fun to do here? Planes freak me out, I need to busy my mind."
"Did you know that there's a 65 percent bigger risk of you getting into a car accident than in a plane crash."
"Did you know that L.A.'s real name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula and L.A. is only 3.63 percent of its full name?" I said mockingly.
"I have a better one. Your tongue print is unique, they're just like fingerprints."
"Ancient Egyptians slept on stone pillows." I shot back.
"Mickey Mouse was the first non-human to win an Oscar." Reid said challenging me.
I shot another useless fact beck at Reid, "The original Coca-Cola was green."
Morgan sat down next to JJ, "Why do they know that stuff?" he said pointing at us.
She looked up from her book and said, "They're like one in the same.". They stared at us as we shot facts back and forth, amazed.
"They've got to run out sometime, right?" Morgan said a bit worried. "I mean I love the kid but, Reid is one fact book enough for me."
"I hope so, I'm not listening to that for two hours." she replied and went back to reading her book.
Cortland Police Station:
We all walked in in one big mob. In a corner at a desk I saw one of my old friends, I touched Reid's shoulder and told him I would be right back. I ran over to Matt and hugged him. "Oh my god hi!" I said as I let him out of our embrace, "How's A-chan?"
"Great, we got a puppy and we also engaged last week."
"Oh My God! You got a puppy?" I said. He gave me a stern look so I continued. "I'm just kidding. Congratulations!"
"So why are you here?" Matt asked.
"Studying for college. FBI agent's mentoring me."
"You're here with the FBI?"
"Yeah."
"I didn't know they'd arrived. Come on I've got to meet 'em."
"Hold on," I said grabbing the back of his collar and pulling him back to me, "you're heading this investigation?"
"Yeah, never thought I'd see anything so cruel here."
"I know… hey, who are the victims?" I inquired.
"We haven't identified them yet."
"Anything on the un sub?"
"Sorry." he said shaking his head.
"It's fine, I better get back." I said looking over my shoulder at the team. "I'll stop by tonight, visit A- chan, see your house, visit you puppy."
"Sure." Matt said as we started to walk back to the group.
"Aaron Hotchner?"
"That's me." Hotch said as he stepped forward and shook Matt's hand. "We'll need a place to work if you don't mind, we'll also need a whiteboard."
"Of course, I can set you up in the conference room." Matt ushered us to the opposite side of the room, "It's over here."
"Jen?" Reid asked.
"What?"
"How do you know agent Koster?"
"We were classmates. I haven't seen anyone since I left. I moved out the week I graduated… couldn't handle the memories."
"What happened?"
"My friend… she went through a psychotic break. Her boyfriend broke up with her and, well, she was really attached to him. Next year he asked me out, I didn't see any problem, she was fine, had her own boyfriend then, I said yes. She found out and got really depressed. I couldn't help her, she was stuck in an eternal rut of depression. Finally, she cracked, attacked me in class, just lunged, nails at the ready. That's how I got this." I said showing him a long scar on my left elbow.
"Her family had to send her to a mental hospital. I felt it was all because of me, I broke up with him and moved away. I know, pathetic, running from your problems but, I couldn't handle the guilt. I needed new scenery… I needed a new life."
"I-I'm sorry."
"It's fine." I said putting on a fake smile, " Come on, we better go in." I said, just realizing we had stopped walking. I turned and opened the glass door and we walked in.
"There have been four different murders in the past two months. All of them have been women, all beaten and cut up. We have found them in various spots around town, all in very open and public areas." Matt started.
"Have you been able to identify any of them?" David Rossi asked.
"No, but were working on it." Matt said then continued, "we haven't found any connection between any of the girls from what we know about them. They're all of different ages, different hair and eye color. All of them are relatively of the same build though. Tall, thin and beautiful. There's one other thing." Matt said then stopped.
"Yes?" Hotch said, prodding.
"This." Matt said as he slid four pictures onto the table. They were the limbs of the victims, one arm, two legs and a stomach. Each one had something different on it, they said WHORE, SLUT, TRAMP and BITCH, all deeply carved into the bodies.
"That's horrible." I said as I looked at the pictures.
"You know, if he carved these words into the girls it shows that he had a massive anger problem towards the women." Reid said.
"I-I got to go." I said as I walked out of the doors and into the fresh air. I heard the door open behind me an spun around to come face-to-face with Reid.
"My first one was pretty tough to handle too." he said sitting down on the stone handrail.
"How'd you get over it?" I said sitting down on the opposite one.
"I talked it out, shared what I felt."
"It's just, I watch the news but I've never seen anything so bad. This close to home? I didn't think that it was possible for something so bad to happen here. It's so quiet and peaceful, the only crime we get is the drunks bothering people, the occasional noise problem and speeders." I said. Reid listened to me vent and didn't say a word. Finally I stopped. " that really helped, thanks. Come on, we better get back in." I opened the door and walked back in. I snuck back into the conference room and sat back down in one of the chairs. The briefing soon ended and I told Reid and the team that I was going to visit a friend.
I drove up to a big white house and parked my car. Matt had given me their address and I couldn't believe how good they had turned out. I walked up the stone steps and rang the doorbell. A tall woman with long brown hair answered the door.
"A-Chan?" I said surprised. Suddenly a little black lab jumped on me. I picked him up and started to pet him.
"J-San!" Ana said as she pulled me into a hug, squishing the puppy. "Oh my god! When did you get here? Why are you here? Do you want something to drink, eat? Is that your car? Oh my god come in!" Ana said excitedly as she pulled me into her house. It was a big house, white walls, brown furniture, pictures on the wall. Ana kept talking.
"Ana… ANA!" I yelled. She stopped talking and looked at me. "One thing at a time."
"Okay. Why are you here?" Ana said pulling me down to sit on the couch.
"I'm here for collage."
"Collage? In Cortland?"
"I signed up for a mentoring program with the FBI."
"The FBI? What are you…"
"Will you let me finish?"
"Sorry?" Ana said giving me an apologetic smile and zipping her lips like a five year old would do.
"As I was saying, we're here investigating the murders that happened."
"How weird? The one week you're in the mentoring program they take you to your old hometown and you have to help solve the case that someone you knew may have been a victim in." Ana said.
"You sound way to excited for me to be working on a case in which the killer may be someone that you know." I said at back to her.
"Touché."
"So, what's new with you?" I said stroking the puppy in my lap. "Besides getting engaged and getting this adorable little dog." I said picking him up and looking at him.
"Nothing much, taxes are high, job market's low, same as ever." she said and we burst out laughing.
"Anything new?" I said as I walked into the police station.
"Why are you so happy?" Matt said staring at me.
"I caught up with Ana. Got on a major sugar-high." I said slightly bouncing.
"You're like a five year old."
"Yeah, but I don't come with the frequent temper tantrums, so I'm a win-win situation." I said holding up my hands, palm up.
"Hey!" I heard someone yell and looked over at David. "We need you over here!" I ran over to him and he held up a picture in front of me. It was one of the victims, without the cuts and bruises on her. "You know her?"
"She looks real familiar but I can't put a name to the face. I've been gone for a year. Sorry." I said, "You have any other photos of the victims? You know, without the…" I said fingering my face.
"We're still working on it."
"Well, thanks anyway."
A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words:
Next Day:
"How could no one see her being dumped here?" Prentiss asked.
"There's little security, only a few houses have views, and a couple of those houses have tall fences that can block their view. If they dumped her in the middle of the night everyone would have been asleep." I said looking around me. Hotch was talking with the security guard who found her, JJ and Morgan were at the baseball field and Reid was at the main street scene. Rossi had got to the scene where she was dumped in the middle of the street, "So, they had to get out of the van otherwise she wouldn't have gotten up this far on the steps. So there has to be a footprint, fallen hair, anything." I said.
"Yeah but, how are we going to find it with a forty by twenty foot area to search?"
"One inch at a time." I said to Prentiss's pessimistic comment. "You start over there, I start over here, we meet in the middle."
"Can't deny with logic."
"Good luck." I said as I started walking towards the corner of the taped in crime scene. I knew that it was pointless, we couldn't find anything, the fall wind would have blown it all away. I had searched ten feet in when I finally had to stand to rest my back. When I stood up I saw someone hiding behind the corner of the building. I pushed my bangs out of the way and headed towards them. Then I was about ten feet away they turned and ran, "Hey! Come here!" I yelled after them and started to run. When I rounded the corner they had gone. When I got back to where I had been standing Hotch and Prentiss were both standing there.
"What was that?" Prentiss asked.
"Just some punk kids hanging around."
"Alright well, you find anything?" Hotch asked me.
"Just some month old chewing gum and a can of scoal. Can't understand how people can stand that crap." I let out a sigh, "Well, shall we?" I said and we started looking again. By the end of the day the only thing mildly interesting that had happened was me seeing that strange person. I was walking out of the station to go home when Matt caught up with me.
"Hey Jen." Matt said running after me.
"What's up?" I said stopping.
"Next week, if you're still here of course, Ana and I are having some people up for a poker game. You want in?"
"Nickels and Dimes?"
"Just chips."
"Yeah, sure I'll be there." I said walking out of the door. "Just tell me the time and place." the door shut just as I finished my last syllable. I walked to my car and started it. I tossed my small bag in the passenger seat and I heard something crinkle. When I looked in the passenger seat I saw the picture. I picked it up ran back inside.
I slid on the floor almost falling to the ground in front of the desk that we were using in the conference room. I grabbed the desk and straightened myself. Matt, Reid, Morgan and Rossi stood staring at me.
"You gotta see this." I said out of breath. I held up the picture and they all gasped.
Abduction:
Matt stood up and took the picture from my hands. "H-How?" he said looking at me.
"I'm so sorry Matt." I said as I pulled him into a hug. The picture was of Ana, she was strapped to a wall and her mouth was duck-taped, she held a look of pure terror in her eyes. Rossi took the picture from Matt's hands and looked at it.
"Who is it?"
"Ana soon to be Koster. Matt's fiancée." I said.
"How'd you get it?"
"Someone put it in my passenger seat. I couldn't have been more than ten minutes ago, I was just out there." Rossi looked at Morgan and Reid. "Call the others, tell them that another girl has gone missing. You, come with me." he said pointing at me. I nodded yes and took Matt to a seat.
"Matt, she's gonna be fine." I said reassuringly. "Hey, look at me. She's gonna be fine. There's a whole FBI team looking for her, we'll alert the community, we'll find her. Trust me." I got up and walked to the conference room where Rossi was waiting.
"Yeah?" I said.
"Close the door." I did. "Why did he give you that picture?"
"How should I know?" I said.
"Did you see anyone near your car when you went out there?"
"If I did I wouldn't be here, I would be tracking them down to find my friend." I said slightly raising my voice to his arrogance.
"Well you're the only one who's seen her beside agent Koster."
"Are you saying that I had something to do with her abduction?" I said raising my voice a little more.
"No, but I can't rule you out. You are one of only two people who's seen her in the past twenty-four hours. And I highly doubt that it was Koster."
"Oh, and how do you know that " I yelled as I stormed out. More than a couple of agent were staring at me. "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT YOU PAPER- PUSHERS?" I yelled and stormed out. I drove home in a rage.
When I got home I burst in to my room and threw the first thing that I saw, which happened to be my glass bottle full of sand from my trip to Germany. I knocked everything off of the wall next to me, let out one last scream and collapsed among the rubble on the floor crying. Suddenly, for reasons still unexplainable, I thought of the kid behind the courthouse. 'They didn't look like anyone that I knew and they looked too old to still be in school. Infact, they looked just a little feminine, no. But…now why would a grown person be sneaking around the courthouse spying on the FBI when they could have been gawking from behind the tape like everyone else?' I wondered out loud. "Unless…" I picked up my bag and ran back to my car. I was at the police station in fifteen minutes.
I walked in the police station and walked past the team. "Come. Idea." I said heading towards the conference room. Everyone got up and followed me in.
"What is it?" Hotch asked me.
"Minute." I said looking through the photos for the one of Ana. I picked it up and looked at it for a second, finally I saw what I was looking for. "Look." I said pointing to a small piece of metal in the picture just shiny enough to get a decent reflection. "When we were at the crime scene earlier I noticed someone watching us. Didn't seem like a big deal at the time, kid snooping around trying to see something cool. But when I got home I was thinking, that kid wasn't a kid at all, it was a grown person, people around here don't snoop, they don't care who sees them gawking at a crime scene. In that picture it shows a person standing about a foot taller than a Hyundai Tiburon, meaning that they would have to be at least five feet tall, which is about the size of the person that I saw. I didn't get a good look but I could see that they had long brown hair, a pale complexion and they were of a small build. Then, when I got closer I saw that they had scars on their face."
"Another possible victim?" Hotch asked.
"It wouldn't fit with the schedule. The unsub has been taking a girl one about every two weeks, two in the same day would be highly unusual." Reid said.
"Alright lets get back to the courthouse, look for something." Rossi said. Reid mouthed Good Job to me and I stood there beaming, then something popped up in my mind.
"Rossi, can I talk with you?" I said a little sheepishly. He stopped and walked towards me.
"Yes?"
"Well, um, two things. First I would like to apologize, I shouldn't have snapped, I'm sorry. It's just, it's hard, coming back after so long, then Ana gets kidnapped."
"I get it."
"Thanks. Second I would like to thank you." I said and he gave me a confused look. "If you hadn't made me snap I wouldn't have been thinking about the case in overhaul mode. If I hadn't I probably wouldn't have thought to look in the picture for a reflective surface and I wouldn't have thought of the person at the courthouse. So thanks."
"No problem. Lets get back to the scene and help out." he said as he held the door open for me.
NEW MATERIAL STARTS HERE!!!
The Only Connection:
When we got to the courthouse I walked everyone through what I did and when we examined the area we found a couple of cigarette buts and a Twix wrapper. We collected them all. Suddenly Garcia called.
"Hey Baby doll. What ya got for me?" Morgan asked putting the call on speaker.
"You will love me after I tell you what I have Hot stuff." I looked at Reid for an explanation for the names. He leaned over and whispered, "They came up with pet names for each other."
"Anything going' on?" I whispered back. He shook his head no so I let it drop and went back to listening to what she had to say.
"Okay, so I got ID's on your vics. The first one, brunette, was one Claire Bunsen. Age twenty-two, missing since October 3rd. Her boyfriend called in her in missing after she didn't return from a party her friend was having. Friend reports she left the party at eleven and decided to gat a cab because she had had a lot to drink. I called the cab company, the driver reports that he dropped her off at 15 Greenbush st. at eleven- thirty and then went back to the garage. He says that he saw her walk inside and turn on the lights."
"Alright thanks baby girl."
"Hold on I'm not done. The second girl, the light blond, is Samantha Miller. Age fourteen. Disappeared from her home October tenth. One parent family, no siblings, mom went out to the store to grab some milk for dinner and when she got home Sam was gone. Third vic was one Sara Anderson, seventeen. Walking home from getting off of her late bus and didn't get home, missing since October fourteenth. No witnesses. Last vic was Kim Sanders, age thirty. Came home from her job and didn't clock in the next day. No known relatives, missing since October eighteenth. That's all for now."
"All right thanks, call me when you get something new." Morgan said hanging up.
"I knew I knew who that person was!" I said out of the blue.
"What do you mean?" Hotch asked looking a bit confused.
"That picture you showed me, the one of the second blond, Kim, I used to walk her Collie for her. That's why she looked so familiar! God! I'm so stupid, why didn't remember that?" I said punishing myself.
"Hey, it's not your fault, so you forgot a name, no biggie." Morgan said.
"No, I didn't forget one face, I forgot four." I said remembering everything about them, every face, every pet they owned, everything about them.
"What do you mean?" JJ asked, curious.
"I knew all of them. Claire used to be my boss when I worked at the restaurant. Samantha, I used to hang out with her, kind of baby-sit her when she was smaller. I used to mentor Sara, she was failing and I helped her raise her grades."
"Alright, lets get back to the station, try to find some new connections." Hotch said breaking the long silence that had fallen over the team. Everyone got back in the SUV's and we drove back to the station.
The Call:
Station:
"Alright guys, get ready for an all-nighter." Rossi said. "I want to find this girl…alive." ha continued looking at me. Reid set to work on the whiteboard trying to find connections between the victims. Morgan and JJ were calling friends and relatives. Hotch and Prentiss had gone to the houses and I was stuck looking through paperwork for any clues about why the girls were taken to help Reid.
BeepBeepBeep…BeepBeepBeep
I jumped up startled, not realizing that I had fallen asleep, I was awoken by my cell phone beeping, announcing that I had a caller. I picked up the phone and looked at the time, it said 3: 10. I answered it thinking who would be calling me at midnight?
"Hello?" I said tired.
"Not so loud." I heard someone whisper on the other end. "You have to be quiet or they'll wake up!" they continued.
"What? Who is this?" I asked whispering.
"It's Ana you nitwit! Now shut up and let me talk!"
"Oh My God! Where are you? Who took you? What happened?" I said raising my voice.
"Will you shut up!" she whispered. "I'm trying to tell you! I just got home from the store and I was putting stuff away when someone whacked me one the back of the head with something. That was around eleven thirty." I threw a dry erase marker at Reid's head and when he looked at me (very annoyed) I signaled him to come over to me. He came and I held the phone between us so we both could here. "I was drifting in and out of it on the car ride. We were in a truck, it looked fairly new from the inside. We got to a barn in the middle of nowhere around noon."
"Are there any windows near you?" Reid asked.
"Yeah."
"What can you see outside?" he whispered.
"Um… trees…trees…trees… and… it looks like a hill. That's it."
"Okay Ana I want you to…" Reid started but was cut off.
"Oh my god they're waking up, I have to go!" Ana said and we heard the click of the connection being cutoff, my phones screen glowed, illuminating my screen picture of Ana and I at a costume party, and then went dark. Reid ran out of the room to get the others and I tried to process what I had just heard. A couple of seconds later Reid and the rest of the team walked in.
"What is it?" Rossi asked tired.
"Ana just called me." I said holding up my phone.
"Did she say where she was?" Hotch asked, now fully awake like the rest of the team.
"She didn't know where she was." I said. "Morgan, call Garcia for me." I said as he pulled out his phone and put it on speaker for the rest of us.
"You know I love it when you call, just not in the middle of the night." Garcia complained sounding as if she had just woken up.
"Garcia, it's Jen. Listen I need you to trace a call I got on my cell."
"Okay what's your number?"
"345-9090. I need a location fast, we might be able to save Ana yet." I said.
"Okay. I'm tracing. I'm warning you, I won't be able to get a pinpoint location, the call's too short, but I can get you a general area."
"That'll have to be good enough." I said waiting.
"Okay I got it! It's near Skaneateles Lake, on the South end."
"Alright Garcia that's awesome but your not done. I need you to compare that location to a geographical map. Ana said that she was surrounded by trees and a small field." I said. I could hear Garcia's frantic typing as she compared the two maps.
"I have three locations that go long with that description, all on the same hill. I'm faxing you the locations as we speak." I turned around and saw the printer coming to life and begin to print the pictures that Garcia sent us.
"Garcia, you're a goddess!" I said as I hung up the phone. Hotch grabbed the photos from the printer and grabbed the keys to the SUVs. Walking out the door with a simple 'Lets go'. I was driving the first SUV because I knew the fastest way to the lake because my grandparents owned a house there. We got to the lake in a record fifteen minutes.
"Gees girl, you can drive!" Morgan said as he stepped out of the car, a little shaky, and into the parking lot of the Glen Haven Hotel. I had to laugh a little at his remark because I had failed my driving test twice because I sped. Hotch started passing out bulletproof vests to all of us and we put them on.
Seaching:
Woods on the South end of Skaneatlas Lake:
"Alright guys, in these woods it can be easy to get lost. Watch out for hidden vines and hidden erratics, there's a lot of them up there. It's fall so there will be a lot of fallen leaves that will be dew covered so again watch you step." I said giving the team a little info about the woods on the hill.
"How do you know so much about these woods?" JJ asked.
"You see that blue house, next to the apple orchard?" I asked pointing to it and they nodded in agreement. "It's my grandparents house. I used to come up here all the time and walk through the woods with my cousins." Everyone had finished with their vest and had gotten a flashlight. "Come on, there's an old four-wheeling trail that we cal follow for a ways up." I said starting up the small hill, covered in old, decomposing apples. I turned on my flashlight and found the old trail. It had a lot more potholes than I remembered but other than that it was the same winding trail. We followed it until the trail had disappeared and we checked our maps that Garcia had sent to us.
"The first location looks as if it's still up farther and more to the left." Reid said pointing his flashlight in that general direction, we started walking again. About twenty minutes and two 'vine valleys' (as we called them when I was little) later I stepped onto a flat surface and stopped.
"What it is?" Rossi asked coming up next to me.
"The road." I said pointing my light down at it. "We shouldn't hit for about another hundred feet."
Now it was Hotch's turn to ask the questions, "Are you sure?" he said stepping up on my left side a looking at my map.
"I'm positive."
"I'll call Garcia, ask her to check out the maps again." Reid offered.
"Don't bother, there's no cell service here." I said as Morgan checked his phone.
"She's right guys we're on our own."
"The closest place you can get service is about a mile back at the Rod and Gun club and even then you have to fight to find it."
"Well what do we do now?" JJ asked.
"I say we follow the yellow brick road." I said as I turned left and started to follow the trail. I heard JJ ask Hotch for a second opinion and he just said, 'she knows these woods better than any of us' and start to follow me. We had followed the road for another ten or so minutes when I spotted what looked to be an old hunting lodge. I flicked off my flashlight and everyone followed suit. It felt weird to be in charge, usually I was second in command I thought. We sneaked up on the house and surrounded it. I kicked off my shoes and socks and crept up to a window, it was dark inside but I could make out features inside. It was a one room house, probably a hunters weekend home, with few rooms. I could see a small cot, a couch, a lounge chair and an old wooden table with one chair. I saw what appeared to be a kitchen. It had two wall cupboards, a small stove, a sink and some old pots and pans and everything was covered in dust and cobwebs. I walked back to the other disappointed.
"Doesn't look like anyone's been here for years." I said putting back on my shoes.
"That's one location down. Two more to find." Prentiss said taking out the better map of the second spot Garcia had found for us. "It looks like it's not that far from here, just over there." she said pointing a little above the house that we were standing in front of. We started walking again. By the time we had finished checking out the second cabin the sun had begun to rise over the hill, giving us light. We headed towards the last spot, it was a ways away, past my grandparents property and that would mean that we would either have to cross the stream or walk up the steep slope to the road and follow that until we passed it. We started to engage in small-talk to pass the time. Reid and I talked about useless facts and then we began to argue about things in Pillars of the Earth. A little after Hotch made us stop arguing we came to the stream. It was wide but shallow and very cold.
"It'll save us time to walk across here but your feet will get cold, wet and muddy. We can walk up to the road and then walk back down but we might pass this point and have to back track a ways. Decisions up to you." everyone looked at each other. We hadn't had anything to eat and we were already cold. Prentiss and Morgan were wet from having fallen on the slippery slope and we were all depressed.
"We don't have that kind of time to waste." Hotch finally said so I started across. The cold was nothing new to me, I always swam well into the fall and had more than once fallen through the winter ice. I made it across and the others followed. I was looking around when I saw it, a black stovepipe. I signaled to the others and pointed it out to them, we started towards it. We were there in seconds, it was an old log cabin, one I had never seen before. The windows were fairly tall ad the only way to see through them from the outside was by climbing the stove pipe which came out of the wall half way up.
"Morgan, Reid…come here." I whispered so as not to be heard by anyone that might be inside. I set my stuff down and took off my shoes again. "Reid I need to borrow your belt and Morgan I need you to give me a boost." I said standing up again. Reid took off his leather belt and handed it to me. "Morgan I need you to get me up to that stove pipe." I said pointing to it. He nodded in silent consent and lace his fingers for me to use as a foot hold. I stepped in his hands and he boosted me up. I slid the belt between the stovepipe and the wall and wrapped it around my hands so that I didn't lose my grip. I planted my feet against the wall and made sure that the belt, and the old stovepipe would hold.
"Are you sure you should be doing this?" Rossi asked me.
"Please I've done more reckless stuff than scaling a wall with nothing but bare feet and a belt wrapped around an old stovepipe to help me."
"Like what?" he said challenging.
"Well I've… you know, I don't really want to discuss that in front of six FBI agents." I said and I started to climb.
I got up to the window and peered in. I saw Ana against the far wall, she was bound and gagged and had some cuts on her arms and legs. Suddenly she opened her eyes and I followed her gaze to the opposite corner. I saw a person in jeans and a black hoodie sharpening a knife. Ana started struggling and frantically looking around when she saw me. She stared, eyes pleading and I could tell she was scared out of her wits. I looked at the unsub and they followed her gaze to the window I was in. I slipped down enough for me not to be seen by them and I heard more than one person gasp at my quick decent. I clung to the wall for a second and then started my decent. I jumped the last six feet and landed on my feet.
"Go! Go! Go! He's gonna kill her! He's got like, eight knives! GO!" I said out of breath.
Hotch pulled my off my knees and told me to go and get behind a tree and wait. Everyone pulled out their guns and proceeded inside as I ran behind a thick tree trunk. I heard them bust down the door end go in, but then I heard another door open. I saw the un sub run out the back and no one followed. They'll never realize that he left until it's too late to follow. I thought and suddenly I found my self running after him. I realized that he had an escape plan from the start, he even made a trail to get away. I was running as fast as I could when I saw him. I kept gaining on him when he suddenly stopped and turned, facing me. He grabbed my arm and swung me against a nearby tree. I fell to the ground and m vision began to blur. I watched the un sub run away and soon I heard footsteps behind me. Reid and Morgan fell down next to me talking, but I couldn't hear what they were saying, that's when everything went black.
Hospital Visit:
Cortland Hospital:
When I woke up I heard faint voices and some incessant beeping noise to the right of me. I opened my eyes and saw the team standing in the room. I felt a pinch on my finger and suddenly everything came rushing back to me.
"I'm in the hospital aren't I?" I said as everyone turned and looked at me.
"Are you okay?" Reid and about three other people asked me.
"Besides having a headache the size of Canada?" I asked, "How's Ana?"
"She's fine. She's in the next room over. She had some pretty severe cuts but we got here in time." Hotch said. "Thanks to you." he added.
"So Ana's fine, you catch the un sub?" I asked.
"No. when Reid and Morgan stopped to help you, well, the un sub got to far ahead to follow and we couldn't find any other trails."
"Oh." I said, my voice falling, disappointed.
"Don't worry, we'll catch him." Rossi said reassuringly.
"Him?" I asked.
"Yeah, him." Rossi said repeating himself. The team looked at me confused.
"If that was a guy than I'm Elvis reincarnated."
"What do you mean?" Prentiss said sitting down on the side of my bed.
"What I mean is that the un sub isn't a guy, the he is actually a she. It's a woman un sub." I said. A wave of shock rolled over the crowd.
"Wait, you mean that we've been chasing males instead of females?" Hotch asked me and I nodded my head yes. Suddenly the doctor came in in the room.
"I'm sorry but I going to have to ask you all to leave. I need to do some checkups." everyone walked out and the doctor started to check everything.
"Hey doc. Why am I in here?"
"When you hit your head on the tree you got a minor concussion. We're gonna have to keep you over night just to make sure that everything's fine and in good working order." he said as he finished up and walked out of the room. Reid walked back into the room and sat down in one of the chairs along the wall.
"So, what'd the doctor say?"
"I have to stay overnight. You know, you don't have to stay here. You can go and work on the case."
"No way. You're not getting rid of us that easily. One of us will always be here."
"It's not that I want to get rid of you it's just that…well, I like to be alone. I know, I'm the Para-human." I said using the word my friends gave me because I was the opposite of everybody else. Reid gave me a confused look. "Para can mean with or against, my friends gave me that name meaning 'against the normal human being' because I had completely different lifestyles from them, for example I like to be left alone and they were very social, I read freely and very avidly, they only read when it was assigned, I excelled in school, most of them didn't."
"Oh."
From that moment on I was never left alone again. The team had set up a rotational schedule so that someone would always be with me and I don't think that it was just for protection if the un sub were to attack me again. I didn't mind it, I got to learn a lot about the teams personal life and their personalities. Mostly, due to my constant pleading with them, they told me about former cases. Matt had stopped in too and said that when Ana gets out if I would take care of Bruno (their dog) while they got out of town for a bit, of course I said yes.
I had lasted the night and Reid had gone to get me my breakfast while I got dressed. The doctor walked in.
"Well miss Anderson I'm pleased to say that you can go home today."
"Well it's about time!" I said getting out of bed. "Where are my keys?" I said searching the room for them.
"There is one exception I'm afraid." he said as I stopped mid-stride.
"What?"
"You can't drive for two days."
"That's bogus!" I yelled.
"It's just a precaution, we want to make sure that you will be okay."
"Whatever." I said as I walked out of the room. I saw Reid ran up to him and grabbed him arm, almost causing him to drop my breakfast of strawberry pop-tarts and Frosted Flakes.
"What are you doing?" he asked as I dragged him down the hall towards the elevators.
"Were busting out of this joint!" I said as I stabbed the down button.
"What are you talking about?" he said as I finally let go of him, getting in the elevator.
"What I mean is that I can go home. You just have to drive."
"Um… you should know, I'm not the best driver in the world." he said as the elevator doors opened.
"That's fine, just don't total my Tiburon. I got three thousand dollars in accessories, upgrades and decals for it." I said as we walked out of the doors.
"Right." he said a bit nervously as we ran across the street to the parking lot. "Are you sure?"
"Just get in." I said tossing him the keys. He got in and started the car.
"Are you really sure?"
"Yes, now drive!" I said.
Well, we got to my house in one piece. Reid was a little worried but he did okay and I have to admit that my constant nagging him to go faster and then saying that I could have been home five minutes after we left the hospital (even though I live fifteen minutes from town).we got to my house and had to walk in through the back garage door because some genius (probably Matt when he was dropping off Bruno) had locked the front door and I had lost my key in the woods when we were looking for Ana. We walked in through the garage door and suddenly a small black bundle of fur ran up and attacked Reid startling him.
"Bruno! Come here." I said picking him up off of the ground and holding him like you would a baby. "Bruno, you don't attack people like that." I said to him.
"I didn't know that you had a dog." Reid said closing the door as I set Bruno down, he went over to Reid and started to sniff him pant leg.
"I don't." I said walking into my kitchen and looking through my fridge for something good to eat. "He's Matt and Ana's, I'm just dog-sitting while heir out of town. You want something to eat? Drink?"
"Water if you have it." he said looking at some of the pictures over the fireplace.
"Please, we have the finest water in Cortland County." I said getting him a glass from the sink. I walked up and handed it to him.
"Oh, thanks." he said taking it from me.
"That's my nephew." I said pointing to the picture that he was looking at. "He'll be three in a couple of months. That's his brother." I said pointing to the picture next to it of an older boy. "He'll be six in January."
"Are these all of your family?"
"No. that one on top is Sam, the friend I told you about." pointing to a picture of a brunette wearing a semi dress in the middle of a party. She looked mildly embarrassed with her hair all in curls because she usually just had it in a ponytail.
"Are these your parents?" he said pointing to another picture.
"Yeah."
"What happened to them? Where are they?"
"There gone." I said and he took the hint to drop the subject. I stared at it for a second then walked to my room.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm taking a shower. I'm not going to the station smelling like a pig sty."
"Oh!" he said looking embarrassed, a little red coming to his cheeks.
"There's some food in the kitchen, you can watch TV or whatever, I don't care, just don't break anything. Explore the house, anything, oh I wouldn't go in the basement if I were you, I blew a couple of lights when I was trying to fix the furnace. And I mean blew." I said symbolizing something blowing up with my hands.
When I got out of my room wearing some blue jeans and my black t- short that said Be nice to me or I'll sic my ninja monkeys on you. I found Reid in my old room that I had converted into a library/ study. He was sitting in my black moon chair reading Pillars of the Earth I walked in and knocked on the wall. He stood up and started to put the book away.
"You like it?" I asked him.
"It's very, um…"
"I know, graphic."
"Yeah."
"It's really good though. I'm looking to buy the sequel, once I get money of course."
"Oh, well, shall we?"
"Sure." I said as I walked out of the room switching off the light and closing the door so that Bruno couldn't get in and chew on anything. Reid drove a little smoother and faster this time but there was still room for improvement, of course it could be hard to adjust to a small, powerful sports car after you drive a big SUV but still. When they walked in I was met with a warm greeting.
"Hey kid how you doing?" Morgan asked patting me on my back.
"I would be a lot better if I was allowed to drive."
"Wait, Reid drove?" he said then burst out laughing.
"It's not that funny." Reid said a bit embarrassed.
"Don't worry, a couple of lessons with me and he'll be able to drive like a pro. You start tomorrow." I said jokingly as I walked up to the whiteboard and read it. "We get anything new?"
"No, I was working on it for hours but the only connection that I can find between all of them is that, well, is that they all knew you."
"Thanks Reid that, that's real comforting."
The Visitor:
It had been two days since we rescued Ana and nothing had happened. No one had seen the un sub, there had been no more disappearances, no more dead girls, nothing. I was home reading in my library with my laptop playing some music when I got the call.
"I'm coming for you." was all that they said. I thought that it was JJ or Prentiss telling me to get ready and that they had found something new. I never expected to see who was at the door when the bell rang.
I opened the door to see a dark shadow on my front porch, I saw that my porch light was out. I started to say that I needed a few more seconds when I heard 'You'. I saw something move to my left and then I felt the sharp pain on the side of my head. I fell into the door and then everything went black.
I woke up with a major headache only to find that I was bound, gagged and blindfolded. I struggled to get free but to no avail, they had tied those knots where every time you struggle it feels like they just get tighter, like a Chinese finger trap. I sat there in the darkness trying to shove the gag out of my mouth with my tongue but again to no avail. Finally I gave up. What felt like an eternity later I heard the flip of a switch and a faint light came through the folds of my blindfold. Suddenly it was ripped off and a bright light blinded me.
"Agh! God, turn it off! Are you trying to blind me?" I said trying to hide my face in the crook of my arms.
"Maybe I am, it's not like you don't deserve it, Enchantress."
"What are you talking about?" I said, my brain still not functioning properly from the blows to my head. It was a lot harder than I thought, and who is this? I thought still blinded. I opened my eyes and they slowly began to focus. I knew I had lost a contact because my vision was blurry on the left side but I hardly ever needed my glasses or contacts anyway. I looked down at my hand and feet and saw that they were bound with thick rope that was wrapped around each arm at least four times per arm, my legs were similarly bound. Suddenly there was a bright flash and I started seeing more spots.
"What was that?" I asked.
"A flash." she said. Finally my eyes had adjusted and I could see that there was a floodlight aimed at me. I saw that the un sub was holding a camera, but why? I saw that the un sub had a long ponytail and was wearing baggy clothes. I looked around me and saw that I was in what looked to be a garage.
"Where am I?"
"In a building." she replied with the vaguest of answers.
"What do you want with me?"
"To settle a score." she said and then walked out through a door on the wall opposite wall from me.
No one had heard from Jen since she left last night and Reid was starting to worry. He grabbed his jacket and found Hotch in the conference room.
"Hotch, I'm going to Jen's house. She isn't here and she hasn't called and it's not like her to be late."
"Alright but take Morgan with you he wanted to stop at a store for something to eat."
"Alright." Reid said as he walked out of the room. "Come on Morgan, you're with me."
"Where're we going?" he said grabbing his jacket and running up to Reid.
"We're going to pick up Jen and then were going to get you food."
Morgan drove and they arrived at Jens house in fifteen minutes. Reid heard music playing and walked up to the door. It was open.
"Morgan. It's open." he said as he drew his gun, so did Morgan. The slowly walked in and searched.
"Clear!"
"Clear in here!" Morgan yelled from the kitchen. He checked the living room and dinning room before he joined up with Reid in front of the library, the source of the music. Reid opened the door and they burst into the room.
"Nothing." Reid said holstering his gun while Morgan walked over to the laptop holstering his.
"She has a variety of music. Everything from Papa Roach's "Last Resort" to Blind Melon's "No Rain"." Morgan said examining the play list.
Reid dialed Hotch. "Hotch, Jen's gone… Yeah I think so…Alright." Reid said hanging up the phone. "They'll be here in a couple of minutes."
"Well, I don't think that the kidnapping happened here." he said turning off the music coming from the laptop. "It looks as if she was reading in this chair then got up and walked out." he said looking at the open book.
"She probably went to answer the door." Reid said walking to it. He looked around and then saw a couple of red dots. "I got blood!" he said yelling to Morgan. "So, she went to answer the door, it was probably night, and she's blindsided. They hit her one the left, judging by the blood-spatter, she fell and hit her head on the doorknob." he said looking at the small pool of blood and a couple of hairs gathered on the door handle. "Then she was dragged a couple of inches" he said looking at a small trail of smeared blood that was almost covered by the rug. "and then picked up and carried out."
The only way of telling time was by the angel of the sun and that was difficult because of the lack of windows on the building. I had tried screaming but all that earned was being blinded by the floodlights again, being scream back at, full volume, and then being slapped in the face. The sounds coming from outside seemed to die down and I figured that the day was turning to night. I might as well go to sleep, there's nothing else to do. I thought laying down on my back and drifting off into a fitful slumber. I kept having nightmares and kept suddenly waking up. Finally I fell asleep, mostly due to exhaustion, that had no dreams. I was awoken when a bucket of cold water was dumped over my head.
"God, you always did hate waking up."
"What?" I said starting to shiver slightly. I looked around me and saw that instead of everything being sideways, it was right-side-up and it seemed to be lower than me. I looked around and saw the cause, I was hung up like a dead deer ready to be skinned and cut apart.
Okay, that's it so far and I would really appreciate reviews. You might not here from me in a while because it's back to school tomorow but I will keep working on the story. Actually i might not update for 2 weeks because this weekend i'm starving myself for 30 hours to raise money for starving people around the world and I might not have an internet connection on my laptop. So, bye for now!