"I'm getting a call on my tablet!" JJ was the first one to notice, but then panic spread as they all found a simultaneous call to theirs. Hotch's phone rang, as a panicked Garcia demanded to know whether they were getting the call too and what to do.
They accepted, all feeling sick.
The first shot was the stocking-covered face of the unsub. "You should not have crossed me, BAU," he said triumphantly. "You walk around with your badges and your guns as though you are so powerful, but I have one of your own and I have brought him to his knees." The unsub stepped back and revealed their missing teammate.
Derek Morgan was bruised and bloody. His shoulder was set unnaturally. His face was distorted with pain. His eyes were closed and his chest was heaving. He was on his knees, with both hands on the floor for balance. He was wobbling and seemed close to falling over on his own. There was a pool of vomit nearby.
Garcia, alone in her lab, let the tears run freely down her face as her shoulders shook. She emitted no sound.
Hotch glared in an unrelated direction, his eyebrows dropping in fury.
Alex bit her lip, guilt coursing through her for letting this happen.
Rossi's hands shook as he tried to keep a brave face.
JJ winced, turning away, unable to continue watching.
Reid's eyes widened as terror crossed his face. He leaned closer to his tablet, studying the image.
On screen, Morgan opened his eyes and glanced at the camera before looking away.
"I have an FBI agent at your mercy, and there's nothing you can do to stop me from doing whatever I want to him, whatever I-"
"You have to give him back!" Reid interrupted in a frantic voice.
Even under the stocking, the smirk was visible. "And why would I do that?"
"Because he's dying," Reid said emphatically.
The unsub paused. "What?"
"Look at his pupils. One's much larger than the other. He has a concussion, a severe one. The vomiting, the loss of balance- he's not going to last much longer without medical help," Reid insisted. The rest of the team could read the truth in his terrified eyes.
"So?" the unsub asked, but he seemed to be listening to Reid, which was a good sign.
"So, if you plan to stick to your three-day schedule, he'll die long before you have a chance to kill him." Reid paused, trying to stop his voice from shaking. "I know you don't want that. I know you want to stick to your schedule. But that's just not going to happen. If he doesn't get medical help, he'll die, and soon."
The unsub paused. "You're right, I don't want to disrupt my schedule. But why would giving him back to you be any better than letting him just bite it right here?"
Reid shut his eyes, let out a trembling breath, and said, "Because if you give him back you can have me instead."
Immediately, every head in the room spun to look at him.
Reid, strengthening in resolve, ignored them. "We'll trade. You give Agent Morgan up for medical treatment, and I'll go with you. I'm more your type than he is. I'm in good health, I'm not likely to die partway through. It's the best way for you to finish your ritual without getting too far behind. It's your best option."
"Spence, no!" JJ whispered. "No, don't do this, don't do this!"
The unsub appeared to be considering it.
"We do the switch on your terms. No snipers, I won't have a gun, GPS, or wire. You name the locations. My only requirements are that it happens within the next two hours, I'm allowed to get paramedics to Agent Morgan, and that Agent Morgan arrives in the same condition he's in now."
The unsub nodded sharply. "I hope you know what you're getting into, Dr. Reid." The transmission cut.
Everyone slowly turned toward Reid, who kept staring dead ahead, a determined look on his face.
"Reid, you don't have to do this. No one's expecting you to do this, and no one will blame you if you back out. This isn't your responsibility." Hotch was uncharacteristically the first to break the silence.
Reid let out a breath. "I know."
JJ walked over and grabbed his arm. "Spence, don't do this, please don't do this."
He turned toward her. "Jayje, I have to."
"There's got to be another way," Garcia said, her voice over the speakerphone laden with unshed tears. "There has to be a third option."
"There's not," Reid replied quietly. "There's no time for another game plan, there's no time for us to find him some other way. He is going to die unless I do this, now."
There was a long pause before Garcia said in a low, shaky voice, "We'll do everything in our power to find you in time. Godspeed."
JJ tried to talk Reid out of going. She pled with him, begged him not to leave Henry without a godfather, tried to persuade him not to sacrifice himself.
He finally stopped replying, focusing on preparing himself mentally for what he was about to do. He tried not to hear her pleas, tried not to feel the clutching hand on his.
The rest of the team stood, silent, unable to find the right words to express what they were feeling. Rossi's hand rested on Reid's shoulder, more solidarity than pressure to stay or go. Reid was thankful for the anchor. Alex was pacing, still feeling guilty that the decision had to be made in the first place.
Hotch just stood still, in the corner, wishing desperately not to have to make this choice, not to have to make this call. He cringed at the thought of willingly feeding Reid to the wolves, as it were. On the other hand, the only way to keep them both alive was to make this trade, and he knew that. He couldn't resign himself to losing one of his agents. He would have to let Reid go if it was really his decision.
Finally, after what seemed like eternity, Reid's tablet rang. He flipped it open, accepting the call.
"I've emailed you coordinates- longitude and latitude. Drive there. Go alone. No backup. More instructions there."
"No," Reid said firmly. "Tell me how I'll get my friend to an ambulance, or I won't go."
The unsub sighed. "Upon your arrival, I'll give you a phone. You'll call someone who can trace it, they will, and they'll call someone in to the location. By the time they get there, you and I will be gone. Agent Morgan will remain. Is that sufficient?"
"Yes."
"You come alone. No one follows you, or you're both dead, do you understand?"
"Yes."
"You have half an hour." The transmission cut.
Reid opened his email, read the contents, then put down the tablet and unhooked his gun, setting it and his phone on the desk.
"No, no, don't do this," JJ begged again, grabbing his arm. "Spence, you can't go in there! Do you know what could happen to you? Do you really get it?"
"Yeah, JJ, I get it," Reid replied tersely. "But it's the only way. Let go of my arm, I've got to go."
JJ shook her head tearfully. "I won't let go. I won't let you do this."
"It's his choice," Rossi said, speaking up for the first time since Reid announced his intention to trade. His voice was solemn, but firm. "He's the only one who gets to make this decision and he has. Let go, JJ."
Her lip wobbled. She let out a sob and flung herself into Reid's arms. He stumbled back slightly before hugging her awkwardly. "JJ, I need to go."
She stilled and pulled back, strength returning to her face. "We'll find you. Don't give up on us."
"I won't," Reid promised. He turned and walked away from them before pausing and turning back. "If the worse happens, make sure he knows it was my choice, no one else's."
"We will," Rossi agreed solemnly.
Reid left.
/
He stopped the car on the side of a road, where his rarely incorrect mind told him the coordinates led. He got out and stood silently, waiting.
The road was abandoned, so when a beat-up van pulled up beside him, he knew immediately who it was. Ignoring the pit in his stomach, Reid approached the car with his hands in the air.
The unsub, stocking in place, climbed out of the driver's seat and opened the back of the van. Morgan was there, unconscious but otherwise no worse off than before.
"Same condition, like you said," the unsub told Reid, handing him a prepaid phone still in the packaging. "Put it together and call someone to trace the call."
Reid moved over beside Morgan, putting himself between his fallen friend and the unsub. He put together the phone and dialed with one hand, wrapping the other around Morgan's wrist, comforting himself with the feel of the other man's pulse.
"G-Garcia."
"Hey, it's me. Trace this call, okay?"
"Already done," she replied, her normally cheerful voice strained. "How is he?"
"No worse," Reid said honestly. "Dispatch paramedics to the location."
He heard her draw in a shaky breath. "Done."
"Bye, Garcia."
"Good luck, my favorite baby genius."
He ended the call, handing the phone back to the unsub. The man nodded. "Move, so I can put him on the ground.
Reid did so, dropping Morgan's wrist and immediately missing the comfort of it. The unsub pulled him out with relative ease, putting him on the side of the road gently so as not to anger his new captive.
"In," the unsub said, pulling his coat to the side to reveal a gun. The firearm didn't matter. Reid couldn't do anything else now.
/
The team rode up screeching in black SUVs just as the ambulance was loading him up. Alex was the first one out, sprinting toward the paramedic.
"How is he? Will he be okay?" she asked the paramedic.
She shrugged. "Head wounds are hard to predict, and his is bad. But now that we have him, we'll try to stabilize him. He's lucky to have survived this long- a few more hours and we would have lost him. I have to go, meet us at the hospital."
"Hey, Mrs. Morgan? It's JJ again. I just wanted to let you know that we've got him."
Fran Morgan started sobbing in pure relief. "Thank you so much. Can I talk to him?"
"He has a concussion. It's a bad one, but the doctors are working on him now. They say they should get him stabilized soon. I'll have him call you when he's awake and caught up on the investigation, okay?"
Mrs. Morgan paused. "There's still an investigation?"
JJ closed her eyes, trying to spare the woman the additional worry. "We were able to negotiate with the unsub to get him to give Derek back, but we haven't caught him yet."
"When you find him, do me a favor and shoot him."
That made JJ smile just a bit, despite everything. "We'll see, ma'am."
/
"Garcia?"
"Please tell me you have something for me to search," Garcia said desperately. "I feel so useless."
"I don't. Fly over here. Bring everything you need to be at top effectiveness. The doctors have Morgan stabilized, but they're keeping him sedated for a while to allow his body to recover. I need you to stay with him while we work the profile."
"That I can do, sir."
"Garcia, you'll also need to catch him up on the situation when he wakes up."
Hotch heard a sharp intake of breath on the line.
"He's not going to like it, Hotch," Garcia said quietly. "But I'll tell him."
/
"Okay, he was willing to make a trade, and coherent enough to do so in a way that wouldn't get him caught. What does this tell us?" Hotch asked.
The team, already having gone a full day without sleep, stared blearily at him.
"He's an addict," Alex finally said. "He has a full-fledged addiction to whatever he's on. Otherwise, the stimulant would cause him to act too erratically to complete the drop well. The stimulant allows him to stay awake, but otherwise his behavior doesn't seem too unusual."
Hotch nodded and wrote it down. At the top of the page he wrote 3 hours into day 1.